by Van Reid
“Is this the Weary Sailor?” they asked themselves. The tavern looked placid, and even homely, as it dozed, and one could almost believe that the exhausted mariner on the sign above the door would find his needed rest in this place. Only the wreck of a piano on the porch gave evidence to what had happened last Thursday night—not a week ago!
And was this ... well, the house of the “Woman in 12A?” And was that the roof by which they escaped? Again, they were struck by the tranquility, and they paused to number the surrounding buildings, the intervening days, and the events that brought them full circle to this street.
Eagleton stood with his hands behind his back and considered the brown building. “Do you suppose they have moved out?” he wondered. It seemed the only explanation for such a change in the local atmosphere. Then he was conscious of a pretty face smiling out at him from a second-story window. The young lady fluttered delicate fingers at him, and he was quite sure that she winked! Eagleton looked like a soldier standing at attention, which demeanor hardly altered when he walked away. His friends hurried to keep up.
Further up the street, three young fellows were slouched against a store-front wall, and one of these shouted, “Did your ship come in, Thaddeus? I thought you must be the mayor and his friends.”
Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump raised their hats as they hastened past. Curiously, the three young men sported toppers that were very much like the Moosepathian’s own new hats, which, in turn, were identical to those gone missing on Friday night.
“Several days of seasonable weather expected,” announced Eagleton, glancing with great interest at these three well-crowned fellows. “Winds shifting to the southwest, with scattered clouds in the forecast.”
“High tide at twelve minutes before eleven,” announced Thump, his eyes wide with curiosity.
“It’s thirty-five minutes past the hour of five,” informed Ephram. Heal-most tripped while casting a look over his shoulder.
“That’s not Thaddeus,” said one of the slouchers, and, “Don’t you know?” said another. “That’s Mr. Thump who saved Calvin Drum and put Fuzz Hadley in his place. They say he’s a long-lost cousin to Thaddeus. He made his fortune digging up Captain Kidd’s treasure up toward Scotia.”
The men on the porch craned their necks to keep the three men in sight, and when, as one, the Moosepathians looked back, the storefront slouchers raised their hats.
The Moosepathians were pleased to reach Brackett Street, however amiable Danforth Street in daylight had proved. Another man and then a woman greeted Thump with the name of Thaddeus and approving, if mystified, smiles.
What halted the members of the club next was the sign of the Faithful Mermaid. On their previous visit, they had entered the tavern by the back door and had not been privy to the prevailing spirit of the place. They had heard of mermaids, of course, and even seen a modest rendition of one or two—in the newspapers or perhaps a book of children’s tales—but they had never seen (nor even imagined) anything so conspicuously ladylike that was also so ... well, so conspicuously ladylike.
“That is a very striking emblem,” said Eagleton.
“She does seem very ... faithful,” said Ephram. It touched him to see the mermaid gaze upon the heart in her hand with such ardent expression.
“Hmmm,” said Thump. There was a robust quality about the mermaid that he did admire. Tightly gripping the day’s Portland Courier, he cleared his throat and said “Hmmm” again.
“It’s Mr. Thump!” called Minerva, when the three men entered the tavern. She hurried to the double doors at the back of the tavern room, stuck her head into the kitchen, and repeated her news. “It’s Mr. Thump and his friends!”
An interested stir had prefaced this announcement; some were simply surprised to see such obvious gentlemen entering the Faithful Mermaid; others had met the Moosepath League on their last visit; everyone had been informed of them, about the business on Danforth Street and the search for Mrs. Roberto. The kitchen doors burst wide and Thaddeus Q. Spark barreled into the room, startling the members of the club all over again with his resemblance to Thump.
“Mr. Thump! Mr. Thump!” he piped in his high voice. “Mr. Eagleton! Mr. Ephram! We heard you were back in town!” He greeted them with handshakes that were positively Moosepathian in their honest delight and energy. “‘Oh, the rumor mill is never still,’ my mother used to say.”
