Robert Herrick

“ Poverty was a matter of God's will in the delightful Latin sense of the word, not a matter of inherited personal disgrace as in a free, Anglo-Saxon democracy.
"I do not like your America," she said gravely to Adelle after she had been a couple of months in the school. "Not to live in always when I am married."
"What's the matter with America?" Adelle asked.
"It is all money, money," the little Mexican replied. "You come to see nothing in your heart but dollars, dollars, dollars. It makes the heart heavy."
Adelle, who had never looked at the world in this light, thought Diane a little "queer." ”

“ Ashly Crane's crude imitation of ardor. All love-making, even the most sincere and eloquent, is verbally disappointingly alike and rather tame. The human animal, ingenious as he is in many ways, is nevertheless almost as limited as the ape when it comes to the articulation of the deeper emotions. That is why delicacy and the habit of nuances give the experienced wooer such an immense advantage, even with a raw girl like Adelle, over the mere clumsy male. Love, like the drama, being so rigidly limited in technique, is no field for the bungler! ”

“ To Adelle, Bobby was merely a smooth, downy boy like all the rest, who showed bare brown arms and white flannels in summer, and had as little to say for himself as she had. She was amused at Nelly's fussed state over the loss of Bobby; she could not understand Mother Glynn's objection to the harmless Bobby's occupying the vacant seat in the roomy car;—but then she did not understand many things in the intricate social world in which she found herself. She did not know that there is no one of their possessions that the rich learn more quickly to guard than their women. ”

“ He set them forth on their jaunt after the stray members of the Clark tribe and other deeds with a favorable expectation that they would commit along the road only the necessary minimum of folly, and above all, sure of Adelle's destination. For at twenty-six she had passed through crude desire, through passion and pain and sorrow, and had discovered for herself the last commonplace of human thinking—that the end of life is not the "pursuit of happiness," as our materialistic forefathers put it in the Constitution they made for us, and cannot be "guaranteed" to any mortal. ”

“ She had passed from the narrowest poverty of the Alton side street to the prodigal ease of Herndon Hall, from the environment of an inferior "rooming-house" to companionship with the rich daughters of "our very best people,"—from an unformed child to the full physical estate of womanhood,—all within three short years; but she had accommodated herself to these great transitions with as little inward change as possible. Her soul was the soul of the Clarks, tricked out with good clothes and the manners and habits of the rich. ”

“ Adelle was met at the dock by "Rosy," who had with her "the two Pols" and Eveline Glynn at whose country home they were staying. "Rosy," as well as her schoolmates, was agreeably surprised by Adelle's appearance after her summer in Mexico. Nature was tardily asserting herself; Adelle was becoming a woman,—a small, delicate, pale little creature, whose rounding bust under her white dress gave her the dainty atmosphere of an early spring flower, fragile and frigid, but full of charm for some connoisseurs of human beauty. ”

“ Most marvelous fact of all was that the thin, pale American type, of which Adelle herself was an example, had largely disappeared from the Alton streets, and in its place there were members from pretty nearly all the races of the earth,—Greeks, Poles, Slavs, Persians,—especially Italians. Many a sturdy young woman, with bare brown arms and glossy black hair, strode along, hatless and unashamed, on her way to shop or mill through the streets where Addie Clark had sidled with prim consciousness of her "place" in society. ”

“ The little tar-paper shack was the only sign of habitation in sight. There was an immense panorama of tumbled hill and valley bounded westward by the curving coast-line where the Pacific surges broke into faint lines of white spume, and where, she might reflect sadly, the ill-fated Seaboard Railroad should now be running trains to open up all this unoccupied land to civilization. However, wild and unsettled as it was, it offered an attractive view, and Adelle at once coveted it. They must buy up this tract over the hill—they should have looked into it when they had arranged to take Highcourt. ”

“ Now something like its stern truth was boring into her consciousness. It seemed that when the larger incentives of living—the big universal ones—had been removed for any cause, human beings were often at a loss what to do with themselves. They sighed for "freedom" when bound to the common wheel, but when released, as Archie and Adelle had been, the average man or woman had but the feeblest notion of what to do with his "freedom." ”

“ Why was he living like this in a lonely shack far away from everybody? Why had he chosen to isolate himself from his fellow-workmen, who herded together near the town where they could slip down to the saloons after their work? He must be by nature a sullen, unsociable fellow. And what sort of life did he live in there, doing his own washing and probably also his own cooking? A kind of curiosity about the truculent stone mason and his way of life thus occupied Adelle's unspeculative mind. He was a good-looking young fellow, lean and well muscled. ”

