Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  She could see part of one of these obscured walls from her bedroom window, even in the first days of July when the verdant growth of summer had taken hold. She stood for a moment in her nightdress and robe on the Sunday morning after the Freeport Fourth of July Celebratory Ball, gazing down at the stones that remained visible, searching out the personality of the day, when Cordelia appeared in her line of sight.

  The young woman looked nothing less than a vision dressed in white and green, her red hair let down upon her shoulders. Delia was struck by this sight of her great-niece, there was such an air of romantic distraction about the girl as she shuffled the leaves of past autumns still wet with the night’s storm. Delia was also struck by the fact that she knew next to nothing about John Benning, the man with whom Cordelia had danced almost the entire night.

  “You had little to say when we got home last night,” she said as she approached the stone wall where Cordelia sat now, looking out over the cove and the island. The old woman had made a quick business of dressing, and put off breakfast in order to interview Cordelia before James and Mercia were up.

  Cordelia turned away from the sea breeze and the sunlight to watch her great-aunt step along the flagstone walk. “Did I?” she said brightly.

  “Yes, if nothing at all counts for little,” said Aunt Della wryly.

  Fearing that her aunt was not very agile, Cordelia offered her hand, but Delia waved her away and plunked herself unceremoniously onto the wall.

  “I came down and sat on this very wall,” she said, “almost fifty years ago to consider Abner’s proposal of marriage.”

  “Well, I haven’t a proposal of marriage to consider,” said Cordelia, with a certain relief in her voice that her aunt was glad to hear.

  “You look like I did, though, I’m sure.”

  “Why, how did you look, Aunty?”

  “What were you thinking of just now, when I spoke to you?”

  “Do you see that gull?” said Cordelia. She pointed down the slope of the land to an outcropping of rock fifty yards away. A herring gull sat with his feathers ruffling against the light breeze. He had a hunched, expectant look, and his head darted from one side to the other as he watched for some sight of either breakfast or company. “I was thinking that if I could memorize his markings and see him the next time I am here, I would name him.”

  “My goodness!” exclaimed Aunt Delia.

  “Why, what were you thinking when you sat here fifty years ago?”

  “I was thinking that if I moved to another town my German was good enough to convince people that I was from Bavaria.”

  Cordelia laughed. “Well, they are almost the same thing.”

  Aunt Delia smiled.

  “Why did you come down here, Aunty?”

  “You know very well. I want to hear about this beau of yours before your father wakes up and demands to know what the young man does for a living.”

  “John’s father is a surveyor. Quite successful, I might add.”

  “And what does John do?”

  “He’s been to Cambridge. And he’s traveled. He’s done the Tour.”

  “He uses his time well, it seems. Does he not have to work for a living himself, then?”

  “He works for his father, as a matter of fact.”

  “Hmm,” said Delia. She shifted herself on the stone wall before asking the important question. “Is he interesting?”

  “He’s very funny.”

  “That’s a beginning.”

  Cordelia leaned conspiratorially toward her aunt. “He misbehaved terribly at school.”

  “I like him better still.”

  “But my beau he is not.” Cordelia herself could not say how this thought affected her. She broke the conversation for a moment by looking seaward, so that the breeze blew the loose strands of red hair away from her face. Delia admired the freckles on the young woman’s nose, then admired the nose itself. She has my nose, the lucky girl, but she’s prettier than I was.

  The pause in their talk did not last long, but it does not take much time for the mind to riffle through pages of experience; Cordelia, in the space of several breaths, relived the pleasures and frustrations of the evening before. The pleasures had derived from the dance itself, as well as from the company of John Benning, his humor and interest, and her own ability to keep up with him both in repartee and on the dance floor.

  The frustration came from having seen John Benning on the Custom House Wharf two days before in the company of a beautiful woman, and from not having the nerve to inquire of him who this potential rival was. For if he was not Cordelia’s beau, he was at the very least a likely one.

