by Van Reid
But Sundry’s plan to visit the Underwoods’ home wavered in his mind like a mote at the corner of his vision, and the wide and wondering eyes of Melanie Ring were not long in catching him up. He began to lose interest in Robin Oig and the oar and the group of idle men, and he wondered that they had held his attention at all. He stood back from the forge, considered the passing traffic—on foot and hoof and wheel—and then the sky and the gull-crowded roofs of the waterfront, and took a deep and uncharacteristic sigh.
“I think I’m off to other things,” he said, perhaps addressing the group as a whole but catching the attention of Robin Oig.
“Where are you off to?” wondered the sailor.
“Before the day is out, I might be off to Edgecomb. Or maybe tomorrow.”
“Edgecomb. Is that inland?”
“A little further than Portland.”
“Oh.”
“Good luck finding Fiddler’s Green.”
“Luck if I don’t fall into a hole first, I guess,” said Robin Oig. “I thought you might come with me.”
Sundry almost laughed, but not unkindly. “I’m not fit for paradise yet,” he said, and tipped his hat as he turned down the street without any clear notion of where he was going next. Somewhere a bell chimed the hour, and it was yet only eight o’clock. Sundry crossed the foot traffic between Perley’s Wharf and Commercial Street and looked back only once. The sailor was craning his neck and standing on tiptoes to watch him disappear among the throngs.
29. Someone’s Mr. Moss
“Here comes your Mr. Moss,” said Dresden Scott. Cordelia Underwood’s personal Maine Guide had been gazing out the parlor window as if hoping he might see more than a tree or two in one direction.
“Oh, dear!” said Cordelia. She leaped from the desk where she had been counting their answered invitations and went to her fiancé’s side. “If only we could have delayed them awhile longer.”
“I thought probably you had delayed them quite enough, letting the dog out the back door to chase after the neighbor’s cat.”
“Teacup needed exercise before a long trip.”
“I thought Teacup was going to be eaten. It’s a good thing the cat didn’t turn around to see who was barking at her.”
Cordelia hung on Dresden’s arm with her cheek against his shoulder. “And he’s not my Mr. Moss. He’s Priscilla’s.”
“Is he?” Dresden looked both indulgent and wry. “Have you told Mr. Moss about these plans of yours?”
There came a rap at the front door. “I don’t have to,” she said, hurrying to the hall. “He has plans of his own, can’t you see?”
Dresden followed her. “I thought I had plans once, too,” he said without a change in expression, though he chuckled at her next sally.
Cordelia posed with her hand on the doorknob. “Before you met me? Nonsense. Mr. Moss!” she declared when she opened the door, looking delighted and surprised.
The young man stood at the top step with his hat in hand and looking spruce, though one collar of his jacket was turned up. He seemed to realize this deficiency at the last moment and laid the wayward corner down. “Miss Underwood,” he said, “I beg your pardon for accepting your mother’s invitation so soon, but I thought I would inquire after Mrs. Morningside this ... morning.”
It was a pretty piece of artifice, and Cordelia admired it. “Her headache was much better when she got up, thank you for asking. Come in, come in, please.” She stepped aside and drew Mr. Moss into the front hall.
Cordelia’s father was out on business, but her mother came down the stairs in a swish of skirts and petticoats. “How nice to see you so soon again, Mr. Moss,” said Mercia, offering her hand.
Dresden, too, shook hands with the visitor, who looked grateful for the sight of another male creature.
Cordelia thought it best to get the bad news out as quickly as possible. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to inquire of my Aunt Grace personally,” she said. “Something unexpected came up, and they all had to take the train home to Ellsworth this morning.” The fact that Mr. Moss was the something unexpected was left out of her statement, and she assured him, when he asked, that “It was nothing serious, really.”
Mr. Moss considered one of the lower treads of the front hall stairs. Cordelia had been brokenhearted for Priscilla when her cousin left this morning, and now she felt more melancholy as this good man did his best to hide his disappointment. Would Priscilla be pleased to know that he had visited so soon or be doubly hurt to know that she had missed him? Cordelia almost reached out to grasp Mr. Moss’s arm, she had such a rush of motherly affection for him.
