Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  TOBY

  21 The Game Was Big in Wiscasset

  IT WAS TWILIGHT OF THE NEXT EVENING WHEN MISTER WALTON ARRIVED in Wiscasset.

  A ribbon of royal purple shone above the courthouse at the top of the hill, and the trees along Main Street were black against the sky. The street lamps seemed hindered by the fading light, or perhaps unwilling to shed their brilliance till they were wholly unrivaled by the greater light of day.

  Up ahead of the station platform the train’s engine chuffed impatiently, and further back a ramp was dropped with a crash from the local feed store to an opened boxcar. Waiting for his bags, Mister Walton watched as the silhouettes of men with wheelbarrows passed from store to car and back. Walking to the corner of the platform, he peered down the narrow alley of buildings to the bridge and the dark waters of the Sheepscott River.

  Barely a yard away from him was a single dray horse and wagon backed up to the side of the feed store. A great broad-shouldered fellow emerged from a doorway and stepped into the rig with a massive sack in each fist. Trudging to the head of the cart, he laid these down and picked up the reins.

  “You haven’t got that bear working for you up there, have you, Peter?” said a second man standing at the doorway.

  “I haven’t seen him,” said the man in the cart.

  “I thought, perhaps, you’d yoked him to the plow.”

  “I haven’t seen him,” came the serious reply again. “I wouldn’t know what to feed him.”

  “What do you feed a bear?” wondered the man in the doorway. He was merely a shadow in the gathering dusk, and it was a moment before Mister Walton realized that the question had been addressed in his direction.

  “Oh,” he said. “I think they are omnivores.”

  “Really,” said the shadowy figure. “I didn’t know bears were religious.”

  “They are very quiet about it,” said Mister Walton, without blinking.

  “Your bags, sir,” said a porter, setting Mister Walton’s valise and a second bag at their owner’s feet. “Can I get a carriage for you?”

  Forgetting, for the moment, the subject of bears, Mister Walton asked how far the Wiscasset House was, and since it proved a reasonable walking distance he decided to travel shanks’ mare. A towheaded boy materialized at his elbow and offered his services for the expedition. Mister Walton handed the boy his valise, but the enterprising fellow insisted on taking both bags.

  The train’s bell rang and the whole line of cars lurched forward—north, toward its next stop. The western face of the station was pinked by the last light of the sun when Mister Walton glanced back at it, but there was a morning sort of spring to his step. A breeze off the river curled past him and sharpened the air with the tang of salt, and evening strollers were compelled, by his amiable expression, to smile as they passed, or tip their hats, or even speak.

  “Have you ever seen a bear, sir?” asked the young boy, nearly breathless from keeping up with the portly man’s energetic pace.

  “A bear? Yes, I believe I have seen a bear once or twice, in captivity.”

  “Is that near Boston?” wondered the lad.

  Mister Walton chuckled. “Well, there are those who think so. No, my son, captivity is where a captured animal is kept; in a circus, you see, or a zoological garden, perhaps. Here, let me take the valise at least. That bag, I fear, is heavier than you thought.”

  “That’s where this one came from. A circus.”

  “A bear, you say?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I wondered what was meant by that conversation at the feed store. Is someone displaying a bear hereabouts?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But you’re expecting one, then?”

  “As soon as someone catches it.”

  Mister Walton did not feel enlightened by this discourse, but even in perplexity he was pleasant and with another chuckle he led the way.

  Lights burned in the windows of the Wiscasset House and a small crowd could be discerned in the parlor, and these facts made the building instantly pleasing to Mister Walton as he and the young boy mounted the front steps and entered the foyer.

  “Come in, come in,” said a tall man holding court in the parlor.

  Mister Walton stepped inside and bade good evening to the dozen or so women and men spaced about amongst ornate furniture.

  “Please, join us,” said the man. He was thin, with large features and a prominent Adam’s apple; his hair was sparse, but his eyebrows were jet black, and they arched ironically when he spoke. “We have been holding forth on a number of important subjects,” he said, “and we are greatly in need of a new opinion.” General laughter followed this declaration, and he added: “We’ll send for a man to take your bags.”

