BOOK ONE 
WEDDING AND DEPARTURE BOOK ONE WEDDING AND DEPARTUREJune 4–5, 1897
Who knew whence Spruce Street had sprung? Several lanes up from the waterfront, it must once have commanded a view of Portland Harbor. Perhaps in the days of King Philip’s War a cow path ran there, or even the rutted trail to a tiny cabin, from which a settler’s family would have fled the Abenaki raids that razed the seaside village with fire and ax. Almost a hundred years later, when the colonies had raised the cry of rebellion (and the vicinity was still known as Falmouth), half a dozen homes along that former cow path might have watched the approach of the British fleet that would shell the town and the landing of the troops that would burn it once again.
And in 1866, on the very day set aside to celebrate the old rebellion, fire would once more blight the eastern view of what was then named Spruce Street, populated with handsome brick and clapboard houses. The Great Portland Blaze, purportedly the result of fireworks, would destroy half the town, but Spruce Street would be spared.
Who knew whence Spruce Street had sprung? Three times fire had visited the peninsula, and much of the perceived history had been swept away by war and the want of memory between generations, so that on the fourth of June, 1897, when the sun rose among a scatter of ambivalent clouds, when squirrels ventured the lawns and birdsong and sea breeze filled the oaks and maples and chestnuts along the old way, it might have seemed to the first solitary walker that it had always been thus, or even that this avenue had risen, persevered, and lingered solely for the purpose of hosting the day’s significant event.
That first pedestrian on the heel of dawn was of less than average height for a grown man (which he was) and if he was more than average breadth (and again, yes), he was yet not fat but stout as a yeoman (which he was not). Consummately dressed in black, complete with gloves and top hat, he wore a brown beard that had twice been termed magnificent and that covered most of his face and a good deal of his upper torso. He held one arm against his side as if he were carrying something under it; the hour was too early for the newspaper that would normally occupy that position, but well-worn custom is hard to conquer.
Of three distinct and related figures expected on Spruce Street that day, he had the furthest to come, and it was not expected that he would walk the distance across town, or so in advance; but excitement had stirred him, and a powerful breakfast had fortified him beyond even his usual energies. He marched up to the gate of a Federal-style brick house and for all those energies, he looked uncertain when he stood there. With the phantom newspaper held in the crook of one arm and his free hand beneath his voluminous beard tapping arrhythmically against his chest, he considered the quiet home and the well-tended lawn.
“Hmmm,” he said.
He wasn’t very sure what he had intended, coming here at such a small hour. He had been roused by anticipation and drawn to this street by the coming event, but he hadn’t the slightest notion of what do with himself, now that he was here. He was not even sure about the hour and was pondering this question when the answer began to toll from a nearby steeple.
The bearded man turned to face St. Dominic and the sound of the bell, whereupon he caught sight of a second pedestrian, likewise turned in that direction, who was consulting first one watch and then another and even two more that he pulled in sequence from various pockets about his person.
“Hmmm,” said the bearded man again, and if the sound could not have actually reached the second man, something of its sentiment appeared to touch the back of his ear, for he turned and gasped with pleasure and amazement to see the yeomanlike figure upon the sidewalk.
“Thump!” came the second man’s voice with more emphasis than volume. (It was, after all, still very early in the morning.) “How very remarkable!” added this fellow, who was of medium height, with black hair and mustaches, who was as well attired as the first man (though in brown), and who appeared also to be carrying something under one arm.
“Ephram!” came the low-registered voice of the first man. They met and shook hands with such enthusiasm that a spectator would hardly have guessed they had parted company not seven hours before.
“What an absolute delight!” continued Matthew Ephram.
“It is good to see you, my friend,” said Joseph Thump. “High tide at 1:48.”
“It’s one minute past five,” declared the mustached fellow. “I woke an hour ago and couldn’t bear to lie in bed.”
“I was the same.”
“There seemed nothing for it but breakfast and a walk.”
“A jaunt!” agreed Thump. They were still shaking hands.
“Even so!”
“And yet,” said Ephram, “despite the excitement of the day, I have walked with a small degree of melancholy that puzzles me.”
“I was the same,” said Thump.
“Were you, really? I myself was loath to admit.”
Thump raised his hands, taking care not dislodge the newspaper that was not under his arm, and gave the slightest sort of shrug.
“It is amazing how often we are got up with the same notions,” said Ephram.
“I have often been amazed,” Thump harmonized.
Their melancholy had all but vanished, though their uncertainty was redoubled as they approached the gate to the Federal-style brick house and wondered in unison (and aloud) what they might do to occupy themselves. It was not necessary for them to wonder long, for coming from the same direction as had Thump was a third figure, tall and blond and cleanshaven, his tan suit and top hat of recent vintage and his arm cocked in a now-familiar position.
“Eagleton!” said Ephram, and “Eagleton!” agreed Thump.
“Goodness’ sakes!” declared the newcomer. “Ephram! Thump!”
The three men strode forth and met with a great deal of handshaking (some between Ephram and Thump again).
“It is extraordinary!” said Matthew Ephram.
“How very like you to anticipate me!” averred Christopher Eagleton.
“Ever in the fore!” declared Joseph Thump.
“Clouds scattering before a southwest wind,” said Eagleton, “expected sunny afternoon, though more overcast by evening and possible thundershowers, clearing once again by tomorrow morning.”
“High tide at 1:48,” announced Thump. “That is, P.M.”
“It’s twelve minutes past the hour of five,” said Ephram.
Now the full charter membership of the Moosepath League found itself before the gates of the Federal-style brick house with no better idea as to its purpose. Truth to tell, they were not, by habit, early risers and the hour was mysterious to them. Was it, perhaps, a little untoward to be up and about while so many people were yet abed? They might have gone back to their respective homes (and back to bed) themselves if they had not had one another’s company to bolster their self-possession. But movement seemed necessary, and they began to amble, almost without conscious thought, eastward on Spruce Street.
It was not long before they met with the first businessman of the day, trundling his milk wagon from the direction of Clark Street. They hailed the fellow cautiously, still not sure about the appropriate early-morning greeting, and they watched with fascination as he stopped before one of the handsome houses along Spruce Street to deliver his wares “round the back.”
Further along the way they saw a fishmonger’s cart rounding the corner. In the distance they caught sight of other pedestrians or wagons trundling the streets. It was interesting to them how many people were out, and they felt less awkward about showing themselves.
“It is really a fine sort of hour,” observed Ephram.
“It really is,” agreed Eagleton. “Don’t you think, Thump?”
Thump had paused when they reached the corner. From this vantage they could look down Clark Street and see the sunlit harbor over the buildings on Commercial Street. “It is quite handsome,” said Thump.
“It really is,” said Eagleton.
Thump’s stomach growled. He was surprised how little his breakfast had done against the novelty of rising so early and the anticipation of the day ahead of them. Perhaps more breakfast was in order and he said so. It was a capital thought, and his friends’ admiration was only improved because of it.
And, now that a second breakfast had been decided upon, they had but to find it.
“Expected sunny this afternoon, overcast by evening and possible thundershowers,” said Eagleton.
“High tide at 1:48,” said Thump.
“It’s early, really,” said Ephram.
“It really is,” said Eagleton.
Thump pointed them down the hill, and trusting his instincts, Ephram and Eagleton followed him.
“Eighteen minutes past the hour of five,” said Ephram.
MAN ABOUT TOWN
Last night the Shipswood Restaurant on Commercial Street was host to a memorable dinner, celebrating today’s wedding of Mister Tobias Walton of Spruce Street and Miss Phileda McCannon of Hallowell. Mister Walton is well known among the restaurant’s patrons and, indeed, among the Portland citizenry as the chairman of the Moosepath League, which society has garnered a good deal of ink in the past months for several unusual exploits. The restaurant itself, in the person of Carlton Pliny, the proprietor, sustained the dinner with the help of the club’s charter members, Mr. Joseph Thump of India Street, Mr. Christopher Eagleton of Chestnut Street, and Mr. Matthew Ephram of Danforth Street.
The event went off without a hitch, and the fêted couple showed, in their graciousness and jollity, why they are favorites among the Shipswood’s employees as well as clientele. Once the largely invited crowd had expended a grand ovation, the happy pair visited briefly with each table before joining their fellows at the place of honor and commencing their meal. The evening was then much like any other night at the restaurant until after dessert was served, whereupon more socializing among the tables was evidenced....
Phileda McCannon gently rapped at the door to the Nowells’ hotel room. “Meer?” she whispered. “Meer? Are you there?” The upper hall of the City Hotel was empty and silent, the light of a promising day brightening the single window. Phileda was dressed a little haphazardly, and her hair was still mostly done up in the paper curls that Miriam had put in the night before. It was the short side of the morning, and the Nowells were not early risers. Nonetheless, when the door opened and Miriam peered into the hall, she wore an indulgent smile.
Parents look like that, thought Phileda, when they are roused from bed on Christmas morning. She smiled, too, if ruefully.
“Am I here?” said Miriam. “Did you think I had slipped off in the night?”
“Did you sleep?” asked Phileda as she was let in.
“I’m sorry, but I did.”
“I think it very contrary of you, sleeping the night before my wedding.”
“I slept the night before my own wedding.”
“I know, you’ve told me, and I think that rests my case.”
“Did you sleep?” asked Miriam.
“About that much,” said Phileda, expressing the amount between a thumb and forefinger.
Miriam dropped onto the settee with a very unladylike yawn. Her husband, Stuart, came out in his pajamas and smoking jacket, squinting like a mole as he searched for his pipe. They had been more than handsome in their youth and had, by good humor and good fortune, retained the better part of their appearance. He was blond, gracefully turning to gray; she was as dark as ever, her own journey from wasp-waisted youth to a middle age with more figure unhindered by any terrible distress. Until Phileda met Tobias Walton, they were the easiest people had ever known.
Phileda herself was almost forty-two, but many a woman twenty years her junior would do well to stand at a distance from her today. She had lived out her own plain youth with humor and generosity, which attributes had repaid her middle age with slender grace. Brisk activity had retained in her a youthful vigor; a fierce sort of intelligence had only brightened her clear blue eyes. In the sunlight her chestnut hair showed a few strands of gray, but whatever lines the years had drawn upon her face were lightly drawn and generally served to point up that humor and generosity. Whenever she smiled, as she would many times that day, anything like age seemed to melt away.
“Do you suppose Toby is up?” she wondered aloud.
“Do you want to go visit him?” asked Miriam. Her husband let out a grunt of discovery and stuck his pipe in his mouth.
“Good morning, Stuart,” said Phileda.
“Good morning, my dear,” he said. “How splendid to see you.” His eyes were closed.
“If I thought that getting married would make me look eighteen again, I might try it,” said Miriam.
“You are married,” said her husband when he had thought about this.
“Oh, that,” she replied, and with a negligible wave of her hand. “What makes you think that would stop me?”
“I’m not sure,” said Stuart. “Lost my head.” He sat down beside his wife, and they looked very cozy together.
Miriam was still marveling at Phileda. “Should we wire ahead and warn the groom?” she asked Stuart.
He narrowed one eye toward Phileda, who managed to sit herself down in the chair opposite for a moment or two. “She is glowing,” he said. “I thought it was the light from the window.”
In seeming contradiction to her elated state, Phileda had to blink away the tears in her eyes, which predicament would be as common to her today as her smiles. “Do you like him?” she asked her friends. It was a question she had asked of no one, and it startled them.
“Like him?” said Miriam.
“Toby?” said Stuart.
“I think he is scandalously good,” said the wife.
“He knows how to bid at whist,” said the husband. Without any great ceremony, he took a handkerchief from the pocket of his smoking jacket and passed it to Phileda.
She thanked him and dabbed at her eyes without embarrassment. “Do you know what the odd thing is?”
Miriam sat up and leaned forward. “No,” she said, taking Phileda’s free hand. “What is the odd thing?”
Phileda was usually a person of such even moods, but on this day, after little or no sleep, she felt that she was careering over hill and dale on a fast horse. “Last summer—oh, a week or so before I went to Boothbay, where I first met Toby—it was the end of June and I was walking above my house, thinking I might visit you. But I kept walking along the ridge, and the day was just glorious. I could see the capitol and the ponds off to the west, and the river was beautiful and blue. Everything seemed very simple, and I thought to myself that I was just fine—that I was just fine. And not only did I understand that I wouldn’t get married, I decided that I wouldn’t get married.” She dabbed at her eyes again and looked down at her shoes.
“That was some decision,” said Miriam, not letting go of Phileda’s hand.
“It was, wasn’t it,” said Phileda. She took a large breath and smiled. “He is scandalously good, isn’t he.”
“He knocked that thought out,” said Stuart.
Miriam swatted at him, but she was laughing, and Phileda, too.
Phileda stood again. “It’s terrible, waking you up at this hour.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Miriam.
“The extra hour—” began Stuart. He looked about the room, as if for the exact time. “Well, the extra four or five hours will do us good.”
Miriam swatted him again.
Phileda did not attempt to thank them for being here this morning, or for having been her friends for so many years (and, in Miriam’s case, since early childhood), or for easing the loneliness since her parents and sister had died. All her words were in her eyes, but there were too many to get out in any order. She went to the window and looked out over Commercial Street. There was traffic, despite the hour. In the distance she thought she could see a flag run up on the observatory. Phileda leaned close to the glass and turned her head to one side, as if she might see Spruce Street and the Walton homestead and Toby Walton’s very window. She took another large breath and said, “I wonder if he’s awake.”
Sundry Moss opened the door at the bottom of the back stairs and poked his head into the kitchen of the old Walton homestead. It was not a surprise to discover the male principal of the approaching nuptials up and boiling coffee. The portly frame of his friend and employer stood quietly by the stove, his bespectacled gaze abstracted by cogitation. “Good morning, Mister,” said Sundry, his deep voice resonant with missing rs.
Mister Walton chuckled. It was a greeting with some history between them—in fact, the first Sundry had offered almost a year before. “Good morning,” said the grand fellow, his hands folded over his rounded middle, almost in an attitude of prayer. Sundry had the vague sense that he had interrupted the man in more than just the aimless gathering of wool. “It should be a nice day,” said Mister Walton.
