Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  “I can’t imagine that you haven’t more than one card, already full,” said the handsome man. He reached into his jacket. “But I have come prepared for just such an eventuality.” He took from an inside pocket a dance card, with the legend Freeport Fourth of July Celebratory Ball—1896 on its front cover. Two middle-aged ladies who were seated next to Cordelia watched without pretense to minding their own business as he handed this to the young woman.

  She took the dance card and unfolded it. It had room for a dozen names—six to each side—and every line was filled with the name John Benning.

  Cordelia laughed aloud. “Are you sure that you have given me the right card? Someone seems to have been practicing their signature on this one.

  “An admirer,” he answered, “hoping to get the steps right by the last dance.”

  The two ladies were absolutely giddy by this point, and could hardly contain themselves in the vicarious pleasure of watching this romantic badinage. “This John Benning,” asked Cordelia, “is he in the room?”

  John Benning reached out his hand. “Come,” he said. “I will introduce you to him. He is said to be a moderately good dancer.”

  “I am only tolerable myself, so perhaps it will be to both our benefits.” She accepted his hand and allowed herself to be whirled upon the dance floor.

  John Benning proved to be something more than moderately good as he led her into the revolving crowd. When they had waltzed halfway around the room, and she had caught a glimpse of her mother’s curiosity as they passed each other, he said: “All that I lack now, ma’am, is your name.”

  She felt out of breath, suddenly, as the events of the last few moments caught up with her. Through the crowd, she could see the two older women pointing in her direction and talking enthusiastically to their neighbors. She realized that she had not answered him, after a moment, and said, simply: “Cordelia Underwood.”

  The titillated onlookers disappeared behind the circle of dancers. “Well, Miss Underwood,” said John Benning with the frankness that had already startled her so. “When I saw you across the dance floor, tolerable was not a word that came to mind.”

  15 A Storm at Mast Landing

  THERE WAS NOT MUCH THAT DR. MORIARTY COULD DO FOR ENOCH DILL. However commonplace, the forces at work here were deep and mysterious and in Enoch’s case, merciful, as well. Enoch’s final hours were warm and snug in his own bed; and if they were not quiet, with the rain pummeling the attic roof, they were nonetheless peaceful.

  “Would you like another lamp, Dr. Moriarty?” asked Mrs. Dill.

  “This is fine, thank you.” He took the dying man’s wrist and felt for a pulse; but finding life too faint to register there, he laid a gentle hand against the side of the dying man’s throat. The artery thrummed weakly, sluggishly, as the doctor kept time with his pocket watch. “I have asked a friend to join us tonight,” he said conversationally.

  “Tom said that you asked him to pick someone up at the hall.”

  “I hope you and your family don’t mind. No disrespect is intended.”

  “I understand . . . your reasons.”

  “Thank you. I say friend, and yet I met him only today.”

  “Uncle Enoch always welcomed a new acquaintance,” said Mrs. Dill without smiling.

  The doctor did smile, however. “Yes.” He put his watch away, glancing at the rain-streaked window at the other end of the attic room. “That window looks out at the bay?”

  Mrs. Dill nodded, and after a period of rain-pattered quiet, she said: “I’ve never seen it before,” speaking of something else.

  “I have seen it twice. If it comes tonight, however, it will be for the last time, I think.”

  “I understand why you asked someone to come.”

  An uncorrupted observer, thought Doctor Moriarty.

  “My daughter will come up so that I can make something to eat when he arrives.”

  “That’s very kind.”

  When Mrs. Dill was gone and before Annie came to replace her, Dr. Moriarty went to the window and looked out into the rainy night. Even with his face pressed to the glass he could see little more than shadows beyond his own lamplit reflection.

  In his bed, ninety-six-year-old Enoch Dill dwindled peacefully.

  When Mister Walton stepped out of the Freeport Town Hall, Dr. Moriarty’s carriage awaited him. He had spent his evening dancing reels and quadrilles, and even the occasional waltz, with several mature women, and delighted himself and his partners in doing so. While dancing, Mister Walton would express an hilarious anecdote, or pretend to be confused with the steps expected of him, and invariably his companion would be escorted from the dance floor in great gales of laughter.

