“Oh, I never listen to her yarns,” Dan told Lorraine, when Lorraine asked if he did not feel sorry for Hazel who had a brutal, drunken father and whose mother with eight children younger than Hazel never had a kind word for the girl, but expected her to come right straight home from work and start tending the babies. “If there was any one else in this town I could hire, I’d do it without hesitation. But if I let her go, Josie Donaldson would want the place or else Cora Spooner, and Hazel is a mild sort of fool. How can she cry all the time and not get granulated lids?” he ended irritably. “She blots her dictation pad for fair.”
“She says they have nothing elevating in their home and she craves better things,” repeated little Lorraine.
“Oh, yes, she does—she wants a duke to drop out of the clouds and swoop her up and a lot she cares if her whole family starve to death. I don’t blame her father for his morning’s morning, if he has to listen to her, and she spends all her money on herself, turning it right into the store for nonsense. Her spare time she spends in Owen Pringle’s boudoir,” Dan’s eyes twinkled, “learning how to be one of the idle rich on eight per! Oh, ’Raine, ask old Ali Baba up for supper—I want to know how it feels to have somebody with sense as a guest.”
“But it’s a real joy for the girls to come here—”
Here Dan betrayed more insight into Lorraine’s life than she fancied he possessed. “It was never a joy for them to come and see you when you lived at the parsonage, scrubbing and cooking and mending! I never sawJosie Donaldson rolling up her sleeves to give you a lift or Hazel Mitchell hanging about until she was asked inside. It was no joy then. They beat it the other way when they saw you coming—”
He spied a tear in Lorraine’s gentle eyes. So he humbly added, “Never mind my growls, do as you like—you don’t dictate to me about the grafters I take to lunch or driving, do you?”
Lorraine did not answer; she was thinking that Dan, too, was quite in the same category. Dan had never had any “joy” in seeing Lorraine until Thurley had gone away. Dan was no different in some respects from the others!
Before the vacation occurred, with Owen, Josie and Cora as the guests, Lorraine rummaged in Dan’s chiffonier to find extra goggles for Cora and a linen motor coat for Owen. She came upon a magazine lying face downward.
She understood why it was almost hidden, for it was a recent issue of a musical journal and the cover page was a brilliant color reproduction of a photograph of Thurley Precore asAïda, glowing praise briefly written underneath. Thurley wore a mesh of lace studded with brilliants; she half reclined on a divan, like some legendary queen dreaming in the blue-black night!
Lorraine did not know how long she had been crouching on the floor as if she were a child discovering hidden Christmas presents. Dan came in and, bending down, gently took the magazine away. Lorraine started up. She realized the contrast between the photograph and herself far more than Dan—since Dan only realized Thurley. Her bungalow apron over a pink house dress, her heelless slippers, her unpowdered, flushed face—andthat gorgeous, super-person smiling out so temptingly at them both!
“’Raine, do you mind—just having the picture?” he asked with none of his customary aggression.
“Why, no—of course not.” She was glad to make her escape.
That night Dan brought his wife some roses and told her she had on a becoming dress; he was glad Cora Spooner was to be Owen’s clerk—after all, it took all kinds of fools to make a world.
And on the same night Thurley, closing her season, received among other offerings a handsome basket of orchids and lilies tied with silvery tulle. The card said, “From an old friend.”
Thurley’s summer was spent unwisely. She excused this by apparently sound reasons. First, she was tired from the season’s work and the unusual social demands which it seemed wisest to endure. Secondly, her jealous curiosity was roused at Bliss Hobart’s mysterious departure without explanation of where he was going or how long he would remain away, an almost brusque leave-taking which consisted of a brief cup of tea at Thurley’s apartment, telling her some critical things about her voice and answering lightly when she questioned him as to his whereabouts,
“I go to my castle in Spain, really, nothing but a simple little hermitage in the Maine woods. I assure you it would be of no interest. Now I must be off, for it is like uprooting an oak every time I go away. I like to leave things as shipshape as possible before I begin to play.”
“Are you never lonesome?” she persisted.
“I’ve all the inhabitants of the forest,” he answered. “Good-by. I understand you’ve accepted for the yachting party, the one Lissa is giving.” His face expressed displeasure.
Thurley nodded; she had intended to escape it until this identical moment when his bland, impersonal manner was fuel for her folly.
“You’ll get good ideas as to what to avoid. I have always contended that to build a virtuous wall around one’s self was questionable,—better be able to view allthat is happening, good and bad, and make one’s deductions accordingly. Lissa reminds me of the basilisk serpent who could ‘look one to death.’ Have a care, Thurley; you’ve no more youth and energy to spare than most of us.” And he left her.
The third reason, and this, too, was an annoying secret, was that Thurley wanted to see the Boston Valley hills and Birge’s Corners. She wanted to go home! Yet not as Thurley Precore, prima donna, but just as Thurley, as unknown but as loved as when she had raced through the village with Dan in pursuit or climbed chestnut trees to the discredit of her manners, helping make daisy chains for the primary class to carry into church on Children’s Day or working her bit of a garden with wholehearted interest and disregard of her appearance.
The notion was absurd and impossible, and, as a powerful destroyer of whim, Thurley accepted the invitation to Lissa’s yachting party and cruised along the coast of Newfoundland in a yacht which had been lent to Lissa by one of her devoted pupils.
The yachting party was not a pleasant affair all told. But it was interesting and exciting. Lissa herself was the discordant note, with the faculty of stirring every one up about something and then losing interest in it and being provoked if the others did not play sheep and do likewise. She had a subtle fashion of reminding every one that, after all, she was the hostess and if they wished they could all get off the yacht at any time they liked and walk home from Newfoundland!