Sundry stepped into the kitchen. “I don’t see how it can miss, though the weather will have to work a little harder.” He had glanced out his bedroom window and thought the sky was not as clear as had been predicted by Mr. Eagleton the night before. The pot on the stove was burbling, and the smell of coffee was almost enough to wake a body. Sundry got cups and saucers down from the cupboard.
“I may have made this strong,” cautioned Mister Walton as he poured, and “My word!” he added at the first sip. “You could stand your spoon in it!”
“It’s not indecisive,” agreed Sundry.
The older man considered the dark brew in his cup. “Perhaps it will do me some good,” he said. Then, looking up, he wondered aloud, “Who do you think will arrive first?”
“The milkman,” said Sundry, and he opened the back door to reveal the very fellow perusing the note that had been left on the stoop the night before.
“Congratulations,” said the milkman when the reason for such a large order of butter and cream was revealed.
Mister Walton bowed his head with comic formality.
“I have a cousin who was married on April Fools’ Day,” said the milkman, who did not often have the opportunity to chat during the appointment of his early-morning rounds.
“Do you?” said the groom-to-be.
“We still don’t know who the joke was on.”
“Many a serious word is said in jest,” pronounced Sundry, which made Mister Walton laugh.
“It was serious, I want to tell you,” said the milkman, but the statement was cryptic without further elucidation. Not offering further news about his family, he went straight off to fetch the required provisions.
The fishmonger, who was used to more discussion (and even debate) with his customers, arrived next, and earlier than usual. The milkman, on his return, transmitted news of the impending nuptials, and the fishmonger explained how he and his wife had been married on the stagecoach somewhere between Newfield and Wells. “We were hightailing it before the matter came to issue with our people and we happened to be riding with a preacher who believed in multiplication under any circumstance.”
“And did you?” wondered a wry Mister Walton.
“Multiply? Well, we had the ten kids, so you could safely say we did.”
“I think so.”
“Which town got the marriage certificate?” wondered Sundry.
“We split the difference and called it Shapleigh,” said the man. He was not a young fellow—a retired fisherman, perhaps—and the effluvia of his trade hung about him like a fog.
“I’ve never been there,” said Sundry.
“We drove through it once,” said the fellow before he left without selling any of the day’s catch. Sundry asked him to leave the door open.
The iceman, who next arrived, had an uncle who claimed to have been lured, while sleepwalking, into a proposal of marriage.
“What did he do when he woke up?” asked Sundry.
“It’s what he didn’t do, I guess, that got him over a barrel.”
“Dear me,” said Mister Walton. “A breach of promise suit.”
“That was the upshot.” According to the iceman, his uncle had tried to wangle out of his purportedly somnambulistic proposal. “The judge had met my uncle over the bench and notioned that the old dodger had been drunk.”
“Not dissimilar states in some people,” said Mister Walton mildly.
“He fined Uncle Luke for disturbing the sanctity of his office and told the woman in question to find a man who knew what he was about when he proposed marriage. My father quite liked it, really.”
“Your mother’s brother,” said Sundry.
“You guessed.”
Something of a procession arrived before the iceman was gone. Sundry caught a glimpse of a head bobbing past the kitchen window, and a moment later Annabelle Spark entered, carrying a linen-covered basket and looking round for a place to put it. Mrs. Spark and Minerva were close behind. The iceman helped Sundry and Mister Walton clear the counters and lift the baskets and hampers of soups and meat pies and pastries from the ladies’ collective arms.
The young women went out again, and Mrs. Spark directed the advent of the cake, which was yet in a state separate from itself and which she would construct to its ultimate glory on Mister Walton’s kitchen table.
“How is Mr. Ring?” inquired Sundry when Mrs. Spark’s attention could be caught between commands.
“It’s why Thaddeus didn’t come,” she replied, and her daughters paused in their work as if they didn’t know it already. “Get to it,” she said, and when they had recommenced their preparations, she turned back to Sundry. “We had to truss the man in bed, he was that bad with the shakes, dreaming with his eyes open and shouting something about hurting his son—meaning, I guess, his daughter. We were afraid he’d hurt himself.” Mrs. Spark shivered. “Melanie, the poor thing, wouldn’t leave him. We sent Timothy for the doctor.” Mrs. Spark reached out and took Sundry’s hand. “Thank you again for going with Thaddeus yesterday and for helping him and Davey bring the man back, though I can’t guess what we’ll do with him. ‘Save a man’s life,’ Thaddeus says, ‘and you’re responsible for it.’”
Sundry thought he understood this.
“I don’t know what we’ll do with him,” said the mother. “The poor soul may take the problem out of our hands by dying sooner than later.”
“I never saw anyone look more dead already,” said Minerva.
“Hush,” said the mother, then: “God bless you, you must be Mister Walton.” Mister Walton bowed, which pleased her. “Is your Mrs. Baffin here yet?” she asked. “I need to make amends for crossing her kitchen, you know.”
“I don’t think it’s a problem,” ventured Mister Walton. He considered Mrs. Baffin relatively peaceful for a mild and sweet and elderly woman.
“No, no,” said Mrs. Spark with a shake of her finger. “It’s bad business otherwise. Oh,” she said to Annabelle. “Go pay Mr. McQuinn.” She fished a coin or two from her apron pocket.
“Mr. McQuinn?” said Mister Walton, and “Not Horace McQuinn?” said Sundry.
“Yes, he brought us all over in his wagon. Do you know him?” Mrs. Spark seemed surprised.
Sundry raised a hand. “Please. I have it,” he told her, and “I insist,” when she objected.
“Bring him in, Sundry, please,” said Mister Walton. “And Mr. Flyce, if he’s with him.”
“Oh, he is!” declared Minerva.
“You mean Cowlick?” said Annabelle, and her mother swatted her arm.
Sundry walked through the house to the front hall and went out to the gate, beside which lingered a gray mare (in fact, an old gray mare) and a couple of familiar figures seated on a crude sort of wagon. There was an ocean breeze that morning, and Sundry thought the clouds were tattering against the rising sun. Robins hopped the lawn, and a squirrel chattered down at him from the safety of the lofty chestnut.
“Well, Mr. McQuinn,” said Sundry with about equal parts pleasure and skepticism as he approached the wagon.
“Gory, Hod!” said the fellow on the other side of the bench, his extraordinary cowlick like an exclamation point above his head. Maven Flyce had been born with the heart and expression of perpetual astonishment. “It’s Mr. Moss!” he declared, leaning forward to gaze past Horace McQuinn as if he’d never seen anything like Sundry in his life.
“Well, it is,” drawled the lean and weathered old fellow at the reins. Horace did not tip his hat but only nodded, his steel gray eyes flashing with humor and observation.
“I am amazed!” said Maven.
“How did you come to bring the Sparks over this morning?” asked Sundry. “Did you volunteer, or was it strictly by chance?”
“Oh, I read the papers,” said Horace McQuinn, looking shrewd. “A lot of news comes by post,” he said with something near a laugh.
Sundry nodded. Horace’s standard post was an actual one, and he leaned on it down at the Custom House Wharf on good days (and sometimes in rain, in the summer). Little got by him. “What do we owe you?” asked Sundry.
“I couldn’t take your money today,” said Horace gravely. Horace McQuinn was of a type who gets up early so as to have plenty of time to do as little as possible, but this fashion of living often brings with it a shrugging philosophy when it comes to the accumulation of wealth.
Sundry Moss hadn’t seen Horace McQuinn since the previous October, but the old fellow had made his mark in the history of the Moosepath League and would have laughed to be so enumerated. His age was indeterminate; his health might have been better if he’d at all taken care of himself, but was perhaps a good deal better than appearance would indicate. Sundry knew him for Mother’s own rascal and liked him.
“If you’ve nothing better to do,” said Sundry, hooking a thumb in the direction of the house, “Mister Walton would be sorry to miss you.”
“I can’t imagine it,” said Horace with another chortle. “What do you say, Maven? Shall we see if Mabel craves help with that cake of hers?”
“Goodness’ sakes, Hod! You don’t think?” said Maven.
“Not too much,” said Horace. He nudged the wagon a few yards farther along the street till he came to a hitching post, then hopped down to the sidewalk with surprising agility. Maven scrambled down the other side and appeared from behind the wagon, looking concerned that he might be called on to work on Mrs. Spark’s cake. “It is a day for it,” said Horace.
“It is bound to be, I guess,” said Sundry as he considered the sky. He thought the clouds were taking their time.
Horace slowly followed the young man’s gaze and said, “It’s just a patch. Mister Walton will have plenty of sun to see what he’s doing.” This made the rascal laugh till he broke into a fit of coughing, and they paused at the steps till he recovered. The delight never left his eyes, however, and when he was done, Horace said to Sundry, “She must be some female.”
Now Sundry laughed to hear Miss McCannon referred to in this manner. “You’d think highly of her,” he replied.
“Well”—Horace shrugged—“she’ll keep him in line, no doubt.”
Sundry did not blink. “We’re hoping,” he said.
“Well, there he is!” announced Horace when he saw Mister Walton waiting for them at the door.
“Mr. McQuinn!” The grand fellow shook Horace’s hand, beaming all the while.
“Good heavens, Hod!” said Maven. “It’s Mister Walton!”
“Odd to find him at his own house,” said Horace evenly.
“A pleasure to see you again, Mr. Flyce,” said Mister Walton.
Maven hardly knew his hand had been shaken; he gaped at the front hall as if he’d never seen anything like it—and perhaps he hadn’t. The Walton home was plain enough for the older, well-to-do side of Portland, but Maven’s entire existence had been something less than plain. Truth to tell, he would have gaped at a hovel or anything in between. “I’m so astounded!” he said.
“Come in, come in!” insisted Mister Walton. “There’s coffee on.” He led them toward the kitchen. “You know the Sparks.”
“Mabel and I go way back,” drawled Horace. He had a fierce way of grinning that looked like a leer to anyone who didn’t know him.
Mabel Spark heard this, and she called out from the kitchen, “I’ve put up with him since we took up the tavern,” but the amusement in her voice indicated that this hadn’t really been a source of much perturbation.
Stationed by the corner cupboards, Horace McQuinn and Maven Flyce accomplished the role of chorus to ensuing events—Horace with his occasional dry commentary and Maven with his perpetual astonishment. Horace thought it proper to laud Mister Walton’s courage in light of the approaching ceremony, and Maven gasped with each bit of praise. Mister Walton chuckled and even blushed, but with pleasure.
Sundry himself took pleasure in watching his friend amid these people. Mister Walton had been born and raised in prosperity, and Sundry himself had seen him move comfortably on the upper rungs of manufactured society; but here the portly fellow sat among the unassuming Spark family, a farm boy (Sundry himself), and the roguish figures of Maven Flyce and Horace McQuinn without the least sense of contradiction. Years later Sundry would be heard to say that Mister Walton simply had “a knack for people.”
Mister Walton was not the only target of Horace’s drawly wit. Horace occasionally leveled his observations in Mrs. Spark’s direction, as she was the sole married female in the room. She was up to this and took little in the way of wisdom from the old fellow, which made him snicker happily. She returned his best and never lost track of what she was doing, which was several things all at once. The Spark children, who knew Horace from his occasional trade at the Faithful Mermaid, were more easily distracted.
“I never had a woman to keep me in line,” said Horace, while the younger Sparks produced fresh baked delicacies from sacks and boxes.
“There wasn’t one born who could, is my guess,” said Mabel without looking round.
“There wasn’t one who’d want to, is mine,” ventured Horace as he filled his pipe without lifting bowl or pouch from his coat pocket. He struck a wooden lucifer against the stove top. Maven watched, his jaw slack and his eyes wide, as if he’d never seen Horace smoke before. Horace took a satisfied puff, then gestured with the stem of his pipe and said, “I’ll wager Mr. Moss, here, will be next in line.”
Mister Walton had been pondering a pie that had been set before him, but he looked up now, to see how Sundry reacted to this prediction. Minerva, Annabelle, and Betty—aged seventeen to fourteen—also betrayed interest in the subject. Even the mother looked up to consider the young man; she was herself a large, handsome woman and understood that her daughters favored her in several characteristics that might be deemed pleasant in the eyes of a potential suitor.
“My sister might be married before the summer is done,” said Sundry, expertly turning the conversation away from himself. “It’ll be the first wedding in the family since my cousin was married—oh, seven or eight years ago.”
“How’d he make out?” inquired Horace.
“I think he’ll live,” said Sundry.
Mrs. Spark let out a snort, and Minerva laughed aloud.
“It was the courtship that nearly did him in,” explained Sundry. He was pouring coffee for Horace and Maven. “She was a widow—a little older than he was, and a decent arm with a shotgun, as it happened.”
Mister Walton laughed ruefully, and Mrs. Spark, who had been considering the sections of her cake, turned now to wait for the balance of the tale.
“He was delivering a May basket,” said Sundry.
“And she shot him?” said Betty.
“I am amazed!” said Maven.
“He was sneaking through the garden,” explained Sundry, “past the kitchen window, and she thought he was a woodchuck. You can’t get caught giving a May basket.” They all understood the magical properties of the May basket and how easily its purpose might be frustrated by improper delivery.
“And she shot him?” said Betty again.
Horace let out a wheezing laugh.
“It’s not a common form of courtship,” said Mister Walton.
“She was sort of sorry, afterward,” admitted Sundry.
“And then she married him?” said Minerva.
“He was crawling on his hands and knees when she looked out and saw the irises swaying. So she more or less caught him in the end that was, just then, uppermost.”
“Who would have thought?” said Maven.
“I always thought the way to a man’s heart was his stomach,” said Mrs. Spark, which caused Horace to laugh himself into a coughing fit again.
“But they went and married each other?” said Betty, who was almost as astonished as Maven.
