The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton (21 page)

We now looked about for any suitable cover from the gathering violence. Suddenly lightning broke from the clouds in jagged cataracts and the waters poured forth. Deafened to one another by thunder, we dismounted and ran into the immediate woods, pulling our horses in with us.

I do not believe I had ever endured such a cataclysm from the skies. I had lived through a hurricane or two, but this tempest hurled itself against the earth with a coiled fury meant, it seemed, to destroy utterly a mere hundred acres of nature's bounty. In the center of such fury, Tom and I lay on the forest floor wrapped in our cloaks, covering our heads with our arms. Trees creaked and crashed around us while our double-tethered horses screamed in terror.

How we or our horses survived this convulsion I cannot say. Our baggage had fallen into disarray in the mélée, but after the storm had passed over quickly, we soon adjusted ourselves and headed back out to the road. We were soaked to the skin, and a cold wind was blowing in on the heels of the squall. A couple of miles farther down the road Tom began to cough, and I could not control my shivering.

The Good Lord must have seen that we had withstood sufficient punishment from the heavens, for we soon came upon a clearing on a slight rise ahead, and then the roof of a small barn came into view. Approaching closer still, we saw the entire barn and then the small dwelling nestled beside it. Yet closer, we noticed two women inspecting the barn for damage; the storm had passed over this farm as well, coming up from the southwest to catch Tom and me in the open.

Seeing us approach, these two women came right over to the road. We must have looked a fright, and they must have been astonished at the thought of two travelers surviving the explosion. Looking us over carefully and asking many questions, they soon understood our condition and invited us in.

Once Tom had stabled the horses, the two women, a Miss Williams and Miss Rutanger, offered us every comfort they had to share at their hearth. We discovered that they likewise were from Massachusetts and that Miss Williams was also a painter, mostly in waters. Such coincidence made me wonder if I might have fallen into a dream while still lying senseless on the forest floor.

They said that they had moved here to farm in peaceful retirement together while Miss Williams prosecuted her trade in water-colors among the neighboring farms and villages. They might have been our friends from school days, rather than utter strangers in the rural reaches of eastern New York.

On the next morning when fever took hold of Tom, Sarah Williams offered him the only bedchamber. There were three rooms in the comfortable cottage, which they had built themselves with the help of a hired man—the parlor we sat in, a kitchen-washroom, and a bedchamber. We three women, therefore, slept before the hearth. Recalling the death of my husband from a terrible ague, however, I was vexed all night by fears for my dear brother and companion.

The next afternoon while Tom slept, I asked Miss Williams to bring out some of her watercolors. They were unlike any I had seen before: as bold and vibrant as a brightly colored child's toy, caprioles of fancy that had the effect of being unschooled. These mermaids, griffins, and fairy-people were devoid of anything passionate or ominous. They were simple, bright, flat depictions, which is to say eye-catching. Sarah had no difficulty selling her exoteric images to farmers and storekeepers for miles around.

Miss Sarah was, of course, very interested in my work, but I had none with me to show her. Since leaving Springfield, in fact, Tom and I had adhered to the principle of finishing each likeness on the same day I started it and receiving payment (no promissory notes!) from each client that very day before taking leave. But now I saw an opportunity of spending more time with two sitters in recompense for their hospitality.

Here again, as with the Misses Fiske, a dual portrait seemed called for. These two women were the closest long-time companions, closer than sisters or cousins even, and closer in their own way, if I may say so, than many husbands and wives. For they appeared to live and labor together in a harmony unknown to many marriages. There were no separate spheres of toil and recreation, as often disjoin a husband and wife, no uncoupling over the years beneath the decorous yoke and conveniences of matrimony. And now I began to think, why should not two women live together by this more honest and enduring bond, once they have fully awakened to the depths and strengths of their romantic attachment?