  Of course it was foolish, this hesitancy; but asking him about this other woman seemed somehow uncouth once he had promised to call on her. Their talk, too, had not made a great deal of room for such a query.

  John Benning had an ease of character, an ability to disarm with frank admiration; indeed, he made no secret of his admiration of Cordelia, though that openness was always tempered with a humorous glint in the eye and the sort of smile that might be sported during an enjoyable game of cards. It was this that both drew her toward him and gave off a certain sense of danger, which admittedly might also have drawn her toward him. But only once had he said anything that she had the least objected to, though her objection had been expressed with her own well-formed sense of drollery.

  “If I had known,” he said between dances, “how many beautiful women had blossomed near my old haunts, I would have come home much sooner.”

  “In the plural,” she had volleyed, “that statement might be considered too broad, and therefore too vague to safely express to a single person.”

  He fell serious, or half-serious, and she wondered if she had talked herself out of a happy culmination to the evening. With hardly a smile, though with that same glint in his eye, he said: “Form the statement in the singular, Miss Underwood, and it may, truthfully, be applied to yourself.”

  “Does he plan to call on you?” asked the great-aunt.

  “He did say he would.”

  “Here, I hope. I would like to meet him again.”

  “No. He had to leave Freeport last night. He had some business to tend.”

  “On Sunday? Well, he might have to wait, then. Your father is talking about taking you north to see this land your uncle left you.”

  “Is he?” Cordelia’s focus of thought shifted entirely. “That didn’t take very long. I hardly had the chance to badger him about it.” Then the two topics of their conversation joined together in her mind. “It isn’t because of Mr. Benning, I hope! Papa didn’t take such a dislike to him that he’s whisking me out of harm’s way, is he?”

  “No, I don’t think your father is all that quick to judge. But he did bring it up last night.”

  Cordelia made a face. “I do want to go . . .”

  “ . . . but Mr. Benning merits your presence as well.”

  “It was pleasant to meet someone. I think he deserves a chance, don’t you?”

  “If he’s smart enough to ask for it.”

  “But Aunty, please don’t refer to him as my beau in front of Papa, or Mr. Benning will have to declare his intentions the first time he crosses the threshold.”

  “I will be circumspect. But his attention to you did not go unnoticed.”

  “Were we an awful curiosity?”

  “Not awful in the least. People couldn’t keep their eyes off you because you were so handsome together. And because you were having such an obviously good time of it.”

  Cordelia reddened. She looked for the gull she had been watching and saw that it was gone.

  “Besides,” continued Delia, “your Mister Walton was entertaining enough to merit his own attention. He covered for you very nicely. I do like the men you met on the wharf the other day. Perhaps I should take a stroll down there myself. I might run into some retired salt who’d like an old woman.”

  “Aunt Delia!”

  “Well, my dea
r, just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean the fire has gone out in the hearth,” said Delia Frost, and she slapped her niece’s knee with a laugh.

  19 The Vote Is In

  EPHRAM, EAGLETON, AND THUMP BREAKFASTED THAT SUNDAY MORNING at Freeport’s Harraseeket Hotel, where they had spent the night—Ephram, and Eagleton sharing a bed with a farmer from Casco, and Thump occupying a narrow cot in the corner of the same room. Uncharacteristic of his race, the farmer was still snoring long after daybreak, when the three friends rose and repaired to the dining room.

  Thump exhibited little enthusiasm for the previous night’s events as they set to a meal of short biscuits and sausage and eggs and pancakes and syrup and fried potatoes and herring and sour cream and milk and apples and several jams; his appetite had obviously not suffered from the excitement, however, for he ate with a seriousness and concentrated effort that would have done well for several men of larger parts.

  “A fine young woman, Miss Riverille,” said Ephram with feeling as he paused over a helping of herring and potato. He dolloped a bit of sour cream upon his plate with a flourish, as if to exclamate his point.

  “Without a doubt,” said Eagleton. “She is a fine young woman.”

