Indeed, the Washington Trust Company, under the thin disguise of the Clark's Field Associates, had shown great shrewdness and ingenuity in "developing" the fifty-acre tract so that the greatest possible sum could be extracted from its lean soil. They had resisted all temptations to open it as "a residential section" of the growing city. They knew that Alton was condemned to the coarser uses of society and must be an industrial slum. So they had sold a small portion in one corner to a steel foundry—one of the subsidiaries of a great corporation. And then they developed the remainder for the use of the operatives gathered together from all parts of the earth. The choicest lots they reserved for "future growth." Along the broad South Road they built substantial brick buildings for stores and offices. In the nest of by-streets that ribbed the tract they erected lofty tenement warrens, as closely packed as the law allows,—not the lowest order of tenement, to be sure, because in the long run such buildings do not make a good investment; but a slightly higher class of brick, bathroomed, three-and four-room tenements, from the rear of which flowed out long streamers of clothes drying in the wind. For the most part Clark's Field had thus received its "development." That which had agitated a number of generations of Alton citizens had been accomplished. For a considerable term of years Clark's Field would not change in character unless a disturbance of unexpected magnitude should wipe clean the ground for men to plan anew.
As I have said, Clark's Field was now an industrial slum, but its character was not as bad as much else in the cities of men. There are far worse places in London or New York or Chicago—even in such smaller cities as Pittsburg and Liverpool—for filth, crowding, and gloom. Age added to cheapness increases misery and squalor, and Clark's Field was still an infant. Indeed, the promoters of Clark's Field were proud of their achievement and advertised it as the last and most enlightened example of wholesale, industrial housing. But as Archie felt about it, the place was worse really than the more celebrated slums of older cities in its pretentious cheapness, its dreary monotony and colorlessness, its very respectability and smug tediousness. A life dropped into its maze and growing up in it must be lost for good and all—must become just another human ant crawling over Clark's Field, with the habits and coloring of all the other human ants striving there for life and happiness. Archie, perhaps, felt this cramped and deadening atmosphere more keenly than Adelle, and he prided himself on his greater sensitiveness. He thanked God that he had come from the broad sunny vineyards of the Golden State, where life still touches the arcadian age,—not from this, as his wife had! His two years of foreign rambling had educated him into a prideful sense of American vulgarity and hideousness of detail.
Adelle seemed wholly absorbed in the bricks and mortar laid upon old Clark's Field. She did not speak. It would be impossible to say what she was thinking of.... At last, as they emerged from another long stretch of narrow street bordered on either side by high tenements that were varied according to a machine pattern by different colored bricks, Archie protested. He growled,—"Well, haven't you seen enough of this sort of thing to last you awhile?"
Adelle gave the order to retrace their journey to the hotel. She looked back into the dreary maze with her wide gray eyes, and now they were not quite empty eyes as they had been in the probate courtroom. She looked and looked as if she were seeing the past as well as the present, as if she were trying to fathom what Judge Orcutt had meant. When the Field faded into the distance behind the rapid car, she sank back into her corner with an unconscious sigh. Archie had taken a cigarette from the little gold case that had been one of Adelle's first presents to him, and as he lighted it skillfully in face of the wind was doubtless thinking that never again would he be misled into going to Clark's Field.
On the way back Adelle ordered the driver to stop in the Square, and despite Archie's protest that it was already long past lunch-time she left him in the car and turned down the side street that led to the old rooming-house. It was gone! In its place was a five-story flat building that occupied not only all their yard, but the livery-stable lot as well. Adelle realized the change with a positive shock. Latterly, since the little lecture by the probate judge, the images of her early life had come back to her mind as they had not for years. The transformation of Clark's Field did not matter so much even: it had not been in the immediate horizon of her youth,—more an idea than a physical possession. But Church Street and the rooming-house and the livery-stable—they had been her very self. She felt strangely as she had seven years before when she was returning to her aunt's house after the funeral of the widow. The last of all her landmarks had been swept away....
She returned to the car with a thoughtful face, and all the way into the city she paid no attention to Archie's chatter, her mind far away, busy with her forlorn little past. Once or twice she wondered what the judge had meant by urging her to take her husband to see Clark's Field. But she was glad that she had gone. She should have visited Alton sometime or other she supposed to see what the old place was like;—she must remember to go to the cemetery before they left B—— and look for her aunt's grave. But this was not all that the judge meant, Adelle suspected.
She was not to discover for some years the full, fine meaning of the judge's intention, perhaps might never recognize all the implications of his message to her on her twenty-first birthday.
XXX
Archie was pacified by a copious luncheon in the Eclair restaurant, which is almost as good as a second-class Paris restaurant, and after an idle afternoon the couple went to a popular musical comedy to end their day. Adelle's business with the trust company was now finished, and they must decide upon their next move. Their first impulse after the rout upon the dock had been to dart back to Europe as expeditiously as possible, with Adelle's recovered lamp, and never darken again their native shores. But this pettish mood had been largely forgotten during the fortnight that ensued, and they remembered their plan of going to California so that Archie might present himself in his new estate and his wife to his own people. A cable from Sadie Paul, stating that she had taken "the B. and T." (which being properly interpreted meant that she had decided to marry her Hungarian count) and was returning to her home to celebrate her wedding, determined them. They forthwith made their arrangements to cross the continent and spend the summer on the Pacific Coast.