Adelle

“ 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 loved to wander about her new possession, exploring its every corner, and when she was tired she could come back to the sunny forecourt and supervise the workmen, making petty decisions, summoning the foreman and the architect for consultation. She thus planned so many alterations which entailed delays that Archie grumbled that they would never get to rights and be able to have people to dinner. Adelle did not seem to care. She had not profited by Irene's advice, and made no effort to create a social atmosphere. ”

“ He was merely conscious that here was a woman whom no man need be ashamed of, even if he married her for other reasons than her beauty. And he set himself at once, not to catechize the bank's ward about her expenditures, but to interest the girl in himself. They went to the Savoy for luncheon, and the trust officer noted pleasurably the attention they received as they made their way through the crowded breakfast-room. And in spite of Adelle's monosyllabic habit of conversation, they got on very well over their food, about which Adelle had well-formulated ideas. ”

“ Adelle did not forget the young stone mason, but she could do nothing more for him even had she known just what to do. Then one morning when she made her usual rounds, she was happily surprised to find him back on the job, working as was his wont a little to one side of his foreign mates with his own helper. His face looked as red as ever, and his eyes were also suspiciously red, but this was the only evidence of his spree that she could see. As Adelle advanced to the place where he was working, the mason glanced up and replied gruffly to her greeting,—
"Morning, ma'am!" ”

“ They had a feeling for her as the mistress of the house, a latent sense of feudal loyalty to their employer that had quite disappeared among the other workmen. Apart from the Italians, the faces of the men upon the job were not familiar to her and were constantly changing, a strange one appearing almost every day. So Adelle felt less at home with them and rarely spoke to them unless she had an order to give that she could not easily transmit through the foreman. ”

“ The magic lamp had gone out most inopportunely! In vain Adelle expostulated, declared there was a mistake, even introduced to the cashier "my husband," who looked uncomfortable, but tried to assume authority and demanded reasons for the bank's treatment of his wife. All the reason lay in that brief cablegram. The couple at last turned dejectedly into the street and again got into Adelle's runabout, which obviously was in need of more petrol.
"It's Pussy," Adelle pronounced with divination.
"If it is, she's got in her fine work fast." ”

“ 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? ”

“ Adelle disliked his ironical laughter, for without knowing it she was groping towards a sounder belief about life than the anarchist's, and she felt sorry for her mistake in arousing false expectations in her cousin, because in the end it might make him all the harder, confirm him in his revolt against life. No, she must find some way out, so that a part of her unearned fortune could be of real benefit to him. ”

“ When at last the girl entered the little hotel salon where he had been cooling his heels for the half-hour, he had a distinct quickening of this latent purpose. Adelle Clark was not at this period, if she ever was, what is usually called a pretty girl. She had grown a little, and now gave the impression of being really tall, which was largely an effect of her skillful dressmaker. Pale and slender and graceful, exquisitely draped in a gown subtly made for her, with a profusion of barbaric jewelry which from this time on she always affected, Adelle was what is commonly called striking. ”

“ So in spite of the admiration aroused by her bijoux when she gave them to the inmates of the Villa, it must be admitted that they were more like the efforts of a school child who has prepared its handiwork for presents to admiring relatives than anything else. But at least it was a real interest, and it raised Adelle in her own estimation. Some of the happiest days she had known were spent in the studio of Miss Cornelia Baxter, on the Rue de l'Université. She would have spent more time there if her other engagements or distractions had not constantly interrupted her pursuit of art. ”

“ Sometime, of course, she must marry and have a child,—that was part of the fate of a girl with money of her own,—and then she should hope to marry a nice man who would not scold or ill-treat her or prefer some other woman—that was all.
"Dell is just a lump of ice!" Irene Paul often said, putting her own plump arms about Adelle's thin little body; and while Adelle tried to wriggle out of the embrace she teased her by assuming the man's aggressive rôle. ”

“ All these diverse human elements, which thus far had been cast up in Adelle's path, were good people enough—some of them earnest and serious about living, but all without exception coarse-minded. All the wealth of Clark's Field had not yet given its owner one simple, clear-thinking human companion.
The young stone mason, Tom Clark, outwardly crude and coarse and with a knowledge of life limited by his personal estate, was nevertheless the first person Adelle had met who tried to do his own thinking about life. ”