Lissa played with Mark in cat-and-mouse fashion, flirted desperately with Caleb to arouse Ernestine’s jealousy, and Caleb, who regarded her as stunning copy, resolved to transplant her bodily in her most daring combination of orange satin with black velvet streamers intohis next best seller. There were ways of gaining revenge, he informed Ernestine, who stayed by herself on the upper deck, dressing in uninteresting smock affairs and talking over prosy matters with Collin Hedley and Polly, while Thurley and Mark romped about to brave Lissa’s displeasure as they made pseudo-love in audacious fashion.
After four weeks of this vapid sport, every one had succeeded in getting on every one else’s nerves and the party disbanded, its members each vowing that, although so and so was a dear, they would never go away with them again, and Thurley flew on to the mountains to visit Miss Clergy and find an enforced peace in the sanitarium routine.
War broke out in Europe with its astonishing effects and complications and when the fall came to rescue Thurley from feeling as aged as the gentleman from Calcutta who had chronic neuralgia and had occupied the veranda chair next to Miss Clergy’s, New York began to hum with winter plans and she returned to Hortense and the apartment with positive delight and eagerness.
Ennui in the young is more deadly than in the middle-aged, since it is an unnatural happening. The press agent who wrote attractive squibs about Miss Precore yachting and in the mountains little dreamed that Thurley started her season with as much zest as the squirrel in the squirrel cage who, from his endless pursuit of nothing, seems to be the proof extraordinary to the world that it is possible for one person to make a quarrel!
Ernestine Christian had romped over to Devonshire to meet a congenial friend who would wheel through the country and thus repay her for the yachting trip, but she was caught in the war clouds and reached home with difficulty.
Caleb met her as was customary, although all she said by way of a welcome was,
“I’ve had a fright of a time. Europe is seething like a witches’ caldron. I’m out of my own cigarettes and special kind of hair nets and my fingers feel like sticks. Dalrymple, the best coach I’ve ever had, has rushed to Canada to go into training!”
“You look fagged,” Caleb admitted as he drove her home. “Well, as nearly as I can make out every one has a grouch on. Thurley is beginning to have bad mannerisms; Bliss must take her in hand. Lissa has ruined her with nonsensical notions and Mark dawdles about only to waste her time. You haven’t asked as to myself,” he reminded her childishly.
“I brought you a hand-illumined thing,” she answered.
“Oh, certainly—always remember the servants when returning home. It pays! By Jove, that’s a nice hullo for a chap, to say nothing of having stood for your glooms in Newfoundland—”
“You were listening behind tall vases to get our conversation,” she reproached. “I dare say you’ve a hundred pages’ getaway on a worst-seller.”
Caleb was silent and then, instead of impetuous defense, he said in a dreary tone, “Don’t believe I’ll bother you again, Ernestine. It just ‘riles’ you and discourages me.”
“Oh, do drop in for dominoes; no one else ever lets me win so often,” she returned, a bundle of nerves and womanish imaginings, prepared to enter her apartment and find fault and be adorably generous all in one.
Caleb was right concerning Thurley’s mannerisms. Her first adverse criticism proved a mental stab at which she recoiled with agonizing and amusing self-excuses.
“Miss Precore has adopted an unpleasant habit ofswaying her body when her voice ascends the scale. Hitherto one of the greatest delights of this young artist was the splendid simplicity which charmed every one who heard and saw her. Not for an instant did she forget the great essentials of musical art—to conceal art itself. She was as unconscious of the audience or the opera company as if she were, in truth, the composer’s mental vision when actually writing the title part! It is to be hoped that this habit and the air of self-consciousness may be done away with before either becomes fixed. To lose such an example of artistic triumph as Thurley Precore has demonstrated to us would be irreparable.”
No one mentioned the criticism to Thurley—there was no need to do so. Two days after it was printed and her manager told her she must go on a concert tour in February, Thurley dressed herself deliberately in a gown as gleamingly white and glitteringly silver as a path of moonlight; it fairly clothed her in romance. She tied green tulle about her hair and, taking a cloak of emerald green velours, she drove to Bliss Hobart’s apartment, having had Hortense first ’phone to ask if he would be at home.
During the drive she planned what she should say with the artifice of a world coquette. Thurley had fallen prey to Lissa’s spell, yet she had, being denied the simple ties of acknowledged relationships, found scant solace in the bizarre theories of a small but powerful portion of the world. She had told herself with the recklessness of youth that she was different from others, therefore she had the right to live in different fashion, to love in different fashion if she chose ... she would not stay a convent sort of celebrity with every one adoring and applauding and copying her in every way imaginable yet no one becoming happily related to her. She regarded Ernestineas a remote, though precious, older sister who had made a bad error in becoming so aloof; she wanted Collin to marry Polly Harris in the good old-fashioned way, since Polly had no more chance of writing successful opera than the fire escape of her attic of turning into a marble stairway. She was undecided as to Caleb’s destiny. Lissa was interesting, even with her jealousies and vanities, her greed for all material things—Thurley suddenly realized that Lissa was interesting because she never corrected one, she never proved the wrong of this or the right of that—and who, not excepting rosy youth, does not incline to him who never reproves but merely condones? Mark did not really interest Thurley, since she had ceased trying to deny the truth to herself—that she loved Bliss Hobart in such tense fashion that she thought of him as her inspiration in whatsoever she did! The only solace she had when Hobart busied himself with new pupils, going here and there to decide this or that question, or when society women flocked about to try their best to fascinate, was that he treated the entire world with the same indifference and kindly patronage and, if Thurley still hoped through magical power to waken in him romantic love, she had sense enough to keep her secret well hidden—from herself most of the time—in order that she might do her work and stay within his jurisdiction.
She found Hobart and Caleb Patmore playing chess, a favorite recreation of the former’s.
“I’m quite a gamester,” Caleb said, with visible relief as she appeared. “Ernestine lapses into childhood via dominoes and Collin actually stops painting to drag me into casino—casino, Thurley! Why do you not stroke my brow or show some symptom of humanity? Polly Harris yearns for cribbage; you know Polly stillhints of that ancestry of hers where she had school marms for aunts and judges for uncles and her cousins all went to military academies. Why this odd devil takes to chess for his pleasure—I understand it not. Help, ho, Thurley, take my place—will you?”
