Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  James wished to be on the train, and quickly, but he stifled this urge in order to acknowledge Grace’s leave-taking. “You are sure of this?” he asked when he bent down to receive her kiss upon his cheek. The truth was that Grace’s departure, once executed, would make the rest of their journey a good deal less complicated.

  “Yes,” she said as she turned to embrace her sister. “Please take care of the children.” Then she added “All of them” as she hugged Cordelia. “And from you, Mr. Benning,” she said, not offering her hand, “I expect the most proper behavior.”

  “I will do my best to meet those expectations,” he replied with a bow.

  “Do so,” she said.

  They were hardly seated before the train moved forward with a shudder; dust shook loose in the car, and a brief cloud of smoke and cinders blew in from the engine so that they were obliged to shut the windows. The wheels sounded roughly on the tracks and the train rumbled and tilted as they eased around a sharp bend.

  It will be wondered what was said the night before, once certain members of their party were informed about the more mysterious aspects of their expedition. There was indeed a good deal of discussion, and it was generally agreed that something was up.

  Argument ran along the line of what that something was, however, but not once was it suggested that the expedition be canceled or postponed. Each understood the need to be alert, but no sense of danger clouded their hearts. The Underwoods were an active people whose recent generations had energetically vied for what they wanted, whether settling frontiers, political debates, or business deals; competition was expected and even welcome.

  Only Priscilla showed misgivings, and they might be compared to the apprehensions of a person who, vaguely wary of heights, yet boards a Ferris wheel with a happy laugh. John Benning—perhaps the most prudent of the lot—suggested that they pick their guide carefully when they reached their destination.

  “The agency in Millinocket has already hired a guide for us,” said James.

  “Perhaps we should find out, then,” said John Benning, “whether he was picked, or whether he volunteered.”

  “Oh, my goodness!” said Cordelia, a happy thrill touching her spine.

  “It’s a shame that your Aunt Delia hadn’t caught that fellow peering through keyholes,” said John, with only a hint of irony. “She would have boxed his ears more ably than I.”

  Cordelia half-expected to find Mr. Tolly on the train with them, and was rather sorry not to see his friendly face among their fellow passengers. She would have liked one of his mile-eating stories on this leg of their journey. She had, instead, the miles themselves—eaten by track and coal and steam. Those regions northwest of Bangor had the grandeur of hard use; great expanses of cleared land—some of it farmed, some of it settled into tiny hamlets, but most of it rolling over distant hills with nothing but bare stumps, scraggly bushes, and scrub pine.

  There was less said among the Underwood party today than yesterday; this train was noisier and that in itself might have discouraged conversation, but there was more to the silence among them. Ethan alone was chattery, and John Benning showed him a magic trick or two, then produced a deck of cards and offered to play hearts with him—something he might not have done if Grace had still been with them. She would not have objected to cards per se, but would have been a little shocked that he carried a deck on his person.

  James had serious thoughts as he watched the quiet land fall past them. Despite his outward humor regarding John Benning and Cordelia, he was not entirely comfortable with the young man’s forward manner, but this could be ascribed to a common characteristic of fatherhood when it comes to daughters—in this case an only daughter.

  John Benning was wise not to press himself upon Cordelia this morning—her Aunt Grace had grown doubtful of his intentions the day before, and had been on the verge of making a case to Cordelia’s mother. Today, with Aunt Grace gone, it seemed James’s office to take up the staff of wariness.

  But John Benning’s circumspection was certainly most wise because of Cordelia herself, who began to wonder why he didn’t pay attention to her despite what others might think. She answered his seeming indifference by not looking at him, and tried to appear interested in Tristram Shandy upon her lap.

  The day was clear. Fat and amiable clouds populated the sky, and to the west there were mountains—an ancient blue ridge in the distance.

