Daniel Plainway - Or The Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  “High tide at about fifty minutes past eleven,” offered Thump.

  Eagleton smiled at certain onlookers and bowed politely. “Clearing tomorrow; wind to fall off after midnight.” Then to the elderly fellow before the fire, he said, “It has been a great pleasure, Colonel.”

  “The devil!” shouted Colonel Barkoddel again.

  The three men jumped, reached for hats that weren’t on their heads, bowed, bumped noggins, wobbled away from the fireplace, nodded to several of the people who watched them with either curiosity or annoyance, and hurried upstairs in the wake of Mr. Burnbrake. They could hear the colonel shouting something as they hurried down the upstairs hall.

  31. The Ox at Plow

  “You said yourself that Norumbega was simply ancient Bangor,” said Sundry to Mister Walton when they were calling the exhausting day done in neighboring rooms at the house of Capital Gaines. They had met in the upstairs hall, both on their way to say good-night to their host.

  “Did I?” Mister Walton said.

  “Well, you indicated that it was more or less common knowledge.”

  Thinking back on the conversation of the day before, the bespectacled fellow laughed softly. “Perhaps I was ting to impress Mr. Covington,” he offered. “It is more a common belief than a knowledge, I think.”

  “But it is a pretty well accepted belief, for all that.” Sundry knew better than to concede to his employer’s self-criticism.

  Mister Walton nodded. They were paused at the top of the stairs. Mr. Noel and Mr. Noggin came in from a walk around the immediate property and hailed the guests on their way to the kitchen. “If there is an ancient crumbling city within a hundred miles of where we stand,” said Mister Walton, by way of answering Sundry’s implicit question, “it would be a strange thing that no one has stumbled upon it by this time.”

  “Still,” said Sundry, “these fellows are putting a great deal of effort into searching such a place out.”

  “People will attach themselves to all manner of curious tenets,” said Mister Walton. He recommenced his journey down the stairs. “What might be viewed from the outside as the boundaries of logic might seem from within simply boundaries to be got over.”

  “And yet, as you said, it would be a strange thing if such a place existed.”

  “But I would like to know what is written on that stone,” admitted Mister Walton.

  Sundry nodded his agreement.

  “Have you gentlemen sorted it all out then?” asked Capital Gaines when they entered the kitchen.

  “I am so weary,” said Mister Walton, though he looked bright enough, “that I will be lucky to sort out the bedclothes and get between them.”

  “Mr. Noggin is wafming some bread and apple butter,” said their host, “if you’ve a mind before you retire. That and a cup of hot milk will do wonders for a night’s sleep.”

  This sounded a pleasant way to finish their labors, and the five men sat about and did for two loaves of bread before they were finished. In the midst of their repast, however, Mister Walton raised the mysterious business again by stating, “I say that I have no theories regarding the runes at Council Hill and the attendant business, but I wonder if Sundry hasn’t been lending his keen mind to the problem.” It was clear, from his earlier questions, that Sundry was pondering the situation, and Mister Walton was curious what direction his friend’s thoughts were taking.

  “Bust her feeding,” said Sundry.

  Mister Walton expressed his “beg your pardon” with wide eyes.

  “It’s something my father always says whenever he sees a team of oxen at the plow. ‘She’ll bust her feeding.’”

  “Does he?”

  “Well, he does.” Sundry was considering this deeply and looked unlikely to offer more on the subject.

  “It seems an unusual expression,” suggested Mr. Noggin.

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “I’ve never heard anything like it,” announced Mr. Noel.

  “She’ll bust her feeding?” asked Mister Walton, wondering if he had heard aright.

  “To begin with, it was just ‘bust her feeding,’ but now he always says, ‘She’ll bust her feeding,’ whenever he sees an ox at the plow.”

  “But an ox is not a she, is it?”

  “That’s what makes it odd.”

  “Part of it, at any rate.”

  “What do you make of it, Capital?” asked Mister Walton.

  “This is a farm, to be sure,” said their host, “but it’s Mr. Noel and Mr. Noggin keep it running. I’m a woodsman by inclination. It’s an odd locution, though, no doubt.”

