Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  I am more than a little excited, as you can imagine, and cannot wait to see you. Give my love to your mother, and tell her to be well for I plan to be like a brisk wind when I arrive. No lack of energy will be allowed. Perhaps we can talk her into letting you go with us to Millinocket. Mama and Papa send their love, and I send mine.

  Your Loving Cousin,

  Cordelia

  8 Curiosity by the Barrel

  LIKE MANY OF THE CITY’S INHABITANTS, MISTER WALTON HAD ONLY SEEN the Mariners’ Hospital from the tree-lined road below it. The hospital and its grounds, however, were at their best that day, as the old mare pulled Horace’s rig into the curving drive: the sunlit lawns were freshly cut; the middle-aged oaks were dense with leaves, restless in the breeze from the sea; the rhododendrons were bright with pink flowers; and the roses overlooking the rocky shore were just peeking from their bonnets.

  At Horace’s suggestion Mister Walton pulled the rig next to an out-building, where several posts offered hitching rings, and by the time he had clambered to the ground, Horace had the old mare tethered. Mister Walton stroked the horse’s neck and smiled out at the expanse of harbor and ocean visible from the knoll.

  “Come on in and meet Mr. Privy,” said Horace.

  “I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Mister Walton said.

  “Ridiculous. You couldn’t intrude on Mr. Privy if you were carrying a barrel of bait.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  Horace made a face and waved one hand in mock disgust. With a speed and method equal to the old mare’s, he led the way to the hospital’s entrance. In deference to Horace’s sore shoulder, Mister Walton opened the great oak door, and they stepped into a magnificent and echoing hall. An older woman at a large desk greeted Horace. “How are you today, Mr. McQuinn?”

  “No better,” said Horace, with a short snicker.

  “No better than you ought to be, you mean,” she returned with a sort of good-humored severity.

  “Well, it has been said.” He laughed again. “How’s Mr. Privy?”

  “He’s quite well today, Mr. McQuinn. He’ll be very happy to see you.”

  Mister Walton followed Horace, who led the way to a side corridor, stopping occasionally to peer in on an acquaintance or to inquire of someone’s health; he might have been a doctor making his daily rounds. Once, he simply halted in the doorway to a patient’s room and pointed at the man. “You be good!” he insisted.

  “You be good, you old dodger!” returned the man with great delight.

  Horace laughed to himself as he continued down the hall, and Mister Walton was both gratified and amazed at the goodwill spread simply by the pointing of Horace’s smoke-stained finger.

  At the last room off the corridor, Horace knocked lightly, though the door was ajar. Then he stepped inside and Mister Walton quietly followed him. Propped up on several pillows, his bed by a bright window that overlooked the green lawns and broad ocean, slept an ancient white-bearded man, long in limb and large of frame, yet somehow small in his great age.

  The room was Spartan in its accoutrements—a bed, a chair, and a small table, but little else. The rhododendrons by his window might have been planted just for him, however, so insistently did they peer in with their young flowers. For all its bareness, the room was bright and cheery.

  By an accident of their circuitous route through the hospital, they could see Horace’s wagon and the old mare pulling lazily at the grass, which only added to the peacefulness of the scene.

  “Sit down, sit down,” said Horace. He pointed to the single chair in the room, and when Mister Walton protested to take the only seat, Horace propped himself on the windowsill and said it again: “Sit down, sit down.”

  Mister Walton did sit down, and together they watched the ancient gentleman gently sleep.

  “This is Mr. Privy,” said Horace.

  “He seems to be resting nicely,” observed Mister Walton.

  “Oh, he will.”

  They watched Mr. Privy some more. There was something beautiful about the ancient fellow—his snow-white beard, the smooth crown of his head shining in the light of the sun, the magnificent wrinkles of his face, his peaceful slumber. Several minutes passed, in which this peaceful slumber was the single object of study, and it occurred to Mister Walton that this was Mr. Privy’s normal state. Softly, he asked Horace if the fellow ever wakened.

