by Van Reid
“Jacob!” came an older (and, to Sundry, a familiar) voice. He looked over his shoulder to see Aunt Beatrice standing at the kitchen door. “Jacob! Bring that flask of yours.”
“Auntie!” said Mr. Fern.
An elderly fellow shuffled in from the other room; he was taken aback at the sight of the farmer, but he considered the impatient hand of his intended bride and pulled something from the inside of his coat. “Well, by gum!” he said to the old woman. “How did you know I had that?”
Aunt Beatrice made a sound that was about equal parts peevishness and humor. She passed the flask to the woman in the dark kerchief, who quickly had the top off and the flask upended over her fingers.
There was something so rare and intimate about the handsome woman’s next act that it almost made Sundry flinch. When she had wet the tips of her fingers with the rum from the flask, she very softly knelt beside Mister Walton’s unconscious form and touched his lips.
Sundry held his breath and thought he waited an hour before Mister Walton’s mouth twitched. The dampened lips retracted, then a tip of the portly fellow’s tongue caught the flavor of what had been gently placed there. The round face was clearly startled. Then finally the eyes opened, not with full consciousness at first, but unseeing.
What’s happened to him? wondered Sundry with an inward gasp. Every terrible imagining ran through his heart till at last he detected a mounting awareness in those eyes.
Mister Walton blinked, squinted, then raised a hand to feel for his spectacles. He took a deep breath, tasted his lips once again, and said, “Good heavens! That is strong stuff!” He turned his head. “Sundry?”
“Mister Walton, I’m here.” Sundry gripped the older man’s hand
“Where’s Phileda?”
“Phil—? Phileda is in Orland, Mister Walton.”
“What? Yes, of course she is. How foolish of me. But where—?” Then the portly fellow took another deep breath, said “The fire!” and sat up, rubbing at the bruise he had contracted by falling on his forehead.
The room drew its own collective breath. “Praise God!” said Mr. Fern.
Sundry stood, cautioning his friend to lay down again.
“Nonsense!” said Mister Walton. “How did I get here?” He glanced around himself, blinking, and Sundry remembered the man’s spectacles. Mister Walton put these on, and again he blinked, looking about the room. “I fear I have been some nuisance.”
“Nonsense!” said the woman in the dark kerchief, gently mocking Mister Walton’s own words and tone. From the moment she stepped in from the kitchen, Sundry was struck by her strength and gentleness; he had been touched by her sweet demeanor when she brushed Mister Walton’s lips with the taste of rum; now he was fiercely loyal to her. Beyond her, through the hall and out the open front door, he could see the intemperate glow of the fire and hear the crash of something falling.
“A little extra touch of something?” said the woman. Someone passed her a cup and she dropped a dollop of rum from the flask into it.
Mister Walton caught sight of Aunt Beatrice, looked surprised for a moment, then nodded to her with courtly ease. He looked to Vergilius Fern.
“Please, Mister Walton,” said the man. “It will be good for you.”
“I think I’m fine, thank you,” said Mister Walton with a tired smile.
“For medicinal purposes?” said the woman in the dark kerchief.
“Your kindness has been medicine enough,” he assured her. He adjusted his spectacles on his nose and considered the handsome woman more carefully. “You look familiar to me, dear,” he said. “Have we met?”
“I am Dee Pilican,” she said, offering her hand.
Some might have been embarrassed in such circumstances, but Mister Walton was simply grateful. “Tobias Walton,” said he, standing uncertainly. Sundry held his hands out. “Thank you, Sundry,” said the bespectacled fellow. “I’m a little shaky, but it’s good to be on my feet.” He took Dee’s hand and considered her more closely. An expression of interest and curiosity touched his face, then he simply smiled and said, “It is a pleasure to meet you.”
“Mister Walton,” said Vergilius Fern, “I beg your forgiveness.”
“Whatever for?”
“For my obstinacy and anger, which has led you to these straits.”
The portly gentleman simply raised a hand and chuckled softly.
The farmer turned to his aunt.