  “Dad knows he’s saying it wrong,” admitted Sundry.

  “He does?”

  “It’s some word, really, he’s using: Greek or Latin. His own father used it, and he learned it from old Parson Leach, an itinerant preacher who used to come through years ago.”

  “Bust her feeding,” said Mister Walton to himself.

  “Bust her feeding.”

  Capital and Mr. Noggin and Mr. Noel each tried their hands (or rather their tongues) at the odd phrase but could make nothing out of it.

  “Does this have anything to do with that figure on the rock?” wondered Mister Walton. “The one that Frederick thought might depict an ox?”

  “The pictograph?” said Capital

  “I was just thinking,” said Sundry, “that it might be a plow rather than an ox.”

  “Were you?” Mister Walton wondered that this element of their recent experiences had caught his friend’s attention so.

  “Yes,” replied Sundry. He cut himself another piece of bread and proceeded to lose sight of it beneath a slab of butter. “But I’m also thinking,” he said, raising the bread to his mouth, “that it might be the same thing ox or plow-ne way or another.”

  32. The Third Crash

  “Do you know?” announced Lavona, more to her sisters than their guests.

  “We haven’t had married people under this roof for years!”

  “We’ve had Mr. Petty,” said Larinda.

  “And Mr. Bungle,” added Alvaid.

  “But not their wives!”

  “Oh, Lavona!” exclaimed Louella with something like a laugh.

  “Nor Mrs. Sharpsteen’s husband,” agreed Lavilda. “Good heavens! Do you suppose we haven’t had a married couple beneath this roof since Mother and Father died?”

  “Posh!” said Louella, but she was thinking on this very heavily.

  The kitchen was spacious, with two stoves, numerous cupboards, and doors to pantries and cellars. The long simple table that ran half the length of the room had once accommodated servants at their meals and their tasks. Daniel and Charlotte were very nearly pushed into their seats with orders to do absolutely nothing toward their own comfort, while the sisters tended to their guests and discussed the dearth of married people beneath their roof.

  Daniel was blushing by this time, and Charlotte smiling. The lawyer cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “but Miss Bumbrake and I are not married.”

  All heads came about. Lavona turned from the warming oven, where she was retrieving the pie: Larinda hesitated in the doorway to the cold pantry, where other victuals and milk were kept; Louella paused in her getting of an extra chair (there were only six at the table, and she had refused Daniel’s help); Lavilda stood with the silverware in her hand, and Alvaid with the table linen.

  “Not married,” said one of the sisters, and the elderly women glanced from Daniel’s discomfort to Charlotte’s smile.

  “Saints and stars!” declared Lavona. “They’re eloping!”

  Now the cry that rose was that of five schoolgirls who have just been informed of some gloriously romantic notion. Larinda sat down, she was so out of breath with it, and Lavilda dropped the silverware.

  “In the snow!” declared Alvaid. “In the storm!”

  “Are there many after you?” asked Larinda.

  “Oh, my!” said Lavona. “They’ll be pursued! Just l
ike Mother and Father!”

  Daniel was attempting to get a word in edgewise but was not assisted by his own astonishment, or by Charlotte, who was fit to be tied with laughter, her hand over her mouth. It was the sight of Daniel laughing that finally stopped the ladies, though not before they had constructed a scenario that would have done the rashest, most fire-headed melodramatist proud. Charlotte let out a single peep of laughter when the room quieted, and apologized by saying, “Oh, dear, I am tired!” She wiped a tear away and told the sisters, “We’ve met only this morning.”

  But the Pettengill sisters had been so convinced by the cry of elopement that this announcement produced a stunned silence.

  “My, that’s quick,” said Larinda finally.

  Louella swatted the air and clicked her tongue. “What she is saying is that they are not eloping.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Larinda.

  “But Mr. Plainway has done a valiant service in rescuing me nonetheless,” added Charlotte, who couldn’t bear to leave the sisters with nothing after the ecstatic peak of their previous misconstruction.

