It was not until Thurley allied herself with the gang at Wood’s Hollow
that she came into possession of the Corners’ great mystery—Abigail
Clergy who lived in solitary grandeur in the red brick mansion
overlooking the lake.
After Thurley had proved herself as great a success as a good fellow
to the gang as she had at convincing Philena of her possibilities as
a missionary, and had played hi-spy half the afternoon, she wandered
by chance towards the first of the deserted summer houses in lieu of
a new hiding place and became fascinated by these silent buildings.
She began exploring one after the other, forgetful of the faint
“Hul-l-o-o—Thur-lee” which the gang sent in her direction.
Boarded-up windows did not yield to her strong fingers nor tottering
verandas offer a cordial invitation to rest. There was a chill in the
October air, and Thurley gladly scampered up and down one pair of steps
after another, peering into one dark room and then another, wandering
through weed-choked gardens and pausing under apple trees to make up
stories to suit each house. In her imaginative way she peopled the places
with golden-haired ladies and blue-eyed babies, handsome gentlemen
driving smart horses, and then every one sitting down to eat tons of
good things served by colored waiters. In her motley travels through the
country Thurley had obtained glimpses of such elegance, if not actually
experiencing it.
The gang was forgotten, so was Philena, and the fact that she had
promised to play missionary at five o’clock. She forgot, as well, that
her father was out of “comfort,” and would complain all night unless he
was supplied, and that she had been worrying all morning as to what they
should do when snow carpeted the meadow and the box-car wagon proved
inefficient against wind and frost!
Thurley was living in an enchanted land all her own—these houses were
hers! One by one she made the imaginary tenants leave and go elsewhere,
while she became an imprisoned princess doomed to spend a year in each
house before she could be free of the ten-headed dragon! She ran along
the shore in delight as she contemplated her prisons. Each day she would
come and camp on the outside of the house in which she was imprisoned,
playing princess in spangled crimson and lace and pretending the
ten-headed dragon lived in a cave in the bottom of the lake and could
poke one of his heads up at unexpected moments to see if his prisoner was
behaving as he desired!
Then she spied a light burning in the last of the houses. She wondered if
she had imagined “until it was better than real,” a favorite experience.
But as she came closer, she saw several lights and unmistakable signs of
long-accustomed habitation.
“This was the loveliest house of all,” she thought mournfully, “and it
had to be lived in!”
Yet this house betrayed signs of decay; the shutters on one side were
fastened tightly and bricks dislodged from an unused chimney. Thurley
could not refrain from taking an extra peek. She made her way to the side
and crept up the steps gently to push at the carved old door with its
tarnished knocker.
It opened! Taut with excitement and fearless, Thurley felt that she
ought to repeat a charm to save herself from being changed into a mouse
or a rubber plant or some such helpless creation.
Inside the house burned a jewelled lamp; bulky objects were shrouded with
covers. The boards creaked under her sturdy feet as she tiptoed about.
A musty smell pervaded everything, and there were several doors, one of
which she was about to open when a voice from the stairway made her halt.
“Ali Baba, it isn’t four o’clock. How dare you come inside?” said the
voice. Looking up, Thurley saw a bent-over lady in an old black dress,
her yellowed fingers shining with rings as they clutched the banister.
Her thin, pointed face with its restless eyes was looking over towards
the opened door; she had not spied Thurley.
“Close that door, you stupid Ali Baba; never dare to come here
again—where are you? Why”—this with a hysterical scream—“it’s a child—a
_child_—” and the little old lady began running down the stairs, beating
her hands in the air, as if trying to strike at Thurley.
Thurley turned, throwing back her head in defiance and calling out, “Lock
your doors, if you don’t want company,” making a hasty retreat at the
same time.
Racing down the path, Thurley came into collision with Ali Baba, who was
on his way to hitch Melba to the coupé.
“For cat’s sake, where do you come from?” he demanded, holding Thurley by
her arm.
Thurley, making sure the door of the house had closed and the little old
lady vanished, whispered, “I thought I’d have a look, so I went inside
and some one came down the stairs and said, ‘Ali Baba, it isn’t four
o’clock!’—and when she saw me, she was cross.”
Ali Baba dropped her arm. “Have you been _inside_ that house?”
Thurley nodded. “Just in the hallway—she found me there.”
“Land sakes and Mrs. Davis,” Ali Baba said, smiling in spite of himself.
