Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,Bless thy little lambs to-night,In the darkness hear me calling,Lead me to eternal light—
Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,Bless thy little lambs to-night,In the darkness hear me calling,Lead me to eternal light—
Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,
Bless thy little lambs to-night,
In the darkness hear me calling,
Lead me to eternal light—
“It’s a wonder she knows any hymn tunes,” Submit Curler had whispered to Ali Baba.
“Says she learned ’em from a gypsy evangelist,” Ali Baba answered, happy to be able to inform Submit Curler, rather than be informed.
“She hasn’t a shoe for the winter,” Betsey Pilrig was telling Hopeful. “Don’t it seem sinful to think of Abby Clergy with her thousands?”
Hopeful nodded. “But I wouldn’t dare to mention it. I’ve got some things of my own, Betsey. Come around after dark. Ain’t it a disgrace to have that man come drunk to his wife’s funeral? If God is just, Betsey, tell me why He gave that beautiful young ’un with an angel’s voice those parents?”
But the minister began to pray, so Betsey was spared answering.
After the funeral, Thurley and her father had retired within the box-car wagon to “grieve proper,” Ali Baba summarized, and every one left them alone, except Dan Birge, junior, who promptly knocked at the wreck of a door.
Ali Baba tried to stop him, although it was nearing four o’clock, sacred hour for Miss Clergy’s drive.
“Hi, you—ain’t you no reverence?” he demanded. “There’s been death in that—that household.”
“I got business with her,” Dan retorted, knocking more boldly.
“You don’t own this town any more’n I do. You come down off that step, you upstart.”
“Chase yourself—I got to speak to Thurley.” Dan made a tantalizing face. “You don’t dare touch me—you ghost coachman—aha—aha—” Thurley opened the door just in time to allow Dan to make good his escape.
Within, he stood back, abashed and silent.
“What is it, Dan?” she asked mournfully. “If it’sthe money you gave me—it’s gone. I’m sorry, but Pa needed ‘comfort’ for the burial.”
“Oh, that’s nothing—he got the ‘comfort’ at my pa’s store, so it’s back in the till. I wanted to say I was sorry and we won’t have the circus until you’re feeling fit.”
Thurley’s eyes filled with tears. “Your mother’s dead, too, ain’t she?” she asked.
“My mother died when I was born,” he confided. “I guess I’d rather have it that way. It would hurt worse to lose your mother, after you really knew her. Say, Thurley, I wanted to tell you I’d like to have you join our gang. There’s about eight of us now—all boys—but I think you’d be just as good. Maybe it would make you forget; maybe your father will go to work and you’ll never go away from here; maybe my father will give him a job, if he can tote barrels. I’ll ask him and you join our gang and we’ll be happy.”
“I’ll have to work,” Thurley corrected. “Pa’s awful sick; Ma thought he would die when we was on the road. He can’t tote barrels and neither can I, but I’d like to join the gang, Dan, if I have time. And when your circus plays at South Wales, I’ll come and sing.” She held out her hand in gratitude.
The boy took it awkwardly. “I liked you right off,” he admitted. “If you see me getting too fresh or mis-spelling words or things like that—tell me. I’ll take it from you. Everybody thinks because my father made money selling beer that I’m going to be hung. Maybe I’ll go to school like you said—I’m not going to be any old bum, anyhow—and, if you decide to join the gang, we meet at Wood’s Hollow by Dog Creek every afternoon it ain’t raining, but don’t tell Lorraine McDowell,because she wanted to be my girl this winter and I won’t let her.”
With which he strutted out of the wagon with the serious feeling of a muchly married man. Somehow Dan had “adopted” Thurley. He felt personally responsible for her happiness and support, and, when he tried convincing his father that Thurley ought to get nine dollars a week for doing nothing and his father jokingly dismissed the matter, Daniel registered a vow that he must see to it that she had everything for which her feminine soul should desire! It was the first time in his life that the finer part of the lad had had a chance to show itself.
Philena Pilrig told her grandmother after Thurley’s first visit, “She makes my fingers tingle down at the ends, and, when she smiles, I want to hug her, and, when she sings, I want to cry and dance all at once.”
Philena, who was eleven but small because of the twisted spine, sat in the window facing the old wagon car, so she could catch glimpses of Thurley striding about bare-legged, her ragged dress fluttering gracefully in the breeze, whistling or singing or calling out to her father who lay on the lounge and coughed and complained.
Having invited the Precores to camp on her land, Betsey Pilrig also felt responsible for their welfare. She saw to it that Thurley washed dishes and ran errands in return for food, and, once, when she ventured over to interview her father as to his intentions of ever working, Thurley stood guard on the steps to tell her “Pa was sleeping—he’s getting that gray look around his lips.”
“Thurley, did you ever go to Sunday school?” she asked one afternoon when Thurley and Philena were intent on paper dolls.
“No, but it’s where you learn about the Lord and you have a Christmas tree—the evangelist told me.”
“Philena gets there except in bad weather—maybe you and she could go together,” Betsey suggested.
“I’ve the loveliest teacher!” Philena supplemented. “Her name is Kate Sills, and she’s going to marry the postmaster—she has a beautiful white plume on her hat.”
“I’d like to go, if I had shoes. I guess you can’t get in barefoot.”
“Maybe we can find shoes, if that’s all that’s wrong.”
“I can be a home missionary, granny,” Philena’s little old face lighted with smiles. “You know—the money in my bank.”
Thurley flushed. “I don’t want any one’s money—least of all Philena’s. What is a home missionary?”
“I’m going to be a foreign missionary when I’m big and strong,” Philena answered. “It’s some one who sails off to China or Africa where they find heathens ready to eat them up; the heathens throw their babies into the river and don’t believe in God, and the missionaries teach them to build nice houses and dress their babies in white and sing songs. I heard a real true one tell about it last winter—she stayed two days at Lorraine’s house—and that’s what I’m going to be, isn’t it, granny?”