Thurley hesitated. It was not to her liking nor her intention to have any one present at her visit, but she dallied the question gracefully, submitting a list of songs for the concert tour and pretending grave anxiety as to the recovery of one of the songbirds recently in a motor accident.
As she rose to go, inventing a dinner engagement, Hobart accompanied her into the reception hall, leaving Caleb straddled on the fire-settle wondering—who knows what?
“What did you really want?” Hobart asked, as she paused before the door. “Don’t tell me you’re going to do Red Cross work and wear a uniform—”
“It’s the criticism,” she said simply. “It hurt—you might have warned me when you saw my faults.”
“I warned you not to waste summers,” he reminded. “I said all I could. You are no longer my pupil and I have other things which take my time.”
“What shall I do?” she demanded petulantly. “I will not be a mere shooting-star person as so many would like to see me—”
“Well, well, let us see.” He placed his hands on her shoulders in the benevolent, paternal fashion she so admired. But she spoiled it by trying to flirt with him as she looked up.
He dropped his hands as if he read the meaning of the coquettish gaze. “Suppose you find a hobby, Thurley; put all your airs and mannerisms into it. It often works for the best good—what shall it be? Collectingbutterflies or canes, opening Indian mounds—trying to write a play—discovering the fourth dimension—eh?”
Tears were in her eyes. And the big ache of her heart was changed into a sob which rose in her throat with a penitent murmur.
“You are cruel,” she said in a fierce little rage.
“You funny, lovely, little fool!” he laughed, but in soul-healing fashion. “Just be the old Thurley and we’ll love you as we did at first!” After which he opened the door and went down to her cab, telling her how becoming was the costume she wore asElsaand promising to send her a book of golf anecdotes which he considered excellent. She drove off feeling somewhat as Hortense Quinby had expressed it—a mere onlooker at something she craved but could never attain. She wanted to rout Caleb from the fire-settle and sit there herself until Bliss Hobart should return, to say to him with the assurance with which loved wives are blessed,
“Darling, how stupid of any one to come in to-night—please bolt the door and finish the story we started. I’ll snuggle down on this cushion and lean against your knee. I like to watch the fire as you read to see the characters slip about the coals.... I’m very silly, Bliss, but there’s no need for me to reform, God made you wise enough for us both!” ...
Spring brought again the longing for Birge’s Corners. Nothing else appealed to Thurley in the way of a vacation. Europe was barred from the engagement tablet, cruising brought memories of Lissa’s yachting party and society flirted in vain with Thurley to gain her appearance at Allied benefits and bazaars. Beyond a compliance to please her manager, she declined.
During the winter Miss Clergy had become more and more insensible to everything save the fact that Thurley Precore was a prima donna and she had achieved her aim. Such matters as vacations were left in Thurley’s hands.
Ernestine had decided her work was going stale, so a California school where only a handful of the wise and great assembled took her westward with scarcely time to say good-by, Caleb complained.
Caleb devoted himself to emotional war charities since they sold his books—particularly when he would stand in the Belgian booth decorated with streamers like a true harlequin and, fountain pen in hand, await the onslaught of damsels demanding he would autograph their copies of his novels.
Lissa also gave up her time to following the wake of these functions, since she looked well in lace gowns and the supposed patriotic charity on her part bore rich returns in the way of pupils. Watching Lissa, Thurley became aware of another truth: to be an intriguer in art or any other capacity requires that one be not a fool butpossessed of shrewd talents and determination. It takes much time and foresight to be successful in this bent, but if one follows this doubtful path to achieving distinction one has little time left with which to pursue the ethical path of sincere work which wins its own reward.
Besides being an intriguer, Lissa reflected Mark’s fame. She never lost an opportunity with which to have their names associated, to call herself a “romantic old sister to the dear lad,” or appear at his recitals to sing some lightweight thing with the high, phenomenal note which alone won applause.
“It seems to me,” Collin said to Thurley one June afternoon when they were enduring a recital of Lissa’s songs at a lawn fête, “that God started in to give Lissa a wonderful voice. He began with this tiptop note and then, as He realized what she was bound to be in spite of every one concerned, He did not bestow anything else on her, but she must have slipped down to earth pirating that note for surely it was meant to be taken away from her!”
Thurley nodded her gratitude for his expression and Polly, who was sitting on Collin’s other side, gave vent to an impudent giggle.
“Thurley, did you know people say that ‘Miss Precore is a recluse’?” Polly asked her a moment later. “That she refuses to sing for charity?”
“Of course Miss Precore has not worked all winter, oh, no,” Thurley’s temper flared up. “Polly and Collin, I tell you both that I am tired even to my professional expression. Look at Lissa—look at Mark—look here,” she began, pointing out other salubrities and celebrities who were murmuring or warbling “poor bleeding Europe” in properly guttural tones.
Polly was thoughtful and when Collin roused her toexplain why, she said, “Suppose we go to war, Thurley, what then?”
“We’ll do what is needed,” Thurley said in as sharp fashion as Hobart could have replied.
Hortense Quinby came searching the audience to deliver a telegram to Thurley, delighted with her opportunity to appear important.
It was a good-by note from Hobart and of no importance, so Thurley thought as she read it:
Dear Thurley—Leaving for my vacation to-night and sorry not to say good-by, will send up the new operas I told you about—don’t waste this summerB. H.
Dear Thurley—
Leaving for my vacation to-night and sorry not to say good-by, will send up the new operas I told you about—don’t waste this summer
B. H.
She rose and excused herself from the entertainment, which caused half the audience to say that “Thurley Precore liked to create scenes” and the other half “she was a purse-proud young woman with no patriotism.”
