by Van Reid
Tim frowned again, but he liked a mystery. “Can Mailon come?”
“He can tag along,” said Thaddeus. Mailon Ring was the next thing to an orphan. Mailon was a scrawny creature who waited outside the kitchen door for Timothy every morning. The day hardly seemed comprehensive to Thaddeus till he had seen that dirty face peering in from the alley. “He’ll have to wait outside while we visit Mr. Thump.”
“Mr. Thump?” said Tim. The name had an odd but oddly likable ring to it. When Tim was dressed and he had his rubber-soled sneakers on, they went to the rear of the house by a long corridor, then down the narrow back stairs to the kitchen. On the way, Tim could smell things cooking—bacon and biscuits and meat pies—and coffee boiling on the stove. The Faithful Mermaid’s day was just beginning, and the older Spark children were busy with their mother bustling about the kitchen and tavern room.
“Tim and I are going to break Uncle Gill out of jail!” announced Thaddeus when he and his youngest son reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Father!” declared Mabel Spark (it being common along the coast of Maine in those days for wives and husbands to refer to one another as Father and Mother). “Talking like that before your son!”
A low whistle came from skinny little Mailon at the kitchen door. He stood close to the threshold so that the door’s gable would protect him from the damp.
“What do you mean, before my son?” said Thaddeus. “It was his idea before it was mine. I thought maybe the two of you had discussed it.”
Timothy’s sisters Minerva and Betty thought this funny, but their humor was lost beneath their mother’s protestations. “Good heavens, Thaddeus Spark!” she said. “I’ll never guess what will come out of you next!” But she laughed herself, saying, “Break him out!” and she ruffled Tim’s hair as she passed him, her hand covered with flour.
“Get some breakfast, Chief,” said Thaddeus, taking his own turn at mussing his son’s hair.
Tim sat down to a plate of bacon and eggs that his sister Minerva had served up.
“Have you eaten, Mailon?” asked Thaddeus.
The boy at the kitchen door nodded. Mrs. Spark wouldn’t let the dirt-covered kid into her kitchen, but she always brought him a plate food if he was nearby at breakfast (and sometimes lunch and dinner). Mailon’s mother was dead and his father nocturnal, and the lion’s share of Mailon’s sustenance came from the backdoor of the Faithful Mermaid.
“Timothy and I are going over to Mr. Thump’s,” said Thaddeus, leaning over the stove to consider a stew as it simmered.
“What are you going to do there?” asked Betty.
“Reciprocate,” said the father.
Tim looked up from his breakfast and frowned. Betty turned about and rolled her eyes, which made Minerva laugh. Betty and Minerva were good girls, seventeen and twelve, respectively, but a good deal too pretty for Thaddeus’s peace of mind. Their sister Annabelle, who was sixteen, was prettier still.
“You laugh, but my old ma used to tell me, ‘Thaddeus, one must reciprocate!’”
“So does a pitman on a steam engine,” suggested Davey, who was bringing dishes from the tavern room to be washed.
“Do you know what I’m talking about?” piped Thaddeus, one eye squinted in the direction of his oldest progeny.
“Not exactly,” said Davey with a sheepish grin.
“I didn’t think so. Wrecking a piano is a good deal less fractious than flattening a police officer, and we will reciprocate accordingly.”
“I’d go myself and scrub his house top to bottom, I’m that grateful,” said Mabel Spark, “but I can’t help wondering what this Mr. Thump was doing over to the Weary Sailor, if he’s the gentleman you say he is.”
“He and his friends were lost, from what I hear tell,” said Thaddeus. “I had invited them to come by and visit, and I guess they were on their way when they ran into your uncle’s performance.”
“You never told me where you met them,” said Mabel Spark.
Thaddeus waved a hand in the air, as if he couldn’t recall, or that it was too small a business to bother explaining. He hadn’t told anyone about his short adventure in front of the Shipswood Restaurant.
Mabel Spark made a face but let Thaddeus go on this point. “I’d like to meet the man,” she said, “and thank him myself.”
“Oh, you’ll think highly of him if you do,” said Thaddeus, and there was the light of humor in his eyes that he did not trouble to explain. “He’s a very handsome fellow.”
“Oh, go on with you!” said Mrs. Spark.
