Fiddler's Green, Or a Wedding, a Ball, and the Singular Adventures of Sundry Moss

by Van Reid

“They say it alleviates a cough to raise your arms above your head,” Mister Walton suggested.

  “Are you Tobias Walton?” came a voice that managed something curiously unpleasant with those words.

  The portly fellow was at a disadvantage; the stranger stood more closely than social protocol might dictate, and Mister Walton had to adjust his spectacles and lean his head back to see who was addressing him. “I am,” he said.

  The newcomer towered over Mister Walton, and his great bearded visage looked like that of an angry prophet. “I am Harold Trowbridge,” thundered this awful vision, and through the commotion of Thump’s renewed fit of coughing, there could be heard the words underminer and daughter and philosophy.

  “Mister Walton suggests that you put your arms over your head,” Eagleton said between Thump’s booming expellations.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Mister Walton, even as he cast sympathetic glances back at his afflicted friend.

  “Something went down the wrong pipe,” said Horace McQuinn.

  Trowbridge shot his frown at Thump before saying to Mister Walton (more exactly than before but still in that dark, low tone of his), “I am Harold Trowbridge, and you are an underminer, your notorious doctrine a blot upon society! I have read extensively about your sort. My daughter may be taken in by your repellent philosophy, but you will not entangle her.”

  Sundry Moss could not hear everything the man was saying, but somewhere about the word blot he left the organ and stepped up to Mister Walton’s side.

  “Arms up. Arms up,” Eagleton was saying to Thump.

  “I am amazed!” declared Maven Flyce.

  “Your daughter?” Mister Walton was saying. “I beg your pardon, but your daughter, you say?”

  Notwithstanding Thump’s coughs, which were impressive, everyone else was now fixed upon Harold Trowbridge. “Mister Walton—” said Sundry.

  If Mister Walton was nonplussed, he was not to be daunted, and he said to the man in the mildest tone and with his mildest expression, “I am sorry, sir, but I don’t believe that I know your daughter.”

  “Of course you dorit know her!” roared the fellow.

  “Here, now,” said Calvin Drum under his breath.

  “You are a pawn of women’s suffrage and anarchy!” growled the lionesque man. “A busybody and an agitator!”

  “Good heavens!” said Mister Walton. He had never been the subject of such a litany. “An agitator?” he said with some humor.

  “Must be Moses, come down from the mountain,” suggested Horace.

  “He’ll be someone come down from his high seat in a moment,” said Sundry.

  Harold Trowbridge straightened to his full height, which was impressive, and said, as if to everyone within hearing, “You had better stay clear of decent folk or someone is liable to clean house with you!”

  “Clean house?” said Mister Walton. Contrary to Trowbridge’s purpose, the phrase almost made him laugh.

  “Perhaps,” said Sundry, “you’d like to step back onto the sidewalk where you and I can clean up the street somewhat first.”

  “Now, let’s not get all haired up,” said Officer Drum.

  Thump had both hands in the air now and was finding this helpful.

  “It’s all right, Sundry,” said Mister Walton. “There has been a misunderstanding, is all.”

  “Yes, this fellow misunderstands who he’s speaking to.”

  Ephram and Eagleton were incredulous. Thump was making deep harrumphing noises (which might have been indignation or might have been the remnants of his cough) as he held his arms above his head.

  “Now, someone explain the problem to me,” said Calvin Drum.

  “I am sure there isn’t one, Officer,” said Mister Walton.

  “And what can I do for you?” said the policeman to Trowbridge.

  “I require nothing from anyone but that this Walton, here, and his cronies watch their step around decent people.”

  “That’s Mister Walton,” said Sundry.

  “Do you know what day this is?” said Officer Drum. “Do you realize that this gentleman is to be married today?”

  “Cronies?” Eagleton was saying. He’d never heard of such a thing.

  “Good gracious!” said Ephram.