The rest of the family, as well as the large and looming Jefford Paisley, the Todd brothers Tom and Patrick (who weren’t related), Captains Broad and Huffle, and some of the laundrywomen pressed around the celebrated fellows, and the tavern room grew noisy with exclamation and inquiry.
“We heard you rescued Mrs. Roberto from a band of thieves and a burning building!” said Patrick Todd.
“Oh, dear!” said one of the laundrywomen. “I don’t know if my heart can take it!” The laundrywomen were fully enamored of the Moosepath League by now and it was an agony to think of its gallant members in such dangerous straits.
“What were the villains up to?” Captain Huffle wondered aloud.
“They told me,” said Tom Todd, “that you went into a camp of hoboes and raised them like an army!” He did not characterize who they were.
“There was Mr. Pfelt,” admitted Eagleton. “And his fellows.”
“Not Paulus Pfelt?” said Thaddeus.
“He never told us his Christian appellation,” said Eagleton.
“He had a singular sobriquet,” admitted Ephram
“He had a what?” said one of the Todd brothers.
“He called himself ...” Ephram hesitated—’Big Eye.”
“Gory!” said someone.
“Big Eye Pfelt!” said Jefford. Others echoed his amazement that the Moosepath had fallen in with one of the most notorious road men known to the State of Maine.
Two Indian scouts rushed into the tavern room, looking like they had spotted a whole war party of Hurons. “We heard up the street that Mr. Thump was here!” declared Timothy Spark. His blond hair stuck out like surprise in several places.
“Why, it’s the young gentlemen who rescued us the other night,” said Ephram without embarrassment. He and his fellows offered their hands again.
“How good it is to see you again,” said Eagleton.
“We will not soon forget the service you did us,” promised Thump
“We’re keeping them a little closer these days,” said Thaddeus.
“They are good boys,” said Eagleton.
One of them is, thought Thaddeus, and he almost said this aloud.
Several people in the room might have said something like it. Most people were at a loss to know what to think about Melanie Ring. She was a mystery, and they could not imagine how they had ever imagined that she was a boy. No one had seen very far behind that dirty face, and now that it was washed clean, more or less, her features seemed much too fine for a boy’s. Eyes that had peered from sooty surroundings like starlight in a well looked less hollow and only large and expressive. “Her mother was a pretty woman,” said someone. Melanie was still dressed like a boy, and the members of the club were unaware of the change in the child they knew as Mailon (or, rather, the change in people’s perception of her).
“Move aside,” said Mabel Spark, then, “Right there. Serve them up,” as if her daughters didn’t know how to wait on guests. The young women piled the table with the best the house could provide—plates laden with onion-smothered beef and gravy, baked vegetables and potato, yeast rolls the size of Thump’s fist, and great flagons of spring water purchased in yard-high bottles from Poland Spring. (The abstemious proclivities of the Moosepath League had been made plain to the Sparks.) “And bring coffee,” Mabel said as her daughters hurried back to the kitchen for further comestibles. “You are hungry, gentlemen?” she inquired, almost fearfully.
They were famished. They were always famished after an excursion (and quite often before one as well). They were only a little indefinite about the precipitate mann
er in which they had been served. Things moved at a more stately pace at the Shipswood Restaurant. Violin music was played. The waiter offered a variety of dishes, and perhaps half an hour or forty-five minutes was necessary to decide on the evening’s repast. For all its headlong preperation, the meal before them was not only adequate but hearty in the extreme.
Ephram cleared his throat.
“It looks marvelous,” said Eagleton, and if his capacity were half as big as his eyes he would do the meal proper justice.
Thump looked up from his dish and said, “I believe that I have brought my appetite with me, Mrs. Spark.” It was something Mr. Moss often said.
“Very good, Thump!” said Ephram.
“Ever in the fore!” said Eagleton, truer words than which had never been said, for, even as they spoke, Thump was gallantly addressing his plate with fork and knife.