“Vergil, Vergil,” she said from across the room, not without affection.
He considered Jacob Lister then, and the old man looked wry and philosophical. Further apology was perhaps working within Vergilius, but there was not quite enough of it, in the end, to get it out. He nodded to the room before leaving the house and returning to the larger matter at hand.
Strangers there could see that this was the culmination of some interesting business. The long night, and the battle against the fire, was not yet finished, however. Sundry saw Mister Walton to a chair. Someone came in with a burned shoulder and was laid on the cot. The general commotion in the makeshift hospital reasserted itself.
“Is there water in the kitchen?” wondered Sundry. He was desperately thirsty, and he thought Mister Walton must be in need of something clear and cold. In the room at the back of the house he found a pump and a glass. He was conscious, in the relative quiet of the kitchen, of a distinct change in the noise from without—the roar of the fire and the general din of men and movement had shifted strangely.
“The lower boardinghouse has been put out!” came a shout from the front door, which intelligence raised a chorus of cheers.
Sundry paused long enough to draw Mister Walton a drink and had only glanced out the kitchen window when he saw a ball of flame land upon a roof down one of the backstreets of Iceboro.
53. Thump Was Diligent
Once on shore, Thump made a run at the western bank of the Kennebec. Unused to negotiating such steep inclines, he mounted the first half of the slope with a straight-backed bearing (an admirable posture in most circumstances), his spine describing a line that was almost perpendicular to the ground. It proved difficult, however, to accommodate gravity with his head and feet so out of plumb with one another. Ephram and Eagleton, distracted by an explosion from the burning building, may have missed the sight of their friend as he tumbled back down the shore and bowled over several new arrivals.
“Good heavens!” said Eagleton when he turned back. Thump was making a second attempt upon the slope. “He must have forgotten something!”
When he did make the top of the riverbank, Thump was stunned by the noise and confusion. The bucket brigades that had formed from the shore to the perimeters of the blaze wavered as the heat and flames shifted with unseen atmospheric currents. Store owners and residents cluttered the streets with wagons, into which they piled their possessions, and frightened, sometimes rearing horses added their snorts and screams to the general roar of the fire and the shouts of men.
“I beg your pardon,” said Thump to one man running past. “Is there something I could be doing?” The fellow hardly glanced at Thump, though perhaps he hadn’t heard. “I beg your pardon!” Thump said again to the next man within reach. “Is there some way I might lend assistance?”
This fellow did pause long enough to say “What?” but hurried off before Thump could repeat himself.
Thump thought his head ached a bit, but he pressed on. “I am sorry to interrupt you, sir,” he said to the next man he encountered.
“Then don’t!” declared this latest contact.
“Help!” came a musical voice through the commotion. “Help me, please!”
“Yes?” said Thump. He was not tall enough to see over many heads, but he stretched his neck and bounced on his toes.
“Help!” came the voice again.
“Yes, yes?” He saw a woman, who appeared to be wearing her Sunday hat and who wrung her hands as she surveyed the milling street. “Ma’am,” said Thump, lifting his borrowed hat.
“I am at your service.”
“Oh, sir!” she cried. “It’s Finney!” The woman laid her hands upon Thump’s coat, as if she would shake him, and he looked down at this unexpected intimacy with small alarm. “She’s got herself up a tree to see what was about,” she was saying, “and cannot get herself down.”
“Good heavens!” said Thump, though it might have been in response to a man who sped past, clipping his elbow and spinning him about-face. “Good heavens!” said Thump again. “Where did you go?”
“I told her, that, at her age, it was a mistake,” the woman explained. Thump was confused by the direction of her voice, and she tugged at his arm to pull him back around. “I told her it was a mistake, but she simply won’t listen.” Still gripping his arm, she proceeded to weave her matronly form through the immediate press.
Thump bumped into several people. “Is she near the flames?” he wondered aloud, and when she did not hear him he shouted, “Is she near the fire?”
“The tree is behind Main Street, but you can see the top branches over the roof there.” She pointed. “A single stray spark might set the whole thing on fire!”