  “Once or twice a day,” said Horace. “He eats a little boiled fish and milk, nibbles a bit of a cracker, thanks you, and nods off.”

  “Does he ever know you’re here?”

  “Perhaps” was Horace’s only answer.

  “And you visit him often,” said Mister Walton.

  “He was a carpenter aboard the first ship I sailed on. I was more than a little wet behind the ears—and proud, you know. Mr. Privy made things a little easier for me. He was a great strapping fellow, but kind of gentle. Never heard him so much as say damn.”

  “He sounds a wonderful fellow,” said Mister Walton with great feeling.

  “I’ve known a lot like him, one way or another,” replied Horace.

  It was true—often there is a sort of unstudied gentility to the hard workers of the world; Mister Walton had seen it himself among seamen and lumpers, loggers, and farmers. And he was thinking of some of these gentlemen laborers, when a man appeared on the lawn between the window and Horace’s wagon. Mister Walton might have taken little notice of this fellow except for a frown that the man threw in his direction, followed by a satisfied nod in Horace’s.

  The man wore a blue vest, a red neckerchief, and the sleeves of his striped shirt were rolled up. With the crook of one finger he held a short jacket over his shoulder, and in the other hand a brown hat, with which he waved to someone below him, nearer the shore.

  Horace was talking of his days before the mast, and how a storm had once blown his ship off course to Greenland. Mister Walton listened with great interest, though he found himself occasionally distracted by the man on the lawn. Horace was painting the picture of a small community of Eskimos, and explaining how a Micmac Indian who sailed with him thought them primitive, when a second man appeared just outside the window—then a third, and a fourth—each of them mimicking the first man’s glances at Mister Walton and Horace. All told, there were five of them gathered there when they spoke among themselves, agreed on some point, and advanced to the door of the outbuilding next to which Mister Walton had left the horse and rig.

  The Micmac, according to Horace, had finished his sailing days in England, where he was hired by a merchant’s wife as a butler. Contrarily, Horace claimed to have also sailed with an ex-butler, who was of the express notion that high tea was the most significant sign of advanced civilization.

  “Pardon me,” said Mister Walton at this juncture, “but there are some men out there who seem to have mistaken your rig for another’s.” Indeed, the five men were carrying, in shifting pairs, a series of large barrels from the outbuilding and loading them onto the back of the wagon.

  “I’m just delivering something for a friend,” explained Horace. “He’s up country, tending to a sick aunt.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Mister Walton, though it seemed to him that there was something surreptitious about the loading of the wagon. Perhaps they did not have official sanction to be using the outbuilding. “I hope she’s better.”

  “She’s mending.”

  Mr. Privy made a snorting sound in his sleep and they thought he might wake, but soon it was obvious that he was enjoying himself too much. A nurse came in and shifted his pillows, and Horace bantered with her good-naturedly, suggesting to her that Mister Walton might be looking for a wife. Mister Walton blushed wonderfully and laughed aloud.

  “Oh, good heavens!” he said as he laughed. “I wouldn’t wish myself on any good woman!”

  “Perhaps Miss Helen, here, isn’t so good,” suggested Horace, finding it necessary to ward off a playful cuff from the woman. “Ooh!” he protested. “Such viole
nce.”

  Mister Walton was so diverted by this rambunctious scene that he did not see where or when the five men disappeared, after they had finished loading Horace’s wagon.

  But he did wonder, as he climbed onto the bench seat of the rig, what was in the barrels behind them. “Pickles, perhaps,” said Horace, glancing back from his perch, but offered no explanation why five unidentified men would appear from nowhere to load his wagon with eight large barrels of pickles. “A favor’s a favor,” he added with a profound shrug.