Polly and Collin stayed the performance out, since two of the women Collin had painted were taking part in the tableaux and had sent him those telling three-cornered notes on mauve linen requesting that he see them as “France Enraged” and “Belgium at Bay.”
Polly stayed because Collin stayed. After the next number was well under way, Collin, stroking that mad, blond beard of his, asked,
“What’s wrong with Thurley? She’s not been herself all winter and she is going off in her voice.”
“Who wouldn’t—living with a ghost person and working harder than an engineer? Bliss will find her a coach this fall who will treat her mercilessly and make her grind again. It isn’t that any singing teacher can teach Thurley things; they merely shut her up in figurativefashion in a dark closet until she promises to behave and sing the way in which she knows she should.”
“She went it rapidly for a time,” Collin reflected, languidly applauding the antics of a folk dance done by “lanky hanks of shes”—“do look behind to see if Hortense Quinby is listening. I’ve an idea she sells her eavesdropping per word to Caleb ... ever notice how she plays ferret when two or three are gathered together talking in an undertone?”
“She’s in pursuit of the professor of ethnology that Mrs. Barnhardt has in tow; he’s a widower on the loose,” Polly chuckled.
“All power to her—what’s on for your summer?”
“Work, I presume.” Polly’s face lost its gaiety. Drudging through a winter of failure with Bliss Hobart telling her she was naught but wilful in refusing to accept the inevitable and also a position—salt in the wound—of assistant librarian for the opera house—it was sufficient to bring about the change of expression. “What is ahead for you?”
“No work, I refuse all commissions, the Allied generals might beg in vain. I’m going to play; there’s a lot of us who are going to visit Bliss at his hermitage.”
“What luck! Really invade his sacred portals?”
“Well, we call it play. I’m to go and the Russian who writes and that funny little man with the square head, Tyronne—he does those historical essays no one reads but every one looks at underneath a glass case in a hundred years or so. And Caleb and Bliss had a row about Caleb’s not writing as he should and Caleb isn’t coming. Poor old Sam is in Lunnon recruiting and he is out, too. But we are going to try to loaf away the summer. I’ll put a sign on my gate, Shoo flies, don’t bother me, I’ve gone off to the north countree—”
He was selfishly unconscious of Polly’s expression.
“How splendid!” was all she said. “I wish I were a boy. I’d go along as Oolong Formosa, the only valet who did not anger the master by gaining a university diploma just when I had become proficient in whisk brooming!”
Collin laughed. “You’re a weird little thought,” he said carelessly. “Sometimes I think you’ll never grow old. We’ll be tottering graybeards and Ernestine and Thurley wrinkled dowagers, but you will still be Polly, brown-faced and boyish! Now, I say, why not give up your big dream for a bit, leave it for the next lifetime and will yourself to be born a long-haired Polish genius with opera scores fairly dripping off your brow—come on, Polly, be my secretary. I need one. Look at the young women who do Caleb’s stuff and Ernestine has that depressing, rubber tired young woman with a bumpy forehead and Thurley the Quinby monstrosity. I’m terribly behind. Please, help a chap out. It’s proper for you to be my secretary since no one can accuse us of being in love—I’ll leave you carte blanche and the key to Parva Sed Apta; you can tidy me up like a good elf, answer notes and even wash my paint brushes.” There was something gentle and generous in Collin’s joyous eyes as he watched her strugglenotto accept.
“I’d be slacking from what I’ve set out to do,” she said finally. “This war may rob us of our future composers abroad and it’s my time to take their place. I study every night, Collin, no matter how I’ve been working and I’ve made plans for the summer.”
“Study at Parva Sed Apta!”
She shook her head. “I’d rather not. Maybe I’ll have to come to it some time, be an out and out dependent, perhaps—”
Collin put his hand down to cover her small, brownish ones. “Why, Polly, you mustn’t go getting morbid. It’s that damned fire escape and attic of yours and the hungry wolves howling outside your door every time you’ve a crumb to spare. Come along into the sunshine—and filled pantry shelves. Play I’m big brother to a little bohemian.”
They were standing for the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and Polly, glad of the release, sprang to her feet and lustily sang the words. But she persisted in her refusal and Collin, a little displeased, told Caleb before he left town to keep a weather eye on Polly and, if she started absurd things like fainting, to kidnap her and take her to Parva Sed Apta where she could protest in helpless but very comfortable surroundings!
Collin did not in the least understand, despite his ability to read his subjects in banal, neutral fashion and to see the inner meanings. He was blind to Polly’s tragedy, one of the most cruel of tragedies in the world—unreturned yet undying love.
In fact Collin was becoming used to his subjects’ asking that special skill be used in the painting of the lace wedding veil or accurate copying of the gold braided uniform of an army officer—so that popular marionettes were the result, when all the time it was with difficulty that his joyous eyes did not see far beneath the lace veil or the uniform and paint the obscure truths be they ugly or beautiful!
Calling on Thurley a week after the garden fête to urge her appearance at a Newport carnival, Caleb was amazed to find her apartment shrouded in gray linen and even the mirrors tied with gauze. Hortense, in the pleasant rôle of a stay-behind martyr, received him totell the news. Thurley had returned to Birge’s Corners—the Fincherie was the name of Miss Clergy’s house—to spend the summer!
“All at once she demanded the old environment, a strange homesickness engulfed her,” Hortense began analytically, delighted to have Caleb at her mercy. “I cannot say whether or not it is wise—but home she has gone. Although she left plenty to do,” she could not refrain from adding, “but, even so, it will be lonesome for me.”
At which Caleb fled, threatening punishment to Thurley for having run him into danger. Later, he received a note stating that Thurley was at the Fincherie and she would have a house party in August, to save the time out for that because she was sure he would find plenty of new types.
“I’ll be hanged,” Caleb ruminated over the situation before he wrote Ernestine the news. “But didn’t Thurley leave a boy-sweetheart in Birge’s Corners?”