  It proved just what an agile dancer he was that he could add two or three capers to a step without overshooting his partner, or come close to missing a cue without ever quite doing so. Once, while dancing with Mercia, he walked a promenade backwards, as if he were carried away by a high wind, and the entire hall roared with delight.

  There was something almost contradictory about the man—portly, gracious, and seemingly quiet even in his jollity. His round face, his wide eyes behind magnifying spectacles—even his nearly bald head—expressed something of the child in him; and yet, there was a wisdom in his joy of life that seemed ancient in its philosophy.

  Whenever he waited out a dance in order to rest, he would sit with the Underwoods, who deliberated on the handsome young man monopolizing their daughter. Cordelia and John Benning (who had been briefly introduced to her parents) seemed to need less rest than other folk, and when they did wait out a dance, it was by the punch bowl on the opposite side of the room.

  Mister Walton recognized John Benning from two days before on the Portland wharf, and had recognized him earlier in the day at the aftermath of Mrs. Roberto’s unexpected parachute landing, which is what he had meant to tell Cordelia.

  Outside, the night had darkened, and a fitful rain increased as clouds choked the sky. The wind picked up, and heralded the coming of electrical flashes with the smell of ions.

  Mopping his brow, Mister Walton looked up at the schoolhouse clock that hung above the small proscenium at the other end of the hall. It was ten-thirty. With regret he bade his dance companions good night, added thanks to the many he had already expressed to Cordelia’s great-aunt and James and Mercia, and stepped out onto the front steps.

  Dr. Moriarty’s carriage awaited him, and though lanterns burned on each side of the rig, they did little to dispel the wet darkness. He cocked his hat against the wind and rain, pulled his coat tight about him, and descended the steps to the carriage.

  “Mister Walton?” inquired young Tom, who sat upon the driver’s bench, almost invisible in a black slicker.

  “Yes, my boy,” he said, above the rain. “How is your uncle?”

  “I fear he’s dying, sir.”

  “I am very sorry to hear it.” He squinted through the damp, but couldn’t see the boy’s expression.

  “Thank you, sir. But he had a good long life, and knew the Lord.”

  “There’s comfort in that, son. I hope I won’t be intruding.”

  “Ma’s expecting you, sir. She knows why Dr. Moriarty asked you to come. Besides, Uncle Enoch was always one for company.”

  Mister Walton saw the flash of a smile with this last thought, and he climbed into the carriage. A flicker to the east silhouetted buildings on the other side of the street, and several seconds later, a soft rumble carried over the sound of carriage wheels and horses. It occurred to him that he had no idea where they were going.

  It was a classic squall coming in from the northeast—a great swirl of wet and chilly weather backing up over the mainland—and though it was relatively mild for a nor’easter along the immediate coast, Mister Walton suspected that those out to sea might be having a bad time. The rain was loud on the top of the carriage, and he was sorry for the boy in front of him, hunched against the driving weather; more than likely, though, the lad
was too young to think of it as anything but an adventure. Lightning illumined the sky in cold flashes, and thunder—a little closer now—shivered the air.

  The carriage was turned north, but soon they were twisting east and south again. Tom slowed the horses as the road grew wilder and steeper. Through the rain, his single passenger could see lights a mile or so across several hills and the darkened surface of the Harraseeket River. Mister Walton wasn’t sure how either Tom or the horses could see the road, and as the way led along the edge of a headland, he tried not to think about it. Twice the carriage took a lurch toward the water and he was sure they would tumble into it.

  He was content, therefore, to feel the carriage draw to a halt, and hear the horses nicker with that sound of recognition that marks the end of a journey. Tom snapped the brake against the rear wheel, then jumped down to throw a chock against it. Mister Walton was about to open the carriage door and step down when the boy called out: “I wouldn’t go out the right hand side, sir.”