“If you’re well enough.”
“Why couldn’t I go with you to Africa or China and sing the songs, and you could pray and teach and I’d mind the babies while you stitched up the white dresses?” Thurley rattled on. “Let’s be missionaries together—listen, I’ll sing some songs.”
“Granny, fetch all the dolls—they can be heathen—that’s the ship we’re going on—and there is Africa allfull of savages—get my Bible, Thurley, and my bag—we’ll pretend we’re there now.” Philena’s crutch tapped quickly over the floor.
Betsey Pilrig, supposed to be busy with her mending, paused to listen to Philena pray for the heathen, her crutch laid aside, kneeling on the floor of “awful Africa,” alias the south room alcove. The heathen, six subdued, disinterested dolls and a fast unravelling Teddy-bear, stood in a row listening to her sweet, thin voice conclude:
“Oh, Lord, you have sent us here to save these people, and, if they don’t understand what I mean and how wrong it is to sacrifice their young and eat us up—Thurley, isn’t it awful to have to say that to the Lord?—but it’s so—may their hearts be inspired by the sweet,sweetvoiced singer who has come with me into the wilderness, forsaking wealth and love to serve the cause. Amen. Now, ladies of Africa,” finished Philena, opening her eyes, “Miss Precore will sing.” She picked up her crutch and gave way to Thurley.
Whereat Thurley, balancing Philena’s pink parasol with one hand and a pretended hymnal in the other, sang “Throw Out the Life Line” and “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” until Betsey Pilrig, unable to remain incognito any longer, came to the doorway to say,
“Thurley, Thurley, how did you ever learn to sing?”
Annoyed that the game be interrupted Thurley answered shortly, “God taught me, I guess, but He made my long legs, too. And now, Mrs. Pilrig, unless we finish, we may be taken prisoner any minute and roasted to ashes—look out, Philena, that big one is after you,” brandishing her parasol to ward him off.
Properly rebuked Mrs. Pilrig stole away to prepare the missionaries’ supper, while Thurley and Philena drew up a compact, signing and dating it to read as follows:
“Thurley Precore and Philena Pilrig of Birge’s Corners do swear they will go as missionaries to convert the heathen from eating flesh and all the other bad things they do. Thurley will sing the songs and mind the babies so the mothers can attend the meetings and Philena is to preach and pray and make white dresses for every one. If Lorraine McDowell wants to she can travel in America and raise funds for the cause but nobody shall ever be the samedearfriends as Thurley Precore and Philena Pilrig. Amen.“Thurley PrecoreandPhilena Pilrig.”
“Thurley Precore and Philena Pilrig of Birge’s Corners do swear they will go as missionaries to convert the heathen from eating flesh and all the other bad things they do. Thurley will sing the songs and mind the babies so the mothers can attend the meetings and Philena is to preach and pray and make white dresses for every one. If Lorraine McDowell wants to she can travel in America and raise funds for the cause but nobody shall ever be the samedearfriends as Thurley Precore and Philena Pilrig. Amen.
“Thurley PrecoreandPhilena Pilrig.”
They put it between the pages of the illustrated Bible and then, descending to things of the earth earthy, fell upon a batch of newly-baked cookies with the ferocity of the unconverted savages.
In the midst of her cookie Philena paused to remark, “Thurley, do you think my being lame will make any difference—you’re so straight and strong—”
Thurley finished her cookie, while she thought up her defense. Spying tears in Philena’s eyes she went over to fling her arms about the crooked back and declare, “Philena Pilrig, you’ll be armed with your crutch—like a soldier with a gun. You’ll really be better to go as a missionary than folks that haven’t crutches,” clapping her hands in delight at the rainbow smile.
“But nobody ever thinks much of cripples—Oyster Jim fought in the Civil War, and, when he came back lame, nobody married him and he started in having a store—they say he wanted to be a lawyer.”
“Then he should have been a lawyer just the same. Wait, Philena, I guess God wants to say something—ssh!” Her eyes were like stars, and she warded off Philena’s outstretched arm as if afraid mortal touchmight dim the celestial message. “Oh, lots of times,” she added a moment later, “God does tell me things—queer things. Sometimes they rhyme like poems in books and sometimes they’re cross—’cause some one has to scold little girls and Pa and Ma never said anything to me—so God had to scold me, and now He’s telling me something to comfort you, Philena. What do you think it is?”
“Oh, you scare me most—talking like a book—God never tells folks things, except what He wrote down in the Bible—whisper it, Thurley—”
“He says, ‘Tell Philena that cripples can be conquerors,’” sang Thurley in a clear monotone, “cripples can be conquerors—there—I guess you’ll be as good a missionary as ever lived.”
Philena repeated it in an awed tone. “That’s beautiful—now I don’t care about my crutch ... but how can you tell for sure it’s God talking?”
Thurley’s eyes were like sapphires in the sun. “Something taps at my heart and I know I’m going to have a wonderful something told me—or a terrible scolding—and then whatever it is God wants to say is justsunginto my head and I know—I do know, Philena, I am right.”
“I wouldn’t tell any one, if I was you,” Philena suggested enviously.
“No, there’s as much about children that grownups don’t understand, as there is about grownups we don’t understand,” Thurley said sagely. “But you can always remember that God said that straight to me—‘cripples can be conquerors’—just like He told me at Midland City, Illinois, ‘You let me catch you cutting off your hair and trying to run away and I’ll stop your singing mighty quick!’ See, Philena?”
“Isn’t it funny?” Thurley told her father that night, “I’m to belong to the gang and play robbers and Indians, and I’m to be a missionary with Philena, and there must be different halves of me, and Dan has seen one half and thinks it is a whole, and so has Philena. I wonder what I’d do if the gang met the same day I’d promised to play missionary?”
A cough answered her. “Is there any more rum?” he fretted.