“She was startled, I think, when he came bolting out of the flowers,” said Sundry. “They caught him down the road half a mile or so, she and her brother, and brought him back to the house and got the buckshot out of him. Considering the exact target of her aim, she thought she knew him pretty intimately, so marriage wasn’t such a rash thing.”
The Spark daughters looked both scandalized and amused. Mrs. Spark shook her head.
“That May basket did its work,” said a pleased Mister Walton.
“My cousin always says it did, but he thinks the means were a little fierce. But here are the Baffins.”
“Toby, Toby!” declared Lucinda Baffin when Sundry had let her and her husband Cedric in. Her sweet old face lit up at the sight of Mister Walton in the midst of the crowded kitchen. “Good heavens! What a day to sleep in!” It was now all of a few minutes before seven, and the elderly Baffins had probably been up for an hour or more. Mrs. Baffin squeezed Sundry’s hand when he took her coat. “The two of us slept as if there weren’t a thing to do. Good morning, good morning,” she said to everyone, the burr of her Nova Scotian childhood evident in her voice. “We haven’t had a crowd in the kitchen for years.”
Mrs. Spark heard this distinct note, announced that her own mother’s people were from Beaver Bank, and they greeted each other like long lost kin.
“Oh, my!” said Maven. He was looking into his mug of coffee and seemed astounded that it was empty. There was a rap at the front door, and he looked up as if this were too much to believe. “I am amazed!” he said, and there did seem to be a lot of traffic that morning.
The man at the front door held a round brown hat to the breast of his checked jacket and with his other hand gripped the handle of a carpet sweeper. He was clean-shaven, and the smell of a fruity pomade in his coal black hair wafted in with the ocean breeze. “Good day to you, sir!” he declared, revealing with his smile a wide part between his upper front teeth. “I trust I haven’t shifted you from your breakfast this fine morning!”
“Not yet,” said Sundry.
“Is the missus in?” wondered the man.
“Not yet,” said Sundry.
A frown barely flickered across the drummer’s face. “I rarely pay a call so early, but I saw some traffic on its way through your yard—”
“It’s really not a good day—” began Sundry.
“I won’t take but a minute of your time,” said the man. He perched his hat on his head and offered his hand. “My name is Felton P. Deltwire, sir, and here I have the ultimate expression of housecleaning ingenuity—the Artemis and Atlanta Company’s Queen of the Carpet Sweepers!”
Sundry was not very fond of dealing with traveling salesmen on a typical day, but he allowed his hand to be shaken and waited for a moment to put in a word.
That moment did not immediately avail itself. “More than likely, sir,” continued the drummer, “the lady of the house has some such device right now! occupying a pantry closet, but I guarantee that if it isn’t a genuine! Queen of the Carpet Sweepers! it hasn’t the double-patented contracirculatory bristle action or the unique compartmental reservoir—patent pending—designed to separate mistakenly swept valuables from the collected dirt.”
The single minute that Mr. Deltwire had promised to expend was more figurative than actual; very quickly it was gone, but even as another was ventured, Sundry’s rescue unexpectedly revealed itself upon the sidewalk.
“Now you may look at this mechanism, sir, and wonder—and rightly wonder—how the lady of the house is to get it under the dining room sideboard, the escritoire, or the upright piano—”
Three well-turned-out gentlemen stood by the gate and peered down the walk with amiable curiosity. Sundry exchanged a wave of the hand with them.
“The primary mechanism is, of course, too large to find its way beneath such furnishings—”
It was the Moosepath League, and as was so often the case, it had arrived in the veritable nick of time. Sundry again waved a hand over the drummer’s head.
“And that is why we have contrived for the Queen of the Carpet Sweepers what is called, in carpet-sweeping parlance, an attachment! and which I hold before you—”
“Gentlemen,” pronounced Sundry with more ceremony than was his habit, including the approaching members of the club in a formal and declarative introduction. “Mr. Deltwire,” he said. “Allow me to present Mr. Ephram, Mr. Eagleton, and Mr. Thump. Sirs, this is Felton P. Deltwire and his Queen of the Carpet Sweepers”
The tall, blond Christopher Eagleton hurried up the walk to shake Felton Deltwire’s hand, saying, “Very pleased! Clouds scattering before a southwest wind, expected sunny this afternoon.”
“Yes, it is a nice day,” said Felton P. Deltwire.
“Hmmm!” said the broad-bearded Joseph Thump, who quickly mounted the steps. “High tide at 1:48.” He took a turn at agitating the drummer’s hand, “P.M.,” he added.
“I’m glad to be informed,” said Felton P. Deltwire.
“It’s five minutes past the hour of seven,” pronounced the darkly mustached Matthew Ephram, close upon the heels of his fellows and consulting one of his three or four watches even as he took Felton P. Deltwire’s hand.
“The sun and Saturn will find themselves in opposition by tomorrow morning,” replied Felton P. Deltwire. “The moon reaches apogee by Saturday, setting in conjunction with Mars on Wednesday next.”
“I never knew!” said Eagleton.
“How marvelous!” said Ephram.
“Hmmm?” said Thump.
“Felton P. Deltwire,” said the drummer. He raised his hat, returned it to his head, and offered his hand again.
“Matthew Ephram,” said that worthy as he reapplied his hand to Felton P. Deltwire’s. “Apogee, you say.”
“Christopher Eagleton,” said the next in line, and he likewise greeted the man a second time. “And the sun in opposition. I hadn’t realized.”
“Joseph Thump,” said the third Moosepathian, who likewise agitated the salesman’s hand once more. “Of the Exeter Thumps.”
“Pleased,” said Felton P. Deltwire. “Very pleased. You gentlemen look ready for anything this morning.”
This observation surprised the members of the club, and they looked at themselves and one another with abrupt concern.
“As I have been trying to tell you, Mr. Deltwire,” said Sundry, “there’s to be a wedding here today, and we will not be able to consider your fine carpet sweeper.”
“Is this the very item?” wondered Eagleton, appraising the long-handled instrument in Felton P. Deltwire’s grip.
“By opposition,” Ephram said, “do you mean that Saturn will be on the other side of the earth from the sun?”
“Mister Walton is in the kitchen,” announced Sundry.
“Hmmm?” said Thump.
“My word, how very nice!” said Eagleton. “You must meet our chairman,” he announced to the drummer, which was not exactly what Sundry had in mind.
“And how is Mister Walton this morning?” said Ephram to Sundry.
“Holding steady,” said Sundry.
One could not fault Mister Walton’s confusion (or anyone else’s) when the gentlemen of the club arrived at the same moment as Mr. Felton P. Deltwire. These four men entered the kitchen in concert (with Sundry bringing up the rear), and between the drummer’s practiced art of familiarity and the Moosepath League’s inherent warmth they appeared like old comrades. “A man for our membership,” Eagleton was saying to Ephram, and this, too, might have signified to those in the kitchen that the Moosepathians had known Felton P. Deltwire for more than the time it took to travel the front hall.
The gentlemen of the club were gratified to see Mrs. Spark and her pretty daughters, and they appeared almost Maven Flyce-like in their degree of astonishment when they discovered that cowlicked individual and Horace McQuinn in Mister Walton’s kitchen. It was a crowd, to be sure, and that is no doubt why Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump knocked one another’s hats from their respective hands as they synchronistically bowed to the women, and after they had begged one another’s pardon, it was perhaps why there was a loud thock when, as with one thought, they bent to retrieve their brand-new toppers.
No one said, “Ouch!” (the members of the club suspected this interjection to be a small bit unrefined), but Thump in particular seemed startled by the chance impact, and Mister Walton insisted on giving the stricken man his seat.
“Well, I never, Hod!” Maven was saying.
“Not here, you haven’t,” agreed Horace.
There was some avid handshaking as the members of the club, emotional with the day’s significance, introduced Mr. Deltwire to the assemblage like a long-lost cousin. The chairman beamed with pleasure.
“You dear men,” Mrs. Baffin was saying to Eagleton, who blushed, then almost gasped as she reached up to pat his cheek.
The drummer closed in on Mrs. Spark, saying, “The lady of the house?”
Mabel Spark was no more susceptible to a salesman’s flattery than to Horace McQuinn’s wisdom. “You get away from my cake with that thing!” she demanded, shaking a spatula at the Queen of the Carpet Sweepers. Felton P. Deltwire displayed excellent discretion by making a short retreat. The kitchen had grown as loud as it was crowded, so that it was difficult, at first, to hear yet another knock at the front door, but Mister Walton let out a short laugh when he did hear it. Sundry raised an eyebrow.
“My word! Who could that be now?” said Mrs. Baffin.
“I’ll get it,” said Mr. Baffin.
But Sundry was up and accustomed to it by now; he gave a nod and made the trip back through pantry and hall. There was another knock before he opened the front door to reveal a policeman on the step.
“Calvin Drum,” said the constable, his hat in hand.
“Officer,” said Sundry.
“That rig,” said the policeman. He pointed down the street. “That wagon. Does it belong here?”
“For the moment it does,” said Sundry.
“Oh,” said the officer. “You see, I saw it once, last year.”
“You say you saw it?” said Sundry.
“I say I saw it, you see.”
“So you said,” said Sundry. “I see.”
The officer looked the slightest bit curt. “Well, I did,” he said. “The horse is darker than I remembered, but I couldn’t mistake her. Last year—oh, closer to July, I think it was—I spotted a wagon just like it with a suspicious load of kegs—”
“Didn’t you speak to the driver?” wondered Sundry. The scenario painted by the policeman had an oddly familiar ring to him.
“Well, I did,” said the man again. “And he just whipped up the horse and bolted. I never did catch him, being on foot, but he went like Absalom’s mule down through town without a thought for cross traffic. Had his hat pulled down so I couldn’t see him proper.” Clearly the memory galled him.
It was a coincidence that three principals of that remembered event were that morning within hailing distance of one another. The man with the runaway wagon (the horse had actually taken off of its own resolve) was in fact ambling up the hall even as Sundry and the policeman were speaking.
“Good morning, Officer,” said Mister Walton, and as he recognized the policeman, his expression altered just a whit. “Is there a problem?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the man.
“Constable Drum is concerned about the wagon,” said Sundry.
“The wagon?” Mister Walton leaned from the doorway. “Horace’s wagon?” His memory of his unintentional involvement with Horace Mc-Quinn’s rum-running continued to set in his mind, and his voice trailed off to a whisper.
“What’s that?” snapped Officer Drum. “Horace? Just as I surmised.”
“He brought the Sparks over this morning,” said Mister Walton.
“Sparks? Which Sparks? Horace who? The Thaddeus Sparks?” He may have realized that this sounded more demanding than courteous, and he altered his bearing before saying, more slowly, “Horace, you say?”
“How’s business, Calvin?” came an amused chortle from the hall.
“McQuinn!” said the policeman. He narrowed his gaze past Mister Walton as he attempted to reconcile the presence of Horace McQuinn at this respectable home. Then he said, “Thaddeus?” and finally, “Mr. Thump!”, for the Moosepathians had left the kitchen to see what was about, and by further coincidence Mr. Thump (who looked so much like Thaddeus Spark) had rescued Officer Drum from certain injury and possible death less than a week before.
“Is that Calvin Drum?” Mrs. Spark called from the kitchen, but this was not enough of a crowd, it seemed, for the day provided a second wagon, which was just then pulling up behind Horace’s.
“Is this the Walton residence?” called the driver.
“Walton?” said the policeman.
“Mister Walton is our chairman, Officer Drum,” informed Thump.
“Ah, the Moosepath League! It’s good to see you again, Mr. Thump.”
“I’ll need some help lugging this contraption,” shouted the driver.
“It’s Phileda’s organ,” said Mister Walton.
“Organ?” said the policeman.
“For the wedding,” said Sundry. It seemed a good moment to add something to the expanding glomeration of words.
“Horace?” said Officer Drum again. The notion of a wedding made the rascal’s presence only the more peculiar.
“I stopped by in case the preacher doesn’t show up,” offered Horace.
Mister Walton chuckled.
From behind Horace, a voice said, “I am amazed!”
“Feeling your oats?” wondered Sundry of Officer Drum. He hooked a thumb in the direction of the newly arrived wagon.
The policeman returned his hat to its perch. “An organ, you say.”
“Don’t be hurting yourself, now,” drawled Horace solicitously.
Sundry and Officer Drum climbed into the back of the wagon to unlash the organ, and with the assistance of the Moosepath League, they lifted it down to the sidewalk. Standing nearby and looking as if he might help if Sundry would let him, Mister Walton said, “It’s going in the parlor. It’s very good of you.” Several neighbors were watching from their lawns, and he waved to them.
Sundry was securing his grip on the organ when he caught sight of still another member of society making his way up the street and necessitating a chapter all his own.
Sundry sensed trouble immediately. No one who has anything happy to convey stalks the sidewalk with such solitary confidence coupled with a hard-eyed (even grim) focus upon his goal. The man was tall and broadshouldered and with a great mane of gray hair. He strode toward Mister Walton’s gate with the appearance of someone who is unaware of the people he passes, or at least that he believes himself above any interest in them. One of Mister Walton’s neighbors wished him good day, but the gray-maned man did not reply.
“There’ll be dancing this afternoon,” Horace McQuinn announced with a lingering look of wisdom toward the members of the club.
“Oh, my!” said Eagleton. He and his fellows exchanged looks of alarm just as the voice of Mister Walton was lifted in recitation.
Everyone paused while this bit of lyric was recited. Mister Walton smiled, the smallest bit of wry warning to his friends. “I heard it from an uncle years ago,” he explained.
“That’s a good one,” said Horace McQuinn, who was known for his own abilities in the way of verse.
Sundry glanced back at the approaching figure. The tall man had halted some yards away and looked as if he were growing angry simply watching the gathering ahead of him. “Muckle on,” said Sundry, hoping to get them all out of the path of this discordant note before it arrived. Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were not very familiar with muckling on, and they had been startled by Mister Walton’s poem, so they did not immediately fall to.
“That’s right,” Officer Drum was saying to Mister Walton. “You’re getting married!” He seemed to have forgotten Horace’s wagon. “I met my wife at a wedding,” he admitted. “Danced all night with her.”