Mabel Spark looked as pleased as she might to see a baby take its first drink from a cup, the general response around the table was one of sympathetic pleasure, and the members of the club indulged their hunger amid the sort of privacy bears at the zoo can expect at dinnertime. All chairs and tables were oriented in their direction, and all gazes attentively marked the completeness of their appetite, as well as the very decorous manner in which it was satisfied. Jefford Paisley promised how he’d “never seen anyone eat so nice or so well.”
“It is no wonder things turned out well,” said Ephram when they were considering the apple pie served up for dessert. “Our chairman was there.” Then he added, “Mister Walton.”
“Mister Walton,” said Thaddeus, as if this name should mean something to him. He was seated with his arms folded over the back of his chair. He had a pipe clenched in his teeth.
“And Sundry Moss,” added Eagleton.
“Sundry Moss?” said Thaddeus. There was a name he couldn’t mistake. “I met those fellows out in front of the Shipswood,” he said.
“Yes, they said they met you,” said Eagleton, remembering now
“When were you at the Shipswood?” asked Mabel of her husband.
“You should have brought them along,” said Thaddeus, nearly avoiding the question.
“They are in Bowdoinham still,” ventured Ephram, “but I should not be surprised to hear that they are home on the morrow.”
“You must bring them by,” said Thaddeus.
When the Moosepathians were finished eating and coffee made the rounds, they told the story of their recent adventures as accurately as they could recall. The tavern was tense with people eager to know how the Moosepath League had tracked down Mrs. Roberto and her assailants, how they had raised an army of hoboes and arrived in time to help put out the fire at Iceboro, how Ephram and Eagleton aided in the capture of looters, and, most of all, how Thump had rescued the extraordinary ascensionist who had herself been bravely rescuing poor animals from certain death.
Timothy and Melanie sat in a comer trying to be inconspicuous.
“My!” said Melanie when the tale was finished. “That was some business!”
Everyone agreed, and the humble way in which the members of the club expressed their involvement only served to raise them in the estimation of their listeners. The laundrywomen, who ordered drinks at an ever increasing rate as the tale unfolded, were near to wailing when it was done.
“And to think it began with a calling card!” said Mabel Spark.
“A calling card?” said someone.
“Oh, yes,” said another who was privy to the early details of the adventure. And so the front of the tale must be told, this time by several people, and finally someone asked to see the storied piece of pasteboard.
“Alas,” said Thump, “my wallet went missing that night.”
“Ah!” said Thaddeus Q. Spark, and he pulled Thump’s wallet from his pocket. “You left it in your coat, Mr. Thump. I found it when I came home that night and have been carrying it ever since.”
Thump was elated and thanked his host several times over. From the wallet he carefully removed a white piece of paper, which he held reverently over the table. No one offered to touch the card, much less take it from him, but they all crowded about, leaned forward with their hands behind their backs, and considered the flowing script upon it.
“Mrs. Roberto,” read someone aloud. The summer sun and sunlit meadows and bright summer skies might have been invested in that single piece of pasteboard.
“Well, God bless her,” said Mrs. Spark. “And God bless you good men for protecting her.” After a moment, she added, “Thaddeus, don’t forget to give Mr. Thump his clothes.”
62.... And What They Didn’t Know
(June 2, 1897)
“Ah, well,” said Mother Pilican to Ezra Porch, which creature slumbered in her lap. “I wouldn’t know what to think if my own name was on the back of a book.” She had signed the last page with the name of Miss Marion Elfaid Platte. It was a young woman’s book, she thought. Melanie Bright’s decision, in the end, to forsake Roger Dald, despite his confession and his assurances against all future misdeed, was perhaps a little bold for Miss Plotte’s readers, but Mrs. Rudolpha Limington Harold would never have written it, and Mr. Wilmington Edward Northstrophe would have sent Melanie off to someplace exotic like Turkey or Argentina instead of Paris.
“What’s that?” said Dee. She came in from the pantry with a plate in her hands. “You’re not going to use your name?”