Regretfully Thurley produced the bottle. “Don’t drink until you see things,” she begged. “Makes me shiver when you talk down low—there—that’s enough for now.... I guess if the gang met on missionary day, I’d make ’em all sit down in front of me and I’d sing to ’em—something awful different from gang stuff or missionary hymns, and then neither could be cross.”
“I guess,” her father hiccoughed, “you’ll—hic—always be a good fellow.”
It was not until Thurley allied herself with the gang at Wood’s Hollow that she came into possession of the Corners’ great mystery—Abigail Clergy who lived in solitary grandeur in the red brick mansion overlooking the lake.
After Thurley had proved herself as great a success as a good fellow to the gang as she had at convincing Philena of her possibilities as a missionary, and had played hi-spy half the afternoon, she wandered by chance towards the first of the deserted summer houses in lieu of a new hiding place and became fascinated by these silent buildings. She began exploring one after the other, forgetful of the faint “Hul-l-o-o—Thur-lee” which the gang sent in her direction.
Boarded-up windows did not yield to her strong fingers nor tottering verandas offer a cordial invitation to rest. There was a chill in the October air, and Thurley gladly scampered up and down one pair of steps after another, peering into one dark room and then another, wandering through weed-choked gardens and pausing under apple trees to make up stories to suit each house. In her imaginative way she peopled the places with golden-haired ladies and blue-eyed babies, handsome gentlemen driving smart horses, and then every one sitting down to eat tons of good things served by colored waiters. In her motley travels through the country Thurley had obtained glimpses of such elegance, if not actually experiencing it.
The gang was forgotten, so was Philena, and the factthat she had promised to play missionary at five o’clock. She forgot, as well, that her father was out of “comfort,” and would complain all night unless he was supplied, and that she had been worrying all morning as to what they should do when snow carpeted the meadow and the box-car wagon proved inefficient against wind and frost!
Thurley was living in an enchanted land all her own—these houses were hers! One by one she made the imaginary tenants leave and go elsewhere, while she became an imprisoned princess doomed to spend a year in each house before she could be free of the ten-headed dragon! She ran along the shore in delight as she contemplated her prisons. Each day she would come and camp on the outside of the house in which she was imprisoned, playing princess in spangled crimson and lace and pretending the ten-headed dragon lived in a cave in the bottom of the lake and could poke one of his heads up at unexpected moments to see if his prisoner was behaving as he desired!
Then she spied a light burning in the last of the houses. She wondered if she had imagined “until it was better than real,” a favorite experience. But as she came closer, she saw several lights and unmistakable signs of long-accustomed habitation.
“This was the loveliest house of all,” she thought mournfully, “and it had to be lived in!”
Yet this house betrayed signs of decay; the shutters on one side were fastened tightly and bricks dislodged from an unused chimney. Thurley could not refrain from taking an extra peek. She made her way to the side and crept up the steps gently to push at the carved old door with its tarnished knocker.
It opened! Taut with excitement and fearless, Thurleyfelt that she ought to repeat a charm to save herself from being changed into a mouse or a rubber plant or some such helpless creation.
Inside the house burned a jewelled lamp; bulky objects were shrouded with covers. The boards creaked under her sturdy feet as she tiptoed about. A musty smell pervaded everything, and there were several doors, one of which she was about to open when a voice from the stairway made her halt.
“Ali Baba, it isn’t four o’clock. How dare you come inside?” said the voice. Looking up, Thurley saw a bent-over lady in an old black dress, her yellowed fingers shining with rings as they clutched the banister. Her thin, pointed face with its restless eyes was looking over towards the opened door; she had not spied Thurley.
“Close that door, you stupid Ali Baba; never dare to come here again—where are you? Why”—this with a hysterical scream—“it’s a child—achild—” and the little old lady began running down the stairs, beating her hands in the air, as if trying to strike at Thurley.
Thurley turned, throwing back her head in defiance and calling out, “Lock your doors, if you don’t want company,” making a hasty retreat at the same time.
Racing down the path, Thurley came into collision with Ali Baba, who was on his way to hitch Melba to the coupé.
“For cat’s sake, where do you come from?” he demanded, holding Thurley by her arm.
Thurley, making sure the door of the house had closed and the little old lady vanished, whispered, “I thought I’d have a look, so I went inside and some one came down the stairs and said, ‘Ali Baba, it isn’t four o’clock!’—and when she saw me, she was cross.”
Ali Baba dropped her arm. “Have you beeninsidethat house?”
Thurley nodded. “Just in the hallway—she found me there.”
“Land sakes and Mrs. Davis,” Ali Baba said, smiling in spite of himself. “I guess you’ve done what no other kid in the Corners has ever dared to try. But don’t do it again—children should not be seen nor heard, according to Miss Abby,” and he brushed by her on his way to the barn.
Thurley was not satisfied with this answer. She went back to the Corners to find Philena’s pale face pressed against the window glass watching for her missionary partner’s tardy appearance.
“Philena, I have been in a funny brick house at the lake,” Thurley said, “and I want your granny to tell me why it is so queer—and who that old woman is, and who is Ali Baba and why can’t any one ever go there?”
Betsey Pilrig, who was passing through the room, stopped in amazement. “Have you been inside the Clergy house?” she demanded.
Thurley told her experience.
Betsey sought refuge in the nearest rocking-chair. “Then, listen, Thurley, for as long as you’ve come to stay a spell, you ought to know—and I guess I can tell you as well as Hopeful Whittier or Ali Baba. A long time ago, most thirty-five years, that house was lived in by Mr. and Mrs. Lemuel Clergy, of New York City, and they were worth more money than they could count, but all they cared for was Abigail, their daughter, and they were going to leave her everything they owned just because they loved her so much. But they always planned she would marry some one and be as happy as a queen.”