  Upon a slope, barely a quarter of a mile away, a solitary horseman waved as the train passed, and Cordelia lifted her hand with such a soft and simple movement that—had he articulated her from all the other faces in all the other windows—he would not have seen her quiet gesture. The wave was for herself somehow, a gauge of where she was going and that she was going, like a dreamer who pinches herself in order to verify an unexpected reality.

  It was noon by the time they reached the town of Milo, where the forests had begun to recover from the industrial and maritime heyday of the mid-nineteenth century. Here they stopped to stretch their legs while the train took on water. An eating house specializing in soup, pie, and strong coffee stood along the tracks, and Cordelia gamely led the way to its dark interior, their boots and shoes clunking noisily upon the boarded walk.

  The establishment was cleanly and expertly run by a large woman in a large calico dress who did not often sell pies by the slice but was politely willing to do so. They stood in the middle of the little room and peered into the shadowy corners where men in shirtsleeves ate with their elbows on the table, while James and John Benning negotiated the purchase of some refreshments. Cordelia found a map on one of the dark walls and traced their route from Bangor to Millinocket with the tip of a finger.

  Three burly fellows rose from their table and passed while the proprietor waited upon the Underwood party. The youngest among these working men cast a glance at Priscilla as he went through the door and said something quietly in French.

  “What was that?” said Cordelia, who spoke the language well enough to have understood the gist of the man’s words.

  “He was remarking upon your cousin,” said John Benning.

  “Good heavens!” said Cordelia, managing a fair imitation of Priscilla’s mother as she cast a glance of mock indignation in her cousin’s direction. “How impertinent!” Cordelia took hold of Priscilla’s arm as if to protect her. Priscilla looked surprised to be the point of anyone’s remark.

  “He said that you have beautiful eyes,” said John to Priscilla.

  “We have heard enough, thank you,” said Cordelia.

  Priscilla wasn’t sure she had heard enough, and said so. The incident might have seemed a small business to anyone else, but Priscilla was oddly affected by it. A sadness washed over her as the train took them from Milo. She could not recall ever having been complimented by someone who was not safely related or distanced by age, and though she felt a sense of pleasure in having been admired, her overwhelming reaction was one of melancholy. It seemed such a nice thing to say, that she had beautiful eyes, and yet so hopeless somehow, that she felt like crying.

  She sighed instead, and Cordelia turned from her window to watch her cousin carefully. No words passed between them, but Cordelia took Priscilla’s hand and squeezed it, her eyes half-questioning, half-understanding.

  “What do you expect your land will be like?” said Priscilla, gamely attempting to change the subject of unspoken conversation.

  “Well,” said Cordelia, “I have had the image in my mind of something that Uncle Basil gave me years ago.” She rummaged in her handbag, producing after some work the ivory brooch.

  “Yes, I remember,” said Priscilla, taking it and finding new interest in the delicate cameo. She touched the face of the brooch, as Cordelia had done a hundred times herself, tracing the scene so artfully sketched there.

  “I see my land atop a hill, looking down upon this lake.” Cordelia indicated the same upon the cameo. “And these trees, and that bit of ledge by the shore. I am afraid my imagina
tion has gone no further.”

  “I hope it is just like this,” said Priscilla, and when she smiled, tears glistened in her beautiful dark eyes, so that Cordelia could not help but reach over and hug her.

  Brownville Junction was their final stop before reaching Millinocket, a jumping-off point for loggers and sportsmen, quieter still than Milo, more roughly built, and more closely hemmed in by tall young pines. In the territories beyond, the forest increased in depth and darkness. The heat of summer met the shade of tree and thicket like a soft kiss, and a heady perfume of balsam and pine permeated the passenger cars. Cordelia leaned her cheek against her window and closed her eyes to savor it.

  James folded his paper now, and his wife laid her needlework to rest upon her lap. The game of cards between Ethan and John Benning slowed to a crawl with waning interest as the woodland deepened its presence around them.

