The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton

by Robert J. Begiebing

  The men of Newspirit were in the far fields, but I introduced him to Lucy Miles, Rebecca Lovejoy, and Miss Sabra Somerby (another who had joined us shortly after I arrived). When we had all settled down, Tom and I repaired to the wooden bench under the great chestnut tree by the front of the house. Not knowing just where to begin, I merely asked, “And Mr. Dana told you everything?”

  Everything, I now learned, that I had told Mr. Dana, who had traced Tom, it turned out, to the Lowell mills. There Tom had found employment at first as a weaving-room supervisor. He had by now come to be on good terms with the managers of the mill, whom he had impressed by his mechanical knowledge and skill. He seemed to be completely in their confidence. He had been, in fact, just about to embark on a journey to England, to Manchester in particular, for the purpose of examining English mills and machines, so that the best England had to offer might be purchased or constructed in America.

  Most of that first conversation, however, dwelled on my own misadventures. Tom recounted all Mr. Dana had told him, and I filled in a few details to be sure he knew all the truth.

  “The man should be hanged!” he said more than once.

  “Mr. Dana said he would look into the possibility,” I suggested.

  “There’s sufficient evidence, he believes, to go forward?”

  “That’s where the doubt lies. Whether we can gather an indictment. It’s my word against his. And that of his cohorts. Would anyone believe me? Such a gaudy tale! And since I’ve heard nothing so far, the police investigations must not have turned up any irrefragable proof of misconduct.”

  “They are probably all in Dudley’s pocket.”

  “Mr. Dana did not seem to think so.” I hesitated before going on. “There’s a larger problem—myself. Do I want to parade my foul experience before the world in the public press? Would people want to believe in the repugnance I felt toward my captor? Want to understand how cunning is the last vestige of one’s freedom? Can you imagine what the penny-a-liners would make of it? My very name would become a byword, the butt of savage jokes.”

  “But Allegra … he’ll never feel the lash of justice. Nay, what’s to keep him from tormenting you further some day? Or some other poor creature? You must have courage.”

  “It’s more a matter of what’s practical. I’ve placed that judgment in Mr. Dana’s hands. What choice do I have? Am I to strike down the scroundrel myself?”

  “You’re forgetting, aren’t you, that Mr. Dana has his own interest in quieting this matter? As you’ve said, he was never willing—perhaps he was not able—to explain satisfactorily his own presence in such a den.”

  “Come, Tom. He’s much-traveled. He’s seen the pits and stews of human degradation. Is it so odd that he might turn his hand to helping a few who are ensnared and degraded in his own city? And isn’t he the very sort of young gentleman who, by his association with those who are in the forefront of reforming vice, we might expect to play such a role? The Reform Society, you know, sends its agents forth to save any number of women.”

  “He is such an agent, you say?”

  “No. But he has acted in this instance, perhaps others, as such a one.”

  “Even so,” Tom said after mulling this idea briefly, “he can’t be in a hurry to serve as an eyewitness to such spectacles as you’ve implied, Allegra. And might he not be making amends for misadventures of his own … or merely returning to such scenes out of degraded curiosity, some secret obsession with human nature in extremity?” He paused to judge my reaction. “Surely his own mind is troubled at the prospect of formal inquiry.”

  “I’m sure his mind is troubled, Tom, for any number of reasons, and he’s too cautious to rush headlong into the courts in any event. Still, I believe you’re construing a hasty judgment on him.”

  “Perhaps, Allegra. But remember, he benefits nothing from any prosecution of Dudley; on the contrary. And for all his breeding, Dana himself served as a common sailor among brutish men. If we owe your salvation in large part to him, may we be forgiven a little doubt concerning his view of the legal merits of your case?”

  “I suppose there’s something in that.”

  “I say finally this: that man, Dudley, should be punished, and stopped, one way or another.”

  “And so he may yet be,” I said. “Still, I now know better to watch and protect myself. Mr. Dudley will lose interest as the months pass.”

  “I take him to be more vindictive than that, Allegra. And dangerously mad.”