  An attendant appeared, just then, and offered his assistance to Mister Walton, who introduced himself. “Yes, sir,” said the attendant, taking the bag and valise. “We have been expecting you.” This did not surprise Mister Walton, since he had wired ahead for a room, but it did engender a small buzz of excitement amongst the small group in the parlor.

  While the new guest was thus engaged, the tall man looked down his nose at the young boy. “Do you know who he is?” he inquired.

  “He’s the one they said was coming, I think,” replied the boy. “He spoke of capturing bears.” As if smelling something unpleasant, the tall man waved the boy away, and Mister Walton barely caught the young fellow in the hall in time to press a generous gratuity into his hand.

  “Alfred Lofton,” said the tall man, when the new guest returned to the parlor. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch the name.”

  “Tobias Walton, at your service, sir.”

  “You know what is on our minds tonight, then, Mister Walton,” said Lofton, loftily.

  The room fell silent in order to hear Mister Walton’s response. He thought it an odd question, really, but felt up to the task of answering it. “Well, since I arrived, bears seem the subject of popular discourse.”

  “I am to understand that you’ve been informed of the details?”

  Mister Walton didn’t know when he’d had such a succession of extraordinary conversations. “Concerning bears?” he ventured.

  “Indeed,” said Lofton.

  “I don’t believe I have.” Mister Walton blinked at the rest of the company, who waited upon his every word. “The boy did intimate that one needed catching.”

  “Let us hope it is not to be caught anywhere nearby,” said the grande dame of the group. “We ladies are quite alarmed, I promise you, sir.”

  “I am certainly sorry to hear it, ma’am.”

  “I don’t think that she’s a particularly dangerous creature, Mister Walton,” said Lofton. “The bear, I mean,” he added, when Mister Walton threw an astonished glance in the direction of the older woman.

  “Oh, of course,” said the puzzled man. “The bear.”

  “She’s quite used to people, we are told, but that in itself rather complicates the matter.”

  “It does?”

  “She isn’t so apt to simply disappear into the forest, is she.”

  “Oh. But she’s used to people, you say? The bear?” Mister Walton was doing his best to understand. Meanwhile, the man from the inn waited.

  “You haven’t been informed, have you?” said Lofton, a hint of irritation in his voice. When Mister Walton—eyes and mouth wide—confirmed this suspicion, the tall man said: “She belongs to one of these Wild West circuses that the yokels love to patronize; and while the special train carrying this horde stopped here briefly yesterday morning, some simpleton in charge of the animals allowed the bear to escape. The sheriff doesn’t seem very concerned over the matter, but our ladies here at the inn dare not venture forth for a walk in town or a round of croquet.”

  “That is distressing,” said Mister Walton. He gave the man from the inn a look that indicated the need to be rescued.

  “Shall I show you to your rooms, sir?” said the attendant. “Yes, that would be
fine,” said Mister Walton. Hat in hand, he nodded to each of the women and shook hands with the men, including Alfred Lofton once more. They did seem interested to meet him, which was very nice, even if their conversation was eccentric.

  When the man from the inn had led Mister Walton away, a buzz went up among the occupants of the parlor. One man got up to stand beside Lofton, saying: “He’s not exactly what I expected, you know.”

  “He is very prompt, however,” said Lofton. “I was told that we shouldn’t expect anyone for three days.”

  “He is very much a gentleman,” expressed one of the women. “I do hope he is cautious.”

  “But it is true,” said another, “he did not impress me as a man of action. I was looking for a younger man, I suppose; or at least a rougher one.”

  “He is rather, shall we say, stocky?” said the fellow beside Lofton.

  “And those spectacles of his,” said someone. “I thought these fellows had to have tremendous powers of sight.”

  “Perhaps he isn’t what we had in mind, it is true,” said Lofton. “But appearances can be deceiving. The Big Game Club wired that they would send one of their best men, and this Mister Walton may prove hard as nails beneath that . . . exterior.”