“I guess you’ve done what no other kid in the Corners has ever dared
to try. But don’t do it again—children should not be seen nor heard,
according to Miss Abby,” and he brushed by her on his way to the barn.
Thurley was not satisfied with this answer. She went back to the Corners
to find Philena’s pale face pressed against the window glass watching for
her missionary partner’s tardy appearance.
“Philena, I have been in a funny brick house at the lake,” Thurley said,
“and I want your granny to tell me why it is so queer—and who that old
woman is, and who is Ali Baba and why can’t any one ever go there?”
Betsey Pilrig, who was passing through the room, stopped in amazement.
“Have you been inside the Clergy house?” she demanded.
Thurley told her experience.
Betsey sought refuge in the nearest rocking-chair. “Then, listen,
Thurley, for as long as you’ve come to stay a spell, you ought to
know—and I guess I can tell you as well as Hopeful Whittier or Ali Baba.
A long time ago, most thirty-five years, that house was lived in by
Mr. and Mrs. Lemuel Clergy, of New York City, and they were worth more
money than they could count, but all they cared for was Abigail, their
daughter, and they were going to leave her everything they owned just
because they loved her so much. But they always planned she would marry
some one and be as happy as a queen.”
Betsey paused for a properly doleful sigh. “As I was sayin’, my cousin,
Hopeful Whittier, had married, and her husband, Jim Whittier, was drowned
on the Great Lakes three months after their weddin’ day. Hopeful came
back to Birge’s Corners, just like to die of grief. Mrs. Clergy heard
of it and came to see her, and she says, ‘My dear, come and live with
us—Abby needs a maid of her own these days, and I think she’d like
you.’ Of course poor Hopeful didn’t know about bein’ a lady’s maid and
fixin’ hair and lace and all that Miss Abby wanted done. But she was so
heartbroken for Jim—they never found his body—that she was glad to go,
and the Clergys were so good to her and Miss Abby so kind and willin’ to
show her how she wanted everything fixed that Hopeful was as happy as she
could be—without forgettin’ Jim.
“In them days the Clergy house—The Fincherie is its name—was never
without guests. My stars, I’ve known as many as thirty extra people
packed in there for a week at a time, and every other house on the shore
the same with balls and basket picnics, charades and corn bakes and
sailin’ trips every minute in the day! But out of every one there—and
there was the grandest and the finest in the land—there was no one half
so beautiful nor gay nor kindhearted as Abby Clergy—no one could deny but
what it was so. Her father’s money and her fine clothes and jewels and
her beauty didn’t turn her head a mite.
“Let me see—I guess she was around seventeen when Hopeful first went
there—girls was more advanced at seventeen than they are now. That fall,
when it came time to close the house and go to New York, Abby Clergy
tells Hopeful she wants her to come and live in their New York house the
same as if she was one of these high-flyer maids they bring from Paris.
Of course Hopeful was mighty glad, for she had come to love Miss Abby
and she knew Jim would have told her to go, if he could have done it. But
before they closed the house, they give a harvest dance, so they called
it—late in September it was—and I never did see such a time. The stables
were packed with teams, and the steam cars ran a special train to South
Wales for some of the people, and a fellow in New York sent the food,
and champagne just flowed like the lake water. They had fiddlers from
New York, and a florist with a load of flowers to fix up every room, and
nobody else on the lake shore thought of going home until the Clergys’
harvest dance was over.
“Hopeful used to tell me everything that was goin’ on and she often
says, ‘Betsey, that girl is too beautiful and good to live—I’m afraid
she is goin’ to be taken.’ I laffed at her and said she’d marry a fine
gentleman, and Hopeful would watch their children playin’ on the beach,
but Hopeful always said no, she had a feeling things wouldn’t be right.
Now Abby Clergy was beautiful—just five feet tall, she was, and slight as
a reed. She had big, black, satiny eyes and an ivory skin. It was natural
for her never to have color and her hair was blue black, combed up high
and fastened with a carved comb, and, when she laffed, Ali Baba said
her teeth was prettier than her strings of pearls—real pearls they was,
too—but I must tell you something about Ali Baba.