Betsey paused for a properly doleful sigh. “As I wassayin’, my cousin, Hopeful Whittier, had married, and her husband, Jim Whittier, was drowned on the Great Lakes three months after their weddin’ day. Hopeful came back to Birge’s Corners, just like to die of grief. Mrs. Clergy heard of it and came to see her, and she says, ‘My dear, come and live with us—Abby needs a maid of her own these days, and I think she’d like you.’ Of course poor Hopeful didn’t know about bein’ a lady’s maid and fixin’ hair and lace and all that Miss Abby wanted done. But she was so heartbroken for Jim—they never found his body—that she was glad to go, and the Clergys were so good to her and Miss Abby so kind and willin’ to show her how she wanted everything fixed that Hopeful was as happy as she could be—without forgettin’ Jim.
“In them days the Clergy house—The Fincherie is its name—was never without guests. My stars, I’ve known as many as thirty extra people packed in there for a week at a time, and every other house on the shore the same with balls and basket picnics, charades and corn bakes and sailin’ trips every minute in the day! But out of every one there—and there was the grandest and the finest in the land—there was no one half so beautiful nor gay nor kindhearted as Abby Clergy—no one could deny but what it was so. Her father’s money and her fine clothes and jewels and her beauty didn’t turn her head a mite.
“Let me see—I guess she was around seventeen when Hopeful first went there—girls was more advanced at seventeen than they are now. That fall, when it came time to close the house and go to New York, Abby Clergy tells Hopeful she wants her to come and live in their New York house the same as if she was one of these high-flyer maids they bring from Paris. Of course Hopefulwas mighty glad, for she had come to love Miss Abby and she knew Jim would have told her to go, if he could have done it. But before they closed the house, they give a harvest dance, so they called it—late in September it was—and I never did see such a time. The stables were packed with teams, and the steam cars ran a special train to South Wales for some of the people, and a fellow in New York sent the food, and champagne just flowed like the lake water. They had fiddlers from New York, and a florist with a load of flowers to fix up every room, and nobody else on the lake shore thought of going home until the Clergys’ harvest dance was over.
“Hopeful used to tell me everything that was goin’ on and she often says, ‘Betsey, that girl is too beautiful and good to live—I’m afraid she is goin’ to be taken.’ I laffed at her and said she’d marry a fine gentleman, and Hopeful would watch their children playin’ on the beach, but Hopeful always said no, she had a feeling things wouldn’t be right. Now Abby Clergy was beautiful—just five feet tall, she was, and slight as a reed. She had big, black, satiny eyes and an ivory skin. It was natural for her never to have color and her hair was blue black, combed up high and fastened with a carved comb, and, when she laffed, Ali Baba said her teeth was prettier than her strings of pearls—real pearls they was, too—but I must tell you something about Ali Baba.
“Nobody never thought of calling Joshua Maples anything but Josh, until Miss Abby named him Ali Baba after he started bein’ her father’s summer coachman and winter caretaker. One day he says to her, ‘Miss Abby, don’t you ever worry about anybody’s stealin’ this house. Just dismiss it from your mind the minute you leave here in the fall—and I ain’t goin’ to let any one steal you, neither.’ And she laffs and says, ‘Why, who wants tosteal me?’ And that was a joke, because Abby Clergy had more beaux than she could remember their names, but she just smiled at them all and never cared any more for any particular one than she did for any particular rose that was bloomin’ outside her window. ‘A lot of thieves,’ says Josh—he was pretty smart in talking—‘and I guess you’ll have to ask me as well as your Pa before I give my consent.’ That sort of tickled her and she jumped up and down and says, ‘You be Ali Baba, and I’ll let you watch over the forty thieves,’ and from then on he was Ali Baba to her, and nobody else ever called him any other name.
“So the harvest party was a grand success. But there come down from New York a stranger, Count Sebastian Gomez, who was introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Clergy as an Eyetalian nobleman with a lot of castles and such truck over in Europe and more money than he wanted. He was a fine-lookin’ fellow, tall and straight as an arrow, and he had a curled-up mustache and big, bold eyes that looked you clean through. He was dressed way up in G, and could talk a lot of these here foreign languages, and he wanted to kiss all the ladies’ hands and everybody thought he was the finest sort of fellow they could ever wish to see....
“But Hopeful Whittier didn’t like him, and she says, when she saw how he was makin’ up to Miss Abby, flatterin’ her and kissin’ her hand and writin’ his name down for all the dances and starin’ angry-like at any other fellow who tried to look at her—she thought then that Miss Abby was makin’ a mistake. But if this count hadn’t eyes for any one but Miss Abby, Miss Abby didn’t have eyes for any one but the count. And Hopeful told me that, when she undressed Miss Abby that night, Miss Abby says to her, ‘Hopeful, I am a happy girl—I’mso happy I don’t know how to understand it—I’ve seen some one I could love better than my own dear father and mother.’ Hopeful tried to warn her, she didn’t know why, but Miss Abby wouldn’t listen, and she sat up half the night, Hopeful says, thinkin’ about him.
“The next day the guests went drivin’, and the count managed to set beside Miss Abby when they rode and at the basket picnic and never to let her out of his sight. Abby’s Pa and Ma seemed pleased about it, and they told their friends Count Gomez was of royal blood and he had letters provin’ he was all he said he was. Well, that didn’t win over Hopeful Whittier nor Ali Baba, but they didn’t matter, of course. So Hopeful went back to New York with the family, and Ali Baba closed up the place. In the middle of the winter I got a letter from Hopeful sayin’ that the count and Miss Abby were engaged, and all New York was talkin’ about the foreign alliance, and how grand it was to marry a nobleman and be a real Eyetalian countess. She said Miss Abby was so happy she just floated about and that she was having trunks and trunks of dresses made because he was goin’ to take her to his palace over in Italy and she wanted his family to think well of her. I didn’t like the sound of it, neither, but I didn’t think no more about it until in the spring, the last of Easter week, a coach and two bay hosses just came tearin’ into the Corners at dusk and put up at the Button livery.