“No, I wouldn’t doubt, were anything to happen to me, but you’d up and marry him.”
“My land, Thaddeus!” she said, and she swatted him with the cloth in her hand. “I can’t guess what gets into you!”
Thaddeus laughed very happily, giggling like a child.
“He’s probably homelier than a hedge fence,” suggested Davey.
Something about this statement caused Thaddeus to scratch at his beard. “Believe me,” said Thaddeus, “he is a very presentable fellow.”
“Take an umbrella,” said his wife.
7. Since Last Summer
“Sundry and I have had a change in plans,” said Mister Walton when they met Phileda McCannon in the foyer of the City Hotel at quarter to seven.
“Have you?” she said, as if she had suspected this.
He laughed. “We are going to visit his uncle.”
“How nice.” She took the hat from his hands and brushed at the wet crown. “And he lives in—”
“Norridgewock.”
“Which is—”
“Quite north of Portland, actually, but Sundry seems to think,” Mister Walton confessed, looking into his eyebrows, “that traveling with you to Brunswick might do for the first leg of the trip.”
“Does he?” Once she had groomed his hat to her satisfaction, she gave it back to him. Phileda was like her old self this morning, and had recovered enough from last night’s misgivings to say “I knew I could count on you” in a manner that might have been admonishment or gratitude. She looked almost demure as she took his arm and they went out in the rain together, behind Sundry and a porter who were carrying her bags. Mister Walton held the umbrella. She smiled, looking down at the steps before them, like a child holding a cherished secret.
In the carriage she continued to hold his arm, which was not required, and she inclined her head a little so that Mister Walton thought, briefly, that she might rest it on his shoulder. Sundry considered the view out the window.
“Will the members be looking for you?” she asked quietly.
“They will forgive us, I think, if we leave town unannounced,” said Mister Walton. “It seemed a little early to rouse them, but Mr. Baffin will ring them up later in the day and tell them.”
The rain drummed on the roof of the cab. “If I were a gambler,” she said, “I would wager money that there will be an adventure in this.”
“Without the rest of the club?” said Sundry.
Miss McCannon laughed lightly.
Mister Walton patted her hand. “We will enter into no intrigues, nor court unusual company without you.”
“Of course, there’s my uncle,” amended Sundry
“Aside from Sundry’s uncle.”
The enclosed platform at Portland’s Grand Trunk Depot was loud with the downpour, with the waiting train’s impatient chuff of steam, the voices and movement of passengers and porters, hurrying footsteps, and finally with the call from the conductor of’All aboard for Martin’s Point, Falmouth Foreside, Cumberland Foreside, Yarmouth, South Freeport, Freeport, Brunswick, and points Ea-aist!” Clusters of electric incandescents gave off enough of a yellowish glow so that the rainy sky at either end of the high-roofed structure looked, in contrast, like twilight.
“I do love to ride in the rain,” said Phileda.
Mister Walton nodded his agreement as he handed her up the steps. “Up ahead,” he said pleasantly when they entered the nearest car and paused at the
end of the aisle. There were, as yet, very few people seated, so it was a small surprise to his companions that it mattered to him what end of the conveyance they occupied.
But while they were standing at the platform, an abundance of red hair had caught Mister Walton’s eye, the shade of which he recognized as surely as a familiar face. Once in the car, Sundry’s gaze fell upon the red hair and the head of long, dark hair beside it, and he knew where they would sit.
Mister Walton and his companions approached the redhead and the brunette from behind, even as the countenance of a third woman, middle-aged and in winter colors, sitting opposite these two, came into view. This woman took note of Mister Walton with something like a start, but the expression on her face lightened slightly after her initial frown. Mister Walton paused at the shoulder of the redheaded woman and inquired, with un-disguised delight, if the seats directly across the aisle were spoken for.
“Mister Walton!” cried the redhead, and if his delight was undisguised hers burst forth like a sudden beam of sunshine.
“Miss Underwood!” he replied with a happy chuckle, and his pleasure was not lessened as the beautiful young woman threw her arms about his neck.
“Oh! I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to see you! Didn’t I tell you, Priscilla, that we would meet someone?”