  “You’re a troop offreethinkers, aren’t you,” said Trowbridge. “Taking a woman under your order,” and his means of expressing woman came as close to making Mister Walton bristle as anything the man had uttered. “I know your tactics,” said Trowbridge. “A young, addle-headed girl might fall right into your schemes, and who can say how many haven’t already—” Trowbridge paused to glare at Thump, whose cough had subsided, but who had forgotten to lower his arms. Standing there with his hands above his head, the bearded Moosepathian looked like a Scottish dancer or perhaps a man who is being robbed.

  “Sir,” said Mister Walton, and quickly (for it was plain that Trowbridge had little patience to listen), “I must apologize.”

  “Apologize?” For the first time, Trowbridge’s threatening glare broke, ever so slightly, to let in a mote of doubt.

  “Mister Walton,” said Calvin Drum, “I’ve half a mind to run him in for breach of peace—and I don’t care who he is.”

  “No, no,” answered Mister Walton. “Yes, apologize, sir. For reasons, unknown to me, you imagine that I have strange designs upon your daughter, and I must believe that some error on my part is the cause of your confusion. I am very sorry that you have been led to this mistaken belief, and I assure you that previous to this moment, I have known no one by your family name, though I believe I can safely speak for all of us in saying that if your daughter is in any danger, we should be pleased to offer whatever help is in our strength. My best advice, of course, would be that you speak to this fine policeman here.”

  Miraculously Mister Walton managed this speech without the slightest hint of condescension, though he might reasonably have employed the tone that a person would use to placate an unruly child or even a madman; the embers of graciousness were so well banked within him that he was able to sympathize with this man’s distress no matter the circumstance or how unpleasant the man.

  “My card,” said Mister Walton, who produced the item from his coat pocket. “Please call on me when we won’t intrude upon everyone’s happy day.”

  “I know where you live!” growled Trowbridge as he backed away. “You have not seen the last of me. I shall be watching, and the devil to the police!”

  It occurred to Thump at this juncture to let his hands down.

  “Good heavens!” said Eagleton. “He was very angry about something.”

  Mister Walton appeared shaken, now that the scene was finished. “Thank you, Sundry, for being so obviously at my side. And you, Officer,” he said to Calvin Drum, “I was very glad to have you here.”

  “Don’t mind him,” said the policeman as he looked after the disappearing figure of Harold Trowbridge. “He’s a loose cannon.”

  “Do you know him?” asked Mister Walton.

  “I know who he is. He has a firm down by the Portland and Ogdensburg.”

  “I thought the name sounded familiar,” said Mister Walton.

  “Or you’ve read it in the court news. He’s been brought up twice on charges of assault and has leveled half a dozen lawsuits himself. There are stores in town that won’t accept his trade, or let him pass their threshold. His firm can’t keep a captain more than a year, they say.”

  “He sounds like an unhappy man,” said Mister Walton quietly.

  “He’s an idiot,” said the officer.

  “At least I’m not unique in securing his anger,” said the portly fellow, “however mysteriously I may have done so.”

  “Not at all,” assured the policeman. “He’s very sure that everyone is out to fleece him. There are those who say his poor wife died as a last resort.”

  “How melancholy.”

  “And I am not sure his way with her was confined to shouts and accusations,” continued the m
an.

  Mister Walton blinked at this and nodded his understanding; but he was disinclined to pursue the subject, and Officer Drum judiciously turned to praising the weather, which theme Eagleton was quick to join.

  “I was so amazed!” said Maven Flyce.

  “What could he have wanted?” asked Ephram in honest wonder.

  “I couldn’t say,” replied Mister Walton. “I think that no amount of discussion was going to reveal what perturbed him. But we shall not allow a single case of bad humor to dispel the good that fills the day.”

  “Begging your pardon, Mister Walton,” said Sundry as they returned to the organ, “but I was a little perturbed with your apology—at first.”

  “An apology is easy, isn’t it. I am sorry for anyone so distressed, and he seemed singularly unhealthy in his anger. But if I was able to wax sincere, despite his uncivil manner, it is because I was thinking about his daughter.”