  They had read of such places, of course, and dreamed of them in those early hours when sleeping visions are borrowed from unnamed and ancient ancestors. The treeless acres so familiar to them might give the impression—however false—of full disclosure, as if, looking over a field, the eye could command all life and thought sustained there; but forests practice no such deception. Deep woods are the very metaphor for secrecy, and peering into an immeasurable forest, the plainest imagination can conceive of teeming life beyond the veil of brush and branch, and even convince the passing glance of hirsute faces and wary eyes peering from leafy top-lofts and ferny underbrush.

  And for those who cannot see the forest for the trees, that which conceals, conceals even itself.

  The forest fell away again, in stages conspicuous to the eye. The train passed over a stretch of water, banked to either side two or three times, then made a final sharp turn to the right, leaning with the curve as open country swept into view like clear sky behind rushing clouds. Ahead of them, the rustic settlement of Millinocket came into view.

  And here we are, said Cordelia to herself as the penultimate leg of their journey came to a slow, rumbling, whistling, brake-hissing halt.

  The day was clear and fine as the Underwoods and their company stepped onto the platform; the street before them had left behind the mud of spring and not yet succumbed to the dust of late summer. Several locals were taking in the air, standing at their stoops or leaning against porch railings. Train arrivals were often good for business and always good for gossip. No one was disappointed by the Underwoods.

  A small white-bearded fellow regarded them carefully. “You’ll be Mr. Underwood,” he said to James.

  “Yes . . . Mr. Butler?”

  “I am. I’ve stacked your things in the backroom over to the store. Your horses and buckboard are stabled across the street.”

  “We are obliged.”

  “Mr. Scott is down at Mrs. Cuthbert’s, taking a bath.” Mr. Butler tipped his hat to the ladies. “Pardon me for saying so.”

  “Mr. Scott is our guide?” asked James.

  “He has been so hired, sir, yes.”

  “I trust his ablutions will not take long. We want to reach our destination before sundown.”

  “There is more of him than me,” said Mr. Butler, interested in the question. “I can’t exactly say how long it would take him.”

  “Does Mrs. Cuthbert have a place to sit?” asked Mercia.

  “She has a porch, ma’am.”

  “Perhaps we can wait for him there,” she suggested, and so they did—the women at any rate, while the men (including young Ethan) brought their animals and gear from the stable to the hitching post outside Mrs. Cuthbert’s humble boardinghouse.

  Cordelia had been sitting too long already, and she paced the length of the porch while her mother and Priscilla sat and watched her. Mrs. Cuthbert, pleased to have female company from more populated soil, was quick to produce a very civilized tea. She sat and chatted with Mercia about the women’s vote.

  The boardinghouse stood in the middle of town—a cluster of some twenty buildings or so along a single street—and from its front porch they could see Mount Katahdin looming in the distance over the stables across the way. A few houses and businesses were rustic in appearance, but most of them might have graced any New England street, their windows peering out from painted or whitewashed clapboards. Chickens scratched in the yard and a cat sunned itself in a store window just across the street.

  “Children,” said Cordelia. “I don’t see any children.” She paused by the porch railing and looked up the street to the railway station and, beyond that, a tall hill topped by three lonely trees.

  “I don’t see anyone to speak of,” said Priscilla.

  Indeed, they had trekked through some uninhabited spaces, but ahead of them was a vast territory of wilderness. The town itself seemed hushed and secretive—poised to take root at the edge of the great timberlands while it was yet too small to offer any threat or hazard to the wild acres within its reach. Cordelia and her cousin were gazing at the distant razor-backed hump of Katahdin when James arrived with the buckboard, Ethan at his side, and John Benning behind them expertly riding a black mare as he led another saddled horse along. The chickens scattered before them.

  “No horse for me?” asked Mercia.

  “No lady’s saddle,” explained her husband.

  Mercia looked put out, and James apologetic. “There is nothing for it, I suppose,” she said.

  “It’s the one thing I hadn’t thought of,” said James, accepting the blame.

  “Ethan will want to drive the buckboard,” said Mercia. “I will sit in the back and look balefully at you.”