  The old mare sauntered them down the drive to the road and pulled them back in the direction of the city. The day had reached a senses-filling zenith with the height of the sun. Even the air over the mouth of Back Cove had warmed considerably, and the horse’s methodical pace, along with the peaceful watch they had taken over Mr. Privy’s sleep, conspired to lull Mister Walton into a placid state of mind. Horace was less talkative on the return trip, but his good-natured driver was content to amble along in comparative quiet. It was only afterwards that Mister Walton remembered passing a policeman, who looked with some interest at the cargo in the back of their conveyance.

  Horace hummed to himself absently as they descended Munjoy Hill. “If you don’t mind,” he said, when they neared the corner of Smith Street, “I’ll drop off here and meet you at the end of the line.”

  “Drop off here?” said Mister Walton, pulling up on the reins. “But where am I going?”

  “She’ll take you there, no mistake,” assured Horace. He was already standing on the street, and he reached out to pat the horse’s flank. “It’s just the other side of town. I have to stop by a friend’s and look at his new dog.”

  “But how will she take me there, if I don’t know where I’m going?” asked a thoroughly flummoxed Mister Walton.

  “She knows the way. You’ll see.” Horace waved once, then turned and shuffled down Smith Street.

  Several carriages, pedestrians, and a man on horseback passed Mister Walton while he pondered his odd circumstances. There was no mistaking his deep perplexity, even when approached from behind, so it was not unusual that a constable, walking down Cumberland Street, would stop to offer his assistance.

  “Are you lost, sir?” asked the officer.

  The mare swung her head around with such wide eyes and greeted the officer with such a cusnorf through the nostrils that Mister Walton simply gaped at the creature and never got a look at the man, which in hindsight seemed a remarkable stroke of luck as it meant that the officer never got a look at him.

  For in the next instant the horse had snapped her nose forward, jerked the reins from Mister Walton’s hands, and bolted down the street like a felon in fear of her life. Mister Walton heard the officer speak, then shout, as they rattled away. Groping for the reins, the bespectacled man caught them at his feet, which give him something to hang on to; but no amount of pulling or whoaing discouraged the mare from her sudden burst of speed. Again he heard the officer shout, but with each command to stop, the mare only increased her exertions, till houses were flying past too swiftly to count and picket fences sped by in a solid blur.

  The Roman Catholic church was quickly visible, coming up on his left, and Mister Walton realized with horror that they were charging toward a major crossing at Franklin Street. Again he pulled back at the reins, but the mare was plunging forward without regard to oncoming traffic. She let out a great blustering whinny as they neared the crossing, and a carriage pulled up in time to let them by. The driver of the carriage shook his fist and cursed the air blue behind them, but they were soon out of earshot and charging past scattering pedestrians and barking dogs. Mister Walton felt his hat lift with the wind of their movement and he barely clapped a hand upon it in time to keep it on his head.

  The steel-rimmed wheels drummed like thunder beneath him, and the shadows of overhanging oaks and elms and maples swept past like storm clouds in a high wind. He attempted to articulate some warning as he plummeted down Cumberland Street, even as he tried to remember the crossings that approached with such dangerous speed. What he managed was to whoop out the name of each street as he came to it, like some mad tour guide, shouting: “Pearl!” and “Chestnut!” to a series of amazed onlookers.

  Round about Cedar Street, a young man on horseback joined into the spirit of things and attempted to charge alongside of him. “Is it a fire?” shouted the lad. “Is it a fire?”

  “Elm!” shouted Mister Walton, and outstripped the fellow four lengths before they reached Preble Street, losing the equestrian in a near-collision of several vehicles.

  A passing drummer helped the young man to steady his rearing mount and asked, breathlessly, what the ruckus was about. “He’s got his hat crammed over his eyes!” was all the lad could say.

  Indeed, Mister Walton’s litany of streets was culled purely from memory by the time he reached the corner of Cumberland and Alder. Somehow he had managed to cram his hat so far down over his face that it had caught on his spectacles, and with one hand on the reins and the other on the seat below him, he dared not let go long enough to extricate himself from the resulting blindness.