“Late that night Hopeful come up here lookin’ as if she had seen a ghost. ‘Good heavens, Betsey,’ she says, ‘we’ve brought Abby Clergy home a ravin’ maniac!’ Well, I didn’t know what to answer, but she went on to tell me that just before the weddin’ was to take place—on Easter Monday night—and all New York was invited to come and see an American girl become an Eyetaliancountess, didn’t that scoundrel clear out and they find he had a wife and five children hidin’ up in Michigan and that he wasn’t nothin’ but a common barber! It was a grand swindle—you know this idea of our girls marryin’ them noblemen was kind of new those days and nobody was smart enough to ask all the questions that they would have done if it was to happen now. It seems he had taken a lot of Miss Abby’s jewelry and she had loaned him money, him tellin’ her his ‘allowance’ was bein’ held up and such truck, and she, poor innocent lamb, believin’ him!
“They didn’t try to do nothin’ to him; the shame was enough to bear without goin’ any further. Hopeful said Mr. Clergy walked the floor all that night, and, finally, he told his lawyer, ‘Let the wretch go, thank God the girl was spared the farce of a marriage.’ So I guess the count and his wife and five children took the Clergy money and opened a shavin’ parlor somewheres in Michigan and I suppose God took care of him when He got around to it.
“But it took Abby Clergy’s reason for the time bein’, and it killed her Ma. When word came about him bein’ false and all, Abby was tryin’ on her weddin’ dress and she fainted dead away. When she come to and they undressed her, she fought ’em like a tiger and kept screamin’ out that it was not so. Finally, they got her calmed down and the doctor came and she told him she never wanted to see any one again; she wanted to go and live for a whole year at the old summer home at Birge’s Lake, where she thought she could forget her sorrow and bury her shame. But she didn’t want to see nor speak to any one—not even her father or mother; she just wanted Hopeful to stay with her.
“I guess if she had asked for the moon they’d have tried to have got it for her. So they packed up herthings, and she and Hopeful came all the way to the Corners by team, and Ali Baba hurried up and made new fires in the house and Miss Abby was put to bed as helpless as a newborn child.
“For three months she had the real old-fashioned kind of brain fever. I guess they don’t have it any more. Some say it has left her queerer than others; I don’t know as to that; I only know that Hopeful never stirred from the Fincherie from the day Miss Abby came until she was out of danger, and then they had to tell her her ma had died six weeks before. Miss Abby had a relapse and never talked except when she was out of her head. She’d moan, ‘Sebastian—Sebastian—I love you—’ And she’d think Hopeful was that Eyetalian fraud and she’d hold out her little hands to her and beg him not to leave her and to prove he never had no wife!
“When she got through with that, it was fall and she had never set eyes on no one but Hopeful and the doctor. She sent for her father, and in Hopeful’s presence she said she wanted to live the rest of her life at the Fincherie with Hopeful and Ali Baba as her servants and she never wanted to take part in the world again, that she was not crazy, she knew her own mind. But she had a broken heart and she could not bear to let the world see all she had suffered.
“It ’most killed her pa—her hair had turned gray and she didn’t weigh more’n a handful—but she kept beggin’ him, and, finally, the doctor said time might change her, but it was no sense to argue with her now—so her father said she could stay there, and stay she has! It wasn’t long after that when her poor father died, but Miss Abby never went to the funeral nor shed a tear. Seems as if all the love and tears God gave her were spent on that rascal. She had the lawyer sell the town propertyand put the money in banks, and some of the furniture they sent on to the Fincherie, but she never let Ali Baba unpack it. And there she lived and there she lives—every day at four she drives in that old coupé with Ali Baba as the coachman. Outside of that, or maybe settin’ on the back balcony when it’s pretty hot weather, Miss Abby never shows herself. Nobody dares to go there neither. At first, the old friends tried to make her be herself, but she wouldn’t listen or even see ’em. She’s a sort of living death, like, wearin’ the same old clothes and stayin’ in her two front rooms year in and year out. Of course Hopeful has given up her life, you might say, to Miss Abby; she could have married many’s the time, but somehow she’s stayed faithful and so has Ali Baba. I guess it was meant to be so. Sometimes Miss Abby tries to thank Hopeful for all she’s done and she gives her presents of money—but she can’t never seem to take an interest in anything, and when it comes the anniversary of her weddin’, Hopeful says she unlocks her trunks and keeps tryin’ on all her weddin’ dresses and cryin’ soft and pitiful. The family lawyer has had doctors and doctors and mind-healers and faith-healers and all such people but nothing never done any good. She just lives in the house like a little old shadow, never hurtin’ no one and doin’ nothin’ wrong—sort of hauntin’ herself, that’s the best way to say it. She’s only fifty-five—but she seems seventy—sort of childish and sharp spoke, if things don’t go to suit, and she’s talkin’ of putting up a big wall around the house so’s nobody could even walk across the lawn.... Well, well, Thurley, so you got inside!”
Philena’s hands were clasped in excitement. “Isn’t it sad, Granny?” she said. “I want to cry.”
Thurley shook her head. “I don’t. I’d like to write a story about it and set it to music and rent a big hall.Then I’d have people pay to come in and hear me sing it to them and I’d rather make the people cry.”
Betsey Pilrig shook her head. “Thurley,” she said, lapsing into old-time phraseology, “I guess there’s no danger of your ever comin’ in with your leg in your arm. I guess if you see your comeupment ahead, you’ll manage to sing your way out of it.”
So it was that in 1912 the second thrilling event happened.
Young Daniel Birge, proprietor of Birge’s General Dry Goods Store, successor to Submit Curler, left his office, a built-up perch back of the shoe counter, to meet Thurley Precore at four o’clock.