  BOOK FIVEJULY 7, 1896

  22 It Was a Shame about Maude

  “A TRAINED BEAR HAS ESCAPED,” SAID JAMES UNDERWOOD AS HIS DAUGHTER scurried down the stairs with the last of her bags. He stood in the front hall with the day’s edition of the Portland Daily Advertiser unfolded before him.

  “It wasn’t very well trained, was it,” suggested Cordelia, balancing a hatbox and a portable writing desk on a portmanteau that stood upended by the door. She stood back and surveyed the luggage that she had collected. “I am not sure that I packed enough.”

  “Only enough for the entire crew of a small vessel,” suggested her father without looking up from his paper.

  “I’m sure there are quite enough petticoats there for a small crew,” she admitted. “Where did it escape from?”

  “The bear, you mean?” said James, who had gone on to other items. “From her cage in Wiscasset.”

  “Who escaped from her cage in Wiscasset?” asked Mercia from another room, where she was closing the drapes to keep the rugs from fading in the summer sun.

  “A bear escaped, Mama,” said Cordelia.

  “Who barely escaped?” demanded Mercia.

  Cordelia was about to try again, but her father shook his head and rolled his eyes. Don’t humor her was the connotation of this wordless idiom, for in his expert opinion his wife was having fun at their expense.

  From the beatific innocence of Mercia’s expression when she came into the hall, Cordelia judged her father’s assumption to be correct. This pleased Cordelia, for Mercia’s playful manner revealed her excitement over the forthcoming journey.

  Cordelia herself smarted a little at leaving home now that John Benning had promised to pay her a call, but the anticipation of an adventure overshadowed her doubts. She was thrilled with the notion of seeing her newly inherited land, and her father’s assurances that there were no proper roads to take her the entire way only heightened her interest.

  Most of all she was keen to see her cousin Priscilla whom she had not visited since their mothers had quarreled last Christmas. Aunt Grace was a sweet person as a rule (when she was not suffering from a headache or a bout of nerves or some form of ague), but she was a great worrier, and her unbounded anxieties often encouraged her to put her own oar in somebody else’s bay.

  The picture of unselfish concern, Grace had not been shy of expressing to Mercia her anxiety over Cordelia’s marriage prospects. Mercia, with as much tact as can be expected of a sister in these circumstances, had told Grace to please trouble herself with her own daughter’s outlook, then listed several of her own concerns, most of which touched upon Grace’s nature, which was described as nosey and high-strung. Grace denied the former and fulfilled the latter by having an attack of the vapors and disappearing into her room for the rest of the day.

  Relations between the sisters were cordial, if strained, for the rest of the Underwoods’ stay, and it had taken the intervening months for their succeeding communications to properly warm again. Mercia insisted, whenever she brought the subject up, that she had forgotten the entire thing.

  “Did they capture her?” asked Mercia, as she entered the hall.

  “The bear, you mean,” said James dryly, but before he could answer, a man came to the door to say that he had brought their carriage. Cordelia and her mother instructed the driver as to how to load the luggage, and James listened to this short course, the newspaper forgotten in his hands.

  “You haven’t told us about your bear, Papa,” said Cordelia, when the driver had staggered back to the carriage with the load they had given him.

  “I had the distinct impression,” said James, “that the creature had no fascination for you.”

  “On the contrary,” assured his wife, and she and Cordelia each took a seat upon one of the lower steps of the front hall stairs.

  “Contrary” would have been just his choice of word, but with a flick of his wrists he snapped the paper open to the proper page and proceeded to read in a dramatic tone of voice.

  “The wire from Wiscasset is humming these days with news of a truant bruin.”

  “I like that,” said Cordelia. “Truant bruin.”