The reopening of the Fincherie with magical haste, untold extravagance and new notions set the town gossiping anew.
To see every window wide open and Betsey and Hopeful polishing them while Ali Baba hurried to and fro on all sorts of errands bent, to know that the stable was empty of its coupé and motor cars were installed, while a pert maid with a cap with streamers minced down the streets and smiled superciliously at every one—it was enough to give the Corners palpitation of the heart.
The general verdict was that Thurley had returned “to lord it over every one.” A few more romantically inclined thought she had come back to “win Dan from ’Raine.” One or two simple souls believed she might be genuinely anxious to be at home again, at least the only home she had ever known.
Thurley bothered little with public opinion. With false assurance as to her ideas, she proceeded to put them into practice without delay. The devil always favoring a new recruit, it would seem, she met with considerable success.
To still the wondering as to Bliss’s summers, the loneliness for a personal relationship and the fag in her head brought about by a season’s hard work and the war agitation, Thurley played along in Lissa’s own manner.
She treated the Corners with good-natured disdain. There was a trifle of the boaster in her as she wore her new creations and drove her smart cab about, smoked openly and permitted unwrapped cases of champagne tobe sent up from the station. But the boasting was because of two elements, the child’s love of mischief and the woman’s loneliness and determination to let no one suspect that she had repented of her strange bargain.
She had driven into the town with Miss Clergy beside her, quite content as long as Thurley was satisfied, Thurley in a startling gown of mulberry chiffon and a jet toque and her driver in a trig green uniform to match the body of the limousine.
The word spread like fire, “Thurley Precore is back, grand as a princess, famous as all outdoors—paint on her cheeks—Miss Clergy is human—itisso, all they’ve said about ’em—watch Dan Birge, sore’n a hedgehog, watch ’Raine—there’ll be doings if she stays.”
There was no attempt at actually refurnishing the Fincherie, but only to let sun stream in and soap and water do its best. A piano was the only added asset save the motor cars, the lady’s maid and Thurley’s accompanist. Thurley preferred to have the contrast of old style furniture, and Miss Clergy wandered vaguely like a lost child through the rooms, smiling with delight at the memories such and such a table or chair recalled; she even pointed to where she had danced the businesslike little polka at her coming out party.
But when Thurley came face to face with Betsey, Hopeful or Ali Baba, all trace of the sophisticated young woman vanished and she flew into their arms in such natural fashion that they afterwards said in stout defense of her, “Thurley ain’t changed a mite—unless people act changed to her!”
Nevertheless there was a change. No one can go away from a village as a runaway beggar girl taking the town mystery and richest person in it at the same time and leave a broken heart to keep green her memory,without somewhat of a readjustment. Nor can she return three years later both famous and rich and lovelier than ever without further complications.
The homey things which Thurley had anticipated would set her right in magic fashion irritated and disappointed her. She wanted to return the same wild rose she had left, being treated as such. But her grandeur was like a stone wall over which the village took turns at peeking and saying, “Well, well, well, so this is Thurley Precore—well, well,well!”
Twelve hours after she had come into the town she was bored to extinction. She missed the excitement of her other life and wondered why she had not stayed on to do the things society had begged of her. Birge’s Corners was as removed from the real world as Iceland from the tropics, they did not appreciate or comprehend her! She was still just a “lucky girl” in their eyes; they almost questioned her success. She would have to die and leave funds for a public drinking fountain before the village would acclaim her as their own with joy and alacrity.
The hills seemed small and stunted and the air over-dusty and hot. The old drive along the river was stupid, she decided, as she took it and was prepared to be drifted back into enchanted girlhood. Her accompanist, who was with her, agreed when Thurley remarked that one never remembered childhood joys with accuracy. The accompanist was thinking ofherown home town where the hills were green and gorgeous and the river sparkling—but the accompanist had not been home in some time either!
The summer yawned before Thurley like a dark cavern. She longed for fall and work—glimpses of Hobart with snubs and sarcasm from him if nothing else. She wanted Ernestine; she felt she could become ascynical as Ernestine with no trouble at all and she would agree with Caleb that “kiss-baby” copy was perfectly proper if people were fools enough to pay for it; she resolved to play cards for money the next winter, as Lissa urged, and really to bully Polly into accepting decent clothes and being some one respectable. She wanted Collin to paint her portrait in a certain cream satin frock, because she wanted to know what Hobart would say of it, and as for Mark—there was a dangerous expression in Thurley’s eyes as she thought of what she might or might not do concerning him ... besides, there were many others who would pay her attention, rich, powerful, foolish creatures who follow such butterflies as religiously as the hounds do the hares. Every one must decide early in the game if he is to run with the hounds or with the hares! Thurley had not yet decided. She knew that as she came home from the disappointing river drive the last resolve to be natural and her wild-rose self vanished—it was the final straw which turned her in the way Lissa’s white fingers had pointed.
Vows or no vows, Thurley would live! And if she loved some one who chose to live a hermit’s life—— And did he live a hermit’s life despite this chatter of a Maine hermitage? There was room for reasonable doubt. Thurley would live as she pleased, time enough to take the consequences!
She began cheering the accompanist by promises of a house party and her own drooping spirits by the promise of thoroughly shocking the narrow, well-meaning town.
When they drove into the stableyard and Ali Baba came out as was his custom, Thurley sent the accompanist into the house and wandered back with Ali Baba.
“Seems mighty fine to have you back,” he said.
“Good to be back, Ali Baba. Well, have I changed somuch?” she asked, waiting curiously for the old man’s opinion.
He shook his head. “If your mother was to have kissed you good-by, I’m gosh hanged whether or not she’d know you now! You’re a great lady.”
“Nonsense, it’s just the clothes. Let’s talk about every one else but me. I want to get Hopeful and Betsey fur coats next winter and you’ll have to find out the sort they like.”