“Oh, my!” said Eagleton again.
“I suppose we should have invited some extra ladies,” said Mister Walton without a smile, but with mischief in his eye.
“I hear Mrs. Roberto’s in town,” said Horace quietly.
For some reason Thump went into a fit of coughing.
“Are you all right?” asked Officer Drum.
Thump nodded vehemently, dragged in a ragged breath, and coughed again. Ephram and Eagleton leaned forward, as if their collective proximity might alleviate his sudden affliction.
“Oh, dear,” said Mister Walton.
Officer Drum noticed a cloud cross Sundry’s expression and followed the young man’s gaze to the lionesque man approaching Mister Walton.
Ephram gave Thump’s back some experimental taps.
“They say it alleviates a cough to raise your arms above your head,” Mister Walton suggested.
“Are you Tobias Walton?” came a voice that managed something curiously unpleasant with those words.
The portly fellow was at a disadvantage; the stranger stood more closely than social protocol might dictate, and Mister Walton had to adjust his spectacles and lean his head back to see who was addressing him. “I am,” he said.
The newcomer towered over Mister Walton, and his great bearded visage looked like that of an angry prophet. “I am Harold Trowbridge,” thundered this awful vision, and through the commotion of Thump’s renewed fit of coughing, there could be heard the words underminer and daughter and philosophy.
“Mister Walton suggests that you put your arms over your head,” Eagleton said between Thump’s booming expellations.
“I beg your pardon?” said Mister Walton, even as he cast sympathetic glances back at his afflicted friend.
“Something went down the wrong pipe,” said Horace McQuinn.
Trowbridge shot his frown at Thump before saying to Mister Walton (more exactly than before but still in that dark, low tone of his), “I am Harold Trowbridge, and you are an underminer, your notorious doctrine a blot upon society! I have read extensively about your sort. My daughter may be taken in by your repellent philosophy, but you will not entangle her.”
Sundry Moss could not hear everything the man was saying, but somewhere about the word blot he left the organ and stepped up to Mister Walton’s side.
“Arms up. Arms up,” Eagleton was saying to Thump.
“I am amazed!” declared Maven Flyce.
“Your daughter?” Mister Walton was saying. “I beg your pardon, but your daughter, you say?”
Notwithstanding Thump’s coughs, which were impressive, everyone else was now fixed upon Harold Trowbridge. “Mister Walton—” said Sundry.
If Mister Walton was nonplussed, he was not to be daunted, and he said to the man in the mildest tone and with his mildest expression, “I am sorry, sir, but I don’t believe that I know your daughter.”
“Of course you dorit know her!” roared the fellow.
“Here, now,” said Calvin Drum under his breath.
“You are a pawn of women’s suffrage and anarchy!” growled the lionesque man. “A busybody and an agitator!”
“Good heavens!” said Mister Walton. He had never been the subject of such a litany. “An agitator?” he said with some humor.
“Must be Moses, come down from the mountain,” suggested Horace.
“He’ll be someone come down from his high seat in a moment,” said Sundry.
Harold Trowbridge straightened to his full height, which was impressive, and said, as if to everyone within hearing, “You had better stay clear of decent folk or someone is liable to clean house with you!”
“Clean house?” said Mister Walton. Contrary to Trowbridge’s purpose, the phrase almost made him laugh.
“Perhaps,” said Sundry, “you’d like to step back onto the sidewalk where you and I can clean up the street somewhat first.”
“Now, let’s not get all haired up,” said Officer Drum.
Thump had both hands in the air now and was finding this helpful.
“It’s all right, Sundry,” said Mister Walton. “There has been a misunderstanding, is all.”
“Yes, this fellow misunderstands who he’s speaking to.”
Ephram and Eagleton were incredulous. Thump was making deep harrumphing noises (which might have been indignation or might have been the remnants of his cough) as he held his arms above his head.
“Now, someone explain the problem to me,” said Calvin Drum.
“I am sure there isn’t one, Officer,” said Mister Walton.
“And what can I do for you?” said the policeman to Trowbridge.
“I require nothing from anyone but that this Walton, here, and his cronies watch their step around decent people.”
“That’s Mister Walton,” said Sundry.
“Do you know what day this is?” said Officer Drum. “Do you realize that this gentleman is to be married today?”
“Cronies?” Eagleton was saying. He’d never heard of such a thing.
“Good gracious!” said Ephram.
“You’re a troop offreethinkers, aren’t you,” said Trowbridge. “Taking a woman under your order,” and his means of expressing woman came as close to making Mister Walton bristle as anything the man had uttered. “I know your tactics,” said Trowbridge. “A young, addle-headed girl might fall right into your schemes, and who can say how many haven’t already—” Trowbridge paused to glare at Thump, whose cough had subsided, but who had forgotten to lower his arms. Standing there with his hands above his head, the bearded Moosepathian looked like a Scottish dancer or perhaps a man who is being robbed.
“Sir,” said Mister Walton, and quickly (for it was plain that Trowbridge had little patience to listen), “I must apologize.”
“Apologize?” For the first time, Trowbridge’s threatening glare broke, ever so slightly, to let in a mote of doubt.
“Mister Walton,” said Calvin Drum, “I’ve half a mind to run him in for breach of peace—and I don’t care who he is.”
“No, no,” answered Mister Walton. “Yes, apologize, sir. For reasons, unknown to me, you imagine that I have strange designs upon your daughter, and I must believe that some error on my part is the cause of your confusion. I am very sorry that you have been led to this mistaken belief, and I assure you that previous to this moment, I have known no one by your family name, though I believe I can safely speak for all of us in saying that if your daughter is in any danger, we should be pleased to offer whatever help is in our strength. My best advice, of course, would be that you speak to this fine policeman here.”
Miraculously Mister Walton managed this speech without the slightest hint of condescension, though he might reasonably have employed the tone that a person would use to placate an unruly child or even a madman; the embers of graciousness were so well banked within him that he was able to sympathize with this man’s distress no matter the circumstance or how unpleasant the man.
“My card,” said Mister Walton, who produced the item from his coat pocket. “Please call on me when we won’t intrude upon everyone’s happy day.”
“I know where you live!” growled Trowbridge as he backed away. “You have not seen the last of me. I shall be watching, and the devil to the police!”
It occurred to Thump at this juncture to let his hands down.
“Good heavens!” said Eagleton. “He was very angry about something.”
Mister Walton appeared shaken, now that the scene was finished. “Thank you, Sundry, for being so obviously at my side. And you, Officer,” he said to Calvin Drum, “I was very glad to have you here.”
“Don’t mind him,” said the policeman as he looked after the disappearing figure of Harold Trowbridge. “He’s a loose cannon.”
“Do you know him?” asked Mister Walton.
“I know who he is. He has a firm down by the Portland and Ogdensburg.”
“I thought the name sounded familiar,” said Mister Walton.
“Or you’ve read it in the court news. He’s been brought up twice on charges of assault and has leveled half a dozen lawsuits himself. There are stores in town that won’t accept his trade, or let him pass their threshold. His firm can’t keep a captain more than a year, they say.”
“He sounds like an unhappy man,” said Mister Walton quietly.
“He’s an idiot,” said the officer.
“At least I’m not unique in securing his anger,” said the portly fellow, “however mysteriously I may have done so.”
“Not at all,” assured the policeman. “He’s very sure that everyone is out to fleece him. There are those who say his poor wife died as a last resort.”
“How melancholy.”
“And I am not sure his way with her was confined to shouts and accusations,” continued the man.
Mister Walton blinked at this and nodded his understanding; but he was disinclined to pursue the subject, and Officer Drum judiciously turned to praising the weather, which theme Eagleton was quick to join.
“I was so amazed!” said Maven Flyce.
“What could he have wanted?” asked Ephram in honest wonder.
“I couldn’t say,” replied Mister Walton. “I think that no amount of discussion was going to reveal what perturbed him. But we shall not allow a single case of bad humor to dispel the good that fills the day.”
“Begging your pardon, Mister Walton,” said Sundry as they returned to the organ, “but I was a little perturbed with your apology—at first.”
“An apology is easy, isn’t it. I am sorry for anyone so distressed, and he seemed singularly unhealthy in his anger. But if I was able to wax sincere, despite his uncivil manner, it is because I was thinking about his daughter.”
“Now, where did that drummer go?” wondered Sundry. “You don’t suppose he’s demonstrating his carpet sweeper on the parlor rug?”
“Well!” said Miriam when she returned to Phileda’s chamber from the little parlor fronting the bride’s rooms at the City Hotel. “Your brother and Stuart are putting breakfast into them, and the management has sent flowers.” She held a large bouquet of roses and white sprays of elderberry.
“How beautiful!” exclaimed Phileda. She was almost ready for the day, having been waited upon by her friend in the most ancient and gracious fashion. She took a breath of the flowers and directed their presentation on the low bureau by the window. Miriam stood back and admired her work before returning to Phileda’s hair, which was dark and long with only a stray gray strand here or there. “Don’t pluck it!” said Phileda when this possibility was offered the first one. “Two more will take its place.”
“My mother used to pluck hers and give them to one of us children,” said Miriam. “‘Here,’ she would say, ‘you gave me this.’”
“Probably you had.”
“I was a terrible child,” admitted Miriam happily. “My own children have been benign in comparison.”
“That was the other business I gave up,” said Phileda.
“Children?”
Phileda nodded. She had not taken her eyes from the bouquet. “It was more difficult, in its way, than deciding not to have a husband.”
“And as premature.”
“One must be as careful of what one gives up as prays for.”
“Perhaps they are the same thing.”
“That sounds like philosophy, Mrs. Nowell.”
Miriam smiled. “You don’t know a thing about Toby’s nephew, do you.”
“He’s the reason I’m getting married today, I suppose, though he couldn’t suspect it. He couldn’t suspect me at all.”
“My children were almost what they were going to be when they were seven,” said Miriam.
“I’ve done it very backwards, you know. Having a child by people I never met—years, in fact, before I ever so much as heard of them. It’s not the usual way to begin a marriage, or the ideal one, I daresay.” She looked at herself in the mirror and picked at the papers in her hair.
“Ideal is what ends well, I suspect,” said Miriam. “Among my own people there have been family divided by tragedy, people raising their children’s children, widows raising children alone, adoption ... and desertion, I fear. Why, you’re like a sister to me.”
Phileda smiled. She had known, heard, and felt this sentiment before.
“Family is where you find it, my father used to say.” Miriam began to help Phileda with her curled papers. “Of course, that was when he tried to trade me to your parents for you. Family is where you find it.”
“It’s not the usual way to begin a marriage,” said Phileda again.
“Yes, well, marriage is unusual, no matter how usual it is.”
“Oh, I do hope.”
Miriam regarded Phileda in the mirror. “You didn’t feel—?” she began, then foundered with the unspoken thought, shook her head, and left off entirely to return to her duties.
“No, I didn’t,” said Phileda, rather mysteriously and without the slightest hint of offense. “It was very mutual. And if it was quickly thought out, it was very well thought out, if you can believe me.”
Miriam nodded. “I like him very much,” she said.
Phileda only continued to smile. “It will be a great thing for him to be with someone from his own family again.”
Mister Walton almost put Mr. Trowbridge from his mind when he returned to the prerituals of the day. He shaved while Sundry laid out his things, and he detained his friend from further chores by chatting with him from the washstand. “You’ll know more about children than I,” he admitted when the conversation chanced upon his nephew.
“We were all kids once, I suppose,” said Sundry. “‘We raise as we have been raised,’ my father said to Martha Stivvard, who was dressing him down for some sin she saw in us kids one Sunday at church.”
“I met her when we visited your family last September.”
“You did cross swords.” The memory seemed to please Sundry.
“She was concerned for the state of my soul,” said Mister Walton.
“You might as well be a full-bloomed heathen, I guess, as be a Methodist.”
“Our fellowship cherishes certain wild creeds.” Mister Walton dabbed at his face with a towel. “If your father is correct, however, then I may perform my duties pretty well. The older I grow, the more I admire my own parents. Perhaps I shall have learned something from them without knowing it. I am in need of some nice cuff links.”
“You have a box of them on your bureau.”
“I was thinking of a pair my father used to wear on special occasions. No, no, I’ll go look for them, thank you, Sundry.” Mister Walton paused in the middle of the room, the towel still in his hand and a dab or two of shaving soap dotting his cheek. “Do you know, my friend, it may sound odd, but I don’t know that I would have half the courage to venture forth upon this new path without your steady presence.”
Sundry simply shook his head and chuckled softly. “Miss McCannon is steady enough, I think.”
“Yes, she is, to be sure. But ‘duty shored by many things, and friendship lights the path it can not take itself.’” Mister Walton briefly gripped Sundry’s shoulder but did not look at him as he stepped into the hall.
Mister Walton had visited the master bedroom several times since coming home last July, poking about his parents’ things for whatever tidings and memory. He was surprised this morning when he opened the door to discover that the room had been transformed. The bed, dressed in new clothes, was facing the windows, instead of between them. Fresh curtains hung in the room, and a new carpet covered the floor. “Good heavens!” he said as it occurred to him for the first time that he and Phileda would be spending the first night of their married life here. Obviously someone else, probably several people, had reached this conclusion before him. Sundry and the Baffins had been hard at work while he was out making arrangements and getting a marriage license.
It was strange to find his parents’ room rearranged, and he paused to take stock of his emotions. He looked out the window and over the front lawn, the gate, and Spruce Street. The past two days had been so hectic that he had not thought very much about his family; now a pang of regret visited him, and he went to the chair by the writing desk to sit down.
What a terrible thing that they could not know Phileda and that she could not know them. How very final that was. Only in God’s heaven would they ever meet. But here they would not know the solace of one another’s wisdom and kindness. How his mother would have doted on Phileda and with what pride his father would have claimed his new daughter-in-law as his own family! How Phileda would have loved them! And Aunt August. And his brother, lost at sea, years ago. How terrible, and terribly final, to think that they would not know one another on these shores.