  “It is a felicitous phrase,” he agreed before continuing. “The beast, it seems, is the property of Colonel Cobb’s Wild West Show, which performed to enthusiastic audiences in our own fair city last September. Those who have patronized Colonel Cobb’s entertainment will remember Maude, the less than statuesque bear who goes under the stage name of “Kodiak.” Maude, as we prefer to think of her, provided some of the most uproarious moments of the show by covering her eyes with her paws whenever Colonel Cobb pointed his famous Remington rifle in her direction. The ursine actress, upon the colonel’s command to behave like a proper bear, brought the house down by standing on her head.” James looked up from his paper. “I’m sorry to have missed that.”

  “I am sorry to have disparaged her training,” said Cordelia, who was enjoying her father’s theatrical reading. “It’s obvious that I spoke too soon.”

  “Ah, but listen to this. Her abilities are manifold. “Maude, it says here, proved to possess talents, however, that even the colonel did not suspect, for during a short stop at the Wiscasset Station, on Sunday afternoon, she made good her escape. It was not till the touring company’s personal train reached Bath that Maude was missed, and a certain amount of deduction, i.e., when was she last seen, led to the conclusion that she had deserted her post at the Lincoln County Seat.” James didn’t bother to look up from his paper to add his own commentary. “In the end she de-trained, as it turned out.”

  “I resisted saying that myself,” said Mercia.

  “Sheriff Charles Piper, leader of the local constabulary, suspects that Maude will prove more nuisance than danger; and there being a reward of fifty dollars for her safe capture, he doubly suspects that fortune seekers will be more nuisance still. With the understanding that actresses are famous for their nervous temperaments, Sheriff Piper has ordered that hunting dogs not be used for the task, and has himself led two forays into the surrounding countryside in hopes of ending the fugitive’s run before either bear or populace come to harm. At the hour before this edition went to print Maude was still on the loose.

  “This journal suggests that, upon sight of the bruin, a harsh command might encourage her to stand on her head, in which position she may be susceptible to capture. We await further word from Wiscasset, and promise the sequel to our readers.”

  “Does our train take us through Wiscasset?” wondered Mercia.

  “I certainly do hope so!” said Cordelia earnestly.

  “Yes, it does,” James informed them. He delved several pages into his paper till he came to the railroad schedules. “I’m afraid we don’t sto
p there, though. Perhaps we’ll get a glimpse of Maude as we trundle by.” He folded his paper methodically.

  It was in the afternoon that a private carriage stopped before the Underwood home, and John Benning stepped onto the sidewalk. From top hat to spats, he was nothing short of impeccable—every line and lineament carefully orchestrated for its greatest effect on a young woman’s heart and a parent’s sense of decorum.

  There was nothing unsure about John Benning—no last-minute inventory of his appearance, no second look at a written address to be convinced that he was at the right place, certainly no hesitation in his step. Several minutes later, after a series of polite knocks and a patient wait by the front door, his return down the walk and back to the street was just as confident. He climbed back into his carriage and spoke to the driver, his face revealing no hint of surprise or disappointment.

  The carriage moved out into the light traffic of High Street and hurried down the hill in the direction of the harbor.

  23 Sundry Moss

  WISCASSET WOKE THAT TUESDAY MORNING AND PEERED FROM ITS WINdows for any sign of Maude. Mrs. Althea Pool, who had sat on her glasses the previous spring, stared out her back door at something black for several minutes before she realized that the object was closer than she thought. Her cat, it turned out to be, sitting on the fence.

  William Nute caught sight of something that had a substantial chance of being a bear. He stood on a knoll behind his house and shielded his eyes against the bright sky, but the object of his attention was too far away and too quickly gone to be sure that it wasn’t a dog or a trick of the light.

  The river, as it happened, proved the better venue for bear spotting. Joseph Jones, puttering down from Sheepscott Village in his barge-like vessel, the Northstar, had a very good look at something ursine making its way just above the western bank.

  This news touched land at the Wiscasset waterfront and did not tarry on its way to town, where most individuals were philosophical. Bears, said George Turner at the telegraph office, were reasonable creatures—not like a sheep or a rhinoceros. Bill Gibbs reminded George that this reasonable creature made a living standing on her head in front of audiences. Dr. Cushman expressed interest in George’s expertise regarding rhinoceroses.