He looked up, then, as if he had just now totaled a column of difficult figures. “I am sorry to miss them,” he said, nodding again at some inner agreement. “Please forward my best wishes when you see or hear from them.”
He was preparing to leave, which surprised Cordelia. Mercia was quicker to discern deeper motives in the young man’s decision to withdraw, even if she had no specific knowledge but only a well-developed intuition. “Won’t you come in and stay awhile, Mr. Moss?” she said with the sort of amiable manner that would not make him feel uncomfortable should he accept or decline. “It won’t be long till lunch, and I am sure that Dresden craves talk of something besides wedding gowns and guest lists.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Underwood,” said Mr. Moss with evident regard. “But really, I should be going.”
“Then you must come for lunch another time,” she insisted.
“I would enjoy that very much.” The young man shook hands with Dresden again and nodded to the ladies, raised his hat in salute, and went out.
Cordelia could not keep herself from following him onto the stoop. “We trust we’ll see you at the wedding, if not before,” she called after him.
“I hope so,” he replied over his shoulder, but when he was at the bottom of the steps, he turned back and said, “Please tell your cousin that she was the most pleasant part of my evening last night.”
“I will,” said Cordelia. She was a little misty-eyed, remembering her own emotions when she had first been parted from Mr. Scott before she had the opportunity to speak or hear words of attachment. “I will certainly tell her you said so.” She was about to say that Priscilla felt the same about him, but Dresden loomed beside her as tacit warning not to meddle. Good-byes were traded once again, and Dresden was escorting his bride-to-be back inside and Mr. Moss was traversing the front walk when Cordelia called out, “My parents thought you made quite a lovely couple!”
Now Mr. Moss turned again, looking vaguely surprised, and this time he bowed his head in a very Moosepathian fashion before finally taking his leave.
“Did we?” said Mercia when Cordelia came back inside. Dresden went into the parlor, apparently in search of something.
“Didn’t you?” said Cordelia, undaunted.
“I like him very much,” said her mother with careful diction. “But—” The word hung in the air.
“You think him a servant, crashing the royal door.”
“I certainly do not, but the fact that your Aunt Grace does must count for something.”
“An obstacle to leap over,” said Cordelia.
“Then it is for Priscilla to leap,” said Mercia. “A person needs to leap but once, God willing, and you have used your quota for the time being.”
After a moment Cordelia said, “I hate to see anyone sad.”
“I know it only too well,” said Mercia.
Mercia was off to the kitchen to ask Mrs. Lerber to start lunch when Cordelia cleared her throat and said, loud enough to be heard in the parlor, “And just think how happy Mr. Scott would have been, back in Millinocket, if he had known my parents approved of him!”
Her mother did not stop, but she may have laughed.
Cordelia stepped back into the parlor, but secretively—peering round the jamb to locate her fiancé. Mr. Scott (as she liked to call him when she was feeling the most affectionate) was reclining in
her father’s favorite chair, his weight more or less on his collarbone, his feet on a hassock, and his neatly trimmed beard resting on his chest. He was tall and powerful-looking, even stretched out like a big cat, and his clear blue eyes did nothing to contradict her last statement as he assessed her standing in the doorway.
Cordelia took a long breath and said for his ears only, “And think how happy I would have been if I had known that Mr. Scott approved of me.”
30. Sadness and Possibility
“They left ten minutes ago,” said Mabel Spark when Sundry stepped into the kitchen of the Faithful Mermaid and inquired after the Rings. “Thaddeus tried to talk him out of it, but Mr. Flyce went with them.”
“Mr. who?” said Sundry.
“Maven Flyce,” said the woman, shaking her head as if she couldn’t believe it herself. “Horace got him up to it, and I guess Thaddeus is right: Half a head is better than none at all.” She thought about this for a moment, then added, “Or maybe it isn’t.”