  “Exceptional might be an appropriate term.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

  “That is, not to put too fine a point upon it.”

  “Not at all.”

  “She was not disagreeable, to my mind.”

  “I found nothing to make me think so.”

  “Rather pleasant to look at, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I was, indeed, ready to say just that.”

  Ephram turned to their laconic friend. “You’re quiet, Thump.”

  Thump looked up from his plate with sudden interest, though the workings of his ruminant muscles never ceased. “Hmmm?” he said. The bruise on his forehead had lessened somewhat, but it still concerned his friends.

  “Quiet, I say,” said Ephram,

  “Yes,” said Thump. “It is.”

  Conversation came, momentarily, to a halt. The clatter of silverware upon china rose to a position of primary sound as Ephram and Eagleton considered the train of discourse. Thump had done a great thing last night, dancing with Mrs. Roberto, and they would have liked to talk with him about it. They themselves had not put to use the lessons learned at Mrs. De Riche’s Academy of Ballroom Sciences, though they had spent most of the evening in the company of Sallie Riverille and Ophelia Simpson.

  Ephram and Eagleton had not said very much, either, leaving the lion’s share of talk to the two females, only occasionally interspersing the conversation with announcements concerning the time and weather.

  “Miss Simpson is a remarkable sort of person,” said Eagleton to Ephram. “Or so she seemed to me.”

  “She is most definitely,” said Ephram. “Most definitely.”

  Like a Roman citizen displaying the senate staff, Eagleton raised a fork in the air as he spoke. “She is, if I may say, uncommonly affable,” he declared.

  “I could not help but notice,” agreed Ephram.

  “Not unlike her friend Sallie in quantity and quality of favorable characteristics.”

  “We could not be more in agreement if we were each saying the exact same thing.”

  “I do feel inspired,” said Eagleton suddenly.

  “As do I,” said Ephram. “Eh, Thump?”

  “Hmmm?” said that worthy. He looked up from his plate as if just now realizing that his friends were at the table with him.

  “This idea of yours concerning a club is capital,” said Ephram. “Simply capital.”

  A light dawned in Thump’s expression. “Yes, well,” he said.

  “Ephram?” said Eagleton with a sort of intensity that could not escape the notice of the man addressed.

  “Yes?” said Ephram.”

  “Thump?”

  “Hmmm?” said Thump.

  “I have an absolutely enormous notion!”

  “Inspiration?” wondered Ephram, eyes wide.

  “Yes, I think most certainly. Something in the nature of a proposition.”

  “Really?” said Ephram. “Let us hear it.”

  There was a dramatic pause as Eagleton sat straight against the back of his chair and squared his shoulders. He began what follows in a deliberate fashion, growing more excited and speaking more rapidly as he continued. “I propose,” he said, “that in recognition of his qualities as a man of action, in acknowledgment of his sterling character, so obvious at our first meeting, and in appreciation of his unselfish aid in rescuing our charter member, Joseph Thump, from the tangles of a descended parachute, I move that we nominate the Honorable Mister Tobias Walton as chairman of . . . our club!”

  “Good heavens!” cried Ephram. The clink of silverware died for a moment as those at other tables in the dining room turned to see what had caused this outburst.

  Ephram and Eagleton took little note of this attention, however; their eyes were upon Thump, who rose from his chair with a wild expression upon his bearded face. “This is time for deliberate action, my friends,” he said. “We are at a veritable crossroads, from which the future of our club’s destiny will be forever affected. I, therefore, move that we vote this very minute to install Mister Tobias Walton as chairman of . . . our club!”

  “Good heavens!” said Ephram.

  “Can we do that?” wondered Eagleton.

  Thump raised a single eyebrow.

  “Is it in the rules?” wondered Ephram.

  “There are no rules!” declared Thump.

  Eagleton stood, his napkin raised to one shoulder like an epaulet. “We are writing the rules!” he realized aloud.

  “We are writing the book!” declared Ephram, rising to his feet to stand with his friends.