  “It will probably be rough ground,” said John Benning, attempting to put the best light on the subject. Mercia was an excellent rider and undaunted by rough ground, but she graciously nodded to him, as if this thought made her feel better.

  Standing at the porch rail, Priscilla pointed, asking: “Are we going in that direction?”

  “Towards Katahdin?” said James. “More or less. Does the old mountain look forbidding?”

  “Not forbidding, perhaps, but a little watchful.”

  “That’s just old Pamola, the thundermaker,” he said as he climbed down from the buckboard. “But he’s gotten sleepy in his dotage and doesn’t come down these days, does he, Mrs. Cuthbert?”

  “He still comes down, now and again, Mr. Underwood,” replied the woman from her rocker. “Sometimes a cloud will appear over that mountain’s back like a bad thought, and people are glad if they’re indoors.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so big,” said Priscilla.

  “The ocean,” suggested Cordelia.

  “It’s not such a big mountain,” said John Benning, tethering the horses by the porch. “There are peaks in the Rockies three times as tall.”

  “He is stooped with age,” came a new voice, rich with broad vowels, and carrying with it the hint of a burr. “In his youth he made other mountains dizzy from craning their necks to look into his face.” A tall man—as tall as James—stood at the front door; he had a large brow and rugged features, ruddy with weather; his hair was that indeterminate color that lingers between straw-blond youth and gray age; his hands were thick and his legs long. He was dressed in denim and flannel, his pant legs tucked into calf-high boots, and his sleeves rolled past the elbows.

  “The Appalachians are old mountains,” agreed John Benning.

  “They show the very age and body of the time,” said the man, “its form and pressure.”

  “Mr. Scott, I presume,” said James, climbing the steps of the porch.

  “Mr. Underwood,” said the man, shaking James’s hand. He took in the rest of the company, glancing only briefly among the women. Cordelia realized, in the quick scan of his gray eyes, that Mr. Scott was a good deal younger than she first thought. “Mr. Butler tells me that you want to leave this afternoon,” he said.

  “That would please us,” replied James.

  “Well, Dresden,” said Mr. Butler, who was crossing the street. �
�I see you have met the Underwoods. Your horse and gear are ready at the stables.” Cordelia glanced between Mr. Butler and Mr. Scott several times before it was clear to her that the name Dresden had been directed at the guide. Mr. Scott could almost be seen to wince at the sound of his Christian name. He cleared his throat and tromped down from the porch, casting a sidelong glance at the ostler, then strode off to retrieve his horse.

  “It’s an unusual name,” said Mercia. “Dresden.”

  “His mother was German,” said Mr. Butler. “It’s the town she came from. Well, here comes Mr. Cross. Prepare to have your likeness taken.”

  A man appeared with a camera slung over his shoulder: a local store owner who extracted a few extra dollars from passing sportsmen by taking their photographs and having the resultant prints ready by the time they returned from the woods. Here, it seemed, was the opportunity for an unusual composition, with the inclusion of three women; it pleased him to have something besides overly equipped hunters and fishermen to photograph, and the Underwoods were easily talked into posing. Cordelia later sent a copy of the picture to Aunt Delia with a letter, saying:

  Are we too spruced up to look like homesteader’s? I think so. I especially look elegant sitting among our gear in the back of the wagon. Papa arranged things so that I could sit on the canvas tents, which were comfortable enough, though they smelled musty. Doesn’t Priscilla look happy? And Ethan, holding the reins? A breeze came up as Mr. Cross prepared his camera, which is why mother is holding her hat—a difficult pose. I think Papa sits like nobility on his horse—I do love this picture of him.

  I wish John Benning had allowed himself to be part of this picture, but he would have none of it—graciously insisting that an outsider should do nothing to mar a family portrait. Oddly enough, Mr. Scott can be seen, though I am sure he thought himself out of view. He is on the left, slightly out of focus, his head down. He would be a handsome man if he would smile.

  The letter continues with an account of what happened next.