  The elderly women cast glowing eyes in Daniel’s direction, and the man realized that he was outnumbered with no hope of reinforcement.

  “I was truly and physically threatened this morning, when Mr. Plainway arrived, and since then he has been nothing but benefit to me and I nothing but trouble to him.”

  “Nonsense,” he said, but it was so under his breath that it was hardly heard. He cleared his throat again and said a little louder, “Nonsense.”

  “I have much to thank him for,” she finished, and it was perhaps less awkward for her to say her thanks in such a public manner than to wait for a private moment.

  “There’s hope for them yet,” whispered Lavilda to Alvaid.

  “We certainly do beg your pardon,” pronounced Louella. “Mother and Father eloped, you know, and we have always just loved the tale.”

  “They didn’t elope in the end,” said Alvaid.

  “Well, it is all the same as if they had.”

  “Oh, my!” said Lavona with a dreamy smile. There were tears in her eyes. “Mother was so beautiful, and Father so very handsome!”

  “You always say that,” countered Larinda, “but they were no more than plain good-looking people.”

  “Didn’t you think they were very beautiful and very handsome?” asked Lavona of Daniel.

  Daniel thought back on the portraits in the parlor and, glancing from one sister to the other, gave the impression of a Solomon-like reflection. “Paintings of course do not always do their subjects justice, but what I was most impressed with was that they appeared to be very fine people.”

  One of Charlotte’s very fine eyebrows lifted a quarter of an inch.

  “That’ not a big enough piece of pie for you, Mr. Plainway!” said Lavona, though it was herself serving it. She whisked the plate from under the man’s nose and returned to the warming oven to find a piece large enough for a man of such perspicacity.

  Larinda brought a plate of ham and a bottle of milk from the cold pant and set it on the table. “We don’t always give our guests the cold shoulder,” she said as she uncovered the meat, and her sisters laughed.

  “You must forgive us,” said Louella. “We have guests too infrequently these days, though there was a time when this house was filled with people.”

  “Summer on the back lawn or down at the riverbank,” said Larinda with a sigh.

  “The oak swing,” said Alvaid.

  “The oak swing,” said Lavilda. “I haven’t thought of it for years.”

  “How do you get along?” wondered Charlotte, for the situation of these ladies had begun to concern her.

  “Oh, we have friends, you know,” said Louella. “Curier is by every day. No doubt you’ll see him in the morning.”

  “Whose rooms shall we put them in?” wondered Lavona in her usual shout.

  “Oh, please,” said Charlotte. “Don’t go to any trouble. Certainly not this late at night.”

  “I can fit on a couch in the parlor,” said Daniel. “Or even the floor by the fire.”

  The sisters would hear none of it and discussed among them whose rooms would be used.

  “Please,” insisted Charlotte, “we couldn’t turn anyone out of her room.”

  “No, no, dear,” said Louella. “You misunderstand.” She patted Charlotte’s shoulder softly. “When Father passed on, he left the house to all of us, but certain rooms very specifically.”

  “He left individual rooms to particular people?” wondered Daniel.

  “Yes,” said Larinda. “He divided it up quite fairly.”

  “And expressly left the halls and entryways for the use of us all,” said Alvaid.

  “We’ve just never been very sure if that means we actually own the halls and entryways!” added Lavona.

  “He was a very peace-loving man,” breathed Lavilda.

  “But he was death on curiosity!” exclaimed Lavona.

  Larinda let out a heartfelt sigh. “Though we never suspected it while he was alive, bless his soul,” she said.

  “No?” Daniel knew enough of human nature to sense a story here.

  “Oh, my!” said Lavona. “The inquisitive wouldn’t survive long in this house! There’s the locked room, you know, in the west wing!”

  “Lavona!” said Louella.

  “A I shouting again?”

  “No…well, yes, you are, but more important, you are telling tales.”

  “Howsoever, it is true! We’ve never seen the other side of that door!”

  “I think, when we were young, it wasn’t locked,” said Lavilda.

  “You always say that!” shouted Lavona.