Thump was increasingly alarmed, not the least at the prospect of climbing a tree, and he wondered if he might recruit some help along the way. His “I beg your pardon” and “Is there a ladder handy?” went unheard, however, and soon they were hurrying down a side street. With the immediate clamor of the fire left behind, Thump realized what din had been assaulting his ears, and what cruel heat had brought a flush to his bearded face, rankling his neck beneath a starched collar. He felt, contrarily, as if he were only now reaching the peak of a sudden fever.
The tree that was their immediate destination was wrapped in a strange glow wherever the direct light of the fire reached it. “Finney!” the woman called into the branches. She leaned against the trunk and peered into the leaves. “Finney? You stay where you are! This man will come up for you!”
Thump heard a tiny voice from above.
“No, dear!” called the woman. “You stay right there! This gentleman is quite pleased to come and get you!” She looked at Thump and said, “Mr.—?”
“Thump, ma’am,” he said and raised his hat once again. “Joseph Thump, (of the Exeter Thumps), ma’am, at your service.”
“Did you hear that?” called the woman into the tree. She looked very plaintive with her hands clasped prayerfully. “He’s on his way!”
Thump was momentarily stunned by this emotional tableau, but then he shook himself and scuttled closer to the tree. Even the nearest branches seemed quite high. Peering up, he asked, “Where is she?”
“Finney?” called the woman melodiously.
Then Thump heard the voice more plainly.
“Meeeooooow!”
Thump peered some more. “I believe there’s a cat up there,” he said.
“What?” said the woman.
“A cat,” he said. “I believe there’s a cat up there.”
For some inexplicable reason the woman swatted him.
Thump looked as if he had been pinched.
“Meeeooooow!” came the voice of the cat. He supposed he would have to deal with the animal while he was up there.
“Ah—this Finney,” he said. “Is she a Miss or Mrs.?”
54. And Ephrarm and Eagleton, Too
Ephram and Eagleton felt dizzy and lost when they reached the top of the bank and the full realization of what they were nearing—both the fire and the attempt to control it—was brought to bear upon their senses. They were swept up in the tumult.
The hoboes scattered toward the opposite side of Iceboro’s main street, where pockets of firefighters were mounting a defense against the encroaching flames. Men appeared at open windows, across from the burning ice-house, and upon the roofs above, unfurling dampened blankets against the heat. Already there were bucket brigades passing water to these new stations. Men and women came and went from these lines, and others scurried in the places between—some with personal effects rescued from nearby houses, others with equipment to fight the fires, and still some few more who might have had their hands in their pockets, they appeared so ineffectual.
“Good heavens, Ephram!” declared Eagleton.
“My thoughts exactly, my friend,” returned Ephram.
“We must find Thump,” said Eagleton.
“Yes,” said Ephram.
“Where could he have gone?” Eagleton gaped at the blizzard of flame and sparks and smoke. “I do hope everyone got out!”
“I wouldn’t want to be in there,” came a long drawl.
“Henry says, ‘I wouldn’t want to be in there,’” came its echo.
Ephram and Eagleton were surprised to find that the long-eared hobo and his shorter, rounder companion were standing at their elbows.
There was a crash from within the burning structure and the nearby line of firefighters retreated. Ephram and Eagleton and the two hoboes ran ahead to avoid being knocked down, and they all reconnoitered some yards away.
Two men—one a small, sharp-nosed fellow with a long-billed cap, the other with a great round belly—stood in front of Eagleton, and the first man leaned close to the second, shouting to be heard above the noise of the fire. “She’s going to get loose,” he said, which phrase startled Eagleton.
“I don’t want to be here when she does,” said the larger man.
There came another wave of heat and sparks that scattered everyone. Eagleton found himself huddled in an narrow alley opposite the fire, his eyes temporarily blinded in the relative darkness. “We’d better get to it before she breaks away,” came a voice beside his left ear.