“Nobody never thought of calling Joshua Maples anything but Josh, until
Miss Abby named him Ali Baba after he started bein’ her father’s summer
coachman and winter caretaker. One day he says to her, ‘Miss Abby, don’t
you ever worry about anybody’s stealin’ this house. Just dismiss it from
your mind the minute you leave here in the fall—and I ain’t goin’ to let
any one steal you, neither.’ And she laffs and says, ‘Why, who wants to
steal me?’ And that was a joke, because Abby Clergy had more beaux than
she could remember their names, but she just smiled at them all and never
cared any more for any particular one than she did for any particular
rose that was bloomin’ outside her window. ‘A lot of thieves,’ says
Josh—he was pretty smart in talking—‘and I guess you’ll have to ask me as
well as your Pa before I give my consent.’ That sort of tickled her and
she jumped up and down and says, ‘You be Ali Baba, and I’ll let you watch
over the forty thieves,’ and from then on he was Ali Baba to her, and
nobody else ever called him any other name.
“So the harvest party was a grand success. But there come down from New
York a stranger, Count Sebastian Gomez, who was introduced to Mr. and
Mrs. Clergy as an Eyetalian nobleman with a lot of castles and such truck
over in Europe and more money than he wanted. He was a fine-lookin’
fellow, tall and straight as an arrow, and he had a curled-up mustache
and big, bold eyes that looked you clean through. He was dressed way up
in G, and could talk a lot of these here foreign languages, and he wanted
to kiss all the ladies’ hands and everybody thought he was the finest
sort of fellow they could ever wish to see....
“But Hopeful Whittier didn’t like him, and she says, when she saw how
he was makin’ up to Miss Abby, flatterin’ her and kissin’ her hand and
writin’ his name down for all the dances and starin’ angry-like at any
other fellow who tried to look at her—she thought then that Miss Abby
was makin’ a mistake. But if this count hadn’t eyes for any one but Miss
Abby, Miss Abby didn’t have eyes for any one but the count. And Hopeful
told me that, when she undressed Miss Abby that night, Miss Abby says
to her, ‘Hopeful, I am a happy girl—I’m so happy I don’t know how to
understand it—I’ve seen some one I could love better than my own dear
father and mother.’ Hopeful tried to warn her, she didn’t know why, but
Miss Abby wouldn’t listen, and she sat up half the night, Hopeful says,
thinkin’ about him.
“The next day the guests went drivin’, and the count managed to set
beside Miss Abby when they rode and at the basket picnic and never to
let her out of his sight. Abby’s Pa and Ma seemed pleased about it, and
they told their friends Count Gomez was of royal blood and he had letters
provin’ he was all he said he was. Well, that didn’t win over Hopeful
Whittier nor Ali Baba, but they didn’t matter, of course. So Hopeful
went back to New York with the family, and Ali Baba closed up the place.
In the middle of the winter I got a letter from Hopeful sayin’ that the
count and Miss Abby were engaged, and all New York was talkin’ about the
foreign alliance, and how grand it was to marry a nobleman and be a real
Eyetalian countess. She said Miss Abby was so happy she just floated
about and that she was having trunks and trunks of dresses made because
he was goin’ to take her to his palace over in Italy and she wanted his
family to think well of her. I didn’t like the sound of it, neither, but
I didn’t think no more about it until in the spring, the last of Easter
week, a coach and two bay hosses just came tearin’ into the Corners at
dusk and put up at the Button livery.
“Late that night Hopeful come up here lookin’ as if she had seen a ghost.
‘Good heavens, Betsey,’ she says, ‘we’ve brought Abby Clergy home a
ravin’ maniac!’ Well, I didn’t know what to answer, but she went on to
tell me that just before the weddin’ was to take place—on Easter Monday
night—and all New York was invited to come and see an American girl
become an Eyetalian countess, didn’t that scoundrel clear out and they
find he had a wife and five children hidin’ up in Michigan and that he
wasn’t nothin’ but a common barber! It was a grand swindle—you know this
idea of our girls marryin’ them noblemen was kind of new those days and
nobody was smart enough to ask all the questions that they would have
done if it was to happen now. It seems he had taken a lot of Miss Abby’s
jewelry and she had loaned him money, him tellin’ her his ‘allowance’ was
bein’ held up and such truck, and she, poor innocent lamb, believin’ him!
“They didn’t try to do nothin’ to him; the shame was enough to bear
without goin’ any further. Hopeful said Mr. Clergy walked the floor all
that night, and, finally, he told his lawyer, ‘Let the wretch go, thank
God the girl was spared the farce of a marriage.’ So I guess the count
and his wife and five children took the Clergy money and opened a shavin’
parlor somewheres in Michigan and I suppose God took care of him when He
got around to it.
