Adelle felt an unconscious relief in the absence of her uncle from the house. There was an end to the disputes about the money, and his unpleasant person no longer occupied the best chair in the kitchen. Her aunt also seemed to be more cheerful than was her wont. It was the slack season in the rooming business, and so the two had some spare time on their hands in the long summer days and could dawdle about, an unusual luxury. They even went to walk in the afternoons. Her aunt took Adelle to see Clark's Field,—a forlorn expanse of empty land with a fringe of flimsy one-story shops along its edge that did not attract the child. She never remembered, naturally, what her aunt told her about the Field, but she must have learned something of its story because she always had in her mind a sense of the importance of this waste and desolate city field. In her childish way she got a vague notion of some great wrong that had been done about the land so that her uncle was smelly and stupid and her aunt had to take in more roomers than she liked. That was as close to the facts as she could get then—as close, it may be said, as many people ever get.... Then they went to look at houses, a more interesting occupation to the child. Her aunt seemed much concerned in the comparative size and location and number of rooms of different houses and this Adelle could understand. The family was going to move sometime from the Church Street house.... In these simple ways the two passed a quiet vacation of ten days. Then came a telegram, and three days later arrived the remains of Veteran John Clark, accompanied by members of the local G. A. R. post who had brought back the body of their dead comrade. John Clark had kept his boasting word to his wife that "this time he would show the boys a good time and prove to 'em that his talk about his property wasn't all hot air!" He had in truth shown himself such a good time that he could not stand a spell of excessively hot weather, to which he succumbed like a sapped reed. A very considerable funeral was arranged and conducted by the members of G. A. R. Post Number I of Alton, to which John Clark had belonged. There was a military band and the post colors, and a number of oldish men in blue uniforms trailed behind the hearse all the way to the cemetery where the veteran was laid away in the lot with his mother and father. Little Adelle, riding in the first carriage with her aunt, observed all this military display over the dead veteran, and concluded that she had done her uncle an injustice during his life. It seemed that he was really a much more important person than she had supposed him to be. This burial was the last benefit poor John Clark received from a grateful country for that spurt of patriotism or willfulness that had led him to run away from the Clark farm to the war forty years before.
And here really concludes the history of the Clarks in the story of Clark's Field. For Adelle, upon whom the burden of the inheritance was to fall, was only half a Clark at the most, and had largely escaped the deadly tradition of family expectations under which Addie had been blighted; while her aunt, of course, had no Clark blood in her veins and had been cured of the Clark habit of expecting.
IV
It may easily be imagined that the veteran's untimely death at the Grand Army Reunion caused more uneasiness in certain other quarters than it did in the Church Street house, where John's going had its mitigations. The lawyers who had arranged the purchase of the Clark interest in the great Field did not really fear that their plans for the cheap capture of the property would ultimately miscarry. But John's death must cause further delay, which might possibly be improved by other interested speculators. And so the legal representatives of the capitalists concerned in the "deal" constituted themselves at once friends and advisers of the widow. They assured her that a mere formality must be satisfied before she could actually touch her husband's estate, and promised to attend to the legal matters without expense to her, it being understood, of course, that whenever the law allowed she should carry out her husband's agreement to sell the Clark interest in the Field. They even went so far as to offer further small advances to the widow if she found herself in immediate need. But this the widow resolutely refused. She was becoming a little suspicious of so much thoughtful kindliness from these lawyers, whom after the prejudice of her sort she was wont to regard as human harpies. She had her widow's pension and her roomers, and her expenses would be considerably lessened by the death of the incompetent veteran, who would no longer be begging money for his "reunions."
There was, of course, Adelle. Her uncle had been her legal guardian and as such had intended to sell her interest in the Field for a pittance. The lawyers assumed that her aunt would be appointed by the probate court to the empty honor of guardianship. Otherwise they regarded her, as everybody always did, as entirely negligible. And she so regarded herself. The lawyers were prompt in having the guardianship question brought up in the probate court for settlement first. It was introduced there as a motion early in the fall term of court, the papers being presented to the judge by the junior member of the distinguished firm of B—— lawyers, Bright, Seagrove, and Bright. Any other judge, probably, would have scribbled his initials then and there upon the printed application for guardianship,—the affair being in charge of such eminent counsel,—and there must have been an end altogether to Adelle's expectations and of this story. That was what the lawyers naturally expected. But this judge, after a hasty glance or two at the application, took the matter under advisement.
"Of course the old boy had to sleep upon it!" young Bright reported to the senior members of the firm. The lawyers of B—— were accustomed to make fun of Judge Orcutt or grumble about his ways of doing things. He was certainly different from the ordinary run of probate judges or of all judges for that matter. The smart law firms that had dealings with him professed to consider him a poor lawyer, but everybody knows that eminent lawyers usually have a poor opinion of the ability of judges. They reason that if the judges had their ability, they would not be poorly paid judges, but holding out their baskets for the fat fruit falling abundantly from the corporation trees.
It should be said that the law was not Judge Orcutt's first love: probably was not his supreme mistress at any time. Perhaps for that very reason he made a better probate judge—a more human judge—than any of the smart lawyers could have made. The little gray-haired judge was a poet, and not an unpublished poet. I will not stop to pass judgment on those thin volumes of verse, elegantly printed and bound, that from time to time appeared in the welter of modern literature with the judge's name. The judge was fonder of them, no doubt, and perhaps prouder of them than Bright, Seagrove, and Bright are of their large retainers. And I believe that the published volumes of verse, and the unprinted ones within his heart and brain, made Judge Orcutt an altogether sounder judge than if he had mused in his idle hours upon the law or upon corporation fees. He was one of those rare judges, who even after twenty years of forms—motions and pleas and precedents—could never wholly forget the individual human being behind the legal form.
And so in this trivial matter of appointing a guardian for a poor girl, the probate judge could not ignore Adelle in the mass of legal verbiage through which such things are done. Who was this Adelle Clark? and what sort of person was this aunt who seemed willing and anxious to assume the legal and moral guardianship of the minor? An aunt by marriage only, wasn't it? Yes, by marriage he assured himself after consulting again the stiff paper form that the lawyers had properly filled out; and he gave one of those funny little quirks to his eye which he did when not wholly satisfied with a "proposition" presented to him. And here was the characteristic difference between Judge Orcutt and any other probate judge. He speculated—maybe for only the better part of ten seconds—but he speculated upon the entity of the small human being that had fallen within the bounds of his court. Was it really for this little girl's best good to let this aunt by marriage take charge of her? Did any hocus-pocus contriving, with which he had become only too familiar, lie beneath this innocent application?
Probably at this point the poet judge would have dismissed the matter from speculation and signed the papers as he usually did, very much, after all, like any other judge, with an additional sigh because he could never really discover all the necessary facts. But another observation held his pen. The paper had been brought to him by young Bright, of Bright, Seagrove, and Bright—a notable firm of lawyers, but not one famous for their charitable practice. Why should Bright, Seagrove, and Bright interest themselves in procuring the guardianship of a poor girl? Ah, it is to be feared that this is where the eminent counsel "fell down" badly, as young Bright said. They should have sent an office boy with the papers or let the aunt go there alone to see the judge! For Judge Orcutt, after another moment of frowning meditation, threw the document into that basket which contained papers for further consideration. Had the girl expectations of property? He would inquire, at least have the girl and her aunt into his court and get a good look at them before performing his routine function of initialing the legal form. Poet that he was, he prided himself much on his powers of penetration into human motives, when he had his subject before him....