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 but possessed 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 to explain 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
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 figurative fashion
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
struggle _not_ to 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 to tell 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?”