The four clerks knew he was going to meet Thurley, that he had been meeting her and would continue to do so every pleasant afternoon, and they might as well ask any questions they wished before this hour, because business did not enter their handsome young proprietor’s head again until he was forced to re-enter the store the next morning.
The clerks, three of whom were under twenty and in love with Dan and one of whom was nearing fifty and longed to put him “dead to rights,” exchanged knowing glances as they watched Dan stalk out of the store humming a popular air and nodding a jaunty good night.
Birge’s Corners naturally had expected something of Dan Birge—who wouldn’t of the only son of a saloon keeper and man of money, according to the Corners’ estimate, who had been brought up at the Hotel Button and permitted to do as he liked? Having so far escaped the gallows, Dan had proceeded to shock the natives as much as was possible. He began at sixteen, when, “like a streak of grease lightnin’,” according to Prince Hawkins, he started in to educate himself by mail order courses,having skipped school and defied teachers years without end. With the Birge determination, once started in any direction, Dan no longer haunted the barroom or the blacksmith’s shop; he went to Betsey Pilrig’s house, where her adopted daughter, Thurley Precore, welcomed and studied with him.
Lorraine McDowell, the minister’s daughter, would have been only too glad to teach Dan Birge, the gossips had it, but Dan had never known Lorraine existed from the day Thurley had first “sung for her supper.”
Too proud to admit such was the case, Lorraine had sensibly set to work to be as useful as any minister’s daughter ought to be in a small town, and if she had her own particular form of heartache when she saw Dan and Thurley walking or riding together or taking supper at the Hotel Button, she kept it well concealed and smiled upon them and every one else alike.
After Dan had been “learning” for two years, while his father bragged that his son would outrival college professors—and all by mail, too—the older Birge died from an apoplectic stroke, leaving Dan his heir with the flourishing tavern, blacksmith’s shop and real estate office to take in hand.
This was the only time that Dan had been known to consult any one—and every one knew Thurley had put him up to doing it, to say nothing of his being under age—but he went to the minister and they had a long talk, after which a sign “Closed” was across the saloon doorway, and carpenters came from out of town to make the place over into such a store as the Corners had never dreamed of possessing.
“My father was an honest saloon keeper, I guess,” Dan had told Thurley, “but that business don’t suit me—nor you,” he added tenderly. “I’m going to keepa dry goods store that will curdle all the milk in the South Wales emporium. I’m eighteen, Thurley, and when I’m twenty-one and rid of trustees, I’ll ask you to marry me, and, when I’m twenty-two, we’ll be married.”
At which Thurley, admiring his audacity, had waived the question and began to suggest what lines of goods had best be carried.
It was only natural that the older generation could not understand a modern youth who would pay ten hard-earned dollars for a bull puppy, and then name her Zaza and pay two dollars more for a brass-studded collar and be willing to settle all claims for partially chewed up rubbers or boots for which the said Zaza seemed to have a penchant!
Neither did they see the necessity of Dan’s trips to New York to buy goods. Submit Curler had never done it, and, if one could “learn by mail,” why not buy as well? Nor did they see the reason for Dan’s red and white canoe, the “Water Demon,” fitted with an awning and striped cushions and a thirty-five dollar talking machine in the center of it, and why, when every one ought to be at work, Dan and Thurley would drift along the lake to the tune of “Dearie” or “Are You Coming Out To-night, Mary Ann?” while Zaza, unasked guest, would swim out and try to upset the cargo. And when Dan engaged two rooms and had aprivate bathroominstalled at the Hotel Button and built a small balcony opening out of his sitting room, the younger generation fell down and worshipped blindly, while the older generation said a Birge never “built a cupola no place without wanting to get out on it and look down on every one,” and, “there was as much sense in all his notions as there would be in putting a deaf mute at a telephone switchboard.”
When Dan was quoted as saying he did not “feel rightunless his suits were made by a New York tailor,” and, without consulting any one, bought a scarlet roadster and talked of building two-family houses as an investment, to say nothing of the twenty thousand dollar house with an iron deer in the front yard and steam heat that he would build when he married Thurley Precore—the older generation tilted their chairs back and recalled the story of the negro about to be hung, who said upon approaching the gallows, “Dis am gwine to be a powerful lesson to dis nigger!”
Yet the town had to admit that Dan built up the Corners more than any of his ancestors or contemporaries. He ventured money in a moving picture show and made it pay, mollifying the churches by turning over the proceeds of the Passion Play for a new carpet for a Sunday-school room and new front steps for the rival denomination. He installed an ice cream soda fountain in Oyster Jim’s store, lending the old man the money, and started the vogue for modern sidewalks and a town clock—and even a manicure! There was no telling to what lengths he might have gone, if he had not been so in love with Thurley that she occupied his thoughts twenty-three and a half hours out of the twenty-four, but he managed to do wonders with the remaining half hour. The town often said he no doubt would have borrowed their farm teams to make polo ponies, and it was suspected that he was striving frantically to “get up a board of health.”
Certain it was that Dan was not afraid to spend his money—some declared it was a hundred thousand and some a hundred and ten thousand. And, most glorious achievement of all, he liberally pensioned Submit Curler, whose eyes were too dim to tell basting thread from sewing silk.
When Dan would try to convince Ali Baba of some needed modern enterprise, Ali Baba would retort angrily, “Who made you so wise and your elders fools? Be careful or you’ll catch brain fever and be as bald as a badger!”
To which Dan would answer good-naturedly, “No doubt of it—didn’t you know that grass never grows on a busy street?”
Which would leave Ali Baba chuckling, “Land sakes and Mrs. Davis, if that boy hasn’t a little Irish in him—dead dog eat a hatchet!”
No one could say Dan underpaid or cheated any person with whom he had dealings. His store had an up-to-date, live air and one could find bargains and articles which had never been seen in former days. Also, when travelling men came to sell him and he entertained them at his attempted bachelor apartments, they would suggest a game of penny-ante and something to drink, and the boy would inform them with no shrinking indecision, “I was raised watching men make fools of themselves,” and bid them good night.