Eagleton blinked into the nearby darkness; as his sight returned, he could see a sharp nose beneath a billed cap and two eyes blinking back at him. “Ga!” said the sharp-nosed fellow. He straightened to his feet, looked around, and, locating his big-bellied companion, caught him by the sleeve. “What are you about?” demanded the little man, and he ushered his companion down the alley—a little snarly dog herding a befuddled bear.
“Ephram!” called Eagleton, but it was not Ephram standing beside him. “Henry!” he said.
“My name’s Bob,” drawled the long-eared hobo.
Eagleton was mystified. Indicating the shorter, plumper fellow beyond the long-eared one, Eagleton said, “Is he Henry, then?”
“No, he’s Bill.”
“Ephram!” called Eagleton.
“Yes, my friend,” came the welcome response from further down the alley. They could see Ephram now in the indirect glow of the great fire.
“Those men who went off just now,” said Eagleton. “I have reason to believe they may have Mrs. Roberto a prisoner somewhere nearby!”
“Good heavens, Eagleton!” declared Ephram.
“Were they the fellows?” said Bob, looking awed and a little fearful
“Henry says, ‘Were they the fellows?’” said Bill, looking similarly stricken.
Eagleton considered the two hoboes with an expression of the utmost puzzlement. He said to Ephram, “I overheard them talking about someone—’she,’ they said—getting loose!”
“Ever in the fore!” said Ephram and truer words could not have been spoken, for Eagleton was, at that moment, hurrying down the alley.
“Come, come!” said Ephram. “No time to gather the troops!” And he, and then Bob and Bill, hurried after.
Astride a horse and breasting the hill above Iceboro at about two o’clock that morning, Edward Fischer—a long retired Kennebec County sheriff who had wakened in the night and seen the glow in the east from his bedroom window—was momentarily stunned by the scene before him.
I had smelled smoke for a mile or more, (he would later write to his father in Bath) and the steady glow over the east had grown in height and intensity as I rode on, but I was not prepared for the sudden view of Iceboro and the fire in its midst when I came over the last hill. Gaping down at the town, I caught glimpses of men and women, ranked in lines, and others r
ushing about at a dozen missions.
The orange flames shot against the sky and silhouetted that which was between the fire and myself, so that the outskirts of the town were invisible to me. It was a sight for Halloween and with the roar of the flames and the voices of desperate men upon the wind, there need only be witches on brooms circling above to complete the picture of some corner of the netherworld.
Suddenly, a new shout went up—louder than the others, for it was in concert—and I could see that one of the great boardinghouses constructed for the ice cutters had begun to smolder.
Ephram and Eagleton heard this same cry go up, but they did not waver in their resolve to rescue Mrs. Roberto. The darkness in the alley was far from complete, once their eyes had adjusted; tongues of flame peered over the nearby roofs, and the glow of the fire reflected dully upon the clouds.
Neither of them had very much experience in the art of furtive movement and they tried several modes of tiptoeing before Eagleton hit upon one that seemed appropriate. He had recalled a passage from the novel Not Without Fondness, by Mrs. Penelope Laurel Charmaine, in which the hero was described (in the act of stalking the villain) as “slipping with forestlike stealth upon his metatarsal pads.” Eagleton had gone to the library to learn where to find his own “metatarsal pads,” and here was another instance oflife magnified by literature, for otherwise he would never have considered perambulating the shadowed alley in quite that manner. (He wasn’t too sure how to slip, however and admitted later that he probably did no better than bob.) With this unusual gait, and his arms held out in hoops to facilitate balance, he might have given a simian impression, but this, too, was perhaps not an inopportune model for a man attempting “forestlike stealth.”
Admiring Eagleton’s learned example, Ephram quickly adopted a similar form of locomotion; Bill attempted the same, and, after several experimental steps, even Bob was bobbing.
Reaching the end of the alley, Eagleton looked around the comer, but the two suspicious men were not in sight. Ephram peered after his friend. The clamor behind them echoed in the empty backstreet, and light, too, played strangely upon the roofs and the tops of trees.