The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton

by Robert J. Begiebing

  “So you see,” Tom went on, “I’m determined to take matters into my own hands … to end his power over you.

  Then he explained the difficulties—chiefly that he could not discover a means to waylay his quarry without arousing his suspicions in advance. Neither could he afford to wait for days or weeks by the roadside until Dudley happened along. So ultimately we agreed upon a ruse: I should write Dudley a letter saying that I wished to speak with him to claim some modest assistance, by way of reparation and as a mutual agreement to keeping us both out of the courts, due to the impecuniousness of my position since escaping his restraint and rushing out into the world alone. My inclination was that he might well believe such a fate had befallen me and quickly see the mutual benefit of our settling privately. I did not doubt that he would expect nothing less of another, and an aggrieved party at that, than something akin to blackmail, that he would wish to come to terms, and perhaps assess my vulnerability to him once again. I insisted on our meeting in a public place, but it would be on his journey there that Tom would surprise him. And if he should not slip into our trap, then Tom would devise another to exact his punishment and warning. We decided that we had nothing to lose by setting our first snare.

  IN THE MEANTIME, I had begun to work outdoors again on most mornings in planting field and garden, and on fine afternoons, before the bugs swarmed with the evolving season, I gathered my paint box, easel, and canvas and set out in the sweet air as yet unthickened by the vapors of midsummer and burdensome heat. I love best that time when clusters of tiny whitish bluets and violets sweep along the just-greening pastures.

  On May Day everyone stopped work by midmorning and alone, or in small groups, hunted far and wide for early flowers. Later that day small baskets of violets, bluets, cowslips, anemones, miterwort and saxifrage, may-apple, or the scarlet bud of maple leaves, among others, found their way to each person’s door, or upon one’s writing table, or atop one’s pillow. A small name tag on each basket made certain that the right party found the intended basket. And in the afternoon, following a picnic, each of us delivered a performance or recitation of our choosing, and appropriate to the efflorescence of spring, in the amphitheater.

  But such idylls as these were not to last. Later, long after the phoebes had nested in my gable, after the orioles and hummingbirds had danced about the blossoms of orchard and honeysuckle, and after my palette began to turn toward the yellows and the vermilions of summer flowers, I sat on our front bench drinking in the moonrise one warm evening when Tom suddenly appeared. He had been lying in wait for some time, he explained, in the shadows of bushes and trees, in hopes that I would emerge from the house, as was my habit about dusk and before turning in.

  He wore no hat, his hair was disheveled, his face strangely awry, his clothes hung uncomfortably about him as clothing sometimes hangs upon a child’s doll. His breath came heavily and his eyes were wild, a look I had never seen before in this man who was my own brother.

  “Allegra!” he whispered as he stepped forth out of the moon-cast shadows. “Hush. Hush. Something has happened.”

  “Tom!” I caught my breath. “What in the world are you talking about? Isn’t it but a fortnight since you were so pleased in your work? You come now like a madman. What is it? Quickly!”

  He sat down beside me, glancing about to be sure no one was nearby.

  “I’ve had our revenge on Dudley,” he said in the same desperate whisper. “That is what’s happened!” I could tell his mouth was painfully dry. His face contorted, he looked in the moonlight like a white devil.

  “What do you mean, Tom?”

  “I went to him, Allegra, just as we planned.”

  “And you could not ensnare him?” I asked. “Oh, Tom, would you please tell me what has happened!”

  “He’s dead, Allegra. It is not what I meant to do. You must believe me, because I would not betray you, our plan. There was a terrible accident. And that’s the long and the short of it, Allegra. Now … now, Allegra, I am a fugitive,” he said. “I shall no longer be able to help, or advise, or watch over you.” He paused to catch his breath and went on.