“He can’t have spent all that time in the company of Horace McQuinn without picking up a trick or two,” said Sundry. “It’s pretty light duty, after all.” There was a moment when he felt the burden almost slip from his shoulders, but it wouldn’t quite dislodge. He was recalling Maven’s endearing slack-jawed expression and the cowlick crowning the man’s perpetually astounded head. “I’ll get my things,” said Sundry, and he hurried upstairs.
“God bless you,” Mabel called after him.
Timothy, who had been much shaken by Melanie’s departure and who was being fed biscuits and jam for his sadness, asked if he could go, and his mother shushed him. When Sundry came back down, Mabel handed him a box packed with several sandwiches and told him that Thaddeus had hailed and paid for a cab. Timothy ran out after Mr. Moss and was snagged by his father before he could hop a ride on the back of the carriage.
Sundry felt partially absolved when he reached the station on time. He wished he hadn’t had to leave the Underwoods in such a hurry, but upon hearing the news of the Morningsides’ departure, he thought it no more than he deserved and only wanted to catch Burne and Melanie Ring.
For all his youth, Sundry knew that there are some burdens less heavy when they are borne than when they are left behind. He had never heard the word karma (though it had entered the language seventy years before), but he might have understood the philosophy. The Puritan concept of retribution may in theory have amounted to something like it, but in practice (or sermon) it weighed too heavily on stern punishment for Sundry’s view of God and Grace, and so a certain faith was both answered and increased when he found that he had not missed the train and that he was partially absolved for having previously denied the innocent and unpleading eyes of Melanie Ring.
Sundry found the father and daughter and Maven Flyce’s cowlick in the second passenger car and was struck by how small they looked at the other end of the aisle: the waif in Tim’s old shirt and jacket, knickers, knee socks, and brogues, the father in whatever else the Sparks had been able to cobble together from their collective wardrobes, and Maven sitting with his back to Sundry but communicating a complete and continual wonder at his surroundings.
Sundry caught Burne Ring’s eye as he approached them, and when he registered that man’s vacant frown, he said, “I thought you might like some company.” Maven stared, openmouthed, and Melanie only a little less so while Sundry arranged his clutch beneath his seat and leaned back, as if prepared for a restful journey.
“Good heavens, Mr. Moss,” said Maven. “Where are you going?”
“Brownville, I guess,” said Sundry, not understanding the depth of Maven’s inquiry.
“Good heavens!” said Maven again. “That’s where we’re going!”
Sundry almost started to explain his presence to Maven but decided simply to nod and say, “That’s what I understand.” It occurred to him that he might send Maven home, but he could not, on short notice, think of a graceful way of doing so. Sundry could not think how to tell the man that his services were no longer needed without the risk of sounding (at least to his own ears) arrogant and pompous. Maven would probably have been amazed but unoffended.
There was a moment in which Maven’s astonished look was the loudest expression among them. Then Burne said in a hoarse growl, “The Sparks sent you,” his face more rueful than angry, and after he spoke, he let out two or three low grunts.
“They told me what train you were boarding,” said Sundry.
Another grunt or two rose from the sick-looking man, and he said a little more fractiously, “I can’t pay your fare.”
“I’ve already bought it,” said Sundry.
Burne Ring let out more of those short, low grunts, like some haggard animal that had been moving too fast. Melanie was looking from her father to Sundry. Maven gaped out the window. Sundry turned his attention to the passengers around them, hoping thereby to relieve the ailing man of the burden of conversation, but then Burne said, “Mailon—” and stopped himself. “Melanie says you were with Mr. Spark when he came and got me.”
“Yes,” said Sundry, “I was there,” but in a voice he might have used if he had admitted to having been at the park.
Burne laid his head against the window glass. He said, “The Sparks are good people, I suppose,” but with so little conviction that Sundry wondered if he could care about this man very much. “IVe been ill,” said Burne between more of those low sounds. “It’d be best if someone’s around for the girl were I to take a spell. Pay me no mind if I speak strangely,” he instructed Sundry. “Sometimes I see things other people don’t,” he added, as if this were a consequence not of drink but of perception.
