Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  Mister Walton was fascinated by Mrs. Roberto’s history—he had known a balloon ascensionist after the war, but it was news to him that anyone would willingly parachute from one, particularly when that person’s spouse had taken, in a similar feat, a fatal plunge. In the course of their conversation, and with polite curiosity, he heard from her a brief autobiography.

  Though standing at safe distances from the lovely Mrs. Roberto in her attractive suit of tights, Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump hung upon every word spoken between her and Mister Walton, and were further impressed with their new acquaintance as a man of action. They were disappointed, therefore, when he wished Mrs. Roberto a soft landing and expressed to them his goodbyes.

  “Must leave?” asked Eagleton, shaking Mister Walton’s hand.

  “I have been invited to join a picnic,” he explained.

  “Other engagement,” said Thump.

  “I’m sure I’ll see you again before the day is out,” said Mister Walton.

  “Consider our club,” said Ephram, handing Mister Walton his card.

  “I most certainly will, thank you.” Mister Walton shook the man’s hand, then ambled into the ever-growing crowd with a wave.

  “Extraordinary,” said Thump, watching Mister Walton’s portly figure disappear amongst the throng.

  “Purposeful,” insisted Eagleton. “Certainly purposeful.”

  “He’s a man for our membership, I’m sure!” said Ephram. He briefly caught Mrs. Roberto’s eye and flinched.

  Mister Walton found the Underwoods relaxing on a piece of ground they had claimed for their picnic beneath a tall oak in the corner of the field. Cordelia saw him first, and greeted him happily as he moved up the small slope, through the gathering cliques of families and sweethearts to the foot of the tree.

  “Good morning, good morning!” he called as he approached, for the sun had not yet reached its zenith.

  “This must be Mister Walton,” said Cordelia’s great-aunt.

  “And you will be Aunt Delia,” he said playfully.

  “I am Delia Frost,” she confirmed.

  “Tobias Walton,” said he, with a bow. A sudden rattle of firecrackers punctuated his self-introduction and startled him into a wordless exclamation. Then with a laugh he shouted, “You’ll make rain, young man,” to the boy who had set off the chain of explosions.

  Rain did threaten as the day progressed, and Mrs. Roberto hastened her balloon ascension by two hours in order to avoid the storm. She and her pilot, who was dressed as Uncle Sam, waved to the still-accumulating crowd while rising majestically into the clouding sky.

  Speeches were being delivered at a podium close to the balloon’s point of departure, and Mrs. Roberto took flight just as Cornelius Blithewaite, Democratic candidate for governor, had reached (by his own reckoning) the dramatic apex of his thunderous declamation of piety and patriotic fervor. “Even as the human race shines, beacon-like—the grandest of God’s works—” he exclaimed, “so does this vast nation, wrestling for morality in the pulpit, fencing for justice in the rostrum, and taking aim through the bead of honor, represent the finest expression of human will!”

  Blithewaite was shouting into the sky, his fists raised, his eyes squinted shut like an Old Testament prophet pulling down the word from on high; and having finished with this potent sentence, he dared a small peek at his audience, only to find the entire assemblage craning their heads after the movement of Mrs. Roberto’s balloon. Blithewaite was a broad-shouldered man, of medium height, with a great shock of white hair capping his head. He had thick spectacles, and a full beard that wagged when he spoke.

  Ephram, who had been as interested in Mrs. Roberto’s activities as anyone, turned back to the speaker, when silence from that quarter became apparent. Seeing Blithewaite’s pained expression, he realized that he had, perhaps, missed a salient point in his favored candidate’s speech and, feeling that some reaction was necessary, instigated a round of applause.

  Vexed with the delayed reaction, Blithewaite continued. “Such emphatic will can only be carried out with the utmost courage, and the complete willingness to put one’s own well-being in the path of our enemy’s deadly fire!” Blithewaite, of course, was speaking in metaphorical terms of the opposing candidate, whose earlier speech had sounded (to the untrained ear) almost metaphor for metaphor the same.