“But it took Abby Clergy’s reason for the time bein’, and it killed her
Ma. When word came about him bein’ false and all, Abby was tryin’ on
her weddin’ dress and she fainted dead away. When she come to and they
undressed her, she fought ’em like a tiger and kept screamin’ out that
it was not so. Finally, they got her calmed down and the doctor came and
she told him she never wanted to see any one again; she wanted to go and
live for a whole year at the old summer home at Birge’s Lake, where she
thought she could forget her sorrow and bury her shame. But she didn’t
want to see nor speak to any one—not even her father or mother; she just
wanted Hopeful to stay with her.
“I guess if she had asked for the moon they’d have tried to have got it
for her. So they packed up her things, and she and Hopeful came all the
way to the Corners by team, and Ali Baba hurried up and made new fires in
the house and Miss Abby was put to bed as helpless as a newborn child.
“For three months she had the real old-fashioned kind of brain fever. I
guess they don’t have it any more. Some say it has left her queerer than
others; I don’t know as to that; I only know that Hopeful never stirred
from the Fincherie from the day Miss Abby came until she was out of
danger, and then they had to tell her her ma had died six weeks before.
Miss Abby had a relapse and never talked except when she was out of her
head. She’d moan, ‘Sebastian—Sebastian—I love you—’ And she’d think
Hopeful was that Eyetalian fraud and she’d hold out her little hands to
her and beg him not to leave her and to prove he never had no wife!
“When she got through with that, it was fall and she had never set eyes
on no one but Hopeful and the doctor. She sent for her father, and in
Hopeful’s presence she said she wanted to live the rest of her life at
the Fincherie with Hopeful and Ali Baba as her servants and she never
wanted to take part in the world again, that she was not crazy, she knew
her own mind. But she had a broken heart and she could not bear to let
the world see all she had suffered.
“It ’most killed her pa—her hair had turned gray and she didn’t weigh
more’n a handful—but she kept beggin’ him, and, finally, the doctor said
time might change her, but it was no sense to argue with her now—so her
father said she could stay there, and stay she has! It wasn’t long after
that when her poor father died, but Miss Abby never went to the funeral
nor shed a tear. Seems as if all the love and tears God gave her were
spent on that rascal. She had the lawyer sell the town property and
put the money in banks, and some of the furniture they sent on to the
Fincherie, but she never let Ali Baba unpack it. And there she lived
and there she lives—every day at four she drives in that old coupé with
Ali Baba as the coachman. Outside of that, or maybe settin’ on the back
balcony when it’s pretty hot weather, Miss Abby never shows herself.
Nobody dares to go there neither. At first, the old friends tried to
make her be herself, but she wouldn’t listen or even see ’em. She’s a
sort of living death, like, wearin’ the same old clothes and stayin’ in
her two front rooms year in and year out. Of course Hopeful has given
up her life, you might say, to Miss Abby; she could have married many’s
the time, but somehow she’s stayed faithful and so has Ali Baba. I guess
it was meant to be so. Sometimes Miss Abby tries to thank Hopeful for
all she’s done and she gives her presents of money—but she can’t never
seem to take an interest in anything, and when it comes the anniversary
of her weddin’, Hopeful says she unlocks her trunks and keeps tryin’ on
all her weddin’ dresses and cryin’ soft and pitiful. The family lawyer
has had doctors and doctors and mind-healers and faith-healers and all
such people but nothing never done any good. She just lives in the
house like a little old shadow, never hurtin’ no one and doin’ nothin’
wrong—sort of hauntin’ herself, that’s the best way to say it. She’s
only fifty-five—but she seems seventy—sort of childish and sharp spoke,
if things don’t go to suit, and she’s talkin’ of putting up a big wall
around the house so’s nobody could even walk across the lawn.... Well,
well, Thurley, so you got inside!”
Philena’s hands were clasped in excitement. “Isn’t it sad, Granny?” she
said. “I want to cry.”
Thurley shook her head. “I don’t. I’d like to write a story about it and
set it to music and rent a big hall. Then I’d have people pay to come in
and hear me sing it to them and I’d rather make the people cry.”
Betsey Pilrig shook her head. “Thurley,” she said, lapsing into old-time
phraseology, “I guess there’s no danger of your ever comin’ in with your
leg in your arm. I guess if you see your comeupment ahead, you’ll manage
to sing your way out of it.”