For Thurley had been admitted and had rushed up the winding stairs like the “younger generation who come knocking at the door.” She had entered the mysterious front room and remained there, while Hopeful and Ali Baba remained below in a state of fearful curiosity.
Whatever the conversation was it was of interest to Miss Clergy. An hour later Miss Clergy saw her guest to the door and then called Hopeful and said that she was taking Thurley Precore to New York by the morning train. She wished to have a trunk—this with a slight quaver in her voice—packed with the best of what she had; she would buy a new wardrobe as soon as she reached the city. She wished no questions asked nor did she wish Hopeful to answer any questions until they had boarded the train. Hopeful was to have her cousin Betsey Pilrig come to live at the Fincherie, because Thurley Precore wished to have her provided for—her[88] voice softened at Thurley’s name—and they were liable to be away for a long time.
Gasping, twisting her apron, dizzy with trying to comprehend new order of things, Hopeful had insisted, “But what am I to say after—after you have boarded the train?”
“Say Miss Clergy has taken Thurley Precore to New York to have her study for grand opera,” Miss Clergy said, after a moment’s deliberation. “And the engagement with Dan Birge is broken for all time.”
Meanwhile, at Betsey Pilrig’s house, Thurley was kneeling before the gentle old lady and telling in her rapt, dramatic fashion,
“I’m going, Granny. I found out all in a moment that I didn’t love Dan as I should. Of course it hurts a little, but they say it is good to have a love affair terminating badly, if you’re to sing in opera. Anyway, I’m going. You are to stay at the Fincherie and be taken care of forever and ever, and, as soon as I’m famous, I’ll pay Miss Clergy back for all her kindness and we’ll have a lovely, white house, you and I, where I’ll come for vacations. It’s so different from singing in church, isn’t it?” She laughed the innocent laugh of pure joy. “Oh, I’m not afraid I’ll not make good. Something tells me I shall—the same as the day I told Philena that cripples could be conquerors—remember? And, Granny, it is really better for Dan, and, if he comes here to-night to see me, say I’ve gone to bed and I’m too tired to be called ... no, no, I’m sure of myself! Granny dear, don’t let the old box-car fall to pieces, I want it as a souvenir. When I build my beautiful house, it shall stay close beside it. It was my home, you know!” The scarlet lips quivered for an instant.
“But are you happy, Thurley, giving up a good man’s[89] love, going with that woman to New York?” The gentle, narrow mind could not comprehend this whirlwind of events, strange and astonishing.
“I’m happier than I’ve been in years! There must be gypsy in me. I’m happy at the thought of travelling again! The old days, even the hungry, cold ones in the box-car wagon, were happier than the days of being fed and warmed but made to sit in school and sew my stint afternoons. Don’t you see, Granny dear, I’m different; and when a person finds that out for sure and some wonderful thing happens to them like Miss Clergy’s hearing me sing that it’s the right thing to go on and follow the trail? Tell Dan—no, I’ll write him, bless his old heart, he didn’t know I halfway wanted to refuse to marry him,” Thurley sobered as if momentarily contrite.
Betsey Pilrig looked at her with lack of comprehension. “Maybe you’re right—maybe you’re wrong. I’ve no power to keep you. What did she say when she offered to take you away?”
“So many things! I could travel abroad, and, if I worked very hard and the right person trained me, she thought I would be famous and she is to be my godmother as it were. The only condition was not to marry for twenty years—that was easy to promise. For I’ll never love any one but Dan, and all of me didn’t love him. So I gave my pledge. She would not have taken me unless I did. She’s bitter, Granny, because of her own affair. She likes to think of cheating a man of me—poor dear! Why, I didn’t mind the promising.”
“I don’t like the condition,” Betsey said, gravely. “You’re young and you don’t know all that is in your heart any more than the world knows of your voice. That wasn’t fair of her!”
But Thurley in a state of ecstasy refused to listen. She fell to packing, and, when Dan came an hour later, Betsey was forced to send him away with the unsatisfactory message that Thurley was busy—she would see him later.
After which Betsey Pilrig watched the light of his roadster twinkle into nothingness. Moonlight called her attention to the box-car wagon. She visualized the long-legged, ragged child Thurley who had sung for her supper—and got it—at the Hotel Button, and the worthless parents. Then she saw Philena limping eagerly about in Thurley’s train as they played missionaries; she saw Thurley in her white dress on Children’s Day when she was made to speak the part of Saturday and declared joyously that she did not care, she really wanted to work for her living. She saw a taller, lovelier Thurley singing at Philena’s funeral. Then she saw Dan and Thurley in the first flush of courtship, with Thurley all blushes and happy songs and four or five engagements a day, while Dan’s business ran itself ... well, that was at an end. In her simple fashion Betsey realized the girl Thurley would never return nor would Dan Birge remain a light-hearted, whistling boy. As for Abby Clergy, some folks might call it generous on her part to take Thurley to the city, but Betsey called it using youth as a crutch and a revenge and she wondered what Miss Abby’s parents would have said if they had known.