  Mister Walton had been gripping the right-hand door—which was the side he had got in on—and he glanced out the window, surprised to see nothing but sky and water, barely demarcated from one another in the rainy blackness. A fork of lightning snapped at the opposing arm of land and nicely lit the gulf that yawned beyond the waterside of the carriage. He laughed wryly. “My Aunt August insisted that it was bad luck to leave by a different door than the one through which you entered, but I think I’ll chance it.”

  Tom opened the left-hand door with an efficient snap. It was clear, even in the dark, that his passenger was slightly disconcerted. “Sorry, sir, I should have spoke sooner. It’s a long step—and a swim, I think—on that side.”

  “That’s all right, my boy. A miss is as good as a mile, they say, and I suppose that goes for long drops.” Climbing out the other side, Mister Walton could see the small hulk of a modest cape standing amongst several wind-swept trees some yards away. Lights burned in two windows, and in one window he saw the shadow of someone peering out.

  Flagstones led past a row of rosebushes that rushed in the wind and rain; Mister Walton could smell them in the heavy air. He picked his way carefully along the wet rock, Tom bringing up the rear. The door opened before they reached the back step, and Tom’s mother ushered them into a warm, dry kitchen.

  The reason for his being here was still not apparent to Mister Walton, and he stood awkwardly in the middle of the room as Mrs. Dill took his coat and hat. There was just enough fire in the old iron hearth to trouble a pot of tea, which burbled quietly with a steady puff of steam.

  A door opened on the other side of the room, revealing a narrow stairway, leading up. Dr. Moriarty appeared from the shadows and stepped down into the kitchen. “Good evening, Mister Walton,” he said in a normal tone, the volume of which surprised the newcomer. It had been expected, with a man dying upstairs, that the whole house would be speaking in whispers.

  “I do hope,” said Mister Walton, in something below a normal voice, “that this is not an intrusion.”

  “The doctor said you’d be coming, Mister Walton,” said Mrs. Dill, as if that explained everything. She was a weathered-looking woman, though he could see the beauty of her youth peering through her years. She was trim from her labor, and her fingers were dexterous as they flipped the collar of his coat up—the better to dry—before hanging it behind the stove, and she proceeded to arrange a cold meal and hot tea at the kitchen table.

  “Come have a bit to eat,” said Dr. Moriarty, pulling a chair up to the table. Tom scooched a chair up beside the doctor and waited politely for the rest to sit. Mister Walton found it hard to figure that he was sitting down to eat here with strangers and near-strangers, Mrs. Dill calmly pouring tea, with a man dying somewhere above them.

  Mrs. Dill did not smile, but her features softened slightly. “Come sit, Mister Walton. Uncle Enoch did love a new acquaintance, and would have been grieved to think that anyone wasn’t well fed at his table.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Dill,” said the bespectacled fellow. And, trusting that he would eventually understand the mystery of his being here, he pulled a chair up to the table and gladly accepted a plate of cold meat, a handful of bread, and a cup of tea.

  16 It Was Their Duty

  EPHRAM, EAGLETON, AND THUMP WERE ECSTATIC OVER THEIR DISCOVERY of Mister Walton. Standing in their own small group in a corner of the Freeport Town Hall, they smiled at the prettily dressed ladies who waltzed past them and discussed amongst themselves the man’s extraordinary virtues.

  “I believe it is safe to say that he is first-rank,” insisted Ephram.

  “Quite, quite,” added Eagleton, by way of enthusiastic accord.

  Thump rubbed the bruise on his forehead. He had been uncharacteristically silent since his accident on the fairgrounds. Ephram and Eagleton were sure that he had been stunned, and this was near to the truth, for he had been stunned—not by the blow to his head, but by the still-vivid recollection of Mrs. Roberto in her attractive suit of tights as she descended in her parachute drop upon him. The image was burned into the cornea of his memory, and he found little in his present circumstances, however prettily the waltzing women were dressed, to distract him from contemplating that instant in which he glanced up at the plummeting woman.

  Ephram repeated his assertion that Mister Walton had the stuff for a position in their undefined and nameless club, hoping that this contention would rouse their friend from his baffled state.

  “I do hope she wasn’t injured in the collision,” said Thump.

