Read Ebook: Clark's Field by Herrick Robert

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Ebook has 65 lines and 7448 words, and 2 pages

chosen for Fortune's favor."

"Ain't one of 'em," the young man asserted emphatically, "so far as I know, would know what to do with a hundred dollars, would be any better off after a couple of years if he had it. That's gospel truth--and I ain't exceptin' myself!" he added after a moment of sober reflection.

Adelle made no comment. She did not seem to be thinking along the same line as the judge and the young mason. Since the yesterday her conception of her problem had changed and grown. Adelle was living fast these days, not in the sense in which she and Archie had lived fast according to their kind, but psychologically and spiritually she was living fast. Her state of yesterday had already given place to another broader, loftier one: she was fast escaping from the purely personal out into the freedom of the impersonal.

"Allowing for Mr. Clark's natural vivacity of statement," the judge observed with an appreciative chuckle, "these California relatives of yours, so far as I can see, are pretty much like everybody else in the world, struggling along the best they can with the limitations of environment and character which they have inherited.... And I am rather inclined to agree with Mr. Clark that it might be unwise to give them, most of them, any special privilege which they hadn't earned for themselves over their neighbors."

"What right have they got to it anyway?" the mason demanded.

"Oh, when you go into rights, Mr. Clark," the judge retorted, "the whole thing is a hopeless muddle. None of us in a very real sense has any rights--extremely few rights, at any rate."

"Well, then, they've no good reason for havin' the money."

"I agree with you. There is no good reason why these twenty-five Clarks, more or less, should arbitrarily be selected for the favors of Clark's Field. And yet they might prove to be as good material to work upon as any other twenty-five taken at random."

Adelle looked up expectantly to the judge. She understood that his mind was thinking forward to wider reaches than his words indicated.

"But you would want to know much more about them than you do now, to study each case carefully in all its bearings, and then doubtless you would make your mistakes, with the best of judgment!"

"I don't see what you mean," the mason said.

"Nor I," said Adelle.

"Let us have some lunch first," the judge replied. "We have done a good deal this morning and need food. Perhaps later we shall all arrive at a complete understanding."

At the close of their luncheon the judge remarked to Adelle,--

"Your cousin and I, Mrs. Clark, have talked over your idea of giving to him and his relatives what the law will not compel you to distribute of Clark's Field. He doesn't seem to think well of the idea."

"It's foolish," the mason growled.

Adelle looked at him swiftly, with a little smile that was sad.

"I was afraid he would say that, Judge," she said softly.

"You know any man would!... I ain't never begged from a woman yet."

"The woman, it seems to me, has nothing to do with the question," the judge put in.

"And it isn't begging," Adelle protested. "It's really yours, a part of it, as much as mine,--more, perhaps."

"It's nobody's by rights, so far as I can see!" the mason retorted with his dry laugh.

"Exactly!" the judge exclaimed. "Young man, you have pronounced the one final word of wisdom on the whole situation. With that for a premise we can start safely towards a conclusion. Clark's Field doesn't belong to you or to your cousin or to any of the Clarks living or dead. It belongs to itself--to the people who live upon it, who use it, who need it to get from it their daily bread and shelter."

"But," jeered the mason, "you can't call 'em out into the street and hand each of 'em a thousand-dollar bill."

"No, and you would make a lot of trouble for everybody if you did--especially for the Alton police courts, I am afraid! But you can act as trustees for Clark's Field--" He turned to Adelle and continued whimsically,--"That's what the old Field did for you, my dear, with my assistance. Its wealth was tied up for fifty years to be let loose in your lap! You found it not such a great gift, after all, so why not pour it back upon the Field?... Why not make a splendid public market on that vacant lot that's still left? And put some public baths in, and a public hall for everybody's use, and a few other really permanent improvements?--which I fear the city will never feel able to do! In that way you would be giving back to Clark's Field and its real owners what properly belongs to it and to them."

So the judge's thought was out at last. It did not take Adelle long to understand it now.

"I'll do it," she said simply, as if the judge had merely voiced the struggling ideas of her own brain. "But how shall I go to work?"

"I think your cousin can show you," the judge laughed. "He has many more ideas than I should dare call my own about what society should do for its disinherited. Suppose you talk it over with him and get his suggestions."

"My God!" the stone mason groaned enigmatically.

The sardonic smile spread over his lean face as he further explained himself,--

"It ain't exactly what I took this trip from California for."

"You didn't understand then," the judge remarked.

"And I didn't understand either," Adelle added.

"I guess I could keep you from getting into trouble with your money as well as the next man. I'd keep you out of the hands of the charity grafters anyhow!"

"I think," the judge summed up whimsically, "that you are one of the best persons in the world to advise on how to distribute the Clark millions. That is what should be done with every young anarchist--set him to work spending money on others. He would end up either in prison or among the conservatives."

"But," Adelle demurred finally, "that leaves the others--all the California Clarks--out of it for good."

"Where they belong," put in the mason.

"I'm not so sure of that," the judge added cautiously. And after further reflection he suggested, "Why shouldn't you two make yourselves into a little private and extra-legal Providence for these members of your family? Once, my dear," he said to Adelle, "I did the same for you! At considerable risk to your welfare I intervened and prevented certain greedy rascals from doing your aunt and you out of Clark's Field, you remember?"

He paused to relate for Tom Clark's benefit the story of the transaction with which we are fully familiar.

"Of course, if then I had known of the existence of our young friend and his family, I should have been obliged to include him in the beneficence of my Providence. But I didn't. It was left for you, my dear, to discover him!... There was a time when I felt that I had played the part of Providence rashly,"--he smiled upon Adelle, who recalled quite vividly the stern lecture that the court had given her when she was about to receive her fortune. "But now I feel that I did very well, indeed. In fact I am rather proud of my success as Providence to this young woman.... So I recommend the same r?le to you and Mr. Clark. Look up these California Clarks, study them, make up your minds what they need most, then act as wisely as you can, not merely in their behalf, but in behalf of us all, of all the people who find themselves upon this earth in the long struggle out of ignorance and misery upwards to light.... It will keep you busy," he concluded with his fine smile,--"busy, I think, for the better part of your two lives. But I can think of no more interesting occupation than to try to be a just and wise Providence!"

"It's some job," the mason remarked. "I don't feel sure we'd succeed in it much better than Fate."

"You will become a part of Fate," the judge said earnestly, "as we all are! Don't you see?"

"We'd better begin with Cousin Stan first," the mason shouted. "I'd like to be his fate, you bet!"

"What would you do with the Honorable Stanley Clark?" the judge asked.

"Boot him clear out of the State of California--show him up for what he is--a mean little cuss of a grafter; no friend of labor or anything else but his own pocket."

"Good! But it will take money to do that these days, a good deal of money! You will have to pay for publicity and court expenses and all the rest of it."

"Hoorah! I'd like to soak him one with his share of Clark's Field!"

"Providence blesses as well as curses," warned the old judge. "And it's chief work, I take it, is educational--to develop all that is possible from within. Remember that, sir, when you are 'soaking' Cousin Stan."

"The educational can wait until we've done some correctin'!"

They all laughed. And presently they parted. As they stood in the little front room waiting for Adelle's car to fetch her, the judge remarked with a certain solemnity,--

"Now at last I believe the fate of Clark's Field is settled. In that good old legal term, the title to the Field, so long restless and unsettled, at last is 'quieted,' I think for good and all, humanly speaking!"

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