  We sat a moment, each examining the matter in our hearts. To own the truth, I did harbor a deep wish to see Dudley punished. And now he had the wealth and freedom to ensnare others in his perverse web of vices.

  Tom spoke first. “At least our uncle is no longer a danger. I returned contrite, but more to the point with enough cash to pay for what we’d taken, with interest, and with news of your disappearance and, so far as I knew at the time, your probable death. From the marks of violence in our parlor room, the police assumed you were abducted, and then when you never surfaced despite every effort, an extensive search … well … we just didn’t know what else to make of it. Only now do I see that he had you well hidden and disguised under their very noses.”

  “As there is little hope now. He’s too wily, and too well placed.”

  “You almost convince me, Allegra. He’s probably at liberty to do more harm in the world. Yet I say again, one way or another he should be stopped!”

  I said nothing at first.

  “I confess to dreaming of revenge, Tom,” I finally admitted. “I feel no longer helpless, and I want to strike out. Yet how? And worse: What would be the consequence if in some way I should? Greater embroilments still? More loss of liberty? I try to expel my darker fancies. But I’m not always equal to remaining above them. To you alone, brother, can I speak such things. Hardly even to myself.”

  “And why shouldn’t you feel this way, Allegra? What sort of unnatural creature would you be, after your sufferings at his hand, if you did not feel like that? But the law may yet catch up with this libertine, and we can bide our time somewhat longer.”

  Tom’s face grew dark. Then he shrugged his shoulders and turned to me. “At least you’re alive and well, and I’ve found you after all.” He hugged me again. “And doing well enough, by the look of it,” he said, looking about the farm.

  “Well enough, dear Tom.”

  “Have you any plans? Will you stay on here … indefinitely?”

  “I feel indefinite as yet. Say rather that it suits me just now. The safety. These precise circumstances. But I also wish for a life other than theirs.” I nodded toward the women still working in the kitchen garden and waved in the direction of the planting fields.

  “I didn’t think you’d become a philosopher, when Mr. Dana told me about … all this. This community of projectors. This ‘ennead,’ as he put it.” He smiled. “It’s a beautiful prospect, all very idyllic, but why shouldn’t a serpent find his way into this garden?”

  “I shall be exceptionally cautious,” I said. “Dudley is a fraud, a foolish egoist who shall never more gain the advantage of me, despite his wealth. I’ve learned a cunning of my own. By severest trial, to be sure, but I have learned my lesson well, Tom.”

  “Be careful you don’t take too much onto yourself … and your new friends. Would even our Mr. Dana be equal to this man? And Dana is in Boston and otherwise engaged, don’t forget. After all, how much can you expect of these philosophers, dear Allegra? I fear something more than caution and cunning will be required. Certainly Dudley must never discover where you are. You must be careful whom you see.”

  “I take great care, Tom,” I assured him. “Although the Community is open to all who would observe and to anyone who would agree to live by its principles and strictures—few enough people as you might imagine—I shun the company of visitors.”

  “When Mr. Dana told me of your false name, I thought it a good ploy.” He laughed. “But we can trust such devices and preca
utions only so far. When I return from England, we had better reconsider.” He thought a moment. “I’m so much occupied that perhaps it’s better to have you here, for now anyway.”

  “Be clear, Tom, if there is anything you have in mind.”

  “I’m not certain myself yet. Perhaps I can put off my travels to England. My employers know there’s a family matter I’m attending to, and they value me. I should beg a little further indulgence and reschedule my mission abroad; it would be but a month’s delay perhaps, or less, to book a new passage.” He thought things through a moment. “May I come here for a week if I can arrange it, so that we might better plan your security as we consult with Mr. Dana?”

  “Mr. Dana does not come here. I believe he thinks it a fool’s paradise, though a safe haven for me.”

  “But I can travel to him as needs be. We must fully understand his assessments and then plan accordingly for you—whatever the future brings. We must, in short, be much wiser than we have been.”

  TO BE BRIEF, Tom’s employers indulged him in the “settlement of certain family matters preparatory to his journey abroad,” and he then agreed with Messrs. Miles and Brown and Miss Lovejoy to live among us for a week, contributing to our labors and observing the rules.