“I guess singin’ pays,” he ventured.
Thurley had led the way inside the barn and settled herself on a bench. “How is June Myers and Josie Donaldson—see, I haven’t forgotten their names—and—Lorraine—and Dan?” she tried to say easily.
Ali Baba glanced at her shrewdly. “Oh, June is the same little whiffet she always was and Josie is tryin’ to write a play; she’ll come to see you, don’t never worry.... We got a new kind of fool here—Owen Pringle; he has an art store and when he heard you was comin’, he sent to town for photographs of you—I didn’t know you could buy ’em right out—and he wants you to autograph ’em and then he’ll sell ’em—don’t you write a stroke of the pen—and his clerk, Cora Spooner—oh, we got a right good stock of pests on hand. I tell you, Thurley, things ain’t like they used to be.”
“You didn’t say about—Dan,” Thurley urged, wondering why she trembled.
“Fine—business growing. Was you scared the first time you come out on the stage?”
“Not much. How are all the home folks, that’s what I want to know.”
Ali Baba lit his pipe in democratic fashion. “All up to snuff, fools included ... goin’ to sing in meetin’?”
“If I’m asked.”
“Well, for land’s sake and Mrs. Davis,” he commanded, “sing somethin’ with a regular tune. I can’t go these songs that slide all over and back again afore a feller gets his foot to tappin’ on time.... Guess you learned to sing in Eyetalian from what you write Betsey?”
“Yes.”
He snorted disapproval. To his mind, as to the majority of village minds, there was no more object in discarding one’s coherent language to speak another than to shave off one’s hair and adopt a wig.
“How is Lorraine?” Thurley studied the barn floor.
“Too good to be true.” Ali Baba stood up and started to examine an old strap. “Her pa is prouder of her every minnit ... she’s made Dan a fine wife—had me up for supper and treated me as fine as silk.... Dan’s a great lad.” He became engrossed in opening the buckle.
Thurley slipped away. Later, Ali Baba told Betsey,
“Opery singers or no opery singers, women is all alike. If they give a fellow the mitten, they just can’t help comin’ back to see how he’s wearin’ it!”
Dan was in South Wales the day Thurley arrived. When he returned to the Corners a week later, the town was chattering with new gusto, but he learned the news from Lorraine herself,—from Lorraine, who had been trying to gain courage enough to call on Thurley and blot out memories of that hidden magazine and the unproved yet strong impression that Dan had not confined himself to magazine pictures of Thurley. Just wherein lay his infidelity she did not know; she shrank as do women of her makeup from ever discovering!
Dan came in buoyantly to waltz her around as was hiscustom, telling of his success with this man and that and plans for the branch store.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, realizing that she was not dimpling with happiness and nodding approbation at every sentence he spoke.
Lorraine disengaged herself from his arm and stood back, twisting her apron nervously. “The town has something new to talk about, Dan. Who do you think is back for the summer?” laughing nervously.
“I don’t know. Who ever comes back here?”
“Miss Clergy—and Thurley.” It was a relief now her name was spoken. “They’ve reopened the Fincherie, and Thurley has a maid and chauffeur and about eight trunks—so Ali Baba says.”
Dan whistled softly. “What do you think of that?” was his sole comment.
“I suppose I ought to call on her,” Lorraine continued bravely, “although she may not care to know any one of us now. She’s so famous and changed! Ali Baba says she smokes and paints her face and the lady’s maid is prettier than any one in the village. She had her piano shipped from New York and an accompanist besides! Do you think I ought to call?” Lorraine’s little face was wrinkled anxiously.
“If you like—I don’t suppose Thurleydoescare,” Dan went over to the lounge and, flinging himself down, picked up a newspaper, “or she would never have left here! Anything else new—nobody lynched Owen yet—Cora got a new beau? I saw a travelling man in Hamilton that was her speed. When he comes here we’ll ask him over and let Cora do her best. I suppose Hazel and Josie have camped out here while I’ve been away. You look pale, ’Raine—what’s wrong—yourdad sick? Then come here and guess what I brought for you—”
“You’re always bringing me things,” she said wistfully. Even his reassuring words did not satisfy. They were spoken with a glib uneasiness which did not deceive.
“You extravagant Dan,” Lorraine said, examining the silver purse, “how lovely of you!”
“I’m going to take forty winks before supper—mind? I can’t get used to irregular hours and country hotels. Oh, ’Raine, small towns are the devil’s own makings, of all the narrow, carping—” Dan dozed off, apparently, with unfinished sentiments giving way to regular breathing.
Lorraine tiptoed away. “He didn’t seem to mind,” she consoled herself as she cooked supper, “but he has not seen her!”
Lorraine had. She watched Thurley as she drove by, standing half hidden behind bushes to note every lovely, strange detail of her appearance, wondering why Thurley, who had brought the world to her feet so easily, must return to this village to steal the peace of mind of a woman who had not even brought the one man she loved to her own timid feet!
Dan stayed at home that evening as if wishing to prove his devotion to Lorraine. Usually he would have wandered down to the hotel or the lodge room. They talked of everything else but Thurley’s return, although each thought of nothing else, and in the morning Dan said carelessly,
“Don’t call on Thurley unless you like. I dare say she does not expect it. Every gawk of a country girl will crowd in on her, curious and self-seeking, and if Thurley wants to see any one, she’ll come to them. She doesn’t belong to the town any more but to the world.” Hisvoice softened as he added, “Good-by, dear; now don’t work your head off. I’ll lunch at the hotel—there is so much stuff to catch up on.”
That same afternoon Dan’s car drove slowly past the Fincherie, whose crisp curtains and lifted shades told the world a new, optimistic story. No one was visible, not even the much discussed lady’s maid or the accompanist who was said to sit on the lawn and drink endless cups of tea “right in the middle of the afternoon!”
Further along in the road he was hailed by a dreaded trio—Josie, Hazel and Cora!