“ Gardiner. After expressing a deep sympathy with Adelle for the death of her aunt (of whose existence he had not been aware before this week) , he easily shifted to the topic of Adelle's future. She must, of course, continue her education. Adelle replied that she should like to keep on with school, by which she meant the Alton Girls' High.
"Of course, of course," the president said easily. "Every girl should have the proper sort of education, and it is all the more important when her responsibilities and opportunities in life are likely to be increased by the possession of property." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Horseback riding was a beneficial pleasure in more than one way. Adelle, of course, profited from the exercise in the open air: she began to grow slowly and to promise womanhood at some not distant day. It also brought her into close relations with some of the leading girls, who had thus far ignored her existence; among them the breezy California sisters, "the two Pols," as they were known in school. These girls profited by Adelle's groom to dispense with the chaperonage of the old riding-master, and before long Adelle learned why this arrangement was made. ”

“ It was his ironic sense of the accidental element in life, especially in relation to property ownership and class distinctions, based on property possession, that made him an incipient anarchist, such as he had described himself to Adelle. He was far too intelligent to believe what the Sunday School taught, and the average American thinks he believes, that property and position in this world are apportioned by desert of one sort or another. He knew in the radius of his own circumscribed life too many instances where privilege was based on nothing more real than Adelle's claim to Clark's Field. ”

“ The manager made no advances to the girl, however, and for that we must consider Adelle herself as chiefly responsible. For, as a woman, or rather the hope of a woman, she was uninteresting,—still a pale, passive, commonplace girl. What womanhood she might expect was slow in coming to her. Even with the halo of the Clark inheritance she could arouse slight amorous interest in any man. And thus Adelle's insignificance again saved her—shall we say?—from the mean fate of becoming the prey of this "roomer."
"No man will ever take the trouble to marry that girl," Mr. ”

“ Her spark of a soul should be touched by some sympathetic agent,—one of the teachers who had lived sadly and deeply, or some generous exception among her school-fellows, who would extend a protecting wing to the persecuted girl. No doubt even in Herndon Hall there were such who might have answered at a pinch to regenerate Adelle and start her forth on a series of physical if not spiritual adventures that would be exhilarating to the reader. ”

“ In his dislike of the doctrine and his desire to deal generously with the woman, the mason was not wholly right, and later Adelle was to perceive this. For if she had not been such as she was she would not have willfully taken to herself such a disastrous person as Archie and thus planted the seed of tragedy in her life as in her womb. If human beings are responsible for anything in their lives, she was responsible for Archie, which sometime she must recognize. ”

“ This consisted of attending the small Episcopal Church in the neighboring village, where the excellent rector, a married man and the father of daughters, often directed his discourses at the Hall pews. But Adelle was no more religiously minded than her worldly little associates. There was nothing in the service of ritualistic beauty to arouse a latent sensuousness—nothing of color or form or sound. Religion in fact had even less to do with daily life in Herndon Hall, in spite of weekly church and morning prayers, than it had in the Church Street house. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nay, worse, was he not guilty of disrespect to the most sacred object of worship that the race has—the holy institution of private property, aiding and abetting an anarchist in his loose views upon this subject? I will not try to defend the judge. He seemed tranquil that first day as he hobbled up his old stairs to his study, as if he felt that he had done a good day's business and was enjoying the approval of a good conscience; also, the satisfaction of insight into human nature, which is one of the rare rewards of becoming old. Nor did he worry for one moment about our heroine Adelle. ”

“ But if the thought of poor Adèle took one shape more than another, as she returned that day from a visit to her sweet friend Rose, it was this: "How drearily unfortunate I am!" And here a little burst of childish laughter breaks on her ear. Adèle, turning to the sound, sees that poor outcast woman who had been the last and most constant attendant upon Madame Arles coming down the street, with her little boy frolicking beside her. Obeying an impulse she was in no mood to resist, she turns back to the gate to greet them; she caresses the boy ”

“ I have a conviction, my child," continued he, in a tone even more serious, "that the poor woman has not lived a pure life before God, or even before the world. Even at this supreme moment of her life, if it be such, I should be unwilling to trust you alone with her, Adaly."
Adèle, trembling,—partly with the chilling wind, and partly with an ill-defined terror of—she knew not what,—nestled more closely to the side of the old gentleman; and he, taking her little hand in his, as tenderly as a lover might have done, said,—
"Adaly, at least your trust in God is firm, is it not?"
"It is! it is!" ”

“ Lady Adeline is, possessed of charms of person which would indeed draw any heart towards her, of the warmest and most enthusiastic disposition, deeply enamoured of you as well as sacredly alive to her engagement to you (and I know her, from a source which cannot mislead me, in person, in mind, in heart, and in determination, to be all that I describe to you) —how could even your judgment, Lord Albert, which is stronger than many of twice your years, but yield to such united influence, and be tempted to decide at the moment on making so much perfection irrevocably your own. ”