Indeed, Miss Rutanger told me at one point that she and Miss Williams had been sent in their youth to separate academies, in result of her parents discovering in one of her letters to Miss Williams an intensity of friendship that they wished to discourage. “‘You must get about and begin to meet others and young beaux,' my father said, ‘or you'll make yourself into a poor spinster yet. You must have other interests.'” Here in New York, she explained, they no longer heard from their parents or old friends.

So I painted them as true companions in life, the taller Miss Rutanger with her arm draped lightly over the shoulder of Miss Williams as they stood in their summer cambrics—a paint brush in Miss Williams's hand and a spray of young herb plants and bean blossoms in Miss Rutanger's. They smile out at the observer, dark-haired, determined, as straightforward in their lives as the day is long. Their barn peeks in at the window, as plowed fields and fruitful orchards recede in the distance.

While I painted their portraits, Miss Rutanger told me that except for occasionally trading watercolors for domestic work and paying small sums for heavy labor, they managed themselves the vegetable and flower gardens, their several cows and two horses, their two-dozen chickens in the poultry yard, and an assortment of cats in the barn and house.

“Have you any suitors?” I asked as I applied a final glaze.

They laughed like schoolgirls. “Oh, we had a few who thought to insinuate themselves into our farm or to ride off with one damosel or the other,” Miss Williams said, “but we've disabused the young men hereabouts of such inclinations, and so they leave us alone now in regard to all that—we two spinsters! And we bear no grudges on either side.”

They reminded me of a warning Mr. Spooner had once spoken: “You must preserve your talent, Allegra,” he had said, perhaps realizing my impossible, growing infatuation with him and perhaps defending himself from it as well. “I know other women who allow themselves to be trapped by the curse of their beauty. Personal comeliness is but incidental. It will be there when you need it, but not your talent, which must be nurtured and disciplined, or surely it will die.” Recalling his admonition now caused me to wonder whether Sister Sabra and Miss Fuller betokened opposing poles of spinsterhood.

O
NCE RECOVERED
, Tom understood the generosity of the Misses Williams and Rutanger, for their ministrations had cooled his brow from the first, and when he awakened they helped me bathe his face, throat, chest, and shoulders.

The women amused us with tales of picnics in the village on holidays and harvesting parties among neighbors. Later, we saw for ourselves that these two lived comfortably within their community, for they joined the farm wives and daughters to attend a quilting bee, leaving Tom and me to tend the cottage and poultry yard.

They returned at day's end, laughing and gay, quite refreshed for the company and the change. We served a supper of chicken stew. But they soon retired after supper to bathe and to sleep well in their own bed at last. Tom and I heard them laughing in the washroom as, by turns, they poured water over one another into the small tub and amused themselves over some gossip they had heard at the quilting.

But our time with these two ladies soon drew to an end, as we had our own livings to get. Moreover, Tom during his seclusion had had many dreams and thoughts about his future, as if illness had brought his mind to a point of crisis.

“How can I go back to Massachusetts and pursue my own interests,” he said one day while the two women were in the field, “with Dudley's corpse hanging over my head? Were I to be questioned by the authorities, could I convincingly deny my hand in his death indefinitely? Yet can I travel about on your skirts like this just as indefinitely?”

I saw the truth of his complaint and I too felt no desire to settle in Albany, nor to be moving constantly, and with uncertain results, farther and farther west.

“I understand, Tom,” I said. “We may be grasping at shadows of freedom only to lose the substance of our work. I've thought often of Boston. I think continually of resuming my studies … in some capacity. Yet, as you say, we can never go back there now.”

“That is just my point, Allegra. I can never go back there. You are quite free to go, and you should see Mr. Dana immediately when you do. You are perfectly innocent in all this. You are the one sinned against. I'm the one who must make other plans.”

“Am I so innocent as that, dear brother? And can we part so easily?” Neither of us spoke immediately. “What other plans?” I finally asked.