The dark-haired woman, perhaps a year or so younger than Miss Underwood, (which would put her just above twenty) looked as pleased, though in a quiet way, to see the bespectacled fellow. She gave the slightest nod to Phileda McCannon, and perhaps something slighter still to Sundry, who himself seemed unusually reticent in his greeting.
“Aunt Grace,” Miss Underwood was saying, “I was just telling Priscilla we would meet someone today! I just knew it!”
“Mrs. Morningside,” said Mister Walton with a bow to the older woman.
“Mister Walton,” said Grace Morningside. She appeared uncomfortable with her niece’s exuberance. “Cordelia,” she said, “people will be wanting the aisle.”
“My fault entirely,” said Mister Walton, undaunted by the woman’s reserve. “Miss Morningside,” he said to the black-haired young woman.
Priscilla Morningside smiled sweetly. “It’s so good to see you again, Mister Walton.”
“You remember my good friend, Sundry Moss,” he said to the three women.
“Of course we do!” said Cordelia, and she stuck her hand out in almost masculine fashion, which caused everyone but her aunt to smile, she was otherwise so feminine.
Sundry shook her hand and pronounced, “Miss Underwood.”
“I have read such things about you both,” declared Cordelia, “and the Moosepath League! Why, I thought we might have provided you with enough adventure! You remember Mr. Moss, Aunt Grace? Priscilla?”
Grace Morningside nodded curtly to Sundry; her daughter Priscilla barely met his eyes but said, “It is good to see you, Mr. Moss.”
“It is my pleasure,” he said quietly.
“And this,” continued Mister Walton, “is my ... very good ... friend Miss Phileda McCannon. Phileda, Mrs. Grace Morningside, her daughter Priscilla, and her niece Cordelia Underwood.”
Grace nodded in a stately manner, Priscilla smiled and said, “How very nice to meet you,” but Cordelia, who brightened at Mister Walton’s use of Phileda’s Christian name, rather than the less familiar “Miss McCannon,” gave the woman a wide-eyed smile and shook her hand.
“I have heard very definite things about you, Miss Underwood,” said Phileda pleasantly.
“Oh, dear,” said Cordelia, who looked as though she might laugh.
“If you don’t mind,” said Mister Walton, as he and Sundry and Phileda occupied the seats across the aisle. Another passenger begged their pardon and passed between. “Are you going to Ellsworth?” Mister Walton inquired; he knew Ellsworth to be the Morningside’s home.
“Only to Freeport—well, to South Freeport,” said Cordelia. “To visit Aunt Delia.”
“You must remember me to her,” said Mister Walton. “I recall with great pleasure the last Fourth of July with Mrs. Frost.” Seventy-nine-year-old Delia Frost was Cordelia’s great-aunt as well as her namesake, and Mister Walton had become very fond of the woman during his single outing with her and the Underwoods. “But I understand congratulations are long overdue,” he said with sudden memory.
“Thank you,” said Cordelia, for she was engaged to be married in June.
“And how is Mr. Scott?”
“Mr. Scott is very much ‘Mr. Scott’ these days,” said Cordelia, as if this were an exasperating state of affairs though great happiness and mischief showed in her eyes.
“I am glad to hear it,” said Mister Walton.
“Cordelia is glad to say it, you can be sure,” said Priscilla, who had summoned enough courage to speak. She had marvelous long black hair but wore it in a manner that might have seemed more appropriate to a girl rather than a young woman. Her dress, too, was not as stylish or mature as Cordelia’s. Mister Walton imagined that Priscilla’s mother had some influence in these matters. Priscilla Morningside’s features were a shade lengthy, which kept them from appearing quite as fine as her cousin’s, but behind round spectacles her dark eyes were beautiful and expressive, and if her smile was not as immediately dazzling as Cordelia’s it was easily drawn out by the present company. She appeared in a constant state of blush this morning.
“And may I guess at the maid of honor?” said Mister Walton.
Priscilla’s smile deepened and Cordelia snatched up her cousin’s hand; she still felt a little giddy, it was plain, when she thought about it all—the handsome and brawny hunting guide, Dresden Scott, their approaching nuptials, the wedding and reception. “Mr. Scott is building a house on my land outside of Millinocket,” said Cordelia, and everything she said—the employment of the name ‘Mr. Scott’ for the man she loved and the reference to ‘my“ land where he was laboring on a house (their home-to-be!)—was filled with a happy wryness for which she had a particular genius. She who was born and bred upon a city street, within sound of the harbor buoys, was to make her life in the north and the interior where there were only outpost villages and scattered logging and hunting camps—but life was to be an adventure!