Mister Walton forced himself to rise and walk to his father’s old bureau, which itself had been moved to another corner of the room. In the top drawer, in a small compartment, he found several sets of cuff links and also the pair he had been looking for. He shot his cuffs, held his left arm before him, and fingered the cuff link hole with the first post. Slowly, but with a kind of deliberateness, something substantial and unexpected in this simple task seemed to revive him, and as he secured his shirt sleeves, he had the odd sensation of putting on more than just his father’s cuff links.
Like all children, Mister Walton was a peculiar compound of hereditary gifts and conscious and unconscious upbringing; like most children, in his middle age he had begun to mimic the appearance and manners of his parents and even ancestors unknown to him with uncanny, if unintentional, accuracy. In certain facial characteristics Mister Walton took after his mother and by extension her father, but in his portly carriage and balding, bespectacled countenance he otherwise favored his father and his father’s family as recorded in portraits along the front hall stairs. How much more deeply and truly did he favor one or take after the other inside himself, in his manners, his speech, and further into his faith and dreams than he could ever understand. What a lot of people it takes to make one person—parents and grandparents and ancestors termed great and great-great—all descending and joining, sometimes colliding, to strike a specific and previously unseen spark. Was it really doing justice to their labor, their laughter, and their love to think that they were gone, or that labor and laughter and love were able to quit the world at all?
Standing in his parents’ bedroom, looking into the mirror above his father’s bureau, he could see bits of those people in his own face and in the frame of his shoulders and even in the way he looked over his spectacles at his own reflection. Truth be told, Phileda had already met these people; she had laughed at an old joke that his father used to tell, smiled at a bit of homely wisdom from his mother, but more important, she had heard such small prizes couched in a voice and a heart specifically crafted by God and handed down by his dear mother and father. And what had he encountered of Phileda’s family? He knew that something worthy had preceded her and that he was the blessed recipient of all that she represented of her people and also of every atom of her that was only Phileda McCannon, that could never have existed before and would never be reproduced.
There was a knock on the door. Sundry had heard enough silence to grow concerned, and he listened for Mister Walton’s soft “Come in.”
“Just wanted to be sure that you hadn’t fallen asleep,” said Sundry.
“What is she committing?” said Mister Walton.
“Phileda?” said Sundry. “She seems pretty rash to me,” he said.
Mister Walton chuckled. “Let us hope she doesn’t come to her senses in the next few hours.”
“We’ll see if we can’t distract her,” suggested Sundry.
A riddle arrived just before noon. The back door was thrown open, and two men rolled the impending quandary across the floor, then propped it up in the corner without a word. Horace McQuinn, who (along with Maven Flyce) seemed content to linger in the kitchen, recognized these fellows but asked no questions. One of them did nod to Horace, and then they were gone. Mrs. Spark had returned to the Faithful Mermaid, but the daughters had stayed behind to serve the reception, and they were amazed to see this intemperate object in such a respectable kitchen.
For the moment the rest of the house remained ignorant of the matter and solely concerned with the coming ceremony. Not long after this arrival, Sundry came down the front hall stairs and found the members of the club in the parlor. They had the appearance of men who await profound tidings, hands behind their backs or folded before them, faces solemn. Ephram compared the clock on the mantel with his own three or four watches. He was troubled to find Mister Walton’s timepiece a minute or two fast; it seemed ungracious to contradict the chairman’s chronometer, so Ephram busied himself with setting his own watches forward to correspond with the mantel clock.
Eagleton, meanwhile, discussed with Felton P. Deltwire the portrait of a Waltonian ancestor that hung upon the wall. “They only had brooms in those days,” said Felton P. Deltwire. His and Eagleton’s conversation had run from apogees and conjunctions to carpet sweeping to sextiles and quartiles and lunar contradictions and back to carpet sweeping. (Eagleton was not very familiar with sextiles and quartiles and several other words and phrases, so he was not always sure what they were talking about.)
Thump simply stood with his hands folded before him, and when Sundry entered, the bearded Moosepathian looked up and nodded.
“Sundry?” came the sweet voice of Lucinda Baffin. She peered into the parlor from the dining room, where she had been arranging the crystal upon the sideboard. “There seems to be something unusual in the kitchen,” she said. Sundry could see Minerva Spark standing behind the elderly woman.
Puzzled by their mysterious demeanor, Sundry stepped into the kitchen, where his gaze fell upon Horace McQuinn standing by the corner cupboard, arms folded, pipe in hand, barely smoking. Horace shrugged when he met Sundry’s inquiring gaze, and when Sundry looked at Annabelle and Minerva Spark, they looked away. He did not immediately see anything unusual, Horace and Maven notwithstanding. Then he caught sight of Maven Flyce’s perpetual expression of surprise and followed the path described by those wide eyes to the current object of their astonishment.
Something protruded from the other side of the baker’s cabinet and Sundry crossed the room to consider the low barrel—and not just a barrel but a keg which had, stenciled across the top, the single surprising word: RUM.
“That wasn’t there before,” said Sundry.
“It walked in about half an hour ago,” explained Horace.
“I was so amazed!” said Maven.
“Half an hour ago?” Sundry looked to the Spark girls for corroboration. The Faithful Mermaid served beer and small beer, stout and ale (and that against the exact laws of the state), but their mother would never allow anything stronger in the house, and consequently rum carried with the Spark children a wild reputation. Annabelle nodded. Minerva shrugged. Whatever arrived in Mister Walton’s kitchen was hardly their business to discuss.
“Half an hour ago?” said Sundry again to Horace McQuinn.
“I don’t know whose it is, but I was startled to see it.”
Sundry frowned at the keg. “Rum?” he said. He couldn’t imagine that Mister Walton knew about this—no, he knew that Mister Walton didn’t know about it. “Someone’s having fun with us,” he said quietly.
“Someone expects some fun, is my guess,” said Horace.
Minerva Spark laughed nervously.
Cedric Baffin poked his head into the kitchen and announced that Mr. Seacost and his wife had arrived.
“Am I straightened out?” Sundry asked Mrs. Baffin. She walked across the kitchen to study his appearance more closely, but Annabelle Spark was quicker (not to say bold), and she reached out and adjusted his tie. “Thank you,” he said, only briefly glancing at her before heading for the front door. A moment later he stuck his face back into the kitchen and pointed a forefinger at the keg. “I’ll take care of that in a moment.”
The Reverend Seacost and his wife had arrived, and the members of the club were solicitous, informing the elderly folk what might be expected of the climate and the tide and also what time it was. “Mister Walton’s clock,” said Ephram. Without further explanation, this statement was mysterious to the minister and his wife, but they smiled and nodded.
“Indeed?” said Mrs. Seacost. She thought that they were supposed to admire the clock on the mantel (perhaps it was a wedding gift), and she studied the instrument with a degree of seriousness that Ephram admired.
“Is someone here?” came Mister Walton’s voice from above.
“Mr. and Mrs. Seacost,” replied Sundry.
“Please inform the reverend that I am in need of spiritual counsel and an opinion regarding which tie I should wear.” So, leaving Mrs. Seacost to the kind attentions of the Moosepath League, Sundry and the minister went upstairs to offer their assistance in these two fields of discipline.
“I suppose,” Mr. Seacost said, “you will not require the standard lecture concerning the properties of marriage and the business of life”
“Am I to miss the standard lecture?” said Mister Walton, giving his best worst appearance of solemn regret. He held out two ties before Mr. Seacost.
“I don’t know that anyone has ever benefited by it,” returned Mr. Seacost, who pointed to the tie on the left.
Sundry heard this happy repartee indistinctly. Another carriage had just pulled up to the gate, and he had a distinct feeling about it.
“What are you seeing?” asked Mister Walton, like a child at Christmas.
“Nothing for your eyes,” said Sundry. “Yet.”
“Oh,” said Mister Walton, suddenly earnest.
“I’ll go down and let them know the coast is clear,” said Sundry.
“Sundry,” said Mister Walton, still with that abrupt seriousness in his face and his bearing. Sundry turned, his brow raised in question. Mister Walton opened his mouth, looking ready to ask some profound question or favor or perhaps to forward some significant message to the new arrivals. In the next moment, however, he closed his mouth and laughed quietly. “Thank you,” he said, for (perhaps) nothing at all or for everything.
Sundry was still smiling when he opened the door for the bridal party—Miss McCannon: her tall brother, Jared; her maid of honor, Miriam Nowell; and Mrs. Nowell’s husband, Stuart, who carried the wedding dress in a long box.
“Is this the right house?” asked Miss McCannon puckishly.
There was something so very definite about her, so very of itself as if she furnished her own source of light, that Sundry was startled. He simply bowed and extended a hand toward the back of the house, where they would find the birthing room just off the pantry. Mrs. Nowell took the dress box, and the women hurried off, leaving Sundry and Mr. Nowell in the hall and a stunned silence in the parlor. The Moosepath League had seen the bride pass.
“Hmmm,” said Mr. Thump.
Sundry was going to see Stuart Nowell and Jared McCannon to the parlor, when Mrs. Baffin tremulously spoke his name again. She stood at the other end of the hall, looking anxious. “There’s a policeman in the backyard.”
“Is there?” said Sundry.
“I think he’s going to come in,” she said.
“Oh, he’s a curious one,” said Horace when they reached the kitchen.
Bravely, if uncertainly, the Spark girls stood their ground. Sundry suggested that Mrs. Baffin escort them to the parlor, there to await the guests and avoid any association with rising matters. “Who marks a keg rum, when rum is illegal?” he said when they were gone. He saw a flash of the policeman’s hat pass the kitchen window and wondered which was more incriminating—the presence of the keg or that of Horace McQuinn and Maven Flyce. He considered rolling the offending object into the pantry and down the cellar steps, but then there was a knock at the kitchen door.
The officer was tall and broad-shouldered. He held his hat at his breast, and he ran a speculative hand through his reddish blond hair. “Good afternoon to you, sir,” he said, looking Sundry’s best man’s outfit up and down. “Are you the master of the house, then?”
“I’m not,” said Sundry.
“I’m Officer Rye. Would you mind if I took a look about?”
“I thought you had been,” said Sundry easily.
The officer was pleasant enough, if a little stiff. He had a stiff pair of reddish mustaches, in fact, that bristled over his cheeks. “Inside, if you take my meaning, sir,” he said.
“We’re having a wedding in about half an hour,” informed Sundry. The appearance of this police officer after the keg’s mysterious arrival touched him with vague misgiving.
The officer looked surprised. “I regret the intrusion, but I have been sent by Sergeant Frith to investigate.” His search past Sundry’s shoulder was snagged by the sight of Horace McQuinn. “Well!” he said. “Well!”
“Cuthbert, how are you?” drawled Horace.
“McQuinn,” said the officer tersely.
“What are you looking for?” asked Sundry.
“I’m not at liberty to divulge that at this hour,” explained the policeman, sounding like a quote in the court news.
“You’re not?” replied Sundry. “I might be able to help you if I knew what this was about.”
The policeman shifted his feet, took a breath, and said, “Actually, the sergeant was small on detail.”
“I think,” said Sundry with a nod toward the baker’s cabinet, “that what you’re looking for is in the corner over there.”
“What?”
“You’re looking for a keg, I guess.”
Officer Cuthbert Rye didn’t ask for further authorization but pressed past Sundry and into the kitchen. He let out one or two low gasps as the keg hove into view, and he stood a few feet away from it, peering at it as if it were a bomb about to explode.
“Who marks a keg ‘rum’ when rum is illegal?” asked Sundry again.
“What’s that you say?” said the gaping officer. “You stay right there, and don’t you move.”
Sundry simply folded his arms.
The officer let out a derisive snort. “You get the owner of this house, and be quick,” he added, countermanding his previous order, though perhaps he didn’t realize it.
“He’s to be married in half an hour,” said Sundry, more seriously.
The officer was large with suspicion, but it occurred to him that he had put his hat back on. Looking rueful, he took it off again and stuck it under one arm. “Yes, well—you had better go find the owner.”
The last thing Sundry wanted to do was to put any sort of cloud over Mister Walton’s day, and almost the last thing he wanted to do was put himself in trouble with the law by claiming (for Mister Walton’s sake) any culpability regarding the object in question. “You mean the owner of the house or the owner of that barrel?” he said, and when the officer gave him a glare, he added, “I’d really like to keep Mister Walton out of this.”
“Walton, eh?” Officer Rye found a notebook and a pencil in his jacket.
“Mister Walton, and he doesn’t know anything about this. We don’t have any notion where it came from, and he doesn’t even know it’s here.”
“I guess I know where it came from,” said the officer. He gave Horace McQuinn the hard stare.
“Who’d have thought!” said Maven Flyce.
“I’m as much in the dark as anyone,” professed Horace.
“You spend enough time skulking around in it,” replied Officer Rye.
Horace returned the officer’s stare with an expression of profound bemusement. He hardly blinked.
“If he didn’t bring it with him, who did?” the policeman asked Sundry.
“Horace said two men came in with it about half an hour ago.”
“What did they look like?” asked the policeman, plainly dubious.
“One had hair,” said Horace slowly, “and one had a hat.”
Cuthbert Rye ceased scribbling in his notebook and considered what he was going to say. “I’m sorry to interrupt a man’s wedding, but I was sent down here to see what was up, and I must speak to the head of the house.”
“Now why would anyone mark a keg ‘rum’ when rum is illegal?” said Sundry for a third time.
“I guess you’d know something about it.”
“I guess I wouldn’t have to know much to understand that contraband would generally be delivered unmarked. How about you, Horace? Have you ever seen a barrel marked ‘rum’ before? Here in Portland?”
“I’ve never heard tell of it,” avowed Horace.
“What are you trying to convince me of?” said the officer, looking almost ready to be convinced.
“Wouldn’t it be a shame to spoil a man’s wedding,” offered Sundry, “simply on account of someone’s bad judgment by way of a joke?”
“A joke? I don’t know that illegal liquor is a joke, there, fellow.”
“Mister Walton would consider it serious indeed,” said Sundry.
