The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton Read Online Free PDF

prosperity, an arctic blast which awakened them from their gorgeous dreams into the desolation of forsaken fidelity and confidence. I will not expostulate here upon the frequency with which this pattern of dreaming and waking repeats itself. The fall into desolation of that year was for me, however, fortuitous, causing my brother Thomas to return from Massachusetts where he had gone to make his way in textile manufacturing. Being a nephew, and ambitious, he had not seen an adequate future for himself on our uncle’s hardscrabble farm; he dreamt of making his fortune through his own mechanical skills and through acquiring a sound knowledge of manufacturing processes. I regretted his temporary failure, yet relished his presence once again. He was a little over a year older than I, about six feet in height, and endowed with the powerful frame and flesh of a young man who had, until recently, tilled the land all his life.
    As when we were children together, we once again spent a portion of our infrequent leisure discussing our aspirations, which of dire necessity had changed considerably on both our parts. Our relations, which had been those of brother and sister orphans, regained something of their old strength, and I entrusted Tom with thoughts I had not opened to others. Mainly, I revealed my fancies of traveling among my scattered relatives to secure more regular employment as a portraitist. I told Tom one evening that I saw no reason why I might not, just as others had, support myself in fair seasons by my skill.
    â€œHow much,” Tom immediately asked, “will people pay for a portrait, Allegra?”
    â€œWell, that depends,” I said. “One would scale one’s craft to a patron’s purse.”
    â€œCan you give me some idea then?”
    â€œTo speak in general, five to ten dollars for a person’s portrait to hang on a wall is not uncommon, slightly less to paint fine—miniature—and perhaps approaching twenty-five for large canvases or group portraits. More if one’s reputation rises.”
    â€œIs that so? Why, Allegra, that’s on a par with a cleric’s salary for a week! Nearly a month’s wages for John, is it not?” John was our uncle’s hired man.
    I could see Tom calculating a week’s work of one or two portraits a day, a level of performance I hoped to maintain by moving about to where the work was.
    â€œYour reputation could soon be enhanced as well,” he said as if musing.
    The next week, Tom grew more and more interested in my proposed travels, not only, I began to see, for their pecuniary potential but for the opportunity of adventure. He too had long ago developed a distaste for farm labors, and he was a born dreamer.
    Suffice to say he ultimately proposed that we act together upon my aspirations. He assured me that a young widow traveling about on her own in search of commissions, even among her limited family relations, would never do, but that he might accompany me as a kind of “assistant-promoter-protector, et cetera,” as he put it.
    â€œYou can show me how to mount and stretch and prepare canvases and boards,” Tom said earnestly, “and purchase supplies, grind pigments, and assist you in every way. And wouldn’t moving about the countryside be an agreeable way of earning one’s living—nay, perhaps fortune!—in these uncertain times. And mightn’t we make the acquaintance, dear sister, of the best society villages and centers of commerce can offer?”
    I agreed with his proposal that I should cast off my second mourning. For if I had already laid aside my veil and my black crape sleeves and collars for tarleton and cambric, our success might depend on a quiet, if untimely, laying aside of even my sable silks and trims for violets and, in summer, whites and colors. As a sobering memento, however, I resolved to wear the glass-and-gold brooch containing a lock of my dear husband’s