  “Can anyone doubt that the violent end of this man of wealth will be scrupulously investigated? And if somehow found out, would I be seen as anything but a murderer? And am I not, after all, whatever I meant to be? Mr. Dana knows the whole story of our encounters with Dudley. Miss Fuller has a full accounting, hasn’t she? And others know something of the sordid tale, and of my rage against this man. Even the Friend of Virtue, as I understand it, has not been restrained in naming Dudley in their lists, despite Mr. Dana’s efforts to restrain them prior to any corroborations and proceedings. And might I have left something behind? Who can say what facts a vigorous examination would uncover of Dudley’s death and of all our entanglements with him? And why should such an examination not eventually lead to me? But I will not sacrifice my freedom by turning myself over to the authorities. Not in trade for this blackguard’s life. He isn’t worthy of the sacrifice. And surely you can see that a sort of justice has been done. Finally. A sort of justice, Allegra.”

  Suddenly I recalled a terrible moment from our childhood, another moment when Tom’s nobility and courage got the better of his judgment. My Uncle Simeon—ever the petty tyrant—had finally caught a fox that had been raiding his henhouse for weeks. Rather than simply dispatch the animal and have done with it, he nailed the unfortunate wretch to the side of the barn and began to skin it alive. The creature’s squalls of distress could be heard, we later were told, among our distant neighbors. While I stood on the door stoop weeping and screaming at my uncle to desist, Tom came rushing in from somewhere and shot the fox through his heart to deliver him. Whereupon Uncle Simeon, enraged to have been cheated out of his cruel retributions, turned upon Tom and beat the boy to the very brink of his young life. He had been badly bloodied, and I alone nursed him back to join the living.

  And now because of Tom’s distress, I simply could not deny him. After all, his accidental justice meted out to this libertine in a fashionable dress coat was on my account, and instigated as well by the folly of my own desire for revenge. And to be sure, I too did not want to see Tom severely punished for it.

  I did not at the time give a thought to enmeshing myself even further in his culpability. Rather, I thought only of helping my brother escape in his dangerous fume of distraction, and I saw that the time had now come to act upon my growing impulse to depart Newspirit.

  It was clear that we had to get away that very night. I could think of no one to help us other than Asa Perry, for who else had such a keen sense of the blindness of authority and the reign of the bad over the good? I knew from something he had said that Mr. Perry intended to leave that very evening for a short stay at his own farm.

  So I had Tom hide in the shadows once more while I went inside and asked Mr. Perry if he would come sit with me briefly that I might ask his advice on a certain matter before his departure. Without hesitation he agreed. He smiled gently, perhaps as he might have smiled upon an anxious daughter, his hair and tunic shimmering in the moonlight.

  I took his hand, as if indeed I were a troubled daughter, and said simply, “Mr. Perry, I’m afraid I very badly need your help this night, if you agree that my cause is just. There is a serious matter before us, regarding my brother Tom—who may be lost, sir—if we do not gain someone’s confidence and aid.”

  He frowned slightly, but never had I seen such a look of peacefulness and self-possession in a man’s eyes.

  “What is it, then, Miss Sigourney?” he said softly, patting my hand. “I am honored that you entrust this … difficulty to me. How may I help you and your brother?”

  I then started at the beginning and, with Tom listening in the shadows, told Mr. Perry the whole story of my running away with Tom to our life on the road, of my captivity at the hands of Mr. Dudley, of my escape and path here to Newspirit with the help of Mr. Dana and Miss Fuller, and of Tom’s misfortune while attemptin
g to subdue forever Mr. Dudley’s odious obsession for me.

  He listened, it seemed to me, gratefully (his white head slowly nodding with empathy and understanding), almost as if he were some wise judge in an Old Testament melodrama.

  “And where do you say your embattled brother is now?” he finally asked when I came to the end of my story.

  “Close by, Mr. Perry, close by. Will you help us, sir? Will you help us on our way this very night? I dare not ask of you any more than that. We have thrown ourselves into your confidence, your discretion, whatever happens. I trust you beyond any other here. Perhaps no one will ever connect Tom with this mayhem. Perhaps it will become just another of those unresolvable incidents of the highway.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, somewhat distracted by his own cogitations on the matter.