“He knocked down old Adam Tweed with a single shot last fall,” said Horace out of the blue.
“Adam Tweed?” said the policeman. “Is it that Mister Walton?”
“It is,” said Sundry simply. Sundry wasn’t the sort of man to curry favor for himself and he was sorry he hadn’t thought to do so for Mister Walton.
“Hmmm,” said the policeman. “We’re not to show favoritism, you know. We were taken to task for that business with the mayor’s brother-in-law.”
“Once the wedding is over,” said Sundry, adding fuel to the fire of the policeman’s nascent decision, “and after I stand up with Mister Walton, I’ll come back and we’ll deal with this.”
“Knocked down Adam Tweed, eh?” said Officer Rye. “That was a good piece of work. We’d been wanting that one for some time.”
“Oh, he was poison, was Adam Tweed,” asserted Horace.
“A joke, eh?” said the officer. Clearly he was a fair-minded man. “All right then. I’m waiting here with the keg, and Mr. McQuinn will wait with me, notwithstanding his declaration of innocence.” Cuthbert Rye was fair-minded, but he wasn’t above irony. “You go ahead and stand up with your friend now.” He nodded curtly and with a frown.
“I’m much obliged,” said Sundry. He turned back toward the front of the house and was startled to see that Mr. and Mrs. Baffin had come into the kitchen during the preceding dialogue. Their own expressions of elderly concern and shock had perhaps aided him in his campaign. “Let’s not speak to Mister Walton about this if we can help it,” he said as he passed them.
“But what are we to do?” she wondered aloud.
Sundry tapped the side of his head and said, “I have a thought.”
“Gory, Hod!” pronounced Maven, when Sundry had left the room. “Isn’t it something!”
“I guess probably it is,” agreed Horace.
Truthfully, Sundry did not have a thought, but it seemed too bad to worry the Baffins. For the span of a breath or two, he paused before the door to the birthing room or sickroom; near the pantry, and with its own fireplace, this smallest room in the house had been used to both purposes. Several people (Mister Walton included) had been born in that room, and some (such as Mister Walton’s Aunt August) had died there; but Sundry did not consider the significance of a bride’s donning her wedding dress there.
With no more than a general idea of what was being accomplished behind that door, he was abashed to hear, indistinctly, Mrs. Nowell express Miss McCannon’s Christian name with the sort of pleasure and wonder that could only mean the bride was dressed and ready. Feeling that he had heard something, however unremarkable or oft repeated, that had not been meant for his ears, he strode into the hall and mounted the stairs at a clip.
“Ten minutes before the hour of two,” came the voice of Mr. Ephram.
Mister Walton waited nervously in the master bedroom. “There you are,” he said when Sundry came in. Mr. Seacost stood to one side, looking amused and meditative.
“Sorry,” said Sundry, giving his own tie an extra pull.
“No, no,” insisted the grand fellow. “I don’t think you could call it a wedding if the groom wasn’t ready to faint dead away.”
“You might not call it a wedding if he does,” suggested Sundry.
“Never fear,” said Mister Walton. “You’ll get me to the altar. I have every faith.” He patted his brow with a handkerchief while Sundry led the way downstairs.
“Is it two yet?” asked the groom.
“I don’t think so,” said Sundry. He expected news of the hour to rise from the parlor at any moment.
“I think a breath of air is in order,” said Mister Walton. Sundry opened the front door, and he and Mr. Seacost stepped out with the groom.
The day had become everything they could have wanted and an Edenic instance of summer on the coast of Maine. The sun was high and warm, the ocean breeze soft and restorative. The greens of the oaks and maples and chestnuts along Spruce Street could almost hurt the eye, and past roofs and the crowns of other trees on streets below them there was a glint of separate green from the harbor itself. Mister Walton appeared incapable of moving till he had taken it in.
But Sundry had a strange and fleeting consciousness of the dark interior of Pearce Eddy’s waterfront flophouse, a vision that welled up from the center of his bright view, carrying with it equal degrees of gratitude and regret. He was at a loss to describe even to himself how that recent experience warred with the present moment, but Mister Walton expressed it for him and also spelled the darker haunt away by saying simply, “We are blessed.”
Sundry would think about it later. “On to the next thing,” he said.
“Gentlemen,” said Mister Walton when he entered the parlor. He who had always carried his portly frame with unconscious savoir-faire appeared to the members of the club as dapper as they had ever seen him, and they were moved to spontaneous applause. Mister Walton blushed and bowed, and Sundry heard his bespectacled friend say, in a quiet, if delighted, voice, “I see Mr. Deltwire received his invitation.”
Sundry had forgotten the drummer, or perhaps had merely accepted the stranger’s presence in the house. It was a tradition in the Moss family that an uninvited guest brings good fortune, so it is not strange that Sundry was disposed to let the man in the checkered suit stay, even if Felton P. Deltwire looked a bit like the palace guard, standing to attention by the door with the Queen of the Carpet Sweepers gripped in one hand.
“So glad you could come,” said the groom, the statement sincere and punctuated with a hearty handshake.
“It’s very nice of you,” said Felton P. Deltwire, as if he had received a formal letter of invitation.
Mister Walton met Mrs. Seacost with an embrace. “Mr. Ephram,” he then said, and shook hands with that worthy fellow. Speaking the names of Mr. Eagleton and Mr. Thump, he did the same. The gentlemen of the club were visibly moved, and they hemmed and blinked as their chairman went on to speak to Stuart Nowell and Jared McCannon. The room was filled with greeting, and charter members joined in as if they themselves had only just arrived.
“Expected sunny afternoon,” said Eagleton to Mr. Nowell, “though more clouds by evening and possible rain, clearing once again by morning.”
“High tide at 1:48,” Thump informed Jared McCannon.
“It’s four minutes before two o’clock,” said Ephram.
“Well,” said Thump, “that was eight minutes ago then, wasn’t it. Good heavens! The next high tide at 1:16,” he corrected, “A.M.”
Jared McCannon looked interested, though surprised. He had met the Moosepath League in the summer of the previous year but had perhaps wondered, in the meantime, if he had imagined it.
The Baffins came into the parlor; she stationed herself at the organ, and he stood beside her. Mister Walton insisted that the pretty Spark girls join them, and they demurely sat by the front windows and gathered appreciative (and all very proper) glances from the men in the room. Sundry feared that Mister Walton would insist on going into the kitchen in search of Horace McQuinn and Maven Flyce, whereby the groom would be apprised of the keg and the cop therein; but the groom was yet dizzy with the moment, and his memory was not so complete.
Ephram was consulting one of the three or four watches that he carried about his person, and Eagleton looked as if he’d been pinched. Thump offered to pump the organ’s foot treadles, and the instrument wheezed into life under the exquisite notes of “If My Songs Had Wings.”
Reverend Seacost, who had been talking quietly with Mr. Nowell, took his place beside Mister Walton and said in a low tone, “The moment of truth is at hand.” Mischievously he said to Sundry, “Prop him up.”
They stood by the hearth and awaited the coming revelation. Sundry thought he might have to “prop him up” as Mister Walton faltered a little. The groom was shaking slightly, and Sundry had a flash of that terrible moment, not a week ago, when his friend had fallen headfirst in a sudden faint.
“Are you all right?” asked Sundry under his breath.
Mister Walton took a breath, then appeared calm again. Fingering one of his cuff links, he said, “I have hardly been better.”
“Watch closely everything that happens next, young man,” said Mr. Seacost with continued good humor. “Our friend may ask you what occurred when all is done.”
“I promise,” said Sundry.
And anyone with a low degree of tolerance for what the skeptical world might consider “immoderate sentiment” herewith has permission to forgo the ensuing chapter. The Moosepath League offers no apologies.
“My word!” said Mister Walton. “Which way are they coming in?” There were two doors to the parlor—one from the dining room and the other from the hall—and he did not know by which door his bride would enter. “We never spoke about it,” he said.
Sundry saw a flash of white in the hall and made a gesture in that direction. Mr. Thump tromped the organ treadle with admirable energy, and the instrument sounded like church itself. When the song was done, Mrs. Baffin startled the bearded Moosepathian by touching his hand affectionately. Then she nodded to him, Thump recommenced his labors, and she began to play Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.”
Miriam Nowell entered the parlor, wearing a beautiful sky blue dress and a spray of white flowers in her dark hair. One eyebrow lifted when she saw Mister Walton—a shot across the bow, so to speak, and a friendly warning of what was to come. The portly fellow gave a small chuckle, and Miriam, pleased with herself, took her place opposite Sundry.
The bride’s brother then came into view; Jared McCannon was tall and good-looking and appropriately serious. There was a white sleeve on his arm, and then Mister Walton saw the white dress attached to the sleeve and the very vision within the dress that he had so anticipated yet could hardly have imagined. Phileda McCannon had tears in her eyes and a smile on her lips that looked as if it might at any moment turn into happy laughter. There was something wry in the way her glasses were perched upon her nose. Then a visible pleasure touched her as she saw her beau and, perhaps as important, what effect seeing her had upon him.
Nearly of a height with Mister Walton, but slender, she had designed her white dress with as little bustle and furbelow as she could reasonably do without. The lines of her shoulders were strong and elegant, and her high collar accented a graceful neck. In the pattern of her dress there was almost the hint of an Empire waist, which had been in vogue a hundred years before and to which her slim carriage was very much suited.
On her breast shone a brooch of silver and pearl, and Mister Walton recognized this piece of jewelry as one that his father had given to his mother on the occasion of their marriage. Again, he fingered one of his father’s cuff links and felt that sense of extended grace as delivered to him by people gone before. The dress, the bride, his mother’s brooch, and the moment all seemed timeless, and Mister Walton felt the hair at the back of his neck lifting with glad anticipation.
There would be no formal giving away. Phileda, with some humor, had declared the phrase “scandalous” (but “many a serious word,” as someone had already said that day). Jared was content to kiss his sister’s cheek when he had escorted her to Mister Walton’s side, then find a place to stand beside the other guests.
Mister Walton was as still as if he were observing some natural phenomenon (an exquisite natural phenomenon) that might evaporate were he to take a single breath. The music had stopped, but he did not know when. Their eyes met—his in wonder and hers with that same mixture of tears and mischief—and she took his hand suddenly in a fierce grip.
Sundry watched life pour into his bespectacled friend. The groom’s expression of wonder slowly melted into a soft smile, and his eyes filled with their own kind of gentle disposition. Mister Walton took a long-delayed and much-needed breath. Mr. Seacost gave them this moment—there in the parlor, with the sunlight coming through the open windows, and also the sea breeze and the song of birds from among the trees. The old minister even bowed his head. Sundry looked away.
“We gather together to unite in the holy estate of matrimony these two people,” said Mr. Seacost, “in the name of God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.” Then he prayed, asking for God’s love to move among them and to bless them all with peace and harmony.
“Amen,” said bride and groom with the minister. Sundry’s lips moved in accordance, and the gathering joined in with a collective and whispered “Amen.”
“Dearly beloved,” continued the minister, “forasmuch as marriage is a holy estate, ordained of God, and to be held in honor by all, it becometh those who enter therein to weigh, with reverent minds, what the Word of God teacheth concerning it. And our Lord Jesus Christ said: ‘Have you not read that He who made them from the beginning made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.’”
Mister Walton’s eyes were closed; Miss McCannon watched him, and he raised his head and looked up when Mr. Seacost next spoke.
“Tobias Elisha Walton, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keep only unto her, so long as you both shall live?”
Over a sudden frog in his throat, Mister Walton said, “I will.”
“Phileda Katherine McCannon, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love him, comfort him, honor and keep him in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, keep only unto him, so long as you both shall live?”
Miss McCannon’s blue eyes grew wide, almost as if she hadn’t expected such a question. Then she said, “Oh, I will.” Her eyes were brimming.
Mr. Thump stood and read in his deep tones the pertinent verses from Colossians 3:12–15, calling for kindness, forbearance, charity, and peace.
Mr. Seacost then spoke in meditation, calling upon the images of time and tide and climate to exemplify nature as experienced in the course of a life and the conduct of a marriage. Certain members of the gathering were moved by these metaphors, and Mister Walton and Miss McCannon smiled through them. Another prayer was offered, another “Amen” chorused through the room, and Mr. Seacost said, “I would enjoin you to take each other’s hands—if you had ever let go of them,” and there was a murmur of laughter. “Toby, if you would repeat after me: I, Tobias Elisha Walton...”
Vows very much like those they had already voiced were repeated, but to each other. Mister Walton very seriously captured his bride’s eyes and spoke the solemn promise without hesitation.
“I, Phileda Katherine McCannon ...” Mr. Seacost continued.
Miss McCannon, for all her aplomb, found herself tongue-tied, and she tripped on a word or two and had particular trouble when asked to say, “and thereto I plight thee my troth.” The breeze from the windows tugged at a stray lock of hair, which tress was then the very center of Mister Walton’s world and attention.
Sundry was asked to produce the ring for the bride, and Mister Walton slipped the simple gold band on Miss McCannon’s slender finger, saying, “Receive this ring as a token of wedded love and troth.”
Then Miriam Nowell offered the groom’s ring, and Phileda worked this with a little more trouble over Mister Walton’s ring finger, saying in turn, “Receive this ring as a token of wedded love and troth.”
Said Mr. Seacost, “O God, who art our dwelling place in all generations: Look with favor upon the homes of our land; enfold husband and wife, parent and child in the bonds of thy pure love; and so bless our homes, that they may be a shelter for the defenseless, a bulwark for the tempted, a resting place for the weary, and a foretaste of our eternal home in thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
“Forasmuch as Tobias Elisha Walton and Phileda Katherine McCannon have consented together in holy wedlock, and have declared the same before God and man, I pronounce them husband and wife: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”
Mr. Seacost said very softly, “Toby,” and to Mrs. Walton, “My dear,” then more loudly to Mister Walton, “You may kiss the bride.”
Again Mister Walton’s eyes were closed, and the new Mrs. Walton’s spilled with tears, and when they had kissed, simply and gently, he opened his eyes and she reached up and very slightly adjusted his tie.
