EPILOGUE

The Occupied Pocket
new Year’s Day 1897

At the eve of the New Year fell upon a Thursday [wrote Christopher Eagleton in his journal on the morning of January 1, 1897] the Moosepath League was free to combine its customary meeting with a celebration of the extraordinary months behind us and the promising days ahead.

The Shipswood was a marvelous place to be, and this writer, for the first time, greeted the New Year in a wakeful state. It was an exhilarating moment when the hour of midnight was announced, although there was some confusion. Mr. Moss had been describing the manner in which his uncle customarily jumped into the New Year from the seat of a chair, and Thump was much taken with the idea. Unfortunately a waiter was passing by our table at the stroke of midnight, and Thump leaped into the man’s arms, surprising everyone. The waiter, unprepared for this activity, dropped himself and Thump into the next table, and there was an engrossing commotion…

Eagleton peered from his study window and considered the day without.

A new thought occurred to him then, and he fell to writing again.

A unusual item in the papers this morning gave scant details about the disappearance of a large group of men in the western part of the state. One of the names attached to this troublesome business seems to be that of Miss Burnbrake’s cousin Roger Noble…

Matthew Ephram was winding his clocks and setting his watches, an appropriate activity, he thought, on the first day of the year. Someone had told him that the operator on the telephone would inform a person of the time, if asked, and he tried this with some success, although the man on the other end seemed to be a minute or so fast.

“If you ever are in need of the time,” said Ephram to the operator,

“never hesitate to call.” He was a little flustered, however, when the man asked for a number, so he called Joseph Thump (of the Exeter Thumps), who was in the process (one might say, the ceremony) of laying to rest another year’s Almanac and Tide Calendar Thump thought of his almanacs as old friends and kept them in the tray of an old travel trunk at the foot of his bed.

Thump assured Ephram that he had suffered no permanent damage from his leap into the New Year. He was preparing to visit Mr. Rhume, the waiter, who was recovering at his aunt’s, as a matter of fact, and it was while speaking with Ephram on the phone that Thump absently reached into a coat pocket and felt a small card there.

“What an extraordinary year it has been!” Ephram was saying.

“Hmm?” said Thump, more in reaction to the card in his pocket than to Ephram. Ephram repeated the assertion even as Thump pulled the card from his pocket and considered it. The first side said nothing, but when he turned it over, he was stunned (quite physically startled) by the name written upon it. “Hmm!” he said, a response that was not easy for Ephram to understand.

“Yes, well,” said Ephram cheerfully.

Thump turned the card over several times, and every time he came back to the second side the name of Mrs. Dorothea Roberto was still there, and every time it gave him the same extraordinary shock. He had never really gotten over the circumstances of their meeting, having unintentionally provided a landing site for the beautiful widow during her Fourth of July parachute drop from an ascended balloon and then (that very night) having danced with her at the Freeport Ball.

“Would you like some company when you visit Mr. Rhume?” asked Ephram.

“That would be very nice,” said Thump, hardly hearing his friend.

“I’ll call Eagleton,” said Ephram, and he rang off.

Thump stood with the earpiece of the phone against the side of his head for several minutes while he considered the card.

What could it mean? he wondered. He didn’t remember having asked Mrs. Roberto for her card, nor did he recall her giving him one. I was never wearing this coat in July! he thought. He continued to turn the card over and to peruse it more closely, but there were no further clues to its history or purpose. Clues! he thought, and pawed through his pockets. There was nothing else to be found, however, and he decided to get out his summer suits and look through those.

An hour so later, having appointed to meet with Ephram and Eagleton, he was walking down the sidewalk of India Street. Several times during his progress he stopped and pulled the card from his pocket and considered the fine handwriting there. What could it mean? he wondered for the hundredth time. Before he had a better idea, however, he decided to say nothing to anyone about the unexpected card.

It was a brilliant day. Already they were experiencing something of a January thaw. He tipped his hat to an older woman who passed by and nodded to a boy, who stuck his tongue out at him.

Thump glanced back at the boy. What did that mean? he wondered. The very notion of sticking one’s tongue out was strange to him and he practiced it tentatively (and to be truthful, half consciously) right there on the street corner.

Another walker-one George Selby of Danforth Street-was passing by at the time, and Selby wrote in his journal (dated that evening, January the first, 1897), “Walking to my sister’s this afternoon, I encountered a well-dressed man with a remarkable beard who stood at the corner of India and Congress Streets with his tongue partially protruded. He had a piece of paper in his hand and he seemed to be concentrating with some force.”

So, George Selby (by all accounts a cautious man) gave wide berth to the man with the remarkable beard and crossed the street. “When I turned back, a minute or so later,” continued Selby in his journal, “I could not see him past the holiday traffic.”