A family with five young children came clamoring down the aisle but sat some seats away. A man who didn’t remove his hat sat in the seat behind Cordelia and Priscilla. Other folk wandered in and sat in small groups. Conversation about the weather could be heard. Someone was advancing their prediction about the local baseball team.
“All aboard!” came the last call of the conductor. He passed Priscilla’s window, walking the length of the train and closing the doors to the passenger cars.
Mister Walton asked after Cordelia’s parents and Priscilla’s brother. Ethan Morningside, it was reported, had been clipping newspaper articles about the Moosepath League’s exploits and keeping them in a scrapbook. “We have a future member, I am sure,” said Mister Walton happily. Mrs. Morningside looked vaguely pained by this thought.
Cordelia said to Phileda, “Aunt Delia promises there is a dress shop in Freeport that is famous for its Boston fashions.”
“Ah,” said Miss McCannon, “the trousseau.”
“Actually, Priscilla and I must have gowns for Mrs. Morrell’s June Ball,” said Cordelia with a conspiratorial air.
“Really?” said Phileda musically. “I plan to be back in Portland for the ball myself.”
“Are you all going?” asked Cordelia. She was bright with her and Priscilla’s errand, and brighter still with the unexpected company on the way. She could chatter without seeming nonsensical and be heard by people several rows away without seeming loud. “I warn you, Mister Walton,” she said, “your name will be on my dance card.”
“And happily,” he said.
There was a noisy blast of steam from the engine and the train moved a speculative foot or so. The next hiss was less startling and the train shifted forward most of a yard and then another and th
en two yards and they could sense through the windows the gray light of the overcast day steadily approaching and then there was rain spattering on the glass and a view of the harbor on their right, with Munjoy Hill, the bowling hall, and the Portland Observatory above and to the left.
“Mister Walton was the life of the Freeport Ball last Fourth of July,” Cordelia informed Phileda.
“Was he?” said Phileda with a sly sidelong glance at Mister Walton.
“And are you going, Mr. Moss?” asked Cordelia.
Sundry looked a little shy of the question. “I’m not sure that a country fellow would be of much use at a society ball, Miss Underwood.”
“I don’t know why not!” said she. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Mr. Moss came to the ball, Priscilla?”
“Cordelia!” said Aunt Grace quietly.
Now it was Priscilla’s turn to appear shy. “That would be very nice, I am sure,” she said, hardly looking up.
“I may have to think about it,” said Sundry, with a slight bow of his head. Cordelia and Phileda caught his gaze lingering on Priscilla Morningside as the young woman looked away.
“We will expect you,” said Cordelia. Her smile broadened whenever she looked from Mister Walton to Phileda and each time that she caught sight of the fond expression on Mister Walton’s face whenever his eyes fell upon Miss McCannon. She was aware, besides, of a potent sort of anxiety between Mr. Moss and her cousin. “We still remember your quick thinking and courage last summer, Mr. Moss,” said Cordelia, referring to their shared adventure of the previous July. Then she added, “Don’t we, Priscilla?”
“Oh, yes, certainly,” said Priscilla, sounding anything but certain.
“I don’t remember accomplishing very much,” said Sundry.
“Sundry will hear no praise of himself, I’m afraid,” said Mister Walton, quick to rescue his friend.
“We will trouble him with it anyway,” said Cordelia. “Won’t we, Priscilla—Ow!” Priscilla may have accidently kicked her cousin’s ankle as she shifted her own feet.
Mrs. Morningside said little, to begin with, though Mister Walton politely referred to her in each matter. Grace Morningside had the demeanor of someone who was born old. Grace had lost her husband several years before and had yet to completely shed her widow’s clothes. She was a thin, not un-handsome woman who gave the outward appearance of a wisp until things became difficult (or she deemed them difficult), whereupon she might surprise everyone with the weight of her opinions and abilities. For the most part, however, she sometimes suffered from headaches and fainting spells.