  “You forgot to wear your uniform!” shouted someone in the crowd, and Blithewaite snapped to attention.

  “What?” he said, breaking the first rule of rhetoric by reacting to a heckler.

  “You forgot to wear your uniform,” repeated a dark-haired young man who stood next to Eagleton. The fellow’s words were not expressed in strident or sarcastic tones, but were delivered as if only Blithewaite’s best interest were being considered.

  “Uniform?” snapped the man on the platform. Though a Republican, Eagleton gave the young man his own version of a hard look; this sort of interruption, after all, was not courteous.

  “Surely such a warlike fellow as you,” the young man was saying, “must have done great damage in the name of freedom during the War Between the States.”

  “Yes!” shouted someone from another corner of the crowd. “What’s all this about courage and deadly fire? You don’t look like you’ve peered down the barrel of a popgun!”

  Blithewaite let out a terrific harrumph that only precipitated a general clamor and laughter. The local Republican candidate for governor, Henry Van Smooten, then stepped forward with hands raised and spoke, seemingly in his rival’s defense. “I am sure that my esteemed opponent was worthily employed during the Great Conflict. Not all men are called to risk life and limb for freedom’s cause.”

  Blithewaite’s eyes widened in indignation, for Van Smooten had spoken so backhandedly and with such a smile on his face that nothing but insult could be taken from his declaration of support. Van Smooten was a thin, gray fellow, with large ears, a jutting chin, and spectacles as thick as Blithewaite’s perched on the end of his sharp nose. The two candidates were of a height, and their eyes met directly when they turned to one another.

  “What are you saying?” demanded Blithewaite. Van Smooten gave his rival a friendly pat on the shoulder. “I am just saying that no one can besmirch your reputation for your failure to show on the field.”

  “Looks like you’re not wearing your stripes, either!” bellowed someone. Van Smooten, whose speech had been as bellicose as Blithewaite’s, turned with sudden fire in his eye and searched the crowd. “I was the secretary to Senator Highgate, helping to govern our nation in its darkest hour!”

  “Buying your way out of the draft, you mean!” came another voice.

  “Bad form, bad form,” said Thump.

  “Questionable situation,” said Eagleton.

  “Not in the best interests of an enjoyable outing,” said Ephram.

  “On the contrary,” said the young man. “Just watch.” He winked at Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump and pushed his way to the front of the crowd.

  “I was working for a mercantile exchange, supplying our regiments with coats,” Blithewaite was insisting.

  “War profiteer!” came the shout from the crowd.

  “I am ready, at any time,” declared Van Smooten, “to defend my ideals to the last drop of blood!” He threw his chest out and set his jaw defiantly. For some reason, he directed this statement to Blithewaite, who took it as an immediate challenge.

  “I’ll stand against the swiftest tide of evil and corruption, even though I drown in the process!” Blithewaite declaimed.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said the young man as he stepped onto the platform. “All this can be solved very simply.”

  “Who are you?” demanded one of Blithewaite’s attendants belligerently.

  “I am John Stewart Benning. Who are you?”

  The man appeared confused by this question; he stepped backwards and immediately faded from the crowd’s attention.

  “Mr. Blithewaite. Mr. Van Smooten.” John Benn
ing proffered his hand to each of these men. They eyed him with suspicion. The crowd had gotten unruly, and the young man raised a commanding hand to indicate the necessity for quiet. “This can all be solved very simply,” he repeated.

  “It can?” said Blithewaite and Van Smooten.

  Some in the crowd laughed. “Now, now,” said John Benning. “Mr. Blithewaite, in listening to your speech, I was struck by your description of certain evils against which we must take arms, even to the detriment of our physical safety.”

  “Of course,” said Blithewaite. He looked ready to say more, but John Benning spoke before him.

  “Now, am I mistaken in deducing that Mr. Van Smooten is representative of those very evils—that this is the very reason for your candidacy against him?”

  Mr. Blithewaite opened his mouth twice without speaking, then said “Yes” with sudden conviction.