“My dear sister. How much longer can I remain a man in exile from his own life and work? And what can I do here now? No, I've come to the conclusion that I must go abroad, Allegra.”

“Abroad?”

“I've been thinking about this; there's no practical alternative for me any longer.” He smiled confidently. “I know people in England. I'm quite certain I can be useful there and find the work I want to do. I know the British manufacturing system, you see. And I can make a contribution. Someday … perhaps someday … I can return. But I will do so on my own terms and with a competency sufficient to protect me wherever I might settle.” He looked at me, but I was speechless. “Perhaps I'll remain abroad. That's neither here nor there now.”

“But if I return to Boston I'll be questioned as to your whereabouts, at the very least. And then what shall I say?”

“That's why you should go to them first. Start with Mr. Dana. Tell him I said only that I could not live under suspicion, that I dared not take my chances here, and so I went abroad. But say merely that you know not where. In a sense you don't, after all. Say you were told nothing, so as to avoid any responsibility, only that I left with no intention of returning. That should put them off. They'll have nothing more to go on.”

“Why haven't you spoken to me about these thoughts before, Tom? And how do you propose to go abroad?”

“We should return to Springfield as soon as you're ready, Allegra. From there I'll go on to Hartford and New York to book my passage. We've been working hard, and I've been spending little of my share. I may have to pick up some work in the city for a time, but that's my concern. You, on the other hand, will then be free to return to Boston. That's what you desire and therefore what you should do.” He looked at me and smiled. “And remember, as Mr. Spooner told you, an artist who is not to remain a mere trifler must keep herself where mention will be made of her pictures, to bring her into notice, and where the most ready sale will be found. Hardly in the obscure settlements to the west!”

I now saw the care he had taken thinking it all through. Even Albany, that good old Dutch city, was little more, as we had discovered, than a center of transit for commerce and travelers going north and west. As one gentleman in trade who sat for me put it, “If Albany retains a few of the wealthiest families in New York, most intelligent people associate it with little more than having lost a portmanteau here.” Was not Boston my better harbor? And Tom was right about our quandary: misfortune had befallen us from the day I met Joseph Dudley. I longed for some way out, but there was nothing to be done. The fact remained: Tom had killed a man, and I had encouraged him. There was nothing in the system of law to forgive Tom, no matter that the dead man had been a fiend of selfishness feeding on others. And I had difficulty enough forgiving myself.

I stood up and went to Tom, who was leaning against the stone fireplace, and put my arms around him. Never had I known a companion longer than my dear brother. And not since the death of my husband had I found a more trustworthy, affectionate protector and friend. And now we were to be separated forever.

My redoubtable companion of the road began to weep along with me. There was nothing more to say. We turned from each other and prepared supper for our hosts. That evening, after the women had gone to bed, we quietly began to put our things in order for the journey back to Albany and on to Springfield.

SIXTEEN

Temptation in the shape of a man

T
hat August Tom and I finally said our farewells at the foot of Court Street in Springfield, where Tom caught the 1:00
P.M.
steamer
Greenfield
down river to Hartford. We had talked through the necessity of our parting so often by then that we endured it steadfastly.

Before I returned to Boston, I remained for some weeks in Springfield. Mr. Stock was away again in Bristol, Rhode Island, south of Providence near Narragansett Bay. His family had a letter from him describing that “town of 4,000 inhabitants, with many merchants and two large steam cotton factories.” But he was finding business hard to come by, due to “political troubles in the State, which diverted the public from patronizing the Fine Arts.” He thought of removing to Warren, a few miles north, he said, where he could stay at the Commercial House and perhaps find more advantage among the prosperous whaling and West India merchants and watermen. If that did not prove successful, he would go on to New Bedford, where, he noted, “my luck has often held and I am known by reputation.”

His parents, John and Martha, had held for him another letter addressed to me in care of Joseph.