“It’s late, Granny love! Tell me—did he mind?” Turning, she found Thurley waiting to say good night to her.
She came and peeked over Betsey’s shoulder at the old wagon. “Good-by, funny home,” she kissed her finger tips to it. “I sha’n’t forget you—not even if[91] I drive into the Corners the next time in a limousine with a footman.”
After Miss Clergy and Thurley had left the Corners, Hopeful and Ali Baba took the day off to get out an extra of their own as to what had happened.
“ ... dressed in a black silk forty-year old she was and a hat to match and all her rings on her fingers and the same hobnail boots,” Ali Baba informed Corners loungers, “but as chirp as if she’d never gone to ruin for over thirty years about an Eyetalian barber—poor Miss Abby! And I bet my hat, she’ll have new clothes and be as up to snuff as they make ’em when she gets to New York.... Thurley? Oh, her own self with a pink dress and a white shade hat and Miss Abby sayin’ to her, ‘We’ll only be shabby a little while longer. It isn’t goin’ to take us long to learn new ways.’ Thurley’s eyes was as blue as the sea and she kept starin’ out beyond everybody and goodness only knows what she was thinkin’ ... anyhow, they’re gone! We’ve orders to close the house and blest if she didn’t have our cousin Betsey Pilrig come to live with us—as good a thing as Miss Abby has done in over thirty years—for it will take the heart from Betsey to lose Thurley, too! When Dan Birge knows that Abby Clergy has stole his girl and she isn’t goin’ to marry him no more’n a terrier’ll leave a badger hole, I guess for the first time in history a Birge will be so sore he’ll have to ride in a rubber-tired cab!” Conscious of being the courier of a thrilling event, Ali Baba nonchalantly borrowed tobacco and strolled on to spread the glad tidings.
Even a mystery or a haunted lady becomes a bore after a certain time. It is like a jolly week-end guest who, without invitation, spends the entire season in one’s[92] only and best pink room. So had Miss Clergy become a nonentity to the town—“a pity,” the older people said, “a pill” retorted the younger.
Which explained somewhat the shock it gave the town when news of her flight to New York with Thurley was announced. “How could that poor soul ever get up and get?” the town asked itself. The truth of the rapidity was that because she had been dormant for so many years—and had endless money—any activity would either be of microscopic importance or stupendous haste; there could be no middle, sane course of action. With Thurley Precore as the incentive, the former course was out of the question. It was like the sleeping princess upon rousing—she lost no time in finding out the state of mind towards him who kissed and wakened her. So Miss Clergy could not leave town fast enough to please herself. She trembled lest Dan Birge, through customary masculine knavery, trick Thurley into marriage and cheat her newly-throbbing heart of its long-awaited revenge.
Three weeks later, when the town was still agog, saying they guessed even “the crabs were laughing with their claws” at the thought of a Birge being handed the mitten, two pillars of the church vowed that Dan Birge had proposed to Lorraine McDowell and been accepted; that he had spoken to her father about the wedding. So he could not have cared so much or else he was marrying Lorraine out of spite. Lorraine would be, at any event, mistress of the twenty-thousand-dollar house and would wear both the solitaire and the wedding band Dan had planned to give Thurley Precore.
The news rivalled the amazement over Miss Clergy’s recovery. The town began to “lot” on whether or not Thurley, with all her notions of being a fine singer, would not be sorry some day.
“He should have married Thurley to meet his equal,” Ali Baba declared. “’Raine has as much chance with him as a paper-shell almond against a hickory nut! Yes, we got a letter from Thurley—she said they was well—that was about all!”
But the town never knew quite all about Dan’s sudden engagement to Lorraine nor Lorraine’s acceptance of Thurley’s suitor. They never knew that Dan, white-faced and with a strange, red light in his eyes, had come to Lorraine to plead with her that she marry him.
To Dan’s despairing anger of youth, Lorraine yielded because of her own despairing love. “I know you love Thurley,” she said, when he scarcely embraced her. “You want to show her some one loves you enough to marry you ... and you knew I always cared. Dan, will you learn to care afterwards? I’ll be the best wife I can! I’ll do everything you want me to do!” She wondered why he winced at the words.
He was thinking of Thurley’s wild rose, defiant, adorable self. It had all happened so quickly that he wondered if it were not some hideous, unfair nightmare from which he would soon waken—and meet Thurley!
But as he looked at her gentle face he knew it was reality; that for over three weeks Thurley had been away from the Corners, Abigail Clergy’s fortune at her disposal to prove that she could sing and the whole world would listen.
