“She went to sleep-like,” Ali Baba told her, after the simple funeral.
“She wasn’t what you would call in pain—just sighing and calling for
people dead these forty years. She says to Hopeful, ‘The Watcher of the
Dead has seen me’—and we knew then it was the end.”
“What about the watcher of the dead?” Thurley said softly.
“The watcher must have some one to keep him company and when the last one
that has died has stayed with him long enough and goes away, they do say
the watcher goes about the village looking into faces to see in which
lies the shadow of death—and he loses no time in taking him so that he
will have company. Miss Clergy remembered the story. She went to sleep
sayin’, ‘Tell Thurley—to—use—her—own—judgment.’”
“Ali Baba—did she—” Thurley grasped his arm.
He nodded. “Just like I said—‘Tell—Thurley—to—use—her—own judgment,’—and
then she looks up at me and she says, ‘An hour’s drive, Ali Baba—not too
fast.’” His rough hand was across his eyes.
“Are you quite _sure_, Ali Baba, that she knew what she was saying?”
“As sure as I am what you are askin’,” the old man answered.
Miss Clergy’s will was dated the year that Thurley went with her to New
York. It left, requiring neither bond nor security, everything to Thurley
Precore.
But the excitement over the death and the disposal of the fortune was
increased by Thurley’s prompt use of it. Even the war lost its prominence
when Thurley in remarkably short time gave out a statement declaring her
intentions.
Her contracts would be kept but after the present season Thurley
Precore was to retire for a year at least, in which she would devote
herself—secretly, she whispered, “to being a gray angel and helping
Bliss,” but to the public she named it “to the philanthropic enterprise
which, with Miss Clergy’s money, was to be started.”
She wrote Bliss Hobart as school-girlish and impulsive a note as one
could imagine, setting forth her gray angel theories in superlative
fashion, even underlining and putting exclamation points in pairs and
punctuating sentences by a wriggling up and down mark which she said he
was to consider as “a grin.”
“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 enterprise will 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 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
to speak 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.”
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 woman
all 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 not capable 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, tagging after 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 you care 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 to commend 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 done
up, 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—’.”