  “And no one has to know, ever, of your tenderness toward us in this plight,” I added.

  “Let me speak to him, to Tom,” Mr. Perry said, his voice lowered.

  I called Tom out of the shadows. The two men knew each other from Tom’s earlier visits, and they shook hands. Tom then, in answer to Mr. Perry’s questions, explained just how the accident had occurred, Mr. Perry all the while watching Tom carefully and calmly.

  The essence of the occurrence was as follows. Tom had caught Mr. Dudley out that noon on the road to the meeting I had proposed. It was not far from his parents’ house, where he now reigned since the death of his father. As Dudley rode by, Tom leapt out of hiding from the hedge by the roadside, pointed his pistol directly at Dudley’s face as he sat astride his rearing horse, and ordered him to dismount.

  In brief, as Tom explained it, no sooner had Dudley dismounted and faced Tom than he threw his heavy stick, which Dudley carried everywhere with him, directly into Tom’s face and rushed at Tom, roaring like an enraged bear. Tom tried to dodge the stick, but it caught him hard at the shoulder and in an instinct of self-defense, but without meaning to, Tom pulled the trigger. Before he fully realized what had happened, Mr. Dudley lay bleeding from his chest and gasping for air.

  “My only purpose that morning,” Tom said, “was to place Dudley on foot and in my power; then to warn him off by threatening his life, thrashing him severely, and leaving him by the roadside to consider his evil ways. To scare him off, you see, and give him a taste of justice.”

  “Did you not think that he would bring action against you?” Mr. Perry asked.

  “No, sir. I felt quite certain that the last thing he would wish was to have open to the scrutiny of the community and the courts the slightest hint of his cruel treatment of my sister.”

  “I see. Perhaps you are right. And this rougher justice would make him pay a certain … percentage, at the least, and you hoped scare him off for good.”

  “Precisely, sir. That was my thinking. Until it all went wrong.”

  “Well, we can say, I think, that justice of a sort was finally done, after hearing the story of Miss Sigourney’s captivity. Accidental justice. It’s a shame you had to carry a pistol in the first place, Tom. I would have met the devil with another stout cane, or better a horsewhip. But there’s nothing to be done about that now. You’ll pay for your error one way or another the rest of your life, Tom, I expect, if they don’t track this thing to your door first and hang you for an outlaw. Could anyone have seen this struggle?”

  “I saw no one, but I was in a daze of distraction. And why shouldn’t I fear that someone on the road might have seen something? I can not say, Mr. Perry.”

  “Yes, I see,” Mr. Perry said. He then cautioned me to stay behind at Newspirit. But I refused to abandon my brother, who had stood by me. Mr. Perry finally gave up trying to dissuade me. So we arranged to leave quietly with him for his homestead that night. I was to have thirty minutes to gather my things together and prepare for flight.

  I entered the house with Mr. Perry, went immediately to my room, placed my essentials into a bag, and then wrapped several unfinished canvases carefully and strapped them to my easel. These I handed out my window down to Tom standing below, where he loaded them into the ox-cart. I wrote a note thanking Mr. and Mrs. Miles for their patience and protection, but, I added, I had decided firmly that it was time for me to leave and earn my way in the world once again. I wished no formal leave-taking or discussions of my decision, I said, so I thought it best for everyone and for my continued security that I simply leave without lengthy explanation. Although I’m sure they hardly expected me to disappear as I did, I doubt that my removal came as an utter surprise.

  Eventually, when Mr. Perry took his leave, I went out again, wrapped in a shawl. A little way along the carriage path I met Mr. Perry in his ox-cart, climbed into the seat beside him, and in an effort to cheer Tom, who lay in back, whispered, “Once again, Brother, we make our escape under the moon in a farm wagon.”