Only that hastily scribbled note was left him—he wondered some days when he was trying to attend to business and not act conscious of the glances of his clerks and customers, whether he might not burst out saying the words,
Dan—
Miss Clergy has promised to take me to New York and let me study. I was telling you the truth about it. I know it is for the best, we could never make each other happy—forgive and forget,
Thurley.
“Well—I always liked you, ’Raine,” he forced himself into saying. “And it’s mighty sensible—I guess your father will say yes.”
“He may think a marriage for—spite,” she added half inaudibly, “isn’t right, but I’ll marry you anyway, Dan,” this to his surprise.
“It hurts to love so hard, doesn’t it?” he asked impersonally. “I thought she was only joking about the fair—but I guess if she knows her own mind, I can know mine!” Determination to turn the tables on Thurley and the town surged to the front. “It’s nobody’s business whether I marry you to-morrow—I’m going right on with the plans for the house and the ring—and all of it! I guess we can learn to be happy in our own way,” he touched her hair gently. “You’re an awful good little girl to care enough not to be jealous of Thurley. I don’t think you’ll ever be sorry we married ... sometimes it takes a funny sort of thing—like my being engaged to Thurley, you know,” he stumbled over the situation in poorly chosen words, “and her wanting a career and leaving me, to make other people happy!” He tried to laugh, lovable, broken-hearted boy, and Lorraine tried to laugh, too, lovable girl whose broken heart was beginning to mend. “And here I am marrying the same little girl I played with—so here’s our pledge to be happy—no matter what.”
To Lorraine’s father, who questioned the sudden[95] courtship, he said with Birge aggression, “Lorraine loves me and she’ll never marry any other fellow. I guess you know all there is to my being engaged to Thurley, sir. I’m sorry it ever got into the paper, but that’s done and there is no taking it back. I loved Thurley, but I’d be a fool to mope my life away like Miss Clergy did because a girl wanted to sing instead of be my wife. After all, it’s not a matter of life and death.” He wondered if the Reverend McDowell knew how loud his heart was thumping, great irregular thumps, each one trying to say in its dumb fashion, “Oh, Thurley-dear!” But he finished bravely, “I’m making plans to build and I guess you know I’ll take good care of ’Raine. If you’ve any other objection to me, I’d like to hear it.”
“Nothing but the haste, my lad,” the older man said slowly. “My child would never marry another man—but yourself—this ‘heart on the rebound’—”
“I want ’Raine!” Dan cried, striking the chair arm with the flat of his palm. “And I’m going to marry her. I’ll wait until the house is built, if you think it best, but she’s promised to marry me and she won’t change.”
“Then why bother me at all?” Lorraine’s father could not refrain from saying. “It was never a Birge habit, as I recall it.”
After Dan left the parsonage study to tell Lorraine her father approved, but they would wait until Fairview was ready for occupancy, and diligently measured her ring finger, finding it two sizes smaller than Thurley’s, he left her, dazed with joy yet trying to still the something which whispered,
“He loves Thurley; you must always be content with crumbs.”
Lorraine began counting over the things in the long-closed[96] hope chest and planning to crowd it to overflowing. What mattered it, if they were not married for a year or two? Was she not “bespoken” to Dan Birge? And Lorraine was quite positive she would not change her mind.
Upon leaving Lorraine that day, Dan went to the box-car wagon to sit for a long time on its steps, thinking the bitter, rebellious things of youth, that dangerous noon-time, trying to forget the glorious moment when he had measured Thurley’s ring finger with a blade of grass she had plucked near Philena’s grave, how every bit of him thrilled with a new, savage joy and new, savage longings ... well, it was to be Lorraine! He flipped the bit of ribbon she had used as a ring guide on the end of his thumb in disdain. After all, it must hurt Thurley a very little when she should hear the news, and, like most of the world, when they cannot have their way unhampered, to hurt the object of past adoration is quite the natural procedure!
When Birge’s Corners exhibited customary signs of fall, with winter clothes hung out to be beaten, smells of catsup and corn relish, the broken panes in the opera house windows repaired and the poster of a gaudy burlesque queen pasted on the billboard, a full line of mufflers and overcoats crowding the emporium show cases, bonfires of leaves and misty haze veiling the early mornings, Thurley Precore and Abby Clergy, two islands of old-fashionedness, entirely surrounded by seas of new fashion, safely ensconced in a comfortable hotel suite, were chatting like schoolgirls over the momentous event of the morrow.
For Thurley was to meet the Napoleon of grand opera, the master critic and coach, who could make or mar the most talented person in creation—Bliss Hobart, a[97] mysterious, powerful, never-erring judge of one’s abilities, both latent and developed.
Miss Clergy’s solicitors and Miss Clergy’s checkbook skilfully deciphered false lures of singing teachers and alleged powerful agents, and had, at the same time, discovered the nucleus of the New York art world. So Thurley was to make her bow, as it were, to the very public itself at noon to-morrow.