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Clark's Field, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Chapter 33 |
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_ CHAPTER XXXIII That summer while the new house was going up they went back to Europe for a few months, as it was too hot on the ranch and they had nothing better to do. They also meant to buy furniture, rugs, pictures, and other material for the new home which they expected would be their permanent abiding-place.... It would be a waste of time to chronicle in minute detail this period of Adelle's marriage. As the reader must suspect by this time, nothing of spiritual significance was to come to Adelle through Archie nor to Archie through Adelle. They did continue for a number of years to be man and wife, although they frequently had bitter quarrels and felt rather than clearly recognized that their union had been a mistake, which neither one seemed able to rectify nor make the best of. It was not so much principle that prolonged their tie, nor design on Archie's part to keep possession of the wealth his wife had brought him, as the fact of the child--and Adelle's hope, which was never realized, of having other children. One of their more serious quarrels was occasioned by Adelle's discovery at this time of Archie's unfortunate speculations. She had already yielded to his constant demands for money for the ranch and broken her arrangement with the Washington Trust Company, converting part of their excellent investments into cash, which she removed to San Francisco, where it could be got at more easily. Archie had had charge of this uninvested portion of the estate; it gave him something to do and to talk about with men. Until her illness, to be sure, Adelle had kept run of what was being done with her money, and opposed any considerable further changes in the investments of the estate, which were of the sort that a good trust company would make, and which had very greatly appreciated in value during these last years of national prosperity. But during her illness and afterwards when she was absorbed in the child, Archie had taken a freer hand and had changed some of the investments unknown to his wife. He had put the money into local enterprises, of which the men he met told him, but about which he could know very little. There were new water-power companies up in the mountains, and there was especially the Seaboard Railroad and Development Company--a daring scheme for opening up a tract of land along the northern coast of California. Into this last venture Archie had put much more of Adelle's money than he liked to remember. It was a pet project of the men he knew best in the Bellevue Club--the polo-playing set. The Honorable George Pointer was very active in Seaboard, representing an English syndicate that was supposed to be backing the enterprise with ample funds, and for this reason the Pointers had prolonged their California sojourn beyond the usual term. Seaboard, it was said, would prove eventually to be much more important than a short line of new railroad developing a desolate stretch of the Pacific: it was to be used as a club upon one of the older railroads. The best families of the State were heavily interested in it, the younger generation of bloods expecting by means of it to rival the railroading exploits of their fathers, whose fortunes, as everybody knows, were acquired in the golden seventies and eighties in much the same way. (And when the explosion in Seaboard came off, it left deep scars all through California society.) All this Archie tried to make Adelle understand, when unexpectedly she gained a knowledge of his operations in Seaboard. She happened to open some letters from his brokers that came to Archie during his absence--letters that clamored for more ready money with which to pay for options that Archie had taken upon the common stock of the new company. Adelle was disturbed when she discovered that more than a million of her money had already gone into Seaboard. The couple had some sharp words about the matter, in which Adelle put the thing rather too bluntly to Archie,-- "What do you know about railroads? You aren't a business man--you never earned a dollar in business in your life!" Adelle was probably remembering how she had given Archie the only order he had ever received for his painting. Archie naturally resented her allusion to his penniless and dependent state. He knew, he asserted, quite as much as other men, whom he instanced, all of whom managed their wives' money affairs without being scolded for what they did. 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. Did she want her husband to sit around with folded hands and do nothing in the world? Archie waxed righteous and right-minded, which is the easiest way to eloquence. Adelle was silent, though not convinced by his reasoning any more than she had been by Irene's about "taking her part." Both seemed to make life needlessly dangerous and complicated, under the disguise of duty. But she could not endure sullenness and bad temper in Archie. Having taken the sort of husband she had, she must make the best of life with him, even if he hazarded her fortune in doubtful enterprises. She remembered with comfort that there was a great deal of money, and ultimately would be even more when Clark's Field was finally liquidated. Archie could hardly go so wrong in investments as to make away with all of it. So she agreed to his selling another block of General Electric or Bell Telephone and taking up his options, and having thus made up their difference, they drifted on their way. They motored across the continent to the remote fastness where the Countess Zornec was housed upon her husband's estate and spent some weeks with the couple. It was easy, even for Adelle's unobservant eyes, to detect signs of trouble in this new marriage. Sadie had a temper. All the girls at the Hall had known that. Indeed, she had the characteristics of her mother, who report said had been an Irish girl in one of the U. P. construction camps when old Paul found her--that was long before his fortune came, when he was a simple contractor for the railroad. Sadie had an unfortunate mouth, with coarse teeth, and when she was crossed, this long mouth wrinkled into a snarl. The Count apparently had already found out how to cross her. Indeed, he did not disguise his contempt for his bride's origins, and sometimes decorum was badly strained at the dinner-table. Sadie was little and lithe and was something of the gamine--her "tricks," as the girls called her daring maneuvers, had always pleased men. But the Count did not like "tricks." He wished more dignity in the wife of a Zornec and did not hesitate to tell Sadie so. Nor did he care to have her gaminerie attract other men. In short, as Sadie confided to Adelle in a burst shortly after her arrival, the Count was a "regular brute." It seemed that Europeans made very good lovers, but dangerous husbands. 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." Adelle suspected dire things, physical violence even, and was silent. Sadie continued,--"Some day he'll go too far, and then--" She closed her lips over the teeth in a hard fashion. Adelle wondered what she would do with the Count in such an event. She could hardly divorce him, for the Pauls were Catholic as well as the Zornecs, of course. It was very inconvenient being a Catholic, she reflected, if you were to be married. And it seemed less easy to drop a husband in Europe than it was in America. There would be trouble about the children and all that. Archie did not find the Count so bad, although he growled sometimes at his host's thinly veiled contempt for all Americans. Archie felt superior to the foreign nobleman who had made a rich American marriage. At least he had taken an heiress from his own people, and there was distinction in that. But the Count and Archie hunted and rode together, also drank deeply of the Hungarian wines and excellent French champagne that the castle contained. He was of the opinion that Sadie Paul had got "what she deserved." "She needed a man to throw her around a bit--she was always too fresh," he told Adelle. 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. The Davises terminated their visit sooner than had been expected. The little boy's ill health was made the excuse, but the fact was that the tempestuous atmosphere of the Zornec household was far from pleasant to easy-going people. They engaged the couple for a return visit the next spring in California and motored off to Paris. The Zornecs had been a good object lesson to them, and for the rest of their trip they remained good friends, being almost lover-like in their respect for each other. They seemed to feel the dangers ahead and restrained their moods. Finally, gathering together their plunder they sailed home, and this time did not make any attempt to evade the custom-house ordeal. They paid nobly for the privilege of being American citizens and did not demur. Adelle insisted upon that, remembering their former experience. Archie was in such haste to get back to California where "Seaboard was acting queer" that he would have paid double for the privilege of entering his own country. They sped swiftly across the continent to their new home. _ |
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