  It was while nearing the Free Will Baptist church that the mare began to moderate her pace. The choir was practicing and the loft windows were open to the summer breeze, so that Mister Walton, with his hat stuck over his nose, could not be blamed for wondering if rescue was arriving from on high. “To joumey’s end, oh speed my troubled heart,” they were singing. By the time they passed the church, the mare had slowed from a gallop to a fast trot and he was able to disengage his hat from his head.

  The mare still would not respond to the reins, however. Well, he thought, Horace did say that she knew where she was going.

  That seemed to be the case. The mare almost slowed to a walk at the next crossing, broke into a trot again along a less populated avenue, turned east, took a hairpin turn north, and after giving herself a nice walk pulled into a barn on an unmarked street.

  Mister Walton did not move immediately from his seat, but sat frozen, one hand gripping the reins, the other still pressing his hat to his head. Light from the westering sun spilled through the barn doors onto the horse’s sweating back, and Mister Walton thought that the comparative shadows inside the barn were playing tricks with his eyes. The horse appeared now, not gray, but brown.

  He blinked, removed his somewhat fogged spectacles, and replaced them after wiping them with his handkerchief. No, the horse definitely looked brown. He climbed down then, somewhat unsteadily, and passed a hand over the mare’s flank. His hand was besmirched with a grayish residue, which had shed from the animal’s back as it had worked up a sweat.

  “I don’t know where that horse goes to get so dirty,” came a booming voice from behind. A large man, respectably dressed, lifted a fedora from his head in greeting and stepped into the barn. “Somewhere she gets this white ash on her, till she’s as gray as Martha Washington. Her own mother wouldn’t recognize her.”

  “I don’t suppose she would,” said Mister Walton, still astounded by it all. “Nor officers of the law.”

  The man looked quickly over his shoulder. “D. C. Pembroke,” he said, when he saw that Mister Walton was not speaking of any immediate presence. He held out a hand.

  Mister Walton shook the hand with as much goodwill as he could muster. “Are you the fellow with the sick aunt, then?” he asked.

  “No, my aunt’s dead. Is that what Horace told you?” The man laughed heartily, shaking his head. He proceeded to unharness the mare. Mister Walton simply stepped aside. “That Horace!” said D. C. Pembroke, chortling to himself. “He might lie, you know, but he’d never steal. He has told me so himself many a time.” This amused him and he began to laugh all over again.

  Mister Walton wandered out into the sunlight and surveyed the well-tended grounds of a handsome house and barn. There was a chair-swing under a wide-spread oak and he settled himself into it. Several minutes later a carriage pulled into the drive and Horace stepped down
from it.

  “Didn’t take you long to get here,” said Horace, wide-eyed as he ambled over to the chair-swing. Wavering between indignation with the man and thankfulness for having survived his ordeal, Mister Walton was somewhat mollified by the look of honest wonder on the old fellow’s face. “You going to make it?” asked Horace, which, coming from him, was almost a tender inquiry.

  Mister Walton was nearly as put out with himself as he was with Horace. He hadn’t traveled most of his adult life without encountering the occasional scoundrel, and he had hoped that he might recognize one when his path was thus crossed. Looking at Horace, however, he found it difficult to count the man a scoundrel. “You are a rascal, Mr. McQuinn,” he announced.

  “So Mother would have it,” replied the man.

  “What is in those barrels—rum?”

  “You mean it wasn’t pickles?”

  Mister Walton was not practiced at looking stern, and found it difficult to arrange his features in a reproving fashion. “Isn’t this sort of activity best conducted in the dark?” he asked.

  “You’re apt to bump into people at night,” said Horace.

  “I very nearly bumped into several in broad daylight,” returned Mister Walton. “That horse knows very little about moderation.” Oddly enough, he thought he might laugh out loud.

  “She did pick up a bit of a tail wind. I had to close my eyes when you hit Franklin Street.”

  Mister Walton did laugh, then, at the absolute sincerity of Horace’s expression. “You had to close your eyes! I had my hat down over my face for six blocks!”