by Van Reid
Burne heard a series of broken phrases from the mouth of Mr. Normell—“his own free will” and “looking for them, I’m sure” among them—and the father pricked up his ears without otherwise shifting his slumped posture. Mr. Normell stopped to glance back at the carriage with a nervous sort of smile that set Burne’s teeth on edge.
The larger man came back to the chaise and looked at the father and child. “Very well,” he said with a wheezing sigh. “I’m Charles Normell,” he said. “Welcome to Normell Acres. Get them down to the summerhouse, Jeffrey.”
Jeffrey Normell scrambled his portly frame back into the driver’s seat, and they recommenced their progress. Burne wavered between apathy for his own well-being and vague dread for that of his child. He leaned to one side, then the other with the rocking of the chaise, and with each tilt to his left he turned his head a little till he had Charles Normell in sight again. The man wore a strange expression—wild and perhaps hostile; then Charles caught Burne’s gaze, and a startled smile wrapped around his broad face.
They met and passed several other people further down the road—large, round-faced folk with stolid faces and curious, anxious eyes—plainly dressed country men and women and their scrubbed-faced children.
Jeffrey Normell did not look at them, but he glanced back at the bottle in Burne’s hand and asked, “Hide that, would you?”
One handsome, round-faced woman, with her hair in a bun and an apron tucked under one arm, reached for the two children before her and gathered them in as the carriage passed. Burne was not surprised to find the cork for his bottle in a pocket. Even in a stupor he knew enough to take care of comfort. He corked the bottle and slipped it into his coat. His small energy began to evanesce till breathing itself sapped his strength.
Further down the road the assembly took on the size of a small mob, the chaise drawing people in its wake as a troller hopes to draw fish. They walked alongside or fell in behind the rig, a ruddy, heavyset clan with the occasional trim figure standing out like a birch among rugged oaks. They had dark hair, as a rule, though Burne saw a red head or two through the haze of his renewed weakness; these people were so obviously of a single lineage that he had the dreamlike sensation of having crossed into another country or discovering the land of a separate and previously unknown race.
The carriage came within sight of several homes—neat little capes and a single larger edifice of colonial origin—then left these dwellings for a rougher lane that led to the pond, a small clapboarded house, and several outbuildings of stone and wood. The crowd followed. On the pond itself there were several boats, each manned by several people—some with nets—who took interest in the gathering at the shore. Beyond the outbuildings, as if waiting on the other side of an invisible line, stood a separate group of men and women, girls and boys, narrow as the Normells were broad—taller, paler, and blond. The two groups were like distinct hives, humming just below the level of dangerous agitation.
“Who are they?” asked Melanie.
“Droones,” said Mr. Normell, and a very unjolly timbre took possession of his voice. “Beyond one or two of their elders, I can tell you no more. We know they are Droones because we do not recognize them or know their names.”
One of these people, a tall, narrow woman of indeterminate years, came forward, past the unseen margin that fenced the others in, and approached the carriage. “What have you there, Mr. Normell?” she asked.
The portly driver blinked, surprised to see her or perhaps to see where she was standing. “Visitors, Mrs. Droone,” he said with a nervous laugh.
“Have you found someone?” she asked, looking at Burne and then Melanie as if she thought this unlikely. “Our Bradford is not back yet.”
“I did,” said Jeffrey, but as if she had accused him of something and he were denying it. “And he will be along presently.”
Her head came up like a watchful eagle’s. Burne tried to muster the energy to meet her gaze but found himself considering a litde girl in a white dress who stood some feet behind this tall woman. The girl carried a doll over her shoulder and added her own uncertainty to that of the elders around her. Further back, beyond the unseen demarcation, there were other children with narrow faces and similar expressions, but the adults in the two crowds had the look of fear and barely concealed desperation.
The tall woman’s face was itself hardened with apprehension and doubt. Only Melanie appeared undaunted, exhibiting more self-possession than the whole lot of them. She was a six-year-old child having an adventure—and almost enjoying it. This poise did not come from her father—he knew that better than anyone—but was more of his grandmother, whose own self-possession had not been a dark thing but full of humor and wit and promise.
Charles Normell came puffing down the road and his presence among them appeared to balance that of the tall woman’s. She did not retreat, but she drew herself up as if ready to squeeze herself through a narrow passage.
Burne felt himself fading. “Where are we?” he said. He was slumped in the back of the chaise, frail and ashen.
“You are in China, sir,” said Mrs. Droone, but in a tone that suggested he could do better.
“He told me that,” said Burne. “But why are we here?” After a breath or two, he said, “What’s this mob all about?”
“It has nothing to do with you, Mr. Ring,” said Charles Normell.
“Who are these two?” demanded Mrs. Droone.
“We’re waiting for Mr. Moss,” said Melanie.
“Moss?” said her father angrily. “Then he brought us here.”
“No, Daddy,” said Melanie. “You made us leave while he was gone.”
Burne remembered this, but not clearly.
“Mr. Moss is coming,” said Melanie. “Didn’t you say?”
“Yes, I did, lad,” came the voice of Jeffrey Normell, almost sounding as he had on the train.