  Ephram and Eagleton exchanged concerned glances. Clearly something needed to be said. “I shouldn’t worry,” said Eagleton. “She did seem healthy.”

  This was, perhaps, an unfortunate choice of words, for it put Thump in mind of waking with his head in Mrs. Roberto’s plush lap, and looking up at her soft brown eyes, past certain robust endowments. Thump agreed that she did seem healthy, and said so. He had, in fact, seen her soft brown eyes with only one of his own, somewhat in the fashion of a mountain climber who sees with one eye the pinnacle he hopes to reach from under a rocky overhang.

  “There are a good deal of charming ladies in attendance, this evening, don’t you think?” wondered Eagleton, to neither of his friends in particular. “We should, perhaps, put to use our skills upon the dance floor, eh?”

  “I was thinking just that,” said Ephram, when it was clear that Thump was not going to respond. “And you, Eagleton?”

  “I am thinking of it as well. Yes, indeed.”

  All three of these men had taken lessons in dance, stiffly learning how to maneuver the latest steps in the arms of Mrs. De Riche, an eighty-two-year-old matron and patron of the arts, who was accustomed to younger students. Since graduating from Mrs. De Riche’s Academy of Ballroom Sciences, they had attended twenty-three functions in which dancing was the primary event and not once put to use the fruits of their learning.

  It seemed that even the possibility, however doubtful, of a dance would not draw Thump from his state of quietude, and to lift the uncomfortable silence between them, Eagleton, in an extraordinary moment of levity, suggested to Ephram that a woman on the other side of the hall was watching him.

  “What?” said an astonished Ephram.

  “I think your prospects have decidedly improved,” said Eagleton.

  “No!”

  “Oh, yes, I do,” teased Eagleton. He winked broadly at Thump, who simply said: “Hmmm?”

  “Who?” demanded Ephram.

  “There—just in front of the second window from the left.”

  “Is she standing?”

  “That’s the one.” Eagleton was rather proud of his choice.

  “In the pink dress?”

  “Oh, I think, most definitely.” Eagleton was bobbing with excitement, having rather forgotten that he had fabricated the entire idea.

  “No!” said Ephram again.

  “Without a doubt!”

  Ephram considered the young woman across
the dance floor. “No!”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Oh-ho!” said Ephram, unbelieving; but the thought so delighted him that he laughed when he said it, which animated his face quite handsomely. The young woman in the pink dress, who was idly taking in the room, caught sight of Ephram’s smile and smiled in return. The two friends reddened to the ears and chortled giddily to one another. Ephram felt as if someone must be tickling him. “Good heavens! I think you’re right!”

  Eagleton poked his friend in the ribs. “Quickly, you must wave to her!”

  “What’s that you say?”

  “Wave! Wave to her!”

  “Wave to her?” Ephram threw his shoulders back, lifted his jaw, and, with an expression of utter terror, shot a hand in the air.

  The young woman, who thought Ephram was being terribly funny, laughed prettily and flickered a delicate hand in his direction. She then caught the attention of another young woman standing next to her, said something and pointed, upon which this second woman looked, laughed, and waved as well.

  Eagleton was saying something that sounded like “Hoff, hoff, hoff!” as Ephram poked him in the ribs. “I think she’s looking at you,” said Ephram.

  “No!”

  “Oh, yes, I really do! Look, she’s waving again!”

  “Oh-ho, Ephram, you’re right! Good heavens, what do I do?”

  “Wave!”

  “What?”

  “Quickly, man—wave to her!”

  Eagleton lifted an arm with as little grace as his friend, like a wooden soldier volunteering for hazardous duty. The second young woman seemed to have caught the giggles from her friend and waved with obvious pleasure to Eagleton.

  Just contemplating his next sentence, Eagleton felt weak in the knees. Ephram caught him by the elbow as he sagged slightly. “Perhaps . . .” suggested Eagleton, “perhaps we should actually make an approach and speak to them.”

  “Opportunity knocks but once,” said an inspired, if perspiring, Ephram. “Well, twice in this case.”