  THIRTEEN

  A Canterbury tale from our retreat to Connecticut

  At his farm, Mr. Perry squeezed us into a swift buggy and drove rapidly through the night to Boston. We took passage the next morning on the Boston-Providence railway. Tom and I then traveled by stage to Plainfield and on to Canterbury from Providence, or Deo volente, as people say. In Canterbury our sister Sophronia Sperrie, “Sophy,” whom we had not seen in years, had settled with her husband, Timothy.

  Our hope was to live with the Sperries for a day or two while Tom and I found suitable lodgings and began to advertise our portrait services. Sophy’s husband was a dry-goods merchant, and they lived with their only child, Abigail, five years of age, in comfortable quarters above the store.

  He was a quiet, dignified little man, who held the unimpeachable respect of his community. But there was a kind of sadness about him that I could never fully fathom, especially considering sister Sophy’s ebullience. She had always had the habit when among friends of expressing unconventional opinions in the most comical fashion. Perhaps the source of his sorrow was their ill fortune with having children. Poor Sophronia had suffered through a number of painful stillbirths. Their success with little Abigail cost them Sophy’s ability ever to bear children again. This agony she had the resilience to overcome, at least in the face she turned to the world, but he, poor man, never quite overcame it. Whatever the source, this certain air of sadness gave a deep cast of sobriety to his person that, I imagine, in part accounted for the high regard with which other men of the world viewed him.

  But now all three Sperries welcomed us into their family. Sophy found it a lark to have us bustling about our business. And Tom and I found ourselves able to adjust to our new circumstances. I painted Sophy, Abigail, and Timothy, and these specimens together with Tom’s handbills brought people into the store asking after portraits. We had less luck in finding tolerable, inexpensive lodgings, so brother Timothy lent us the use of one of his rental properties—a snug cottage just out of town, beside the road to Plainfield, even while he continued to advertise for a suitable renter.

  Canterbury was an active, pretty village above a river that flowed smoothly over a bed of white sand and pebbles and among level green meadows and sloping banks fringed with weeping willows. High hills of chestnut forest demarcated the formidable western terminus of the valley. But to the east the slope downward appeared gentle and fertile, filled with farmlands divided by intersecting walls and fences and dotted with white farmhouses, orchards, and walnut shade trees. In haying times, the air was redolent with new-mown hay, and that sweet scent is what I still recall about that countryside.

  Our cottage sat beside a road, an important, dusty way on the stageline, bordered by rows of umbrageous maples, with occasional stately elms towering aloft, as did one such giant that sheltered our dwelling and shaded our dooryard.

  Neither Tom nor I had met Timothy Sperrie. But I came to respect him—his calm dignity, his courtesy and generosity toward us, and his success as a businessman and leader in Windham County. He loved to discuss with Tom the latest developments in textile manufacturing and the spreading railroads of New England.
Of course, we never told them of Mr. Dudley, only of our adventures on the road and in Boston. But what I found most intriguing about Sophy and Timothy was the love that held them together—perhaps deepened by their mutual suffering—despite the fundamental differences in their character.

  Nothing illustrates this difference and this bond better than a story of public disorder that took place during the first year of their marriage, in 1834, when Timothy, though born and raised in Canterbury, was just establishing himself as a merchant.

  I had heard townsfolk speaking in a disparaging fashion of a handsome house on Canterbury Green, known variously as the Luther Paine House, the Colored Academy, or other epithets of less civility. This is a two-story house in the proportionate turn-of-the-century style, with lovely fanlights at its center, elegant columnar cover boards, and delightful dentil frieze-work under the roof-cornice and above the arched doorway.

  When I first asked Sophy and Timothy about the house, they politely declined to explain this disparaging attitude. But in a private moment, Sophy freely told me about it. Most people regretted the incident now, she explained, and felt more than a little shame, but seven or eight years ago blood ran hot in their veins.

  The house was in fact infamous, having been from 1833 to 1834 the “Academy for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color.” The headmistress and proprietor, a Quaker spinster named Prudence Crandall, had established the female academy at the request of citizens in 1832. But in the fall of that year, Sophy explained, Miss Crandall admitted a local Negro girl.