Burne understood nothing and had reached the end of his strength, barely propped up by the bottle in his coat pocket. He dwindled visibly, like a clouding patch of sunlight on a bedsheet.
“Daddy?” said Melanie.
A muddle of voices rose up, frightened and angry and petulant. “Take them into the summerhouse,” said Charles.
“What are they here for?” said someone.
Burne perceived it all through the fog of his sudden relapse. Hands grasped him; an arm reached behind his back, lifting, then carrying him to the house and to a bed. He was looking up at his daughter’s anxious face. Beyond her were tall screened windows and a maple branch swaying in the breeze and the leaves on the tree were alike yet each different (he knew) and he was wondering about them and the branch and the tree and how it looked if you stood outside the building and saw the tree beside it and how the tree gave shade and the sun lit the top of the tree and the water beyond and the breeze that moved the branches was why he noticed the tree in the first place and the air and a bird sang and there was shadow—shade and shadow and shadow.
“Daddy?” said Melanie. She stood by the bed and clutched at his arm. “Daddy?”
“Mailon,” said Burne, which utterance he intended to be his last act of parental responsibility.
40. Tke Deafened Man Thought Whispers Were Silence
They came to a room where the sun picked its way past a toplofty maple to fall across a four-posted bed. Burne looked small and ineffectual on the brightly quilted counterpane, his graying hair damping the white pillow and his face as pale as the sheets.
“Daddy?” said Melanie, standing by the bed and gripping his arm. “Daddy?” In her other hand she still held the clutch, which she had thought, this time, to snatch hold of as they left the carriage.
“Mailon,” said her father softly. She almost corrected him, but she remembered that Mr. Moss had introduced her to Mr. Normell as Mailon and that, dressed as she was, everyone here would think her a boy. “Boys aren’t so hard pressed as girls,” her father had said. Oddly, she had been feeling a little less like a boy in the pas
t few days, but she would honor what she perceived as her father’s intent in using the old name.
“Stand aside, stand aside,” said a wide and elderly woman who was coming into the room. Jeffrey Normell and then Charles came after, echoing her “Stand aside.” People shifted and moved but did not leave the room as she leaned over the stricken man, instructed that his coat and shirt be unbuttoned. She felt his face and wrists and finally his neck.
“What is that?” she said when his coat was turned back and she heard something hard in his pocket fall upon the bedcovers. Reaching into the pocket, she retrieved the bottle, saying testily, “What have you brought me?” She turned upon her heel, her round, rosy face twisted into an almost childish expression of pique. “What have you brought me?”
“That’s Mr. Ring,” said Jeffrey, as if this would explain everything.
“Not anymore, it isn’t,” said the old woman.
Melanie did not look at her or Jeffrey Normell or even her father but considered the faces of the men who had carried Burne to the bed. They were respectable-looking fellows, their shirts rolled up to the elbows and some with hats in their hands. Similarly, the little girl did not glean the import of the old woman’s words from the words themselves, but from the faces of these men as they understood and cast sidelong glances at the child.
“He hasn’t been very well,” said Melanie, and for the look on her face, she might have been defending him against accusation.
Jeffrey looked past Charles’s shoulder from the other side of the room. “What do you mean, not anymore?”
“Who are these people?” said the old woman.
“Now, now, Auntie,” said Charles, stepping forward.
“Who was this man?” she amended.
“There is another man coming who will be able to help us,” said Charles, not sounding very convinced himself.
“I should hope so!” said the woman.
“Aunt Gisselle!” said Charles with a little more severity than he had heretofore exhibited.
“How do you know he’s coming?” she said. For all her pique, and despite the general noise of agreement from the others in the room, she appeared uncertain of her strength against Charles. She gained an inch or two of height, however, and considerable more assurance by turning back to Jeffrey and saying again, “How do you know he’s coming?”
“He’s following these folk,” said Charles.
“Is he? And what is he going to say when he finds one of them dead?”
“He hasn’t been well,” explained Jeffrey.
“How much excuse do you think that people around here need to burn every one of us out of the county?” declared the woman.
“That was years ago,” said one of the otherwise silent men, but without much conviction.
“Aunt Gisselle,” said Charles.
“It’s not like that anymore,” said someone.
“It will be again, mark my word!”
“Auntie, you should go out,” said Charles. “Now.”
“Mr. Moss understood that this fellow was unwell,” said Jeffrey.
“And you!” she said, pointing an accusatory finger. “All of us in more trouble than we know what to do with, and you bring a man to die here, and a boy to watch it! It’s a good thing he is dead, I suppose, or what will the Droones think?”
“That’s enough,” barked Charles. One of the men who had carried Burne looked ready to speak, but then Charles said, “Out of the room, Auntie! Out of the house!” And when she did not move to obey, he laid hold of her arm, pulled her away from the bed, and shoved her none too gently toward the door.
There stood Mrs. Droone, almost at Jeffrey’s shoulder, and none of them knew how long she had been listening and watching.
“The idea!” said Aunt Gisselle, slapping her nephew’s hand till he let her go.
“Indeed” said Mrs. Droone.
“Mrs. Droone,” said Charles, “I do not remember inviting you into this house.”