  “All those in favor!” demanded Thump.

  20 The Ghost in the Garden

  NORTH EAST TELEGRAPH COMPANY

  OFFICE—FREEPORT, MAINE

  JULY 5—AM 9:00

  PORTLAND, MAINE

  MR & MRS C BAFFIN

  12C ADAMS ST

  STAYING WITH FRIENDS THE DR MORIARTYS S. FREEPORT.

  EXPECT HOME MON. REGARDS.

  TOBY

  MISTER WALTON WOKE SUDDENLY WITH THE DISTINCT IMPRESSION THAT someone had spoken his name. For a moment he blinked myopically at his unfamiliar surroundings—the nightstand, the pitcher and wash basin, the greenish-blue wallpaper. Even as he reached for his spectacles, however, he realized that he was in the guest bedroom of the Moriarty home. He peered up at the ceiling and imagined pictures in the imperfections of the plaster.

  Good heavens! he thought, as the memory of the previous night’s eerie vigil returned to him. Could it really have been? He shivered slightly beneath the sheets, though it was a warm July morning and the sun shone upon the carpet in elongated panes.

  What a series of events had brought him here! Imagine that such a simple and ridiculous thing as losing his hat off the Custom House Wharf could lead him to new friends and uncommon experiences!

  Three days. Well, things come in threes, they say. Life will quiet down a bit now. The thought made him sigh. It was too bad, somehow, that things must quiet down. For one thing, it meant that he would have to finally decide what he was to do with the family house. Despite the excitement of the past few days, despite his new friends (and, in fact, perhaps in reaction to them), he felt a wave of loneliness pass over him. He wondered where all his life’s wanderings had got him—under a strange roof, with no family left him but a sister who was (the last he knew) in Africa.

  Optimism was a keystone to Mister Walton’s soul, however—optimism, faith, and goodwill. There are few things more healing than a cheerful imagination, and before long he had cheerfully imagined several fine scenarios that might carry him through this next day and the rest of his life.

  He stretched with a small groan and sat up in bed, looking at the carpet; it occurred to him that the spill of su
nlight was not long enough to indicate an early hour. He and the doctor had retired in the wee hours, but he had not meant to sleep the morning away. It was Sunday morning and the Moriartys were no doubt expecting to go to church.

  Mrs. Moriarty and the two little girls had already gone, as it turned out, and the doctor, who had only just risen, was banging around with some pots and pans in the kitchen. The smell of fresh coffee, of bacon frying and biscuits warming drew Mister Walton in the right direction.

  “Good morning!” said the doctor, when his guest entered the kitchen. “Mary and the girls will be home soon. Have a cup of coffee.”

  Mister Walton happily availed himself of this amenity and sat down at the kitchen table, while Dr. Moriarty busied himself with bacon and eggs. “Sunnyside up,” he replied to the doctor’s question, then thought of the voice in his mind that had drifted away with his first waking thought. He could hear it in his memory now saying “Mister Walton,” and it sounded not unlike Mr. Thump announcing the hour when the tide would be high.

  “I hope you were not disappointed in our phantom ship last night,” said Dr. Moriarty to Mister Walton.

  “It was the most singular thing,” admitted the older gentleman. He laid down his fork and knife and considered his next statement. The doctor’s wife and their daughters, Aria (who was ten) and Emily (who was seven), had returned from church in time to join them, and Mister Walton was concerned that the subject might frighten the children. “I have traveled a good deal, Dr. Moriarty, and heard of . . . similar occurrences . . . but I have always taken such tales with a grain of salt.”

  “And is your opinion still seasoned?”

  “I must say that it all seems a little unreal, sitting at breakfast with your lovely family, and the sun shining through the window.”

  “It is the third time I have seen that particular apparition, Mister Walton, and it is no more real for the repeat performances.” Dr. Moriarty reached behind him for the coffee urn on the sideboard and poured his guest and his wife a second cup.