“ Miss Comstock pronounced with the quick perception of a woman; "he's after the girl's money." While the man said to himself, with the more ponderous indirectness of the male,—"That woman is not quite the influence that an unformed girl should have about her. She's working the girl, too, for motors and things." And yet both smiled and joked companionably across the shoulders of the unconscious Adelle.
As the trust officer returned to his hotel in his hansom, he jingled a few stray coins in his pocket, the remains of twenty pounds in gold that the day had cost him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Adelle meanwhile was wrestling with herself; with what people have the habit of calling the "conscience," but what had better be called the "consciousness," endeavoring to realize more fully the position in which she found herself. The idea within, like most ideas hotly nursed in a troubled brain, was growing all the time, until it filled all her waking moments and most of her dreams. She had to will deliberately not to take the little path up the hill to the mason's shack. ”

“ There is always the awakening, the coming back once more to consciousness, to the world that has been, and must endure, but will never again be as it was. Adelle woke to consciousness in the orangery, where they had laid mattresses for her and the dead child. Through the open door she might see the blackened walls of what had been Highcourt. The fire had swept clear through the three parts, scorching even the eucalyptus trees above on the hillside, and had died out at last for lack of food. ”

“ 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? ”

“ He had somehow found the means to follow her, arriving that morning by the third-class train, and had hung around the piazza, confident that the girl must appear in this center of civic activity. They at once took to a gondola as the safest method of privacy. And it was in this gondola, behind the little black curtains of the felza, that Adelle received her second kiss from the lips of a man. But this time due preparation had been made: the kiss was neither unexpected nor undesired, and on her part, at least, the embrace had all the fervor of nature. ”

“ Ashly Crane was a good-looking, keen American banker, who paid strict attention to his manners, clothes, and habits. He was ambitious, of course, and had been so busily climbing upwards from his first clerkship in the trust company that he had not yet married. Very likely he felt that with his ever-widening horizon of prospects it would not be wise to anchor himself socially to any woman, who might prove to be a drag upon his future. ”

“ Herndon Hall, with its utterly false standards of everything that concerns woman's being, was the fruit of those ideals that have obtained about women, their position and education, for many centuries. And Herndon Hall was Adelle's accident—the fate to which the trust officers in all good will consigned her. There always is and must be, even in our own enlightened age of feminist movements, a Herndon Hall—perhaps more than one. Parents who believe that marriage and "a suitable position in society" are all there is in life for a woman will always create Herndon Halls. ”

“ Adelle knew that he was speaking of the stone mason; she knew that Clark was daring the impossible to get at her child, to save her "Boy." She felt in every fiber of her body the strain of that feat—the clinging, creeping progress up the perpendicular wall over the cañon. Those around groaned as they watched, expecting each moment to see the man's body fall backwards sickeningly into space. ”

“ And while the young mason expatiated on his land of plenty where the poor man could still enjoy his own bit of God's sunlight and fresh fruit and flowers from the earth, Adelle watched the thick stream of workers in Clark's Field, pushing and dawdling along the narrow street. There were girls with bare arms and soiled shirt-waists and black skirts, there were lean, pale boys, and women old before their time, hurrying from tenement to shop, their hearts divided between the two cares of home and livelihood. ”

“ He did not mind, as much as Adelle did, his spitting habit, for he remembered the time not more than a generation or two ago when the best American gentlemen chewed tobacco or took snuff, and he could see quality in a person who spat upon the ground, but did not conceal ugly and vile thoughts, or who abused the language of books in favor of that more enduring vernacular of the street, or who confused the table implements, or did the hundred and one other little things that are supposedly the indelible marks of an inferior culture. ”

“ Smith proceeded in his most acid tones, glaring at Archie, "is properly called an adventurer, and rarely if ever proves to have character enough to retain the respect of the woman he has wheedled into sacrificing herself."
This was a bit unfair, for Archie had been wheedled rather than wheedled Adelle. Moreover, the world is full, as Mr. Smith must surely know, of young men who have committed matrimony with girls financially to their advantage and who have retained not only their own self-respect, but won the admiration of their acquaintances into the bargain for their skill and good luck. ”

“ The rich, sensuous country, with its peculiar profusion of exotic vegetation and the luxury of perpetual good weather, made Adelle, pale offspring of an outworn Puritanism, bloom, especially after the birth of her child. It was as if all the desires of the old Clarks to escape the hardships of their bleak lives found at last their fulfillment in her. She expanded under the influence of warmth and color; for climate is a larger moral factor than is usually recognized. ”