When he married Thurley Precore, the town gossiped, Dan would meet his match, and, in concluding their jeremiad, said they doubted whether Thurley would marry him after all, but if, for spite, he married Lorraine, who, goodness knows, would jump sky high if she ever had the chance, Dan Birge would be the same bully his father had been to his wife—there never was a Birge who didn’t have to boss the job or quit!
None of this bothered Dan, not even the vituperation of himself when he encouraged a family of Sicilian bootmakers to rent one of his cottages and began topay to have his shoes shined. Nothing bothered Dan except the fear lest Thurley should not marry him; that only botheredhim at stray moments when a wilful impulse led her to break an engagement with him and run off to sing at some entertainment at South Wales.
As he strode along the main street, Zaza heeling him, he whistled “Bonnie Sweet Bessie” and shouted out a hullo to every one he passed, regardless of age or rank. There was something delightfully irrepressible about Dan. Perhaps the fact that every girl in town was or had been or was planning to be in love with him might have aided his buoyancy, as well as the knowledge that the older generation still looked at him with horrified disapproval and yet were powerless to control so much as a single one of Zaza’s barks.
He made his way up the winding path leading to the burial ground, one of those picturesque spots with weeping willows, wild roses and a tottering old fence, and scraggly berry bushes growing insolently without.
“Oh, Thurley,” he began, calling before he reached the summit.
“Ship ahoy!” sang back a strong, sweet voice. Presently he came upon a tall, blue-eyed girl with thick braids of dark hair. She was sitting under a willow tree, a book thrown carelessly at one side.
“Thurley, dearest,” he began, sitting down and kissing her, “I thought four o’clock would never come.”
“Did you make mistakes in change?” She put her hand on his shoulder. “If the clerks could see their lord and master now,” and she rumpled up his hair.
“Bother the clerks and the whole darned town—I’ve made you promise to marry me, Thurley, and you’re not going to make me keep it a secret. Why don’t we tell every one right away? What’s the use of keeping it to ourselves, when we are both sure of ourselves and the happiest things alive?”
Thurley laughed indulgently. “It’s just me, Dan. I want to be terribly sure of myself.”
He took her hands in his. “You are! You love me. You’ve always cared for me, as I have for you—’way back ten years ago when you joined the gang! I have all the money we need and you may have it all. Say we won’t keep it a secret! I’m dead tired of the Hotel Button; it gets on my nerves these days. Mrs. Hawkins has been mighty white to me—when I know what a spoiled nuisance I must have been—but she’s a perfect litany of woe. I can hear her now, ‘Wal, there wuz two funerals down to South Wales to-day—an’ I meant to make a lemon pie but there wuz no lemons!’ Or else she gets on another tactic—of borrowers—and she greets a chap with, ‘Don’t never talk about borrowers, Dan Birge; my curtain frames has been as far as the next township, and sometimes I ain’t set eyes on my ice cream freezer from May to November!’ And if I’m trying extra hard to think about business—and I’m really thinking about you—she starts in about somebody’s second cousin’s divorce and soliloquizes, ‘We’re all members of one human family and God never meant for man and wife to live together like cat and dog.’ And I’ve never known it to fail that I was hurrying to get away to meet some one—and it was ’most always you—that she didn’t drag me into her sitting room to see some of her damned—excuse me, Thurley—embroidery that she’s going stone blind by doing and listen to her explain, ‘These two doilies is just alike, only one is blue with flowers and the other is pink with stars and anchors—they’re a weddin’ present for Mrs. P. L. Flanigan—her second wedding, too; she’s been on the stage since she could lisp, supported Madame Modjeska all through the West and then married a no good Irish comedian.... Oh, Dan, don’t bein a hurry! Look at this one—ain’t it a work of art, if I do say so—clover is like sweet peas, awful hard to embroider natural.’”
Dan paused, out of breath.
“Yes,” Thurley said soberly, “but she has her meals on time, and you eat them.”
“My Swedish appetite is always with me, no joke; but what of that? Do you think I expect you to drudge like Prince Hawkins’ wife? Not much. We are going to have amaid, no hired girl, but a trained maid, and we’ll pay her five and maybe six dollars a week, and a wash-woman besides that.”
“The town will say I’m lazy. Lorraine McDowell does all the work at the parsonage and visits the poor families besides.”
“That’s very fine in Lorraine, but she isn’t my Thurley. You just couldn’t pin yourself down to routine, could you?” He looked at her admiringly. “The best you can do is to pin the other chap down to it—like you did me. It is you who made me study and make good; I was a spoiled kid with more money than was good for me and no one with a grain of faith as to my future. They were holding their breath until I’d get into a scrape and they could go at me without gloves. Well, I didn’t, unless they call loving Thurley Precore and being engaged to her a scrape! Of course they’ve patted me on the shoulder now and said decent things, but I’m twenty-two and a man, and they can’t do otherwise. I guess you said about all there was to say when you told me, ‘The best vault in which to keep your fortune is a good education.’”
Thurley leaned over to kiss him on the forehead. “You’re a wonder,” she whispered, “but, really, wouldn’t Lorraine make you happier?”
His face clouded with an injured expression. “Why drag in Lorraine? She’d like to drag herself in,” he admitted candidly, “and I guess every one knows it, but you don’t fall in love to suit the other fellow—and I don’t love Lorraine.”
“She’s so pretty and frail, and you’re such a big, strong gypsy lad,” mused Thurley, pulling sprays of feathery grass idly, “and I’m such a big, strong gypsy lass that we’re not contrasts. We’re too much alike, Dan; too selfish in the same way. Every one is bound to be selfish in some way or other, but when you both hit the same trail, it usually ends in a crash ... please, wait until I finish. Then we’re too fond of having our own ways. I’d like it if you became Daniel Precore instead of my becoming Thurley Birge; yes, I truly would. I don’t want to promise to love, honor and obey any one—not a bit of it. I want to do what I dreamed of as a child—those dreams kept me alive, Dan. I want to sing, not in the town, but in New York, London, Paris. I’ve read of girls from the country who made good, and I can sing, Dan! It is not silly for me to say it. Besides, there is little else I can do!”