  “Now, where did that drummer go?” wondered Sundry. “You don’t suppose he’s demonstrating his carpet sweeper on the parlor rug?”

  6. Time and Tide

  “Well!” said Miriam when she returned to Phileda’s chamber from the little parlor fronting the bride’s rooms at the City Hotel. “Your brother and Stuart are putting breakfast into them, and the management has sent flowers.” She held a large bouquet of roses and white sprays of elderberry.

  “How beautiful!” exclaimed Phileda. She was almost ready for the day, having been waited upon by her friend in the most ancient and gracious fashion. She took a breath of the flowers and directed their presentation on the low bureau by the window. Miriam stood back and admired her work before returning to Phileda’s hair, which was dark and long with only a stray gray strand here or there. “Don’t pluck it!” said Phileda when this possibility was offered the first one. “Two more will take its place.”

  “My mother used to pluck hers and give them to one of us children,” said Miriam. “‘Here,’ she would say, ‘you gave me this.’”

  “Probably you had.”

  “I was a terrible child,” admitted Miriam happily. “My own children have been benign in comparison.”

  “That was the other business I gave up,” said Phileda.

  “Children?”

  Phileda nodded. She had not taken her eyes from the bouquet. “It was more difficult, in its way, than deciding not to have a husband.”

  “And as premature.”

  “One must be as careful of what one gives up as prays for.”

  “Perhaps they are the same thing.”

  “That sounds like philosophy, Mrs. Nowell.”

  Miriam smiled. “You don’t know a thing about Toby’s nephew, do you.”

  “He’s the reason I’m getting married today, I suppose, though he couldn’t suspect it. He couldn’t suspect me at all.”

  “My children were almost what they were going to be when they were seven,” said Miriam.

  “I’ve done it very backwards, you know. Having a child by people I never met—years, in fact, before I ever so much as heard of them. It’s not the usual way to begin a marriage, or the ideal one, I daresay.” She looked at herself in the mirror and picked at the papers in her hair.

  “Ideal is what ends well, I suspect,” said Miriam. “Among my own people there have been family divided by tragedy, people raising their children’s children, widows raising children alone, adoption ... and desertion, I fear. Why, you’re like a sister to me.”

  Phileda smiled. She had known, heard, and felt this sentiment before.

  “Family is where you find it, my father used to say.” Miriam began to help Phileda with her curled papers. “Of course, that was when he tried to trade me to your parents for you. Family is where you find it.”

  “It’s not the usual way to begin a marriage,” said Phileda again.

  “Yes, well, marriage is unusual, no matter how usual it is.”

  “Oh, I do hope.”

  Miriam regarded Phileda in the mirror. “You didn’t feel—?” she began, then foundered with the unspoken thought, shook her head, and left off entirely to return to her duties.

  “No, I didn’t,” said Phileda, rather mysteriously and without the slightest hint of offense. “It was very mutual. And if it was quickly thought out, it was very well thought out, if you can believe me.”

  Miriam nodded. “I like him very much,” she said.

  Phileda only continued to smile. “It will be a great thing for him to be with someone from his own family again.”

  Mister Walton almost put Mr. Trowbridge from his mind when he returned to the prerituals of the day. He shaved while Sundry laid out his things, and he detained his friend from further chores by chatting with him from the washstand. “You’ll know more about children than I,” he admitted when the conversation chanced upon his nephew.

  “We were all kids once, I suppose,” said Sundry. “‘We raise as we have been raised,’ my father said to Martha Stivvard, who was dressing him down for some sin she saw in us kids one Sunday at church.”

  “I met her when we visited your family last September.”

  “You did cross swords.” The memory seemed to please Sundry.

  “She was concerned for the state of my soul,” said Mister Walton.

  “You might as well be a full-bloomed heathen, I guess, as be a Methodist.”

  “Our fellowship cherishes certain wild creeds.” Mister Walton dabbed at his face with a towel. “If your father is correct, however, then I may perform my duties pretty well. The older I grow, the more I admire my own parents. Perhaps I shall have learned something from them without knowing it. I am in need of some nice cuff links.”

