by Van Reid
“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.”
11. Indications
“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 fie
ry, 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.
12. Departure (June 5, 1897)
“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 Ephr
am, 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?”