  “Well, I always think it!”

  Larinda leaned close between Daniel and Charlotte, encouraging the guests themselves to lean forward. “We’re not even sure that we should be talking of it,” she said in something of a stage whisper.

  “It used to smell very nice outside the room!” shouted Lavona.

  Daniel had taken it upon himself to cut some portions from the shoulder of ham, and Charlotte was only now realizing (as she warmed up) how hungry she was, but this last statement lifted their eyes from the table, and they exchanged perplexed glances before Daniel spoke. “And what harm is there in talking of it?” Daniel wondered.

  “If we ever saw the inside of that room, we’d lose everything!” asserted Lavona.

  “What?” said Daniel.

  “If any one of us saw it!” said Lavilda, shouting like her sister.

  “Good heavens!” said Daniel. He looked to Louella.

  Louella nodded, saying quietly, “It’s what we’ve been told.”

  “Has it?” Daniel couldn’t imagine such an article in a will and didn’t know if it was binding if it existed.

  “Mr. Edward has been very definite on that subject,” agreed Lavilda. “No one is to go into the west wing room save for himself.”

  “Mr. Edward?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he is your lawyer?”

  “He is. He was Father’s lawyer before Father died.”

  Alvaid added her own note, saying, “Mr. Edward is the one with a key.”

  Daniel returned to the ham and laid some slices on Charlotte’s plate.

  Lavona had doled out some herculean portions of pie, and Louella placed glasses on the table. The sisters were pleased as could be to have the two “young people” eating heartily at the table. Appetite did indeed overtake curiosity as Daniel and Charlotte made a late dinner, but when the edge was gone from his hunger, Daniel found his mind considering the mysterious west wing room and this Mr. Edward, who kept its secret hidden.

  “Never heard of such a thing,” he said to himself as he looked across the table at Charlotte, who was listening very intently to a genealogy of the Pettengill family. His curiosity was again whisked aside, but by something else entirely, as he watched her.

  “Mother and Father might never
have been married if not for an old Finn who lived in Hallowell in those days,” said Larinda.

  “Old Kalf,” added Lavilda.

  “And did he help them elope?” asked Daniel.

  “He helped them not to elope, in a manner of speaking,” said Larinda.

  “He was a magician,” said another of the sisters.

  “A wizard, I think,” said still another. “I think the Finns have wizards.”

  Charlotte sat back in a large wing-backed chair, a quilt over her knees, as she soaked up the warmth from the hearth and grew spellbound by the flames. Standing with his back to the fire in the parlor, Daniel lost track of who was speaking as the words came thick and fast.

  “A wizard is a magician.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, but I’ve seen a magician when I was a girl, but I’ve never seen a wizard.”

  “There was a magician who came to the fair.”

  “I think there may be a difference.”

  “The difference is that a magician has tricks.”

  “Well, the story! Old Kalf had his tricks, to be sure!”

  “Mother and Father believed it! Grandmother believed it!”

  “They all saw it!”

  “They saw something, certainly, but-”

  “It is very impolite to be carrying on like this when Mr. Plainway and Miss Burn brake haven’t the slightest idea what we are talking about.”

  This last was from Louella, and they quietly accepted her chastisement, falling silent while the burden of the story found its speaker. Daniel glanced over his shoulder at the portraits above the mantel; they were fine-looking people, he mostly bald with large mustaches and a square jaw, she with dark hair in a bun and her own chin lifted a little defiantly perhaps. They had thoughtful eyes, however, and Daniel could believe that they were both kind.

  “Father’s family had been greatly dashed by the Revolution,” said Larinda. “Their political aspirations an their fortunes suffered, for they were Tories, you see.” Glances sped from sister to sister as this admission was made. “But as unwanted as they were in Boston, they found themselves without welcome in New Brunswick, where so many of their persuasion fled after the surrender at Yorktown. Despised by the colonists, they were condescended to by the English, and Grandfather took his family, which had yet to include Father, to the coast of Maine, where the ownership of land was much in dispute and where a person might settle without reference to his past.