“My goodness’ sakes!” said Eagleton. “Wouldn’t you say, Ephram?”
“I was indeed going to,” said Ephram with no hint of vexation that his words had been presupposed. He was, in fact, delighted to be of such close mind with his friend and rather thought it a compliment to himself that they were.
“Wouldn’t you say, Thump?” said Eagleton.
“Hmmm?” said Thump.
Hearty congratulations to the newly married couple had been offered all the way around, and the gathering soon wandered into the dining room for a modest reception served up by the Spark girls. The wedding cake, Mrs. Spark’s grand creation, presided over the table, and Annabelle and Minerva were laden with many compliments to carry to their mother, along with a few to keep themselves, for they were really very handsome young women.
Though occupying the center of everyone’s interest, the bride and groom were blissfully unaware of even their own side of various conversations, and sometimes their answers were at odds with whatever subject was at hand. Mister Walton said, and very happily, “Do you think so?” when Thump spoke of the hour in which to expect the coming high tide, and the chairman would never have willingly caused his bearded friend such resultant confusion.
“Mr. Moss!” came a portentous Hsst! of a whisper in Sundry’s ear. Annabelle Spark stood just behind him and looked ready to pluck his sleeve when he turned about. “The policeman is getting anxious.”
“Is he?” said Sundry, with very little thought in the words. He exchanged a look with Mrs. Baffin but managed a small smile. She appeared to accept that he had a plan and turned back to the bride and groom. But the day had not been conducive to scheming against the unforeseen. Sundry had been bent on enjoying himself despite the situation at the back of the house. Annabelle waited in the pantry, looking anxious, her wide eyes questioning Sundry as he strode past.
“Ah! There you are,” said Officer Rye. He looked as if he’d been pacing all the while. Horace still leaned with his elbow on the cupboard. Maven Flyce’s astonished expression had hardly shifted. “I told you he’d be on his way,” said Horace.
Sundry was startled. A second policeman was in the kitchen now.
“Mr. Moss,” said Calvin Drum sharply.
“Officer Drum.”
“This is awkward,” said Officer Drum. “I don’t like to trouble a man at his wedding, but Sergeant Frith sent me back to see what was keeping Cuthbert.”
“I am amazed!” said Maven.
Annabelle and Minerva had pressed their faces past the kitchen door, and in a moment they stepped in to make way for the Baffins.
“We’ll need to see the owner of the house,” said Officer Rye.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have get Mister Walton,” said Officer Drum.
“Mister Walton doesn’t know a thing about it, I promise you,” said Sundry, “and as I took care of the preparations, this must be my doing, however accidental.”
The Spark girls gasped, and the voices of Lucinda and Cedric Baffin were heard to take the blame upon themselves. “I’m sure Mr. Moss didn’t know a thing about it!” said Annabelle, looking sweet in her distress.
“I still should speak to your employer,” said Officer Rye, looking unconvinced by Sundry’s short speech.
“I wish you wouldn’t.” Sundry stepped toward the door, as if to block the policeman’s way. The door then bumped him in the back of the head.
Excusing himself, Mister Walton came into the kitchen. “What’s happening?” he asked. “Sundry? What’s the trouble?”
“Nothing at all,” said Sundry, though the presence of the policemen and the expression on everyone’s face certainly put the lie to his words.
“No?” said Mister Walton, with perhaps the tone of a parent who is one statement away from demanding the truth. “Officer Drum,” he said, “and Officer—”
“Mister Walton,” said Officer Drum.
“Congratulations to you, sir,” said Officer Rye. “I am sorry to interrupt your wedding day with police business, but I was sent by Sergeant Frith on the strength of an informant.”
“Police business? Informant?”
“Toby?” The door opened again, and the recently installed woman of the house stood at the threshold, surveying the puzzled and anxious faces. “Toby? What’s the matter?”
“I’m not sure, my dear. Sundry?”
“It’s the keg, here in your kitchen,” answered the policeman as he backed away from the object.
The short barrel did look guilty, and Mister Walton let out a small gasp as he approached it. “Now, what do you suppose—” He looked across the kitchen at Horace McQuinn, with whom he had some history regarding the conveyance of illegal spirits.
“I don’t suppose at all, sir,” the policeman was saying. He had perhaps reached the end of his patience. “Now, someone is going down to the station with me, or everyone, is.”
The situation grew only more awkward, and in more ways than one, when Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump came into the kitchen. “What is it? What is it?” said one of them. “Good heavens!” said another when they saw the policemen. “Hmmm!” said a third. Room began to sound like a mistaken nomenclature for the space they subsequently occupied. In addition, the person of Mr. Thump, who had rescued Officer Drum’s wellbeing only a week or so ago, only made that policeman’s duty the more unpleasant.
“The devil of it is—I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said Calvin Drum, “the worst of it is that if I didn’t know a one of you from Adam, I might hoist that keg and dump it down the sink without another word.”
“I don’t know them, and I’m taking someone with me to explain things to the sergeant,” asserted Cuthbert Rye.
Calvin Drum looked as if he didn’t know what to be embarrassed about. He shifted his feet, shrugged his shoulders, and let out a low growl. “Ever since that business with the mayor’s brother-in-law,” he said.
“I wouldn’t allow you to make such an exception,” said Mister Walton.
“It is odd circumstance,” drawled Horace.
“It’s very odd to have the word rum painted across the head,” observed Mister Walton. “I do apologize, Officers. And the fact that you hesitate at all is appreciated. Officer Rye, I must thank you for allowing our recent ceremony to carry on uninterrupted. I shall, of course, go with you to talk about this with your sergeant.”
“We shall go,” corrected Phileda.
“I have arranged to take care of the whole business,” said Sundry.
“No, no, Sundry, I can’t allow it,” said Mister Walton.
Mister Walton looked around, as if for his coat, and Phileda took hold of his arm, and Sundry began to ask the policemen if he couldn’t represent the household when still another voice made itself heard and the general babble died away so that its sentiments could be repeated.
“I’d taste what’s in that barrel before I marched a man away from his wedding reception,” said Felton P. Deltwire, who held the Queen of the Carpet Sweepers in one hand and half a pie in the other.
“Here, now!” said Officer Rye. “Let’s not be making light of it, and perhaps you’d like to come down and talk a bit with the sergeant yourself.”
“I sold a Queen of the Carpet Sweepers to an army sergeant’s wife once,” said the drummer offhandedly. He took another bite of his pastry and said, “I only meant that regret might fit the other foot if you took this gentleman to the police station without first determining the contents of that keg.”
“I guess it’s pretty plain,” said Officer Rye.
“That’s just my point,” said Felton P. Deltwire.
“Never judge a book by its cover,” said Thump suddenly.
“Oh, my!” said Maven Flyce.
Officer Rye considered the keg with a frown, then exchanged looks with Horace McQuinn, who looked amused.
“Latch on to that, will you, Mr. Flyce?” said Calvin Drum.
“Who’d have thought?” said Maven.
“Calvin?” said Cuthbert Rye.
“I’ll take the heat for this one,” said Officer Drum.
In a moment they had the keg in the dry sink, and Sundry had gone to the cellarway for a hatchet, which Officer Drum took, saying, “I’m an old hand at this. Stand aside.” He went to the sink and broached the barrelhead with a crack of the hatchet and a splash. The room held its collective breath, but it was evident, almost immediately, that Officer Drum sensed something he hadn’t expected. He dipped a forefinger into the barrel and brought it out dripping with a rummy-looking substance. He did not put his finger to his mouth but held it under his nose and declared, “Turpentine!”
“I’m glad you didn’t pour me a portion,” said Felton P. Deltwire, who appeared to have found another pastry in one of his pockets.
“Well, this is mysterious!” said Mister Walton.
“But, Toby, what does it mean?” wondered Phileda.
“It’s a rum trick, if you don’t mind the phraseology,” said Officer Drum. He gave Horace McQuinn a sharp look.
“I’ll be!” said Officer Rye. He went to the sink and dipped a finger. They all gathered around the dry sink to see and smell for themselves.
“I never thought!” said Maven.
“It is a peculiarity,” admitted Horace. “And a pretty hard business to visit a fellow on his wedding day.”
“Well, God bless the both of them,” said Mrs. Spark. “It must have been a lovely wedding. Minerva said she cried.” Mabel Spark was pounding out bread dough and fanning flour over half the kitchen. She paused in her labor to look through the cloud she had made. “But what was this about a keg of turpentine and the police?”
Sundry guessed that she knew the story top to bottom from her daughters, but some tales ask to be repeated and from every point of reference; he did not mind explaining his while he ate dinner. He might have eaten in the tavern, but he liked the family bustling around him. The growing noise from the tavern room briefly shouted whenever anyone opened the swinging door. Thaddeus Spark, looking as Mr. Thump-like as ever, came into the kitchen during Sundry’s recitation.
Thaddeus leaned an elbow on the counter and paused to listen to the tale. Three of the Spark children, Minerva and Annabelle and Bobby, came in and out, pausing as long as they dared to hear Sundry’s version of things, and though the young women had been there, they seemed the most interested.
“I can’t understand the turpentine,” said Thaddeus.
“It was Felton R Deltwire’s idea to broach the keg,” admitted Sundry. He was speaking to Mrs. Spark, who might appreciate this, having met the man.
“He came in useful after all,” she said.
“I wish I had thought of it,” said Sundry.
“It was someone’s idea of a joke,” said Annabelle.
“Do you think?” Sundry wasn’t so sure. “It reminds me of the sick pig that Mister Walton and I met just last week. When we found the cure for him, it was still another day or so before we discovered what had made him sick in the first place.”
“Did you get Mr. Moss’s room ready?” asked Mrs. Spark when Betty came down the back stairs. The girl had, and she was hurried off to other duties.
“I’m glad you had a room,” said Sundry.
“Give the dear folk some peace and quiet,” said Mrs. Spark. “When Thaddeus and I were married, they kept us up all night banging pots and singing.” She rolled her eyes at the memory. “We’ll put you on the third floor, if you don’t mind,” she said to Sundry. “With the family. Your Mr. Deltwire took the last room on the second, I’m afraid.”
“I can climb another flight of stairs,” said Sundry.
“I wasn’t going to put that drummer on the same floor as the girls, I can tell you!” said the mother. “I think he followed them back here after the wedding, though he made out as if it were pure chance.”
“That wasn’t what kept me up,” said Thaddeus proudly. He had a talent for hanging on to subjects. It took his wife a moment to realize that he was still talking about their wedding night, and she flung a potato at him. He deftly caught the spud, laughing happily at his own joke.
Sundry did not immediately look up from his meal, but he heard Annabelle whisper, “Daddy!” as she hurried out to the tavern room.
Thaddeus was still chuckling, but he grew serious when Davey appeared at the back stairs. “Mr. Ring’s awake,” said Davey. “I think he’s in his right mind, too.”
“Where’s Melanie?” asked Mrs. Spark, wiping her hands on her apron and making for the stairs.
“She fell asleep in the chair.”
“We shouldn’t leave her alone in there.”
Thaddeus was vacillating between his duties in the tavern room and those upstairs. “I’ll go with you,” said Sundry to Mabel, rising from his chair.
Mrs. Spark waited at the first landing, then led the way up the next flight of steps, which were narrow and contained; she opened the door at the top and led the way down the hall. Sundry stopped at the threshold to the sickroom, where the heat radiated as from a fevered breath. In the grate burned a low fire, which Sundry hardly believed was necessary. The curtains were drawn, and the glowing hearth doubled as light in the dim room.
The man whom Sundry had helped carry the day before lay in a small bed by the window. His breathing was quick. His eyes were deep and fiery, his lips drawn back as if in pain. Burne Ring stared at the small form curled up in the chair beside the bed, and someone might have thought, by his wild expression, that he intended some harm upon the sleeping child.
“The doctor said small beer,” said Mrs. Spark. Davey stood behind her and he hesitated a moment before hurrying off. “Mr. Ring,” she said, as if greeting a familiar guest at the door.
Burne Ring rolled onto his back, his breathing hard and shallow, and Sundry had the stabbing thought that the man was going to expire. Calm and businesslike, Mrs. Spark stirred the fire and threw in a few pieces of coal. She dusted her hands and advanced to the bed. But Burne Ring’s eyes were closed now, his mouth open, his breathing fast.
“He’s asleep again,” said Mrs. Spark. She turned to the little girl in boys’ clothes who was curled in the chair. “Let’s take her to Tim’s room.”
Sundry slipped his arms beneath the sleeping child, surprised that she hardly stirred when he lifted her.
“He’s asleep again,” Mrs. Spark said to Davey at the door. He stepped aside with his cup of small beer. Sundry followed the woman down the hall. The family rooms at the Faithful Mermaid were plain and comfortable. The rugs were braided by hand, the pictures on the walls were from old calendars, and the sturdy furniture was from estate sales at older, declining homes. Timothy’s room, which he shared with Bobby, had a single window overlooking the tavern sign and they could hear the creak of this wooden emblem when the wind shook it. While they stood between the two small beds there was a tap at the window, then another. Mr. Eagleton’s predicted rain had commenced.
Tim was asleep, his hair standing in cowlicks over his pillow, his arms and legs thrown in all directions. Mrs. Spark pulled the covers back on Bobby’s bed, and Sundry laid the sleeping girl down. Melanie stayed as she had been situated, and there was in her openmouthed breathing and her thin limbs something of her father that touched them.
“You don’t want a kid, do you?” said Mrs. Spark. Her voice was quiet, and there was something in her tone that indicated she had no intention of letting Melanie Ring go.
“Someday,” said Sundry.
“Sometimes they come before someday,” she whispered. “I’d send her father to the hospital; but she insists on staying with him, and that’s no place for a child.”
“You may not have him very much longer,” said Sundry, turning away from the little girl and saying this more to his feet than the woman beside him.
“I don’t suppose we will.” She brushed the hair from Melanie’s forehead. Having seen her pound dough a few minutes before, Sundry was taken by how gentle she could be. She was not unhandsome, Mrs. Spark, but she looked like some years of hard work and child rearing. A few of those years fell off in that moment, and she might have been a young mother stroking the sleeping head of her first child.