  “Evil?” hollered Van Smooten, as if he had been bitten. “Why this . . . this political malefactor is a veritable snake in the garden!”

  “Exactly,” said John Benning, stepping between the two before they could close in on one another. “And so I propose a bout of fisticuffs—best out of three rounds.”

  The roar that greeted this motion was deafening. Mrs. Roberto (even in her attractive suit of tights) was forgotten. Sums of money were raised in the air as men made wagers, not on the proposed bout, but on its likelihood of coming to pass.

  “This is ridiculous!” said Van Smooten.

  Blithewaite, before he could stop himself, said: “I thought you would say that.”

  “Are you impugning my courage?” asked Van Smooten indignantly.

  Blithewaite seemed to realize, at this point, that he had just closed the door on a graceful exit. If he had thought quickly, he might have claimed to have been referring to Van Smooten’s good sense. Instead he stuttered excitedly, and Van Smooten was free to interpret the statement as he wanted.

  “I’ll fight you!” declared Van Smooten. “And consider it a blow for the veritable Rights of Man!”

  Again the crowd roared, and this time, as the commotion died, the Freeport band, marching onto the fairgrounds, could be heard trampling the Grapes of Wrath. A great sense of martial purpose filled the two candidates, and as one they turned and strode down the steps of the platform. Men and women parted for them, and John Benning led the way to an unoccupied portion of the field, where the ever-increasing throng made a cordon to describe an improvised ring.

  Not everyone in the crowd was happy with these proceedings. “This can’t be legal,” said one stern-faced elder.

  A man who was in uniform—indeed, he looked remarkably cool on this summer day in his woolen blues—stepped forward. There were the stripes of a sergeant on his shoulder, and the sleeve of one arm was pinned to the side of his coat. He had an ancient scar across his cheek, and his face had the ruddy look of someone unimpressed with the state’s prohibition against drink. But he had a gentle strength about him, and deferring to his age and service, the crowd let him through to the ring.

  “Now what’s all this?” he demanded, not without humor. “You don’t really mean to promote a boxing match between these two?”

  John Benning smiled. “Well, Sergeant, they seemed so ready to spill their blood for any number of worthy causes, I thought it cruel to deny them.”

  “That’s the way to fight a war,” averred a man in the crowd. “Let the politicians have it out.”

  The veteran turned an appraising gaze on the two combatants. Blithewaite and Van Smooten had divested themselves of their jackets and were limbering themselves up, their faces frozen in attitudes of heroic determination. Van Smooten looked, as he shot his fists at imaginary foes, like a man who had fallen asleep on a nest of ants, while Blithewaite gave several experimental pumps into the air and followed each jab with a triumphant “Ha!”

  Perhaps the old soldier couldn’t imagine that either man had any real ability to cause the other harm, for he turned back to John Benning with a soft smile. “You’ll need a referee,” he said simply.

  “The honor falls to you, sir,” said John Benning respectfully.

  “No,” said the sergeant. He indicated his empty sleeve. “If they get tangled up, I couldn’t separate them with one arm.”

  John Benning scanned the crowd, and his eyes fell upon Ephram. “You, sir,” he said. “You look like a fair-minded man.”

  “Democrat!” shouted Ephram in a tone higher than was natural to him. “Decline on grounds of partiality.” He turned to Eagleton, with no intention but to see how his friend reacted to this.

  “Republican!” shouted Eagleton, and together they turned to Thump, who belonged to a party that had been dissolved for ten years.

  12 A Descent into the Maelstrom

  IN A SMALL FOLDING CHAIR THAT THE UNDERWOODS PROVIDED FOR HIM, Mister Walton sat at the edge of the picnic linen and dined happily on cold beef, potato salad, boiled eggs, and numerous breads, chutneys, and jams, while Cordelia’s great-aunt Delia entertained him with tales of her namesake’s early signs of single-mindedness. Cordelia, of course, was delighted to hear of all the contrary things she had done as a child, and Mister Walton beamed as Aunt Delia described how she and her great-niece had conspired to put bow ties on the necks of her South Freeport neighbor’s ducks.