“I hardly believe I write them, once they’re done.” Mother Pilican flexed her hand, looking at it as if it were strange. “What would your father have thought?” She had said this before.
“What would he have thought?” said Dee.
“Oh, God bless him! He would have laughed.”
Dee thought her father would have laughed, but with pleasure. “I don’t think I’ll go to Portland this summer,” she said.
“What?”
“I think I’ll see what summer in Dresden is like. It’s been too long.”
“Oh, Dee! I’m fine. And Fale hasn’t changed for ten years.”
“I know. But wouldn’t it be fun with Teddy and Bill?”
Mrs. Pilican smiled just to think of them. “They would certainly love to have you.” She would never tell Dee that every June the whole lot of them walked around in a daze of melancholy for a week after she left.
“I think I’ll stay this summer.” Dee almost spoke in a whisper.
“I won’t say I’ll be sorry to have you.” The old woman stroked the sleeping cat, without thinking what she was doing and soon Mr. Porch was stretching his yellow sides, showing his claws while he yawned, and blinking back as if he didn’t know her. She tickled his chin.
Mr. Porch trilled contentedly and stretched some more. Then he fell off Mother Pilican’s lap with a maladroit flop. He looked startled, but was quick to regain his dignity, or the pretense of it. He paid no attention to their laughter and washed one of his forefeet. Dee picked him up, which was just what they both needed. “Did Mr. Siegfried’s letter explain about his mysterious telegram?” she asked. They had received the telegram on Sunday; the letter had arrived that morning.
“He explained,” said the old woman, “but I don’t know if he made it any less mysterious. And who do you suppose those three men turned out to be?”
She was reaching into her dress pocket when they heard someone on the front steps. The door opened and Fale stepped inside. “Company,” he said. A shadow fell across the threshold, and, even before he appeared with his hat in hand, Dee knew it was Olin Bell.
“Olin!” said Mother Pilican, and Dee also spoke his name, but silently.
“I just came by to see how you were,” he said, taking them all in with a glance but meaning Dee.
“I just put the last sentence to my last book,” said the old woman.
Fale laughed.
“I consider it great good luck that you should arrive at just this minute,” said Mother Pilican to Olin.
Olin couldn’t imagine it. He reddened and Dee thou
ght she should rescue him. “We still see smoke, now and again, over the hill,” she said. She walked to the hall with Mr. Porch in her arms and looked out the door.
“It’s an awful mess,” said Olin. He had been over to Iceboro, the last day or so, helping to clean up after the fire.
“There’s Hank,” said Dee, catching sight of the tall gray horse tied up on the other side of the fence across the street.
“Yes,” said Olin wryly. “He lets me ride him.”
“And you want to put a plow behind him,” chided Dee playfully.
“It would make him useful to a farmer,” said Olin, but he gazed after the horse with obvious pride.
A cloud of late mayflies hovered in the morning air above the fence. Hank tossed his head at them and nickered in a bass tone. The odd call of a cowbird rose from the hill beyond. Dee was briefly lost in the scene. Olin reached up to stroke the cat in her arms and Mr. Porch reacted with a lightning strike. “Whoa!” said Olin, and he pulled his hand back.
“Ezra Porch!” declared Dee, and she dropped the cat. Mr. Porch let out a jealous rowl and skittered up the stairs, where he watched balefully from between the balusters. “Olin, I’m sorry!” said Dee, and she took up the man’s hand in hers.
Olin laughed. “It’s nothing alongside being kicked by a cow.”
“But you’re bleeding!”
He almost snatched his hand away from her, partly in embarrassment, partly to put the scratch to his mouth, but he stopped as if to see what would happen. Dee realized, then, that she was holding his hand, that it was strong and callous in her soft palm, and that she felt a wave of sudden pleasure. She looked up into his blue eyes, imagined that he was experiencing something similar, and what she felt was suddenly elevated by several degrees of geometric progression. It had something to do with an absolute lack of fear.