“Oh, Dan, do take us by her house,” they began, waving their arms in wild invitation. “We’re crazy to see her—Cora never knew her,” Josie Donaldson explained by way of excuse as they climbed pell mell into the machine.
“I guess she won’t want to remember us,” Josie added, “but ma sent over my winter coat one time and she wore it two seasons—she ought to knowme.”
“My aunt helped her a lot too,” added Hazel Mitchell, “and she borrowed every one’s books. I don’t think she’ll dare put on airs. I’m going to start right in and call her Thurley just as if I didn’t know she was famous. I’m dying to get inside that house. Just think, girls, it hasn’t been opened for years until—” Thin ice was fast approaching in the matter of the past and with a swift side glance at Dan, who steered ahead with a fiendish hope of dashing his human cargo off the nearest cliff, Hazel winked at the others and began anew,
“How’s Lorraine?”
“Fine! Where do you girls want to go?”
“To call on Thurley. Please, Dan, drive us up there. It’ll look so much better if we came in a machine.”
“Your machine, anyhow,” giggled Josie.
“Aren’t you working to-day?” he asked Hazel savagely.
“I had a headache and the doctor said I needed fresh air.”
“Then you better stay outdoors instead of calling on people, if it’s fresh air you are after,” he advised.
Nothing but giggles answered him and they hailed the white clad figure of Owen Pringle, who held up his cane in threatening fashion.
“You sha’n’t have the prettiest girls all to yourself, you old married man,” he threatened. “Do let me sit in the back—”
Unwillingly, Dan halted the car and a new element of disturbance was added.
“We want to call on Thurley Precore,” they told Owen, who was always at his best when his arms were full of girl and some one else was driving the car. “Come along and we’ll ask her to let you design some hats—come on.”
“Joyful, joyful, joyful,” he began in an assumed falsetto, at which Dan drew the car to a standstill and looked around with a frown.
“I don’t wish to call on Thurley,” he said sharply, “as you well know. If you insist on my driving you up to her house, I’ll do so. My wife will call on her when she sees fit.”
Which somewhat subdued the quartette, who murmured their gratitude and were hurriedly raced back until the Fincherie was reached. Whispering their thanks, each personally thinking what a dreadful disposition Dan Birge had, they raced up the walk—the leisure class of Birge’s Corners, as Dan thought with half a chuckle.
He was wondering what Thurley would say to them, as he turned his machine in the opposite direction.
Dan’s car rounded the driveway of the cemetery, one of those desolate country burial grounds on a remote hill with a neglected wooden fence running about it and wild shrubbery crowding in on the graves. He saw a smart cab in front of the tottering gate. He knew it belonged to but one person—Thurley—and he deliberately halted his machine and crossed the road to read the telling monogram T. P. entwined with fantastic plumes, consolation for having no real ancestors or crest. As he did so, Dan was glad—glad with all his heart!
He climbed the path which was nearest Philena’s grave. He knew Thurley would be beside it.
... She was sitting with her back towards him, lost in her thoughts and unconscious of any one’s being close at hand.
Dan paused. He was trembling—as Lorraine trembled when he had so grudgingly asked her hand in marriage. He knew Thurley had never loved him in the deepest sense—and yet—he seemed to see her as the old wild-rose girl in gingham, waiting for her lover’s coming!
He put his hand to his head as if it pained. Then he came a step in advance. It was hard work to believe this was Thurley. She wore a wonderful silk driving coat which covered an afternoon frock of val lace tied with pink ribbons and a petticoat of pink satin. Her hat, a large, white lace affair, lay beside her, its silver ties half hidden in the grass. Her brown hair was smooth and glossy, betraying endless brushing and care. One handhalfway supported her splendid, tall self—it was very white these days and the nails shone, while a ring of diamonds sparkled up in triumph. Her pink satin slipper toes and the flesh-colored stockings peeked out coquettishly. With a flash of humor Dan spied the tiny anklet watch on its braided, glittering chain. Thurley was very close to the crimson rambler plant which she and Dan planted for Philena on a Memorial Day, long before Thurley had said her reluctant yes!
Here he stepped on a twig whose crackling noise caused Thurley to turn half way and glance up with neither fear nor surprise—nor special delight.
“Why, it’s Dan Birge,” was all she said, raising her hand cordially.
“Do you mind?” His voice sounded weak and far away. “May I sit down? I—I was passing and I saw your cab; I was sure it was yours from the monogram—”
“If you like. How nice to see you again!” She spoke in such deliberate fashion that Dan wondered whether she was pretending. She seemed years older. It was not the rouge nor the sophisticated look in the blue eyes—nothing one could describe, unless one wished to be abstruse and say her soul had aged.
Dan broke the pause by saying lightly, “Odd we should meet here, isn’t it? I was out of town when you came—Lorraine told me about it last night. She asked if she should call—I didn’t know whether or not you’d like to have her.”
“It would be most kind,” Thurley said in the same even voice. “I have been deluged with calls—mostly out of curiosity. Or to see if I would deny having worn some one else’s clothes and having lived in a box-car ... the old car was used for kindling for a poor family, Ali Baba says.”
“I didn’t know about it until it was too late to save it. It hurt when I thought of your old wagon being chopped up.”
“Did it? Sentimental goose,” she managed to laugh at him.
“Were you having a serious ‘think’?” he asked, after a brief silence.
“About Philena—” She plucked some long blades of grass and began plaiting them into a ring. “How well you look! Lorraine takes good care of you, doesn’t she? Does she look as splendidly?”
“Wish she did—you’ll see her, no doubt.”
“If I stay here. I threatened to move this morning. Some old neighbors came in during my practice hour—they don’t understand!”
“What made you come back,” he asked with a flash of the old boy spirit, “when you never even wrote me!”
“Do you think it was yourself?”