Maven stared at Burne, then looked around for some of these visions, and Sundry was reminded of the previous fall when Horace McQuinn had conveyed similar watchful duties to Messrs. Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump.
The call to board the train was given from the platform; Sundry could almost feel the engine ahead of them straining, and just as a billow of steam rolled past the windows, he thought he caught a glimpse of a large, blond-bearded man standing on the platform with a great long oar over his shoulder.
Sundry leaned closer to the window, and when the steam no longer obscured his view, he could see that there was indeed a large, blond-bearded man standing on the platform with a great long oar over his shoulder, but also the conductor and another man in railroad livery talking with apparent heat on either side of the sailor. Robin Oig only frowned at one and then the other, and finally the conductor said something sharp to the other railroad man and then something to the man with the oar and jabbed the air with his forefinger in a direction, Sundry guessed, meant to indicate the figurative door. The conductor wandered off and shouted the final all aboard.
Clearly Robin Oig had wanted to board the passenger car with his oar and had been refused. The sailor only shrugged, nodded his head, and walked off in the direction pointed out to him.
Sundry sat back and considered little Melanie Ring, who, along with Maven Flyce, had viewed the scene on the platform. Any other day, or any other moment, Sundry might have gone out and seen what he could do to help the peculiar Robin Oig, but he was sure he had quite enough on his hands already.
“That was some oar!” said the little girl.
“I was so amazed,” said Maven.
“He’s off to Fiddler’s Green,” said Sundry without irony.
Maven and the child stared out the window, but the sailor was gone. The conductor had returned to his train, and the railroad man left standing there looked as if he smelled something unpleasant. Sundry was about to explain to them about Fiddler’s Green but the car lurched forward, and the little girl, who had never been on a train before, seemed to have enough to interest her. Certainly Maven did. The sounds of the great engine ahead of them were dulled through the distance and body of a car and a half, but the strain and pressure of its work could be felt, thrumming the length of the creature to life.
Sundry hims
elf had seldom traveled by locomotive before he met Mister Walton, but he had regard for the experience. It was true, there was nothing like having the flesh and sinew of a living creature beneath you or pulling the traces before, but he understood why the steam engine was once known as the iron horse and why railroad men loved a particular specimen like a pet.
The ever-shifting nature of a person’s fellow travelers was of great interest: drummers and businessmen, visiting relatives and hopeful suitors, families moving out to the summer cottages and laboring people seeking employment in new surroundings. People getting off at the next stop were brisk and tentative; long-haul travelers indulged in whatever comforts they brought along, reading newspapers or fanning lunch out from a picnic hamper. Up the aisle, two children were asking their mother when they would “get there,” and a young woman, who may have thought that Sundry was watching her, touched her “best hat” to be sure that it was becomingly tilted. The essence of a cigar rose from some seats beyond, where a man was slouched and presumably attempting to smoke himself to sleep. (He would, and a neighbor would rouse him to give warning of a smoldering vest front.)
The train passed below Portland’s beloved observatory and the bowling lanes, and the engine whistle shrieked as it neared a bend in the tracks at the corner of the Eastern Promenade; a cow had gotten loose down on the tracks the other day, and presumably the engineer was leaning from his window and peering ahead for any sign of further bovine encroachment. They picked up speed when all was deemed clear, and the old almshouse whisked past them on the right. Then they were crossing the eastbound trestle that divided Casco Bay from Back Cove, bound for the first stop in Falmouth Foreside. Maven Flyce’s nose hardly left the window.
Everyone seemed animated with the motion of the train and Sundry watched Burne Ring for some moments before he realized that the man was actually shaking, independent of the general tremor beneath them. The air was noisier, too, as they accelerated down the tracks, and it was difficult to hear those small grunting sounds that rose from deep in the stricken man’s throat.