  I could not see what would come of this arrangement, and felt a little unsettled while I waited for Tom to return. I began to find it difficult to paint again, but I found my old habit of reading to be congenial. I was soon out of suitable reading material, however.

  One cool, rainy evening I went into the Community’s library looking for something of interest. The library, consisting of all the books each member had brought with him to Newspirit, was in a south-facing, solid little outbuilding beside the house. The walls had been lined with unfinished bookshelves that were by now mostly filled. A small stove had been fitted against the north wall. In the center of the room, on a straw carpet, sat a long, handsome library table and three rustic chairs.

  As I entered, I immediately saw little Phebe Miles sitting at the table alone concentrating on a book set before her.

  “Oh, hello,” I said. “More lessons? A good quiet place to do them.”

  She looked up and smiled back at me.

  “Not a lesson, Miss Sigourney. I’ve finished mine for the day. Though Peter hasn’t. It’s just old Aesop. Mother said that if Peter and I choose several to memorize and perform on some fine afternoon after dinner, we shall have no other lessons that day.”

  “Well then, you had better find some you like. That was good of your mother. Much more fun than lessons.”

  “Yes, Miss Sigourney.”

  “Don’t let me disturb you, then. I’ve just come looking for something to read.”

  The little girl returned to Aesop. She was ten or eleven years old, and seeing her alone seated at the table dressed in her own plain little linen tunic seemed suddenly odd to me, as such dress on the children did not when they were among their family. Not that the lovely girl seemed ridiculous, but simply that I saw with new eyes, as it were, the striking oddity of the philosopher’s gown upon a child.

  I remained quiet and began to peruse the bookshelves for something to pique my interest. Sacred Writings of the Ancient Persian Prophets; The Divine Pymander of Hermes Trismegistus; St. Bridget’s Revelations; Behmen’s Theosophick Philosophy Unfolded; Jansen’s Spiritual Journey; Mde. Guyon’s Les Opuscules Spirituels; Fenelon’s Dissertation on Pure Love.

  “Find anything, Miss Sigourney?” Phebe asked.

  “Oh dear,” I said. “I think I’ve come to the wrong place.” I ventured a laugh.

  “Lots of those are father’s and Mr. Brown’s,” she offered, as if by way of explanation.

  “Law’s Way to Divine Knowledge,” I read aloud. “Swendenborg’s Arcana Coelestia; Quarles’s Emblems and Hieroglyphics; Crashaw’s Steps to the Temple. Oh dear me, Phebe!”

  We both laughed. I moved to a bookshelf on the other side of the room, but found little better luck there.

  Phebe smiled. I was struck by how many of the books were either of ancient origin, from the preceding century, or from the one before that, and how few were from our own time, as if the librarian who had assembled them thought mankind had lost its way at some point between 1600 and 1750.

  “Nothing yet, Miss Sigourney?” Phebe persisted.

  “I’m afraid not, Phebe.” I looked further along the next shelf.

  “You might find Hesiod or Tusser of interest.” She pointed to an adjacent shelf. “Over there.”

  Finally, two shelves down, I found old Tusser.

  “Shall I try this, then?” I held up Tusser toward Phebe.

  “Good,” she said. “Father refers to him often; there’s always something useful in Tusser as to the secrets of husbandry, he says.”

  “Then that settles it, Phebe, thank you.” She laughed. “I’ll tell you what I learn, but for now I’ll let you get back to your Aesop. When will your performance be, then?”

  “A day or two, I should think. If the rain stops.”

  Occasional performances, readings, and recitations took place in a little clearing in the wood, not far from the house, and I found that I had come to look forward to these harmless recreations.

  As I was about to leave the library, Phebe said, “I have a few books in our attic-room that you are welcome to, Miss Sigourney. Mostly tales and poems.”

  “Oh, thank you, Phebe! That’s very kind of you. Perhaps I will look in some day then to see what you have.”