“ Thus Adelle became fully acquainted with the facts of sex in their abnormal as well as more normal aspects. That she got no special personal harm from this irregular education and from the example of "the two Pols" was due solely to her own unawakened temperament. Life had no gloss for her, and it had no poetic appeal. She supposed, when she considered the matter at all, that sometime as a woman she would be submitted to the coil of passion and sex, like all the others about whom her friends talked incessantly. They seemed to regard every man as a possible source of excitement to a woman. ”

“ Archie believed in the strong hand with women. Adelle wondered whether Archie would ever attempt to use it upon her and what she would do under such circumstances. She was sure that she would resent it dreadfully. That would seem too much for any woman to bear—to marry a poor man and support him quite handsomely in idleness and then be abused by him. But fortunately it had not got to that point in their marriage—nothing worse than sullenness and silence or angry words had happened thus far. ”

“ But why, Adelle urged more softly, did he have to speculate—try to make more money than they already had? And Archie's somewhat incoherent reply was much the same as Irene Pointer's reasons for going into the society of one's fellows. To try to make more money when one already had the use of a great deal was an honorable and sensible ambition—every one would tell her so. All moneyed men who were worth their salt were always alive to opportunities of enlarging their possessions. ”

“ And Judge Orcutt was very much of a gentleman in almost every sense of the word. He came from an old Puritan family, as American families are reckoned, which had had its worthies for a young man to respect, and its traditions, not of wealth but of culture and breeding, kindly humanity, and an interest in life and letters. Something of this aristocratic inheritance could be felt in his manners by the two women who were not of his social class and who were treated with an even greater consideration than if they had been. ”

“ Adelle was to be congratulated for having married an American, "who at least knew how to treat a woman," as if she were more than his horse or his servant. Adelle might once have been pleased by this admission of envy of her Archie; but now she had her own troubles. However, she did not confess them to any one. She said good-naturedly that it was hard being married to most any man, until you got used to it. Sadie shook her small head and showed her large teeth.
"I'll show him," she said, "that he can't wipe his feet on me! An American woman won't stand what he's used to." ”

“ The stone mason was sitting cornerwise on his chair in the hotel room, twirling on his thumb a new "Stetson" hat that he had purchased as part of his holiday equipment. There was nothing especially bizarre in the costume that Tom Clark had chosen. Democracy has eradicated almost everything individual or picturesque in man's attire. The standard equipment may be had in every town in the land. There remains merely the fine distinction of being well dressed against being badly dressed, and Clark was badly dressed, as any experienced eye such as Adelle's could see at a glance. ”

“ There were long periods when he could neither make love nor paint, and he took to spending his idle evenings at the Casino, which was not good for his slender purse. As the weeks passed and their ruses seemed successful, the two grew more reckless and indulged in flying expeditions about the country roads in Adelle's little car. One evening, as they were returning in the sunset glow from a long jaunt down the coast, Adelle at the wheel and Archie's arm encircling her waist, they came plump upon Irene Paul and Pussy Comstock in a hired motor. Adelle stiffened and threw on high speed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One easily might undervalue Adelle's passion, however, if it were judged solely by its intellectual quality. The beauty and the wonder of passion is that it cannot be weighed by any mental scales, its terms are not transferable. Adelle's share of the universal mystery, in spite of the banality of its expression, may have been as great as any woman's who ever lived. At least it filled her being and swept her to unexpected heights of feeling and power.
She was completely happy at this time, but Archie after the first days was restless and somewhat bored. ”

“ For the ordinary nature it is impossible to live day after day, year in and year out, under the powerful external stimulus of riches, without confounding the outer source of power with an innate virtue.
But with our Adelle, by the time her visit had come to an end, her new education had got merely to the point where she had the self-interest and assurance of the ordinary American girl of twelve. That Church Street experience had chastened her. But if her education was to continue at the present rate, she was likely to become selfish, egotistical, and purse-proud in a few years. ”

“ We can see how far from the anarchist his philosophy of life led him. The accidents of life—yes, but mysterious, not merely ironic and meaningless, accidents! Adelle Clark, the unpromising little girl, the loud, silly young married woman, was the instrument chosen by Fate—only the judge said God-sharpened by pain and sorrow to become the intelligent destiny of Clark's Field. Could the law with all its hedging and guarding beat that? Could the stone mason or the judge himself or any human mind select a better executor for Clark's Field than the unlikely instrument which Fate had chosen? ”

“ As she went up the slippery path she thought about what the mason had said, about his being a Clark, too. She felt herself on much closer terms of knowledge and sympathy with this workman of her own name than with the fashionable women who had come for luncheon to Highcourt.
Hitherto Adelle had met in the journey of life mainly coarse-minded persons—I do not mean by this, nasty or vulgar people, but simply men and women who were content to live on the surfaces and let others do for them what thinking they needed—people upon whom the experience of living could make little fine impression. ”