Thus Adelle realized the absurdity of the family inheritance scheme by which property is preserved for the use of blood descendants of its owner, irrespective of their fitness to use it. She saw that inheritance was a mere survival of an archaic system of tribal bond, which society, through its customary inertia and timidity and general dislike for change, had preserved,—indeed, had made infinitely complex and precise by a code of property laws. She sat back in her chair, silent, puzzled and baffled by the situation. The only way, it seemed, in which she could give the stone mason his share of his grandfather's property was by stripping herself of all her possessions for the tribe of California Clarks, which she felt no inclination to do.
Her cousin, apparently, had been following the same course of reflection in part. He observed dispassionately,—
"I don't know much about 'em, and you don't know anything at all, of course. Mos' likely they 're no better and no worse than any average bunch of human beings. It's curious to think that if grandfather had kept his folks back East informed of his post-office address, all these Clarks big and little would have come in for a slice of the pie!"
"It might not have been such a big pie, then," Adelle remarked.
She remembered quite well what the judge had said about the accumulation of her fortune. It was just because these California Clarks had been lost to sight that there was any "pie" at all. If Edward S. had left his post-office address, there was no doubt that long before this Clark's Field would have been eaten up: there would have been no Adelle Clark—and no book about her and Clark's Field!
The mason tossed his hat in the air and caught it dexterously on the point of his thumb. He mused,—
"All the same they'd open their eyes some, I guess, if they knew what we know. My, wouldn't it make 'em mad to think how near they'd come to some easy money!"
He laughed with relish at the ironical humor of the situation—the picture of the California Clarks running hungrily with outstretched hands to grab their piece of Clark's Field. And he laughed with a bitter perception of the underlying farce of human society. 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. In the hasty fashion of his nature he concluded intolerantly that all personal privilege was rotten, and hated—or thought he did—all those "grafters" who enjoyed what Fate had not been kind enough to give him. 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.
"Tell me again," Clark demanded moodily, "just what those banker stiffs said about the title? When was it finally fixed up so as to shut us out?"
"I don't know just when, but I suppose some time before I came of age. It must have been between the time my aunt and I first went to see them and my twenty-first birthday."