by Van Reid
“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.”
3. A Kitchen Full and a Chorus of Two
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 prepar
ations, 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.