  “You have a box of them on your bureau.”

  “I was thinking of a pair my father used to wear on special occasions. No, no, I’ll go look for them, thank you, Sundry.” Mister Walton paused in the middle of the room, the towel still in his hand and a dab or two of shaving soap dotting his cheek. “Do you know, my friend, it may sound odd, but I don’t know that I would have half the courage to venture forth upon this new path without your steady presence.”

  Sundry simply shook his head and chuckled softly. “Miss McCannon is steady enough, I think.”

  “Yes, she is, to be sure. But ‘duty shored by many things, and friendship lights the path it can not take itself.’” Mister Walton briefly gripped Sundry’s shoulder but did not look at him as he stepped into the hall.

  Mister Walton had visited the master bedroom several times since coming home last July, poking about his parents’ things for whatever tidings and memory. He was surprised this morning when he opened the door to discover that the room had been transformed. The bed, dressed in new clothes, was facing the windows, instead of between them. Fresh curtains hung in the room, and a new carpet covered the floor. “Good heavens!” he said as it occurred to him for the first time that he and Phileda would be spending the first night of their married life here. Obviously someone else, probably several people, had reached this conclusion before him. Sundry and the Baffins had been hard at work while he was out making arrangements and getting a marriage license.

  It was strange to find his parents’ room rearranged, and he paused to take stock of his emotions. He looked out the window and over the front lawn, the gate, and Spruce Street. The past two days had been so hectic that he had not thought very much about his family; now a pang of regret visited him, and he went to the chair by the writing desk to sit down.

  What a terrible thing that they could not know Phileda and that she could not know them. How very final that was. Only in God’s heaven would they ever meet. But here they would not know the solace of one another’s wisdom and kindness. How his mother would have doted on Phileda and with what pride his father would have claimed his new daughter-in-law as his own family! How Phileda would have loved them! And Aunt August. And his brother, lost at sea, years ago. How terrible, and terribly final, to think that they would not know one another on these shores.
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  Mister Walton forced himself to rise and walk to his father’s old bureau, which itself had been moved to another corner of the room. In the top drawer, in a small compartment, he found several sets of cuff links and also the pair he had been looking for. He shot his cuffs, held his left arm before him, and fingered the cuff link hole with the first post. Slowly, but with a kind of deliberateness, something substantial and unexpected in this simple task seemed to revive him, and as he secured his shirt sleeves, he had the odd sensation of putting on more than just his father’s cuff links.

  Like all children, Mister Walton was a peculiar compound of hereditary gifts and conscious and unconscious upbringing; like most children, in his middle age he had begun to mimic the appearance and manners of his parents and even ancestors unknown to him with uncanny, if unintentional, accuracy. In certain facial characteristics Mister Walton took after his mother and by extension her father, but in his portly carriage and balding, bespectacled countenance he otherwise favored his father and his father’s family as recorded in portraits along the front hall stairs. How much more deeply and truly did he favor one or take after the other inside himself, in his manners, his speech, and further into his faith and dreams than he could ever understand. What a lot of people it takes to make one person—parents and grandparents and ancestors termed great and great-great—all descending and joining, sometimes colliding, to strike a specific and previously unseen spark. Was it really doing justice to their labor, their laughter, and their love to think that they were gone, or that labor and laughter and love were able to quit the world at all?

  Standing in his parents’ bedroom, looking into the mirror above his father’s bureau, he could see bits of those people in his own face and in the frame of his shoulders and even in the way he looked over his spectacles at his own reflection. Truth be told, Phileda had already met these people; she had laughed at an old joke that his father used to tell, smiled at a bit of homely wisdom from his mother, but more important, she had heard such small prizes couched in a voice and a heart specifically crafted by God and handed down by his dear mother and father. And what had he encountered of Phileda’s family? He knew that something worthy had preceded her and that he was the blessed recipient of all that she represented of her people and also of every atom of her that was only Phileda McCannon, that could never have existed before and would never be reproduced.