“No. I’m quite removed from you in every way. Why, that dress and ring cost more than Lorraine spends in a year! As Ali Baba says, ‘you are a great lady’—for you wouldn’t have come back unless you were,” he added honestly. “It makes us feel shabby and underdone by contrast.... Of course I never hope to be the same to you—you have everything the world can give you for pleasure and attention. I’m not deluding myself. I’m not such a jay as most of the boys—”
“You never were,” she supplemented quickly.
“I always tried to be ‘citified,’ to wake the town up and keep abreast of the times. Anyway, I loved the finest girl the village ever knew.” There was a quiver in his voice. It was like reopening a newly healed wound and letting it bleed a trifle.
“And you married her,” Thurley insisted, the coquettecoming to the surface. She tilted her head to look down at him through half closed, purplish eyes.
“Ilovedher—and I have a splendid wife,” Dan corrected.
“What a lot happens in three years!” Thurley finished the grass ring and stuck it on her engagement finger. “Shall I make one for you?”
“Do! Ought I to be here taking up your time? Perhaps you wanted to get away from every one or you wouldn’t have come.” Dan felt the contrast between them more and more; his clothes seemed poorly fitted and his scarf pin a trifle gaudy, his shoes the fire-sale variety—a country bumpkin beside this adorable, tall girl in the lace and pink satin with distracting, tangly ribbons.
“I like to talk to you, Dan. I wondered how we would meet!”
“What made you come back?” he demanded. “It wasn’t the Corners and I don’t flatter myself it was me ... for you could have written me at any time and I would have come!”
The slim fingers stopped plaiting the grass. “Would you—really?”
He looked at her with despairing eyes. “Did you get any big baskets of orchids and lilies with a card, ‘from an old friend’?”
“Were they from you?” she said sadly. “Oh, Dan, it was too bad you ever had to care for me!”
“Can you stop the birds from singing or the sun from shining—or a fool for loving some one very fine?”
“Why, no,” Thurley looked out at the hills. “That’s always the hardest thing in the world—not the caring for some one but caring for some one who doesn’t care for you!”
Dan reached over to take her hand. “Is it thatthat brought you here?” he asked tenderly. “Doesn’t some one love you? You needn’t answer. I know ... so fame isn’t enough,” he dropped her hand almost roughly. “Everything’s in the devil of a mess,” he remarked to no one in particular.
Thurley caught the drift of his remark. “It’s the devil of a mess,” she repeated clearly, “because we are not bad enough to be all bad and do terrible things that blot out the hurts or not all good so we can be saints with wings and harps for consolation ... we just struggle—most of us.”
“When did you know I was married?”
“The night of my début—like a story, isn’t it?”
“And we were there—’Raine and I—on our wedding trip.” After three years’ attempt at bravado, the real heart of him was allowed to suffer, suffer as it should have done three years ago instead of fanning revengeful temper on as a worthless substitute.
Thurley faced him directly, hugging her long legs under her boy fashion. “I’m not worth it. The best part of me is my voice, Dan. Only the worst part of me isn’t content to have it that way. I’ve worked mighty hard since we said good-by—I’ve known all sorts and conditions of people, great and near great, good and bad—I’ve had all sorts of men make love to me and I’ve encouraged all sorts of men—just so far. I’ve done things no one would approve of my doing and some things that only a few could approve of or understand. Mostly though I’ve worked and worked and I’ve decided that it is either work for me all my days if I’m to keep on singing, or else I’ll stop working and love and be loved, perhaps. But the two do not go hand in hand ... perhaps I’m bitter.”
“She made you promise never to marry,” Dan interrupted;“she is a selfish old woman who wasn’t fair!”
Thurley nodded. “Love made her insane,” she defended.
After a moment Dan said, “Sing for me, Thurley, like you used to—when things were different.”
Reaching out her hand, Thurley held his in simple palship as she sang in a hushed voice the old tunes they both had loved. As she finished, he said with an effort,
“Maybe we better not see each other this summer.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m only a small town man with a mighty fine wife and you are a genius coming here to amuse yourself, to make yourself forget some one who doesn’t love you—and that’s not a wise combination! I’m liable to lose my head ... I kept it pretty well after you left.”
“Do you blame me?” She seemed contrite herself. “Were you fair?”
“I suppose not. It was just the choice of two futures—you chose the one intended for you. Only now that you’ve chosen, don’t keep on bruising yourself and every one else by trying to—trying to—”
“Don’t you want to see me?” She was determined to have some one want to see her own self, whether or not she sang a single note.
“Don’t I want to? I’ll always want to.” He came closer to her. “Were you never sorry you went away? It would help a lot to know.”
Closing her eyes and remembering as little of the three years as was possible, nothing of her vow or Lorraine, Thurley gave vent to her starved womanhood. “A little,” she whispered.
“Then I will see you and be your pal,” was his answer. “Let me be just that. No one can say there’sany harm in it—not even ’Raine. I’ll have her call on you, Thurley; that will make it right.” He was very close now, his cheek almost touched her own. She drew away.
“In opera those tenors make love as if you were their own,” he said savagely. “I hated to see it!”
“But you were on your wedding journey,” she reminded.
They both laughed, jangling, noncontagious sounds.
“But, Dan, we’d never have gotten along,” she reminded him. “I’m a creature of whims and moods—spoiled, of course, it was inevitable.” She began telling some of her experiences.
“But you won’t forbid my being just pal,” he urged, as she consulted the anklet watch and found it tea-time.
“Not if you’re content to have it that way,” she promised. “Run along and I’ll follow, it would never do to have us drive off in unison.”
As she stood up her rumpled lace draperies made her seem more like a little girl.
“Thurley, Thurley,” he said in sort of impassioned reverie, “you have come back to me—”
“Only for the summer,” she answered in gay decision. “Oh, Dan, remember I haven’t really found myself, nor shall I, perhaps. So think of me as lightly as you can. My present state of mind would permit of but one motto for over my fireplace,