  “Please do, Miss Sigourney.” She smiled sweetly. “I think the world would be a very dismal world without books, don’t you? I could not live without books. I take so much pleasure in reading beautiful stories and poetry. I like to hear beautiful words and thoughts. ‘Beautiful’ is my favorite word, you see.”

  We laughed again. “And pictures,” she went on. “I have scrapbooks full of beautiful paintings. And mother bought me some water cakes so I can try to teach myself.”

  “I especially like beautiful paintings also, Phebe. Would you like me to teach you a little?”

  “Oh yes, Miss Sigourney! Would you please?”

  From that moment on, Phebe became my only pupil—an especially apt one—during all my time at Newspirit.

  IT WAS, JUST AS Phebe had predicted, two days later that the children held their performance. In the forenoon Phebe and Peter had accompanied their mother to help with the first hay and then with picking berries. After dinner they played in the stream to cool off while practicing the lines they had composed. Sisters Rebecca, Sabra, and I had spent the morning in kitchen drudgery, while Lucy tended the garden, harvesting our second crop of peas and tiny early squash.

  That afternoon all other recreations and labors were laid aside so that the whole company might repair to the small clearing in the woods that had become our fair-weather theater, lecture hall, and pulpit. The clearing had been opened perhaps by a great wind a few years ago, for the decaying trunks lay like benches about our modest amphitheater, which had been then kept open, according to Mr. Brown’s theory, by grazing deer. And now we kept it arranged to our liking as well.

  Rebecca and Sabra had made wreaths of braided hay, oak leaves, and flowers for the women to wear about their heads. Each gentleman brought a flower of his choosing to be presented to the children upon completion of an act in the drama. Surely anyone stumbling upon us would have thought he had wandered into some strange Druidical ceremony, as we sat ranged round the “stage” in our linen tunics, wreaths, and flowers while the children enacted their fables.

  Phebe and Peter performed four. Following each, one of the brethren was to suggest a modern application and present the little actors with a flower. The first fable was “The Dog and the Wolf,” with Peter wearing a collar of woven field grasses and Phebe in a wolf’s mask that she had drawn and colored on paper.

  “Who put that collar ’round your neck,” Wolf asked, “and fed you to such sleekness?”

  “Why my master, of course,”
answered Dog.

  “Then,” said Wolf, “may no friend of mine be treated like a dog, for this collar is as grievous as starvation!”

  Brother Miles suddenly stood to his full height and declaimed his interpretation like an overblown actor announcing the Trump of Doom: “Abstain from the fruits of oppression and blood! Seek, rather, the means of your independence. The beast named Man has yet most costly tastes, and must regenerate himself before the earth be restored to fruitfulness and redeemed from the curse of his cupidity.”

  We all applauded, and while Mr. Miles stepped forward to present each of his children a small cluster of budding Lily-of-the-Valley, for innocence, Brother Brown stood up and expanded on his worthy founding partner’s words: “Of all the traffic in which civilized society is involved, that of human labor is the most degrading. From the state of serfdom to the receipt of wages is a small step in human progress. Laboring for wages must itself be transcended to unburden the aspirations of humanity’s spirit!” Pleased with his contribution, Brother Brown sat down again and continued munching on pea pods from the small basket he seemed to carry everywhere.

  Sabra leaned toward me and whispered her interpretation: “Does not Liberty make a better marriage?”

  But just as Brown finished, the children began another fable. Phebe sat before Peter, who held a broken piece of foxtail grass in his hand, similar to a whole foxtail Phebe wore attached to her little backside.

  “My life is no longer worth living,” Peter exclaimed. Then he looked at Phebe in her fine foxtail and seemed to look about at other imagined foxes beside her.

  “Assembled foxes all,” he said in a loud, high voice, “tails are, after all, most ungraceful. They are but heavy appendages and quite superfluous. See how much better off I am!” He shook his tailless behind at the foxes, whereupon Phebe spoke up as the representative of gathered clan.

  “Dear Sir,” she began. “You advise us merely to your advantage. For if you would bring us into your own condition, that is to conceal your own deficiency in the general distress, will we not all share your deficiency in common?”