“I do not remember inviting you to keep secrets.”
“This has nothing to do with the problem at hand,” said Charles.
“Doesn’t it?” Charles Normell might prod his own aunt toward the door, but he was not so sure about showing Mrs. Droone the same. “This is not a time to be crossing the Droones, Charles Normell,” said the woman.
“This not a time to threaten the Normells, Bridey Droone.”
“Do you see what you have got us into!” said Aunt Gisselle to Jeffrey. She had the look of near hysterics. “How can you be so stupid when there is so much at stake!”
“Take her out of here!” Charles shouted, and the other men looked glad to comply—and to follow her out. “And you, too, Mrs. Droone, if you please. Unless you would like to deal with this situation.”
“I may need to, by the look of things,” said the woman.
“I will call you if need arises,” said Charles without revealing any irony.
The woman startled him by advancing into the room, and before anyone could stop her, she approached the bed and laid a hand against Burne Ring’s neck.
“Are you satisfied?” asked Charles.
“Perhaps,” she said.
Melanie moved to step out of the woman’s shadow. “That’s my father,” said the little girl with her own note of warning.
The woman regarded Melanie for the first time. “I am sorry, child,” she said, not sounding very sorry. “But there is pressing business hereabouts that you could not be expected to understand.”
“Are you satisfied?” asked Charles again.
“Not very,” said the imposing woman. “The fact that he is dead may only mean that he died sooner than you expected.”
“We have not forgotten our agreement,” said Charles.
“Nor what might occur if you do, I trust.”
“Jeffrey could not find anyone willing to come with him,” said Charles, “but he did meet a man traveling with these two and is certain this fellow will follow them. This man came willingly, and his son with him. Your Bradford hasn’t returned, has he?”
“Mr. Moss will be along presently,” Jeffrey assured everyone. “I am quite sure. Don’t you think so, Mailon?”
Melanie thought before answering. “Yes,” she said finally. She very nearly added, “And you had better take care when he does, for he is a member of the Moosepath League,” but she had heard enough about Daniel Boone’s dealings with enemy tribes and the hairbreadth escapes of Mountain Wilma to know that one did not reveal the strength of one’s forces. “He’ll come,” she said. She had complete faith in Mr. Moss.
Mrs. Droone scanned the room with her hawklike eye, then turned about and quit the room. It was clear, from the sound, that a crowd had gathered in the fore of the house.
Charles’s round face was red with anger, his eyes protruding as he stared after the woman and his relatives. He leveled this gaze on Jeffrey. “This Mr. Moss of yours had better be prompt,” he hissed.
“Oh, yes,” said Jeffrey. “I’m sure he will be.”
Charles cast a glance toward the outer room. “She’s right, you know.”
“What? Who?”
“Aunt Gisselle.”
“But it won’t matter once Mr. Moss sets things aright—”
“Won’t it?”
“I looked and looked,” said Jeffrey. “It’s very enervating, and I thought I had done quite well. To find someone with the gift is complex, but to find someone with the gift who is willing to come here—” Jeffrey pointed at Charles and almost shouted, “You try that! I thought I was very clever.”
“That remains to be seen,” said Charles. He had calmed somewhat, and it must have occurred to him that they were speaking in front of the boy. “How do you know this Mr. Moss can help us?”
“He told me so,” said Jeffrey, and when Charles did not respond, or not in so many words, he added, “I had a feeling—”
“How could you have a feeling?”
“I did. About him.” There was a
brief silence; then Jeffrey finished with, “He seemed trustworthy.”
“Then I guess we shall see if trustworthy serves. If you think it has been difficult traveling about and looking for someone, you should have stayed and stared across the line at Droones. Or watched everyone else stand about and fret and brood. I’m not sure you didn’t have the better portion.”
They had reached an impasse or at least a lack of anything further to say. Charles walked past Jeffrey and went out of the room. Jeffrey began to follow him but stopped and turned to Melanie. “Come, lad,” he said, uncertain and distracted. “We’ll find something for you to eat.”
“I should stay here, I think,” she said.
“What?” he said. “Oh, yes.” There was a dead man on the bed whose remains should be arranged in a dignified manner and also the child who must be dealt with. “There’s a great deal happening,” he told her, as if this would excuse everything. “It’s very important that your Mr. Moss arrives,” he said, looking at his own hands. “And soon, I think.” He was talking to himself now, and nodding to himself.
“I should stay here,” she said.
Jeffrey Normell seemed honesdy troubled to leave the child in this room alone, but perhaps not honestly enough. “We’ll find you something to eat,” he said, and left.
Though hungry, Melanie did not want anything from these people. Letting her little clutch drop to the floor, she sat in the chair by the bed and watched her father as she had done coundess times before. The sun had lowered, and the shadows of the maple tree had crept up the inner wall. The room was even nicer than her room at the Faithful Mermaid—or finer, at least. Tim had told her about Mr. Thump’s apartments, which he had visited a week or so ago with his father, and she wondered if they were as well decked out as this: framed prints of cows and fields and flocked wallpaper, a beautiful bowl and pitcher on a highly wrought washstand, a dresser, and a pretty blue and green rug beneath the four-posted bed.