Timothy let out a groan and turned over. Mrs. Spark and Sundry left: on tiptoes. They paused again at the door to the sickroom. Davey Spark had recommenced his watch over the man. He yawned in his chair. “It’s long, sitting here,” he said.
“You should take up knitting,” said his mother, not pausing to find out whether her oldest born thought this funny. “I’ll show you your room,” she said to Sundry. “And then you’d better go down and have some pie.”
“I can do that,” he said.
“I wouldn’t want to say anything in front of Phileda,” Mister Walton began to say when the steam whistle of the Manitoba let out a blast. He waited, one finger raised and his posture eloquent of his unfinished statement. On their way down the pier, Phileda had stopped to peruse the wares of one of the wharfside vendors and they were a little ahead of her. When the last of the whistle shriek died and his ears had ceased to ring, Mister Walton said, “I am concerned to be leaving without first having solved the business of that keg.”
Sundry wondered if Miss McCannon (Mrs. Walton, he reminded himself) would express something similar before the ship cast off and when Mister Walton was out of earshot. “I thought that business was done with,” he said.
Mister Walton smiled. “I seem to remember that when our good friend Hercules appeared to have been cured, it was you who wondered what had made him sick in the first place.”
“I was just concerned that any talk of curing might make a pig anxious.”
Mister Walton laughed. “I am going to miss you, my friend.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Well—” The portly fellow took off his spectacles and rubbed them with a handkerchief. He stopped and looked back for Phileda. “It would be embarrassing to lose my wife at this point in our marriage.”
Phileda caught sight of them, smiled, and waved, a newly purchased scarf fluttering with her gesture. This morning she was dressed a little more ornately than was her habit; this was the first evidence of her trousseau, after all, and she and her new husband were boarding ship this morning, no matter the serious nature of their mission.
While she paid the vendor, Mister Walton considered Sundry with an odd expression. “You’re not thinking of leaving my employ?” he asked.
“Leaving?” Sundry pulled a frown. “No, I hadn’t thought of it.”
Mister Walton nodded to himself.
“I needed something bright to wave when we cast off,” said Phileda as she caught up with them, and she had certainly picked the brightest scarf for the purpose. Taking Mister Walton’s arm, she leaned close to him as they continued up the wharf. The porter with their bags was long out of sight.
In the shadows of buildings along the wharf there were patches of dampness from last night’s rain; but the clouds had graciously disappeared, and the crowds had come out in force on this Saturday morning—the ladies with their bright dresses and parasols, the men striding about looking business whether they had any or not. Arriving passengers and the friends and relatives here to see them off milled at the foot of the gangplank and lined the upper deck of the steamship. There were ship spotters and children and vendors and even the occasional dog and the smell of peanuts roasting and the colorful flags of the steamship flapping in the harbor breeze above it all.
“Look who has anticipated us,” said Mister Walton, and as if by fiat the crowd parted and three sprucely dressed gentlemen in top hats were revealed.
The charter members were looking up at the steamship’s stack and were leaning so far back to do so that they had to hold their hats onto their heads to keep them from falling off. Contrary to appearances, Mr. Thump was informing his friends of the salutary qualities of the American walnut. “There are black ones and white ones, I was informed, and the one on High Street is nearly as tall.” He directed their gazes with the day’s edition of the Portland Courier. “The nut is said to enrich the blood,” he added.
“Very good, Thump,” said Ephram, shading his eyes with the Eastern Argus.
“It’s a very nice tree,” agreed Eagleton, who might have been looking at it instead of the stack of a steamship. This morning he was not without his Portland Daily Advertiser.
“The hull is very hard,” said Ephram, speaking of the walnut.
“Steel this thick,” said a man who was standing nearby. He held his thumb and forefingers apart.
Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were not quite ready for this semantic leap; but Mister Walton greeted them in the next instant, and walnuts and ships’ hulls were quickly forgotten. Ephram shook hands with Mister Walton, and Eagleton exchanged similar greetings with Sundry while Thump hesitated, then gently agitated Phileda’s offered hand. Thump looked uncertain, and perhaps he wondered if she was going to buss him on the cheek—a thing she had done recently when she and Mister Walton first announced their engagement. She let him off with a warm smile, and he blushed anyway. Eagleton then pumped Mister Walton’s hand with great vigor and Thump shook Sundry’s hand and Ephram took his turn wishing his best to the new bride. Then the greetings and good thoughts continued round and finished with Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump’s shaking one another’s hands and seeming a little surprised about it.
“Who could have known,” said Mister Walton, his hands behind his back in the attitude of unrehearsed oration, “and certainly I didn’t, that when I returned to Portland last July, I would, in less than a year, gain such friendship? I have always thought myself blessed beyond my worth and yet now every former blessing, and even every trouble and dismay, seem ten times as fortunate, since they have added up in experience to this moment when I can call such men friends and such a woman friend and wife.”
There was much blinking of eyes among the membership. Perhaps the sun was too bright. There was another shout from the steam whistle, and they had the impression that the ship was growing impatient.
“All ashore that’s going ashore!” shouted the first mate from the head of the plank.
“They’re very punctual,” said Mister Walton. “And I fear we did not rise with the sun this morning.”
To the members of the club, this last statement was suggestive in a manner that was wholly unintentional on the part of their chairman. It was perhaps the plural pronoun linked with the verb to rise, not to mention the state, that is the place, well, at any rate, perhaps it were best—!
Thump shook himself from a brief reverie, and Eagleton looked as if he had discovered a pebble in his shoe. Ephram meanwhile did not even think to consult one of the three or four watches that he carried about his person. Mrs. Walton did not help their state of confusion by invoking Mrs. Morrell’s upcoming June Ball, which they had pledged to attend.
“Yes, well,” said Ephram.
“Exactly,” said Eagleton.
“Hmmm,” said Thump.
“I shall expect descriptive summaries all the way around,” Phileda insisted, “and an account of the lovely ladies with whom you exercise your dancing skills. And Mr. Moss?”
“I have my ticket,” said Sundry, his arms folded before him and his expression a perfect composite of the amused and the doubtful.
She reached out and squeezed his hand, which was meant as a tacit expression of “Good luck.”
Late arrivals hurried by, crossing paths with those who had said their farewells and were now returning to the wharf. There was often a festive atmosphere about the docks when a steamship arrived or departed, particularly on such a handsome summer day, when the sea breeze perfectly complemented the strength of the sun and the gulls and terns wheeled noisily overhead. The salt air itself invigorated a body, and the general bustle of the wharves lent constant interest to the eye.
But the attention of the Moosepath League, and of Sundry Moss, was wholly upon the Waltons as they mounted the gangplank, and Mister and Mrs. Walton’s attention was almost wholly, and quite pardonably, upon each other. Happy as he was for them both, Sundry felt very mixed emotions to see them go; he thought himself a little adrift when he considered the weeks and maybe months ahead without the steady presence of his friend and employer and the happy wryness and wisdom of Phileda McCannon. And the June Ball, so quickly approaching, was of more consequence to him, and therefore answerable for more anxiety, than he would have admitted to anyone.
“I do believe they are the picture of a handsome couple,” said Ephram when the newlyweds reached the top of the plank and waved again. It was a phrase he had read in a book not long ago.
Sundry and the members of the club returned the wave.
“You are very right, my friend,” said Eagleton. “Don’t you think, Thump?”
“Hmmm,” said Thump. He lowered his bearded visage, as if in thought, then raised his head again and said, “‘They would benefit each acquaintance (and even the brief passerby) with their gracious mien and warm their surroundings by the kindness and happiness of their coupled tendencies.’” Thump let this quote hang in the air before citing its source. “The Rose Beneath the Street, by Mrs. Rudolpha Limington Harold.”
“Ah, yes!” said Ephram. “That was a fine story. And how very right.” He could believe that these words were crafted to describe their departing friends.
Sundry took a moment to regard these men with whom his lot had been so unpredictably cast. They, too, had about them the wisdom of kindness and would never have guessed that the quote from Mrs. Harold might well describe themselves. They were, in fact (in their own way), as steady company as a person could want. Sundry felt a sudden confidence regarding Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump. It was as if the couple on the deck above them had indeed left behind a sense of warmth and grace, and that those left upon the wharf would know what to do simply by imagining what Tobias and Phileda Walton would have done in their place.
The steamship let out another whistle, and the final call was shouted from the deck. A bell rang. The air grew cacophonous with good-byes and last-minute instructions between those leaving and those staying behind. The Waltons did not attempt any communications beyond the occasional wave. A new and unexpected source of noise had risen from the other side of the wharf, and their attention was increasingly taken by something beyond the crowd.
Sundry was aware of a cheer and a chorus of laughter. A voice carried over the general din. He could not at first make out the words, but he was surprised, as he peered past and above the heads in the crowd, to see the paddle end of a great long oar rise like a sprout in the air. Beside him, Eagleton was getting a little better look, and Ephram almost as good a view, but Thump was standing on his tiptoes and seeing little or nothing past the swarm of people. There was more laughter as the oar was lowered and several people were obliged to move aside. Sundry glimpsed a vast bear of a man, unshaven, with ruddy cheeks, blond hair cast behind his ears, and a cap tilted precariously at the back of his head. The big fellow was carrying a haversack in one hand and that great sweep of an oar over his shoulder.
The fellow stalked through the crowd, and folks leaped aside till there was only the Moosepath League standing in the way and Thump at their center, leaning forward and looking amazed.
“I don’t expect anything this close,” growled the sailor, but he looked like a man not ready to take anything by chance.
“I beg your pardon?” said Thump. Ephram and Eagleton stepped closer to their friend. Sundry watched from a pace or two away, a little less daunted than the members of the club, but not entirely at his ease. “Can I be of assistance, sir?” said Thump.
“He’s looking for Fiddler’s Green, man!” shouted someone.
The wharf grew almost quiet, while Thump pondered this news. “I’ve never been,” he admitted.
There was a roar of laughter from several sailors in the crowd, but the immense fellow before Thump seemed to consider it a serious business. “Fiddler’s Green,” he declared, as if reading from a stone, “is a form of Paradise; that is, Heaven; that is, anyplace that won’t starve you, burn your hide, or freeze parts that you might be needing in port. Fiddler’s Green takes some wandering to find, and there’s only one way of knowing it. Throw an oar over your shoulder—”
“I do beg your pardon,” said Thump again for no obvious reason.
“Take that oar with you wherever you go,” continued the sailor, “and wherever you go, you go as far from the sea as the sea will allow (when you leave the sea, you’ll find the sea if you go far enough, if you take my meaning), and you roam with that oar till you come to a place where they ask to look at it, and they peer at it, and they consider it, and they ask you what it is.”
“Do they really?” said Thump. He was astonished.
“And then you’ve found it,” said the fellow. “Fiddler’s Green!” He patted Thump’s back as if they had been friends all their lives. Thump looked as stiff as if he were expecting snow down his neck. Once again hefting his haversack and swinging his oar back over his shoulder (expertly missing several onlookers’ heads by mere inches), the big man strode toward the street without further word or even a good-bye to his newfound confidant.
“Be sure to write, Robin!” shouted one wag, and the sailor simply raised a hand and waved.
The sound of the gangplank being lifted drew everyone’s attention back to the Manitoba and a new volley of sentiments flew between the deck and the wharf. Sundry spotted the Waltons a little further up the rail, and he waved. Mrs. Walton looked elegant, waving her newly purchased scarf. It was the brightest scarf or kerchief on display, and there were many. Mister Walton took off his glasses and rubbed them with his handkerchief. Sundry knew that his friend was feeling a potent mix of emotions. Mister Walton had beside him his new and beloved wife, he was steaming to Halifax to meet his nephew, he was by nature a forward-thinking and optimistic fellow; but he was waving good-bye to his friends. Life is unpredictable.
Sundry sighed—a strange thing to hear from him if anyone had been able to hear it among the noise of the crowd and the rumble of the Manitoba. He saw that Mrs. Walton was gesturing at her side, patting her waist, and without thinking Sundry touched his own waist and then put his hand in his coat pocket and felt a folded piece of paper there.
He nodded to her. She seemed satisfied and turned away. When the tugs were escorting the steamship into the harbor channel, Sundry took the piece of paper from his pocket and read it.
I did not want to say anything in front of Toby, it read, but I am concerned that the business regarding that mysterious keg is not finished and that you have been left to deal with its sequel by yourself Please take care and do not put yourself in the way of any trouble. Thank you for your friendship and particularly for your companionship with Toby. We will be anxious for our return to Portland and to our friends. Affectionately, Phileda.
SEA AND SHORE
Various Happenings of Interest Along the Wharves
A smokey souwester was holding forth on the waterfront yesterday afternoon and it blew so hard that many of the people who were enjoying their usual Sunday stroll along the wharves had considerable difficulty in keeping their headgear in place. The surface of the harbor was dotted with whitecaps and very few of the numerous crafts that were flitting about carried full sail. The Thomson liner Iona was expected to arrive but she had not been sighted at dark.
There was not much in the way of business, it being Sunday. The only English steamer in port was the Vancouver, so a good deal of talk along the wharves ran in the direction of that vessel, the officers and crew of which were kept busy during the afternoon receiving visitors. Others spoke of the Manitoba, which left port on Saturday, and some speculated where she might be, a day out.
Talk of another kind centered on a peculiar apparition of the day before, which ascended the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Wharf at about the same moment the Manitoba, was steaming from the harbor. A large fellow—something of a giant, claimed observers—appeared in the crowd and was pretty hard to miss as he added to the height of his general person by his possession of an oar, the size of which itself would have done justice to Cleopatra’s barge. He carried the sweep like a baseball bat over his shoulder and was last seen, by the wharfside walkers, peering one way, then the other, along Commercial Street, before striding away in a westerly direction.
The large four master Wm. B. Palmer arrived from Philadelphia yesterday with a cargo of coal for the Maine Central Railroad....