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Clark's Field, a novel by Robert Herrick |
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Chapter 45 |
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_ CHAPTER XLV Adelle registered at the Eclair Hotel in B---- with her maid. It was the only hotel that she knew in the city, although when she first crossed the ornate lobby she remembered with a sick sensation that other visit with Archie on their scandalously notorious arrival from Europe to take possession of her fortune. However, Adelle was not one to allow sentimental impressions to upset her, and signed the register carefully--"Mrs. Adelle Clark and maid, Bellevue, California." She had resolved to signify her new life by renouncing her married name here in the country where she had begun life as Adelle Clark, although her divorce was not yet even started. She expected her cousin Tom Clark in a few days. She had thought it best to precede him and pave the way for him at the Washington Trust Company by announcing her news to the officers first. A little reflection and the memory of certain expressions from the trust officers of complacency in their success in "quieting" the Clark title had convinced her that this would be the wiser course to pursue. The trust company might find some objections to undoing all the fine legal work that they had accomplished in the settlement of the estate. Adelle was received by the new president, that same Mr. Solomon Smith who had delivered the trust company's ultimatum to her after her marriage. Mr. Smith, it seemed, had recently succeeded to the dignity of President West, who had retired as chairman of the company's board, fat with honor and profit. President Solomon Smith received Adelle with all the consideration due to such an old and rich client, whose business interests were still presumably considerable, although latterly she had seen fit to remove them from the cautious guardianship of the trust company. She was in mourning, he noticed, and looked much older and more of a person in every way than when it had been his official duty to deliver his solemn wigging in the Paris studio to the trust company's erring ward. Mr. Smith probably realized with satisfaction the success of his prophecies on the consequences of her rash act, which he had so eloquently pointed out. Adelle made no reference, however, to her own troubles, nor explained why she had announced herself by her maiden name. She had come on more important business. It took her some time to make clear to the banker what the real purpose of her visit was, and when Mr. Smith realized it he summoned to the conference two other officers of the institution, who were better acquainted with the detail of the Clark estate than he was. After the thing had been put before them, the temperature in the president's office leaped upwards with astonishing rapidity on this chilly day in early May. Three more horrified gentlemen it would have been hard to find in the entire city, whose citizens are easily horrified. For this woman, whom Fate and the Washington Trust Company had endowed with a large fortune, to try to raise the ghost of that troublesome Edward S. Clark, whom they had been at so much pains and expense to lay, seemed merely mad. When Adelle reiterated her conviction that she herself had discovered at last the heirs of the lost Edward S., President Smith demanded with some asperity whether Mrs. Davis--Mrs. Clark--understood what this meant. Adelle replied very simply that she supposed it meant the California Clarks getting at last their half of Clark's Field, which certainly belonged to them more than to her. "Not at all!" all three gentlemen roared at her exasperatedly. "They'd have a hard time making good their title now!" one of them remarked, with a cynical laugh. "It would mean a lot of expensive litigation for one thing," another injected. "Which would fall upon you," the trust president pointed out. "But why?" Adelle asked quietly. "I shouldn't fight their claims." The three gentlemen gasped, and then let forth a flood of discordant protest, which was summed up by the president's flat assertion,-- "You'd have to!" Patiently, while his colleagues waited, he tried to make clear to Adelle in words of two syllables that the Clark's Field Associates would be obliged to defend the titles they had given to the land, and she as majority partner in this lucrative enterprise would have to stand her share of the risk and the legal expense involved. Adelle saw that the affair was more complex than she had thought and said so, with no indication, however, of giving up her purpose. "It is not a simple matter at all to consider the claims of these California Clarks. The land has passed out of our--your control: it has probably passed through several hands in many instances, each owner pledging his faith in the validity of his title. You can see that any action taken now by these heirs of Edward S. Clark against the present owners of Clark's Field would injure numberless innocent people. It is not to be thought of for one moment!" Having reached a moral ground for not upsetting things as they were, the president of the trust company felt more at ease and expatiated at length on "the good faith of the Washington Trust Company and all others" who had been parties to the transaction. Adelle sighed as she listened to the torrent of eloquence and realized what an upheaval her simple act of restitution would cause. It seemed to her that the law was a very peculiar institution, indeed, which prevented people from using their property for many years in order not to injure some possible heirs, and then just as stoutly prevented those heirs when they had been discovered from getting their own! "It is simply preposterous, the whole thing," one of the younger officers observed, rising to go about more important business. "It's not likely to come to anything--they are poor people, these other Clarks, you said?" inquired Mr. Smith. "I know only one of them," Adelle replied. "He was a stone mason working on my place in California. It was by accident that I learned of his relationship to me. He has some brothers and sisters living, four of them I think he said. They are all poor people. I don't know whether he has any cousins. I didn't ask him. But I think he said something once about an uncle or aunt, so it's likely there are other heirs, too." The trust president asked testily,-- "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!" Another reacted equally conventionally,--"She must be a little queer." And the third--the president--vouchsafed,--"What she needs is a strong hand to keep her straight." All of which Adelle, like any self-respecting woman, might have resented. _ |
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