“I know it,” he said in a muffled tone, “but why not sing just for me? I’ll always listen.”
“That’s the trouble. I want to sing for thousands of strangers; I want to be famous, Dan, and yet, I want you for my pal. Don’t you see that it doesn’t go together as it should? For me to stay here as your wife, and for me to travel all over the world and be on the stage—and all that would go with it. I wouldn’t be your wife unless I was sure to be the right wife. Dear old boy, you shrug your shoulders every time I try to explain it. But I’m different from Lorraine and the other girls. I’m selfish and generous all in one, quick tempered and patient byturns. I hate to fuss about details. Domesticity drives me mad, poor Granny Pilrig can tell you! I’d sit up half the night to learn a song or read a book, and then I’d want to be hideously lazy the next morning. Sometimes I feel as if I were floating in the air, flying with absolutely divine ease and bliss just because of something deep inside myself—I haven’t the faintest idea what it is. I can sing on hilltops and laugh in the grayest of drizzles. Everything can be in glorious purples and golden colors. And when the sun is actually bright and every one is congratulating every one on the weather, I find myself old, tired, black within. I want to cry, scream, go away from every one and neither speak nor move. That’s what they call temperament, I understand, and you, Dan boy,” Thurley’s lovable mouth curved into smiles, “you could never say that is a good basis for a happy marriage—particularly to a gentleman with a ‘Swedish appetite’ and one who likes to be amused when he comes home tired out from a bargain sale of kitchen oilcloth!”
“Well, what is the basis for a happy marriage? Mrs. Hawkins says ‘young folks should set down and talk about what they each like to eat before the engagement is announced!’ I guess we can pass that up.”
“Did you know what Mrs. Hawkins said about me, as being a good wife for you? It’s funny! She told Granny and Granny told me. She said, ‘I bet Thurley would dust the divil out of her cut glass and rustle into her georgette crêpes to get to a singing bee; but cook that boy a square meal, darn a sock, stand a bit of the Birge temper—never!’”
“She’s just a meddlesome old woman,” Dan began angrily.
“She’s truthful and she likes us both. Don’t let’s rush ahead and be married until we are sure, and until you tryonce more to see if you don’t love Lorraine; it seems so cruel when she cares so hard.”
“If she writes me any more silly notes about maple sugar socials on her everlasting pink paper and smelling of shampoo powders, I’ll stop speaking to her,” he declared. “Let’s settle it to-day, Thurley—announce our engagement in the SaturdayGazette. Everything I have or ever will have is yours. I love you; I’ll do what you say and be as you would have me. Darling, you’ve no one in this world to look out for you and I’ve no one to look out for. Let me take care of you! Please, I care so hard.” His dark, handsome face was very close to hers and, suddenly, he laid his head on her shoulder, smothering a sob.
Thurley’s sunrise, rose-red self went out to him in sympathy. “Does it mean so much?”
“Just—everything,” was the incoherent answer.
“Then—I will.” Tears came into her blue eyes. “I couldn’t make you wait any longer. Look at me.” She lifted his face between her hands and they looked into each other’s eyes for a long, wonderful instant. “Dan, it may be a mistake, but I think I do love you even if I’m not willing to be a house-and-garden wife and stop my singing.... I’d perish if I stopped singing, so promise me you’ll never ask it.”
“Not in church and parlors and like that,” he said unwillingly, “but my wife isn’t going to sing on the stage.”
Thurley’s brows drew together in perplexity. “Well, maybe no one will ever ask me,” she evaded. “We won’t quarrel about it until they do—only I’d fight you pretty hard if you tried to stop my singing—it means even more than you do!”
“It won’t after we are married,” he asserted jealously,“and I won’t wait long for you either. We’ll live at the hotel until the house is ready. I want to begin the plans to-morrow.”
“Oh, Dan, a year anyway! Whatever will Granny do?”
“Move her into the hotel,” he promised generously. “But you’ve got to marry me in September! Let’s go over to Philena’s grave and pledge it.”
“I don’t think I deserve you, you’re so much in earnest, but I am sort of playing a lovely, interesting part—a wonderful part, too, but I’d really like to have strangers here to see how well I do it,” Thurley tried to explain as they came up to a white cross newer than the surrounding markers on which was engraved:
Philena, beloved grandchild of Betsey Pilrig,Young, beautiful and good, God numbered her among His angelsAt the early age of fifteen!
“Now promise,” Dan insisted, holding her hands.
“I promise,” Thurley answered. Leaning over the cross, they kissed each other with tender solemnity.
“Shall we sit here and talk,” Thurley asked, “or walk back?”
“Anything you like. You’re so beautiful to-day, Thurley, I wonder if you realize how beautiful you are! I’m going to make you wear the proper sort of clothes and send right off for your ring.”
Thurley glanced at her pink cotton blouse and white wash skirt in disdain. “I hate bothering over clothes and yet I’d like rich, weird creations just dropped from the skies. I never could sit and sew like—”
“Lorraine, I suppose!” Dan laughed in spite of himself. “I want to walk over to theGazetteoffice and putour engagement notice in. I wouldn’t want that to go by another week, if I had to get out an extry. I believe I’d make them get out an extry, too!”
“Did theGazetteever get out an extry for anything?” she asked.
“The nearest they ever came to it was when Ali Baba was learning to ride a wheel and he ran into a barrel of tar pitch within half an hour of four o’clock! Come on, sweetheart, we can begin planning furniture.”
Thurley lingered near an old tombstone with the engraving: