“Of course you’ll be rushed to death when this reaches you,” she concluded, “but you must hear me out. Remember, I listened to all you told me! Never could I spend all that money for myself nor in a sense would it be right. Miss Clergy should have lived down her disappointment, married and raised her boys to fight and her girls to wait and serve. Why should I, stranger that I am, use the money for personal pleasures? I will not even buy a bankrupt title with it.” Here she drew a very large “grin” mark.“I am buying all the deserted lake houses—we have begun negotiations for them and together with the Fincherie there will be a little city of ex-soldiers learning new trades, forgetting empty sleeves and wheel-chair means of travelling, shell shock, snagged souls—all the wilful things which prevent settling down to every day living.“It seems to me, Bliss Hobart, it will always be up to one-tenth of the world to look after the other nine-tenths—so this enterprisewill not end as the tapping of crutches dies away. The soldiers must, of necessity, come first. But there is to be a permanent ‘practical art’ colony there—to teach all who need to be taught the thing best fitted for him—or her. (Grin mark.) There are to be ‘hers’!“Life may be shorn of fineries and extravagances and it may be simple—but it need never be sordid and unendurable and that is what I shall try to prove. My heart is set on having flower beds of deep, purple violets and mignonette for the lawns, sun dials with comforting mottoes—there will be a task—the carving of them. I want the one before the Fincherie itself to read:“‘And as our years do run apace,Let us love GodAnd live in peace.’“Do you like it? (Grin mark.)“I shall have huge, copper lanterns to light the roads at night, there must be yellow ivy and gorse about the walls and cool, gray lavender as a background for pink ramblers and yellow tea roses and, oh, gray angel, I must have a wind screen of willows. I shall build a great archway in the middle of the estate and a stone fence encircling it all. Over the archway I want a thick, oak slab with this motto cut in by a master hand: ‘God gave them a great thing to do—and they did it.’“In each house there shall be particular equipment for particular occupations. Children’s theaters—and fine weaving—carving of wood and ivory and copying brocades. Just see the work to be done, the joy of it—and the pity, too! There must be a bee farm and a poultry annex and I’ve a regular bag of tricks up my sleeve. I’ve Ali Baba as overseer—Betsey and Hopeful as managers—and myself (grin mark) to demonstrate the practical worth of your vision.“For you are the dreamer and I the doer. We are, in our relations, the same as that of science towards theology: ‘Nous nous saluons mais nous ne parlons pas.’ Is it not so? (Wee grin mark.) You speak but you are afraid to do and I am afraid tospeak but I must do. There, write me you will come to my Fincherie and see my children and give us your blessing,“Thurley.”
“Of course you’ll be rushed to death when this reaches you,” she concluded, “but you must hear me out. Remember, I listened to all you told me! Never could I spend all that money for myself nor in a sense would it be right. Miss Clergy should have lived down her disappointment, married and raised her boys to fight and her girls to wait and serve. Why should I, stranger that I am, use the money for personal pleasures? I will not even buy a bankrupt title with it.” Here she drew a very large “grin” mark.
“I am buying all the deserted lake houses—we have begun negotiations for them and together with the Fincherie there will be a little city of ex-soldiers learning new trades, forgetting empty sleeves and wheel-chair means of travelling, shell shock, snagged souls—all the wilful things which prevent settling down to every day living.
“It seems to me, Bliss Hobart, it will always be up to one-tenth of the world to look after the other nine-tenths—so this enterprisewill not end as the tapping of crutches dies away. The soldiers must, of necessity, come first. But there is to be a permanent ‘practical art’ colony there—to teach all who need to be taught the thing best fitted for him—or her. (Grin mark.) There are to be ‘hers’!
“Life may be shorn of fineries and extravagances and it may be simple—but it need never be sordid and unendurable and that is what I shall try to prove. My heart is set on having flower beds of deep, purple violets and mignonette for the lawns, sun dials with comforting mottoes—there will be a task—the carving of them. I want the one before the Fincherie itself to read:
“‘And as our years do run apace,Let us love GodAnd live in peace.’
“‘And as our years do run apace,Let us love GodAnd live in peace.’
“‘And as our years do run apace,
Let us love God
And live in peace.’
“Do you like it? (Grin mark.)
“I shall have huge, copper lanterns to light the roads at night, there must be yellow ivy and gorse about the walls and cool, gray lavender as a background for pink ramblers and yellow tea roses and, oh, gray angel, I must have a wind screen of willows. I shall build a great archway in the middle of the estate and a stone fence encircling it all. Over the archway I want a thick, oak slab with this motto cut in by a master hand: ‘God gave them a great thing to do—and they did it.’
“In each house there shall be particular equipment for particular occupations. Children’s theaters—and fine weaving—carving of wood and ivory and copying brocades. Just see the work to be done, the joy of it—and the pity, too! There must be a bee farm and a poultry annex and I’ve a regular bag of tricks up my sleeve. I’ve Ali Baba as overseer—Betsey and Hopeful as managers—and myself (grin mark) to demonstrate the practical worth of your vision.
“For you are the dreamer and I the doer. We are, in our relations, the same as that of science towards theology: ‘Nous nous saluons mais nous ne parlons pas.’ Is it not so? (Wee grin mark.) You speak but you are afraid to do and I am afraid tospeak but I must do. There, write me you will come to my Fincherie and see my children and give us your blessing,
“Thurley.”
She received her answer via wire the night she returned to New York unwillingly to sing her first concert.
“Not a gray angel but white. Wait until I can say not write it.“B. H.”
“Not a gray angel but white. Wait until I can say not write it.
“B. H.”
All New York whispered that “the Precore voice” was more ravishing than ever, particularly when it sang love songs!
While Thurley bustled about between her season and her remodelling of the lake colony and assembling her new family, the original family underwent some thrilling events.
Hobart was taken unawares with a fresh budget of duties which kept him West without respite, although he went so far as to send Thurley numerous flowergrams and offer donations towards her Fincherie, writing notes in which he demanded more details as to the work and advice as to her career.
Polly Harris had a mysterious surprise which resolved itself into a great success. It was not the grand opera that Polly stubbornly dreamed of during the lean years of struggle; without warning, she composed and had published camp songs which roused the country to topnotch enthusiasm. They were jingles, really, but with sincere sentiments, a tinge of humor and a vigorous little melody—they sprang from the depths of Polly’s loyal heart, bravely relinquishing opera ambitions because “a song fights as well as an army,” she decided, locking her attic door and preparing to drudge.
“I feel light-headed,” she informed Thurley when she came to the latter’s apartment to tell all about it. “As if I were going to open my eyes to find myself in a dentist’s chair, following the taking of old fashioned laughing gas while I lost a wisdom tooth! That it would be the same ‘’ammer, ’ammer, ’ammer on the broad ’ighway’ for yours truly! Oh, don’t ask how I wrote them—how do you sing or Bliss direct—or Collin paint?” she added softly.
“Come, sit in my lap, Polly,” said Thurley suddenly. “I’ve always wanted to have you, you’re such a featherweight and I’m so huge. I always wanted to capture you and make you hear me out. You don’t know how glad I am for you and what wonderful things are ahead for every one.” She beckoned so enticingly that Polly, the same, unspoiled Polly in brown smock and shabby boots, perched herself on Thurley’s knee while they talked it all out. The Fincherie Colony and Hobart’s precious dreams, the useless, selfish work Caleb was doing, Ernestine’s amusingly complaining letters, Lissa’s lack of success in finding a duke or a blue-blooded patroness, the threat that she might have to cut her hair short if she was really going to stay—what would become of that lazy rascal of a Mark?—and here was Collin giving no one a hint as to what he was doing. And then Polly flushed and she said awkwardly:
“Perhaps he will come to care a little, now, Thurley—success sometimes makes people seem different—more desirable, doesn’t it? I know it ought not to be the bait—but when you have cared so long—you are reckless. Money never brings a person the real things, does it?” And Polly began to sob, as she had refrained from sobbing for years while Thurley rocked her in her arms, playing comforting gray angel and understanding womanall in one. They ended quite normally by a heated argument as to whether Polly should or should not—now that she was to be placed on a pedestal with Francis Scott Key—wear a distinctive costume while she toured the country and sang her songs—say a bright red sailor and a blue cloth cape with a single line of white braid—and didn’t she feel ashamed to make such distressing faces because Thurley was planning a pink chiffon evening dress for her—base ingratitude of these newly arrived!
So Polly toured the country in the costume Thurley designed, singing her songs and meeting with success, while music shops plastered their windows with Polly Harris’ latest, and news of her triumph echoed in the trenches to startle Ernestine into cabling congratulations and Lissa into groaning in envy. Polly was to join Bliss in San Francisco for a spring campaign and, when she visited Thurley at the Fincherie, she took endless photographs and mental notes of the colony with which to regale him, asking if there was any special message Thurley wished him to have.
“How wonderfully it is coming on! How kind every one is and workmen seem to do wonders in no time! We shall have the last house restored by July—and tell him we have two hundred boys here and they say they never want to move along—”
“I mean personal message,” Polly interrupted.
Thurley shook her head.
“I’ll use my own judgment,” Polly added, not knowing how dangerously near she came to repeating words of grave and liberating importance.
The third event of the family happened in June when Ernestine and Caleb met each other at the steamer pier. Having faced reality and realized what she was notcapable of doing, Ernestine was flying home in honest haste to try to do what she felt was her duty.
She looked forward to meeting Caleb as the same sentimental person who would propose to her before they had passed down the gangway. Ernestine had discovered that reality, while a stern friend at first, was a sincere and lasting one. The ooze had vanished from her scheme of things since she faced the horrors of—not war—but of the jumblers-in such as Lissa and Mark and the hysterical young things from Birge’s Corners. She had even come across Hortense Quinby who was occupied by making intellectual love to a thick-set young private who contemptuously accepted her affection with the excuse, “An educated dame is better than no one—but when I get back to my girl in Harlem—” while Hortense told herself that this Jo Carter had a soul above being an elevator boy; his was a spirit destined to lead men; and she tried to check his constant assault on the King’s English and planned on being his “fairy godmother” when he should return to America! Ernestine had watched with disapproval the onslaught of débutantes upon the regulars who accepted the adoration with scornful grins and conceited smirks, allowing these delicately bred and reared young creatures who had been so bored or misunderstood by their families, to lavish their attentions on them unchecked. She had seen, by way of contrast, the capable, heroic men and women who managed with admirable tact to suppress these feverish young things from doing their worst and yet not allow them to escape without a whirl at the grindstone. Ernestine looked upon these young things as one does at straggling boys, stray dogs and hoboes who invariably follow the wind-up of any dignified and splendid procession, taggingafter and convinced in their own minds they are attracting as much attention as the mounted police who swish along in advance.
Having looked honestly at reality and judged it fairly, Ernestine had honestly judged of both her former and her present self. She felt she could never return to the unreal, intensive selfishness which she had fostered and excused under the title of “being different”—that she could greet Caleb in almost flapper fashion, saying,
“Here I am, ready to marry you! Let’s have a general confession. First, one Caleb Patmore has never done his best work—but he will. Secondly, one Ernestine Christian has been a neurotic, selfish soul but she is going to reform.”
Caleb met her, to be sure. But before he spoke she knew some catastrophe had happened in his affairs. As he piloted her to her apartment, trying to ask interested questions, and saying that she looked fagged and he thanked heaven she was not going for public talks, Ernestine waited for him to speak of himself.
To her amazement, he would have left her at the doorway. But she took his arm, as Thurley might have done, in impulsive fashion and commanded him to come inside.
Rather unwillingly, he obeyed, telling about Thurley and her “rather far-fetched scheme,” and Polly’s success and her tour of the country with Bliss who must be “completely out of his element” boosting for this and that and actually prophesying a near and sudden peace. Had she seen much of Mark? How was Lissa getting on? And where was Collin,—no need for him to rush over to fight beside bricklayers!
“What has happened,” Ernestine asked. “You are trying to lie to me—by silence. Don’t—don’t youcare any more?” feeling a reluctance to speak of her own change of heart.
“Of course, but you can’t love a beggar,” he flung back roughly. “You don’t mean to say that when it’s too late you’ve come back prepared to marry a bankrupt—a failure,” his teeth gritted together.
“What are you babbling of? Please don’t be like a Henry James conversation, say it! I’ve learned to honor directness of speech and action.”
“I’ll oblige you and take my leave. The damned public is as fickle as a weather vane. They raved over my ‘Patriotic Burglar’—I made more off of it than any three of my other books. The public couldn’t get enough of it. And I went ahead, as I always do,” this with insolent assurance, “on my next best seller, ‘Military Molly’—no plot but a pretty girl, German spy and Yankee hero—it is enough for these days—there was to be a red, white and blue cover on it and Molly in her nursing costume. And the firm refused it! They dared to say the tide has turned against war fiction, people felt reality too keenly to want imaginary woes and victories pictured for them—they said that to me, Caleb Patmore,” he was unconscious of his absurdity, “when my books have made more money for them than any other author they have. They said it was thin and I had better take a long rest ... that an editor’s greatest need in the world was to discover whether or not an author was trying to kid himself and to disillusionize him as quickly and painlessly as possible—” he tried to laugh.
“That is not so bad,” Ernestine said quietly, “it had to come some time. Rest for a year and then see what your viewpoints are.”
“But I’m stony broke! I never dreamed I’d be turned down! They dared tell me the story had nothing tocommend it save questionable cleverness in nomenclature.... Why, I was hard to convince when they first wrote me; I had made some bad plays on the stock market—I counted on ‘Military Molly’ to pull me out of the hole and my next book, ‘The Battles of Billy Girl,’ to get me back to where I was a year ago. I guess there will never be any more of my books, unless some one stakes me to publish independently and every one shies when you hint of it ... would you, Ernestine?”
“Not if you were never to speak to me.”
He gave a half snarl, half exclamation. “You always wanted to see me a failure! Enjoy yourself,”—picking up his hat.
“Caleb, I came back because I was not needed over there. I came back to be a real woman—and my first job is to make you a real man. I shall marry you, almost before I unpack my trunks, and proceed to show you that the really great things in life are never written out; that your firm have had the courage, no matter what their motive, to show you the truth, and your wife is going to see that you follow it!”
As he stared at her, half enraged and half delighted, he realized that here spoke a new and rejuvenated woman and artist combined. The clever, sallow face was blushing prettily and there was something softly beautiful in the dark eyes.
At that moment neither knew they were about to join Thurley’s angel-band and with the gray angels not to sing—but to do.
“Suppose I’m a permanent failure, grumbling and jealous of your success and bitter towards the world at large? You want to take such a risk? And it is a risk, laugh all you wish and shake your head, I’m terribly doneup, feel gone to bits, brain of an oyster and my nerves are shaky—”
“You remind me of nothing more terrible, Caleb, than the picture over which the world has often smiled: the tiny lad sitting on a doorstep and murmuring in hopes cruel relatives will overhear and be grief-stricken and remorseful, ‘I’m going into the garden to eat worms!’ And we all know, relatives included, what a stampede indoors there would be if some one called out, ‘But, oh, Jack, before you do, let’s go to the circus and have pink lemonade—’.”
Thurley, Polly and Bliss Hobart were taking a turn about the Fincherie gardens to discuss a multitude of detail, whether or not Caleb and Ernestine Patmore, gay deceivers to be married all in a moment and never let any one know, would visit the Fincherie as soon as Ernestine’s letter intimated. Why had Collin and Mark stopped writing? Didn’t the exhibition of doll houses for the coming Christmas market speak well for the work being done? And if Hobart had spoken in favor of the leather department, Polly championed the wireless school and the brass and copper hand industries. She had shown favoritism, as well, for she sang three songs for those boys and only two and a half for the others.
Thurley drew their attention to a newly finished sun dial. “You see,” she said, as they took chairs within a summer house, “it is getting used to one’s self that is the trick. We all have to do it in some way or other at some time. I dare say if one were born with four fingers and an extra one appeared without warning, it would be quite a task to know how to provide for the newcomer ... besides, they all feel it has been worth while,” she added, turning her eager, flushed face towards Bliss Hobart.
“Why hasn’t the town put up a statue of you?” asked Polly. “Do people salaam when they meet you?”
“Well, they don’t mind saying I belong to Birge’sCorners—reward sufficient.” Thurley stood up to wave a welcoming arm to a small person in flowered organdie and a huge shade hat, who was making her way across the lawn, squired by her todding son.
“I want you to meet Lorraine Birge,” she explained swiftly. “Lorraine is my right hand man—now.” She did not add what had happened—the awful, furious moment when Lorraine was summoned home from public speaking to witness the result of Herta’s carelessness regarding Boy—the fall from the window with the fractured arms as a result. It had banished the war-madness; the old, gentle Lorraine, with an added strength of purpose perhaps born of her tiny sojourn into the world, returned for all time. With Thurley as her “guardian angel,” she once more recreated her house as Dan had left it—and would expect it—nursing her child, shaking her head firmly when committees asked when she would join them once again!
Lorraine hesitated when she saw the strangers, but Boy ambled along to garrote Hobart’s watch chain and with his fingers clutch Polly’s red hat brim so there was no chance for further reserve and the quartette sat chatting of the Fincherie work, and of the future art colony soon to be in evidence until the chimes struck five and Lorraine bundled her son under her arm and made for her motor car.
“Isn’t she the wife of—of—” Polly asked curiously.
“Of Dan,” Thurley admitted. “She most surely is—and we are the best of friends. Not even Dan could come between us! We each made a mistake, and then unmade it, and that inspired us with mutual pity and admiration,—understand?”
“When are you going to sing next?” Bliss Hobart asked.
“When I have time! Don’t bother me about singing. I’m so busy and so happy that I haven’t time to plan.”
Ali Baba, important in a new uniform, came across the lawn to tell Thurley the New York train had brought her four guests.
“You’ll be real glad to see three of them, and real sorry to see the fourth,” he whispered patronizingly, “the fourth is that artist—he’s blind!”
Polly sprang to her feet. “I knew it—I knew it,” she said breathlessly.
It was quite true. The over brilliant, joyous eyes faced the darkness for all time. Mark Wirth had acted as his courier and as the trio came into the reception room, Ernestine and Caleb stood in the background and Collin tried to smile at them while Mark raised his hand to suppress their exclamations.
“We’ve come to belong to Ali Baba’s forty thieves,” said Ernestine, to break the silence. “We’re as tired and hungry as four people can be. Collin has splendid things to tell you, he is very shy about letting us know how wonderful he has been.” Her voice broke and she looked at Caleb to take up the burden.
But Caleb was staring at Collin, whose sensitive face quivered as a woman’s does before she cries. He made no response.
Hobart came and took his hand. “I’m mighty proud of you, old man; you get yourself rested up and forget the haughty beauties waiting to be painted in their best togs.... You’ll have to be a sculptor in spite of yourself.”
“The master said, ‘All an artist needs is to trust his eyes,’” Collin repeated.
“Ah, but his inner eyes—which never dim,” Thurleycorrected, coming over to kiss his cheek. “Here is Polly waiting to kiss you on both cheeks. Why, Collin, you’ve just come home twice as precious; that’s all, isn’t it?—just come home.”
Polly stood back, afraid that his hands would reach up to touch her cheeks and discover the tears.
“I want Polly,” Collin said suddenly. “Where is she?”
Hobart gave her an imperative nudge.
“We bother Polly from being her best,” he said softly. “Let’s clear.... Polly’s the only one to make Collin get used to himself.”
In the late evening, Thurley and Mark came back into the house, after Mark had “talked her head off” in the garden and as she said good night, she added,
“To think you’re going to do something that will make the worth-while world claim you!”
“If it’s really not too late to study law,” he lapsed back into uncertainty.
“I’ve come to believe that nothing worth while is ever too late, it may not be in just the way we had planned or preferred, but if the right effort is made, the result follows.... Mark, what wonderful things another person’s tragedy can inspire!”
“It has been Collin mostly—and Lissa’s awful selfishness! Besides, Ernestine is really human and Caleb follows her about like a lamb. She’ll have him writing something ripping if he’s not careful.”
Hobart was reading in the study and he came in to where they were and said that Thurley was too fagged to stay up another moment.
“Which means you want to talk to Mark and being a woman, I’m a hindrance,” she laughed, slipping away.
In her room, she found Polly a funny muddle of rose-colored negligee, handkerchiefs rolled into moist little balls, and curl papers, oddly enough! Ernestine was trying to argue with her, but Polly’s head was among the cushions of Thurley’s chaise longue and only smothered sobs escaped at intervals.
Ernestine gave a sigh of relief as Thurley entered. “Do make her behave! Polly dear, you must be brave, as you used to be about your own affairs. We all know how hard you care. We just want you to keep on caring, and it might have been worse. Why, Collin’s soul isn’t bruised; now Caleb’s was,” she added honestly.
“How did he ever marry you?” Polly managed to ask.
“I ordered it, as you must—mustn’t she, Thurley? It’s her duty.”
Thurley slipped down beside Polly. “A gray angel can ask a man to marry her as easily as she can knit him a sweater,” she whispered. “Collin needs you; he must use his talents wisely and only some one who really will belong to him can make him prove his worth.”
After Polly halfway promised that she would find the shortest, most forceful method of requesting marriage to a blind hero who could become a sublime poet in deathless stone and bronze, Ernestine departed to find Caleb in a changed, softened mood in which he admitted that when a chap witnessed such a tragedy—and such rose-colored clouds encircling it, who saw what Thurley had done, forgetting herself and her career, and the men at the Fincherie quietly getting used to themselves and ‘life as usual’ all about, it made him realize what a smashing story could be written about such real people. Caleb had awakened to his possibility of being a vigorous realist.
Thurley turned off the lights in her room and openedthe window to commune with the genial moon. She wondered if Bliss Hobart would ever be in dire need of gray angel courtship.... The memory of Miss Clergy’s message, “Tell Thurley to use her own judgment,” caused the color to flood her tired cheeks ... she almost hoped he would not—it would be so very splendid to have Bliss Hobart plead his own cause ... she was only a small part gray angel, she admitted, she was mostly—just Thurley!
Thurley returned to New York in October to sing some engagements. The public clamored for her until one engagement seemed naturally to lead to another and after the signing of the armistice, Thanksgiving Day confronted her, recalling her to the Fincherie to help the celebration to be as perfect as possible. Besides, Lorraine had written that Dan was home, a slight heart trouble as the reason, but otherwise the same splendid Dan, and Lorraine was waiting to confide in Thurley all that had happened.
“So you cannot be induced to stay any longer?” Bliss asked, as she came into his studio to say good-by.
“I’m not as needed here as at the Fincherie—and then, Dan Birge is home and I want to see him,” she admitted honestly. “So don’t dare dig up another date for me until after the New Year. I must stay at home that long for I’m to be Mrs. Santa Claus, you see; even he has been ousted by the new women!”
“I won’t see you for a long time,” he objected drolly. “And you look to-day like the little girl of six years ago when you explained how you wintered with the circus and then sang hymns until I thought I had discovered the Yogi trick of having one’s soul slip out of the body and wander at will—that I was listening at Saint Peter’s keyhole—”
“So I please you,” she answered seriously.
“Of course. I knew you would,” his hand touched the little idol which had always remained on his desk.“It was just that I dreaded the inevitable transition period; so many women never rise above it to find the gray angel part of themselves—”
“Ernestine did,” Thurley murmured.
“Ah, she is a gray angel of gray angels! Fancy her making Caleb stop his fulsome tales and write real things!”
“But she hasn’t played a concert! Must she sacrifice her talent, too?”
“No, it is like anything worth while. It takes much personal endeavor to get it started. When Caleb has begun to wear alpaca house-coats and put bird-houses in all his trees and talk of the uplift and vegetable diets, Ernestine can safely scamper back to her piano and play as she never has before.... They, too, are proving my vision,” he added.
“So is Collin with his wife Polly, and Mark, so would Sam Sparling had he been able to stay among us. It is a simple thing to prove when you really understand the compensations.”
“And Mark has proved the falseness of Lissa’s love and—”
“You are talking like an old-fashioned valentine. Dear, dear, this will never do.” She fastened her dull red cape with its banding of fur.
“Don’t go, I’ve so many things to tell you. I used to be afraid to whisper my ideas to any one; therefore, they were useless. And now, I simply won’t allow myself to keep an idea over night. I must tell it to you—and have you prove it out.... Thurley, do you remember the day at Blessed Memory when we walked to the sea and—”
She looked at her watch. “I must go, Bliss, I’ve promised to say good-by to Caleb and Ernestine and tosee how much Collin has done on his statue—Polly says it is wonderful.”
He escorted her to the door, but before he opened it he said in serious tone, “Are you going to flirt with Dan again?”
“Always! I adore him as I adore no one else! He is an inspiration and a Punch and Judy show all in one,” adding as she slipped away, “Perhaps we were talking at cross purposes. I mean Dan junior!”
The night she returned to the Fincherie she gave a concert for Ali Baba and his Forty Thieves in the newly added community room, some of the village hearing of the event and straying in to listen.
Not until the end of the programme did she see Dan Birge and Lorraine. Impulsively, Thurley sang, “Coming Through the Rye,” looking at them in whole-souled friendship.
As the hall was clearing, Thurley flew down to find them.
“Oh, Dan,” she held on to his hands, “it is yourself for certain, I’m so terribly glad!” She read in his dark eyes the shadow which will rest on most of those who have fought and returned, a dangerous expression liable to turn into haunted, ugly memories, desperate longings and unwise impulses.
Lorraine wondered if Thurley read the same problem which she had discerned even while he was kissing her his welcome.
“It is mighty good to be back,” was all he said. “A man doesn’t know what he is going to miss until it is too late. But you’ve done a wonderful thing. Lorraine tells me it is to be permanent.” Yet the dangerous expression of his eyes seemed to ridicule his own praise.
“Don’t you think Lorraine looks well?” Thurley asked to cover the pause.
“Yes, Lorraine is always the same, thank fortune! The Boy is the only one who has changed.”
Lorraine flushed, thinking all in an instant of how dangerously near she had come to being forever changed, emancipated, as Hortense Quinby would have called it, leaving her fireside untended to pursue phantoms of restless imagination. She smiled in understanding at Thurley as Dan began to say what a splendid overseer Ali Baba made and how good it was to see the old town and surely if Miss Clergy could understand, she would be well pleased with Thurley’s disposal of her fortune. As he talked, he rested his weight first on one foot and then the other, his eyebrows twitching and his hands working together and when Thurley asked as to his own condition, he was brusque almost to rudeness in refusing to consider it of importance.
“If I had only got bumped good and proper,” he declared, “I wouldn’t mind, but I hate this sort of air cushion, cruel invaliding of a man.... Of course you can’t understand because you haven’t been into things. It’s the same as a race horse sold to a cabstand and made to trot slowly to the station with a burden of nervous spinsters!”
Thurley understood the meaning of his expression and the readjustment he must face. She mercifully let Dan go on his way, while Ali Baba swept down on her to report all that had and had not happened during her absence.
Dan and Lorraine walked home that mild November night, Lorraine clinging to his arm until he slouched his shoulder as if the attitude annoyed him.
“Does it make you tired?” she asked wistfully.
“No, it seems too damned civilized,” he flung back to her dismay.
“Why—Dan!”
He halted to light a cigar before he tried to explain, then walked with long strides and a slight scuffling of the feet. Lorraine had to half run in order to keep abreast.
“Dan, tell me, is there something you are keeping back? I’m brave, I’m really braver than you think, I can understand things, truly, I can, tell me—” She was trying not to cry.
“Nothing more than any man has to face when he’s been in the thick of things and returns to a two-by-four existence. Can you go into the store to listen to women haggle over prices and men fuss about neckties, when all of you tingles with what you’ve seen and helped to do? It is just that you’ve grown beyond your home town. Yet the heart-part of you wants to come back to it and stay loyal and content ... maybe that’s not clear—it’s such a queer thing. We beggars moon about homesickness and sit about campfires and almost crucify ourselves with longing to be home and our letters promise you it will be, ‘Home, Hoboken or hell’ by this time or that.... You’d think we’d rush home and remain one glad grin! But we don’t. Part of us does—the heart-part of us that demands admiring relatives—the very dearest wife and child in the world,” he reached out to touch her arm as he almost strode by her, “but there is another part of us—whether wounded or not, that part is there—the primitive part that has to be roused in order to go over the top,—it can’t demobilize by an officer’s command, it has to die down—slowly—just wear away, a fretting, gnawing longing to go shoot up the town, wallow in mud as you hike, hike, hike after some one—catchthe some one—maim him ... maybe kill him,” he was talking more to himself, “to have the boom-boom of guns waken you and put you to sleep, see slaughter about you and chaos and every universal law turned inside out and yourself in the center of it ... and that part will have to be conquered by every true soldier. And who is going to help him? He’ll love home folks the same and all the civilized comforts and fun-making—but sometimes that other part of him will battle against being chained back into silence. It’s the same as the call of the East or the mountaineer’s nostalgia when he has to live in flat country, a state of mind, Lorraine; don’t be frightened, I shouldn’t have bothered you with it—”
They had reached their gate and Dan flung it open with a clatter.
“Let’s sit out on the steps for awhile, will you?” he urged. “Four walls stifle me. If I was sure of my nerve, I’d run the car until morning through dark roads—fast as the wind—” He gave a jangling laugh as he settled himself on the steps.
“Poor Dan,” Lorraine sobbed, trying to gather all of him in her arms.
“Poor little Lorraine, you can’t understand. A fine mess I’ve been for you anyhow, first trying not to love you, not understanding nor appreciating you; then when Boy came and I knew your worth and my love for you and what a splendid pal Thurley was, but just a pal, and then the war, and now—”
“But I do understand,” she told him swiftly, “I do, indeed.... Dan, you don’t know all that has happened—about me. They’ll tell you fast enough, so let me prepare you. When you were gone, instead of grieving and waiting, I, too, found a primitive part of me ... it was the women all about me that roused it, the womengoing overseas, making speeches, parading in uniforms—and I deliberately neglected our boy! Yes, I did! Ask father, for he disapproved but I would not listen. It was all something I don’t quite understand now, but a mighty powerful something while it lasted, and it was Thurley who taught me the lesson,” Lorraine continued in her sweet, even voice, neither sparing herself nor softening the details. Finally, she ended,
“Even now, loving you a thousand times harder and adoring Boy, content always to be the homemaker, happy in it, there is, sometimes, a faint longing to go forth and do, what shall I name it? And so, I do understand your primitive part, Dan, and I shall be patient with it.... Perhaps it was worth the making the mistake to be able to understand you.”
He gathered her in his arms. “Lorraine,” he whispered, “we both understand—”
So they sat like two jolly, sentimental ghosts, until dawn filtered through dark clouds, talking as they had never talked before, of intangible, personal doubts and resolves, of many happy things to come and of the mistakes which lay behind.
“You know the feeling, Dan! You have been big and keen enough to analyze it,” Lorraine summarized. “Now help other men to become used to ‘life as usual.’ Thurley calls stay-at-homes and quiet workers ‘gray angels’ because we are considered ineffectual, simply keeping things going. You can be a gray angel, Dan. It’s the most peaceful feeling in the world! Help the boys at Thurley’s Fincherie to be average men, neither heroes nor martyrs, talk to them as only a man who is one of them can talk,—there lies your duty and your salvation.”
“I will,” Dan promised, “if you will talk tome!”
The Fincherie Christmas tree had been a great success with a Mrs. Santa Claus in a foam of tulle and lace instead of an apple-dumpling gentleman in a red jerkin and leather boots.
Every one had everything, so the rumor went, and Thurley sang carols until she repeated “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” for the third time and fled in self-defence.
Bliss Hobart had come into the Corners unexpectedly that morning and, after Thurley’s exit, he stood up to suggest three cheers for the Fincherie gray angel, which were given by a happy, well fed community who began to think about the joys of sleep.
Ali Baba, who had always placed Hobart high in personal esteem, tramped over to inform him that Thurley was in the little breakfast room of the original Fincherie.
Hobart moved in that direction with alacrity. He found Thurley sorting over a bundle of letters.
“If you hadn’t come to the Fincherie,” she began, “I should have come to New York to ask you what to do with these people?” She held out some of the letters.
He glanced at them. “Oh, managers will badger any one who has been a gold mine—that’s to be expected. I, myself, was to make a faint protest about too much retirement, but when Mrs. Santa Claus has been a real joy spreader, it isn’t fair to harass her, is it?”
“None of you can bother me overly much. I’m resolvedto sing just enough to make people always want me, andliveenough to be able to sing my best. There!”
“May you follow that advice! But let’s talk about sentimental things. I always find myself slipping this time of the year.” He sat beside her.
“Stoical dreamer! I’m just beginning to understand you.”
“You didn’t give me a Christmas present.”
“You didn’t give me one,” she began.
But he drew a small box from his pocket and presented it.
“Why, Bliss!” She was too pleased to conceal her delight. She opened it to find a locket of palest gold with a fine, shining chain. The locket yielded to the pressure of her thumb and within was space for some loved one’s face, while on the other side was made in bas relief an enamelled violet crown.
“You think I—really—have—” she began.
“I do, and I think I really want you to marry me,” he said very positively. “I don’t want you to answer by quoting a half mad woman’s request made to an untutored girl. Will you marry me, Thurley, battered old dreamer of nearly forty who hadn’t the courage to put into execution what he thought, who had to tell it to a gray angel who went and did? Will you?”
“Let’s talk about Ernestine and Caleb’s new book; or Collin’s statue of Polly that is so marvellous, or Mark,—did you know he really is on the road to right? Let me tell about Dan, how invaluable he has become to every one in the town, saying just the right, ‘Steady, mates,’ to the boys up here, going on in his business, loving Lorraine a trifle harder than ever and keeping a weather eye out for town improvements. And did you hear about Hortense Quinby? She has killed herself—”
“I can wait an additional ten minutes,” he conceded; “what about Hortense?”
“The boy she fancied was in love with her married his own sweetheart without delay and Hortense ended it in a foolish, mad fashion! You know how she was—how such women are—”
“Better out of the game,” Hobart commented grimly.
“It touches me, not the tragedy itself, but the wasted life.... Bliss, do you know that nearly anything under the sun can be readjusted satisfactorily if people will only be honest regarding the facts concerning it? You call fame the violet crown and I call the stay-at-homes the gray angels; you say true artists are a vanguard—fine sounding names! But there is nothing new about it, is there? The idea of substituting one idea, theory or name for another to act as a rejuvenation of the brain and keep inspiration of the heart aglow began before the days of the pyramids! It is necessary to keep interest top hole and while the basis of it is almost hallucination and it may tend towards madness, the advantages do outweigh the tendencies. The name—the violet crown,” she caressed the locket with her hands, “spurs me on to be a gray angel and that name has comforted Polly, Lorraine, Ernestine—and will many others. To belong to the vanguard of civilization—what strange intoxication is there in the title!—to battle with art-intrigues,—romantic phrase! I could never be without it. Bliss, what oddities human beings are—”
“And now, will you marry me?” he asked meekly.
“Lissa has failed to find a duke and the Hotel Particular is for sale; she staked everything on winning a title or a patroness. What will become of her?”
“Unfortunately life travels so much more swiftly than justice, I am afraid she may find another loophole ofescape ... such people often do.... But will you marry me?”
“And I find myself growing as particular as Dorothy, wife of Sir Thomas Brown, who wished her ‘shewes to be eythar pinke or blewe,’” she continued, “for I cannot—”
“I will not be cheated of another moment—answer me.”
“You love me, that way?” she asked gravely.
“All ways. Surely, Miss Clergy’s promise—”
“It is not that,” she admitted, “for when she died she left me the message, ‘Tell Thurley to use her own judgment.’ It is not that.”
“Then what—unless you don’t love me?”
“A great disillusionment waits for you,” she said honestly. “I am only a womanly hypocrite. I am not worthy of the violet crown nor the vanguard. I’m as simple hearted as Lorraine and far more stupid when you come to know the real me.... I have always loved you. I flirted only to see if it would not rouse the man of you to protest. I let Lissa influence me, harm my voice, color my notions, to see if you would not speak out as ‘my man,’ not my singing teacher, my master critic.... I tried in every avenue I could, Bliss, to make you care. Finally, you told me your vision and the greatest joy of it was not the vision but the thought you were sharing it with me. I told myself, ‘at last I have something to work for, something with which I can tempt his interest—bait for his affection’—you see? So I set to work to live according to your ideals, not that I did not believe it, but because you, your own self, had told me of it and it was your fondest wish to see it realized.... Miss Clergy’s death brought me the fortune ... theglorious ending of the war my opportunity ... and so on. Now you say you love me. And I love you. But I warn you that all your visions and ideals mattered not so much as the fact of your sharing them with me, the nearest I had ever come to being essential to some one, belonging to some one—as I fancied in the old circus days when I played the bearded lady was my mother and the animals my brothers and sisters. F-funny, isn’t it? Well, am I altogether too disappointing—clay toes will peep out but it is better you should see them now—not later.” She waited his verdict, her head tilted defiantly and the glorious, blue eyes smiling bravely.
He did not hesitate. “Do you know a man’s greatest joy is to discover the one he loves best of every one is not all gray angel, that he will not have to exist on the heights, even though he is prepared to break masculine precedent and do so, but a real woman with adorable weaknesses and amusing faults, spasms of ‘intuition’ and bothers about becoming hats and concern as to the said man’s habit of not wearing overshoes—that she will not scorn a broad shoulder to weep on if the cook leaves unceremoniously, nor a bit of domination when it comes to selecting the right school for the boy or the number of frocks for the girl’s coming out? Now, I’ve matched clay toes with you, most delightful lover’s game in the world.... Let me whisper something else, Thurley; I was growing afraid of you. I thought I had better capture you while you were content to be merely a gray angel lest you become the shining, white spirit of the vanguard and such a happening be made impossible.”
Without waiting for her approval, he took her in his arms.
Making the nightly rounds to see if the windows wereproperly fastened, Ali Baba paused in the offing. He glanced up at the mistletoe under which he had happened to halt and smiled with sentimental satisfaction.
“Land sakes and Mrs. Davis,” he chuckled, “I guess Miss Abby was dead to rights when she left it to Thurley’s judgment!”