Reader, do you know Giovanni Sassetta's
St. Anthony Tempted by the Devil in the Shape of a Woman
? Consider the obverse: What is a
woman
to do with these raw temptations of the flesh? Having carefully laid plans to return to Boston, I dared not entertain longings that Chas Sparhawk's letter threatened to awaken. From Albany I had posted a letter to Mr. Dana. I had given him Mr. Stock's Springfield address. But even in Springfield, I did not hear from Mr. Dana for some time because he was himself abroad. Now I posted a letter to Chas, asking him to meet me briefly at the station house in Worcester between 4:00 and 4:30
P.M.
; I was to be on the 12:15 cars from Springfield to Boston.

I completed several commissions in and around Springfield, and a brief correspondence between Chas and me followed. I had determined to continue my study in Boston by awaiting, if need be, Mr. Spooner's return. And the day before I left Springfield, I sent a final letter to Mr. Dana telling him of my imminent arrival and asking for an appointment to see him within the week. I did not look forward to such an interview, but Tom had been right—there was business between us that needed to be cleared before I could go on. Without Tom's company, however, I was more lonely than I had expected.

As planned, Chas Sparhawk met me at the Main Street Depot. In the interval before the cars left for Boston, over a quick cup of tea at the Worcester House opposite the Depot, he tried to convince me to stay on in Worcester longer, but I made clear my determination to go.

“You and I will not be so far apart after all, Chas,” I said. “Little better than forty miles is nothing these days, by the railcars.”

“I have too much business in hand to be running to and fro,” he said. “Surely you could stay until tomorrow! Or week's end.”

It was pleasing to see Chas again, and I won't deny that I was tempted to linger, but I told him a partial truth—that I had scheduled immediately an important interview with Mr. Dana, who had agreed to take time from his law practice to discover what he might about Mr. Spooner.

Chas, I saw, had found his niche in Worcester, following his usual method of staying in lucrative situations until they became less so or until he tired of them. Here he helped the farm family with whom he took his room and board while he promoted a business in gilding mirror frames, decorating furniture and walls, and painting signs, carriages, and portraits by the score. “Even a little engraving,” he added, “calling cards and such.”

It would have been all too easy to give in to my feelings, which Chas had so capably renewed as he sat there smiling into my eyes, but in truth I was apprehensive. Might I easily enter into a state of enduring intimacy and distraction from which I could not regain myself? I began to avoid his eyes.

“My dear Allegra,” he said at one point. “Do you not think that buds need the sun now and then to come into flower? Wouldn't it be madness to condemn to darkness what you and I once quickened?” He placed his large darkened hand halfway across our little table. I did not reach for his hand yet.

Portrait of “Aunt Lucinda” of Essex County, Massachusetts
, Artist Unknown. Published courtesy of the Fruitlands Museums, Harvard, Massachusetts.

“Chas, I have lovely memories of our brief days together. And you may visit me in Boston… .”

“If you insist on your headlong rush into the city this very hour, I'll have no other choice, will I?” He frowned and waved the hand that had rested on the table. “I'll just postpone the work I promised to begin shortly. But you must write to me where I may reach you, once you're settled. If that's how you insist to arrange things. Agreed?”

“It's but a little patience required, Chas.”

“And in the meantime? What shall I do?” He lowered his voice to a near whisper and looked about like a comic actor. “And here we are in public where I can hardly enfold you with these arms once again, kiss you senseless, nuzzle your hair. You might as well be sitting behind a wall of glass as sitting the other side of this table!”

I laughed, but I remembered only too well the effects upon me of all his nuzzling and intemperate kisses. I was therefore all the more relieved for having arranged for a new situation in the city before he insisted that we drink once more at the Fountain of Pleasure. Indeed, in the short interval before the cars left for Boston, I had grown restless under his bold gaze and in our memories of one another.

“Oh to be at my liberty in Boston again!” I sighed as I waved to Chas from the moving cars. It is to you, Boston, that I must return before I can give myself to any other!