  “You have not seen a drake properly dressed, Mister Walton,” she was saying, wiping tears from her own eyes, “till you have seen him fitted with a black bow tie.”

  “The picture is not complete,” said James dryly, “till you have imagined your neighbor as she watches them waddle in a line through her backyard.”

  Certain nearby picnickers had enjoyed the story as well, without crossing the bounds of courtesy; indeed, there was much good-natured banter between groups as they ate and played. The lighting of firecrackers was presided over by fathers, who did their best not to look like they were having as good a time as their children. A game of croquet had begun some yards away, and the immediate population had dwindled accordingly.

  The news skipped across the field that Mrs. Roberto (in her attractive suit of tights) would expedite her balloon launching in order to make her famous parachute jump before the weather turned. While they watched this intrepid lady rise with her pilot into the graying sky, it was remarked that the speeches at the other side of the field were inaudible from where they sat, and, inevitably, a discussion arose over the pros and cons of this state of affairs. During just such an exchange with a particularly pleasant gentleman, Mister Walton introduced himself.

  “Dr. Patrick Moriarty,” said the man, shaking Mister Walton’s hand. “I see, by your expression, that you are an enthusiast of the great detective.”

  Indeed, a surprised light had risen in Mister Walton’s eye at the name Moriarty. Two years ago he had read (along with every other devotee) of Sherlock Holmes’s death, and nearly wept to think of that grand character, however fictitious, plunging over Reichenbach Falls with the evil Professor Moriarty. “Why, yes, I am. Forgive my lack of tact.”

  “Not at all,” said Dr. Moriarty. He was a genial, middle-aged fellow with a wife and two young daughters, all three of whom had joined the croquet match. “I had one patient,” he said, with complete seriousness, “who refused treatment from me for a year and a half after Holmes died.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “I’m an admirer of the detective myself, and not a little perturbed with this previously unknown relative of mine for causing his demise.”

  “Ah, well, you can pick your friends, you know,” said Mister Walton, with no more of a smile than might be called sly.

  Dr. Moriarty was looking down the field, past Mister Walton’s shoulder, and it was clear that something unusual had caught his eye. Mister Walton turned to see a large crowd gathering at one side of the speakers’ platform. “Which event is that, do you suppose?” he wondered aloud.

  “I don’t know,” said Dr. Moriarty. “It has more the look of a mob than an event.” He had be
en sitting against the oak tree, but he stood now. Cordelia came forward and peered after the throng. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say that a bout was being set up,” said the doctor.

  “A bout? Do you mean a fight?”

  “Yes, and perhaps I don’t know better. If that isn’t a boxing match . . .”

  “Who could it be?” said Cordelia. “It isn’t legal to set up an unscheduled fight, is it? Aren’t there licenses and such?”

  “Exactly,” said Dr. Moriarty. “Perhaps I had better take a closer look, in case anyone is hurt. Maybe, by the power vested in me as a physician, I can call it off. Care for a walk?” he asked Mister Walton.

  “Perhaps I will stretch my legs, if the Underwoods don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” said James. “But do come back and help us finish all this food.”

  As referee, Thump had not the slightest idea what was expected of him. He had read of prize fights in the Portland Courier, but had never actually seen one, and judges only merited a passing mention in such articles. He was, therefore, more than a little daunted to find himself surrounded by a boisterous crowd with Blithewaite, Van Smooten, John Benning, and the one-armed veteran.

  Blithewaite and Van Smooten eyed each other like two aging tomcats, circling sideways with their fists waving threateningly in front of them. Shouting above the babble of the crowd, Benning declared the Queensberry rules, which Thump knew only by name. The old soldier, who could see the confusion on the face of this unenlightened referee, patted Thump encouragingly on the back, saying: “Just keep them apart if they start grappling with each other, and don’t let either of them hit where it’s not polite.”