Mrs. Roberto - Or the Widowy Worries of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  “You must enjoy Portland.” To prove his words held no trace of bitterness, he looked at her with a mild expression of interest.

  He was right, of course—the summer would not pass swiftly if time in the city weighed heavily upon her. She did love her summers away from Dresden, among her friends in the city, the anonymous bustle of the streets and the crowded events, but it was after the rest of the year at home and months of quiet during which a solitary life might stand out in one’s heart.

  “I do enjoy it,” she said.

  “You have friends there.”

  “I do. And cousins, too, who are like friends.”

  “And your cousins who come and stay in Dresden all the summer.”

  “Theodora and William, my mother’s sister’s children. They always come in June, just before I leave.”

  “I’ve met them,” he said, unconsciously emphasizing his words with a shake of the reins. “They come to the dances down at the grange.”

  “Theodora is a marvelous dancer,” said Dee, and quite unexpectedly a series of peculiar associations led her to wondering if Olin’s sudden interest and attention was a roundabout way of approaching her cousin, who was some years younger than Dee and (to Dee’s mind) a good deal prettier. Dee’s face reddened with something akin to shame, and her heart fell like a stricken sparrow. She had been courted, won, and cast aside all in the space of a few minutes and a mile, and she wondered that she could be so foolish at her age.

  With his eyes fixed ahead, Olin said simply, “They’re very nice people, but I’m not sure it’s a good trade.”

  The part of her that she imagined had gone down for the last time suddenly came to the surface again for air; in fact, she almost gasped when she spoke. “Olin, what a nice thing to say!” It was remarkable with what speed that horror of foolishness, that near shame, had scattered, and she had to make sense of her emotions all over again.

  “You must attend the theater, and the like, down in Portland,” he said, which turned the conversation for his own sake and (not inconsequentially) gave her room to regroup her thoughts. There was nothing critical or accusatory in his tone; he seemed wistful, as if he might like to see the city and go to the theater himself someday.

  “I don’t so much really,” she replied. “To be truthful, my life in Portland is nearly as quiet as it is here. But the sense of other people doing things and hurrying about their business is a wonderful distraction. I always feel as if I’m doing something just strolling the sidewalk.”

  He nodded. Olin, as it happened, had an imagination, and he could picture things he hadn’t seen or feel things he hadn’t experienced.

  “I would like to go to the city someday when it’s winter,” she said. It was an old daydream of hers. “Perhaps even for the holidays. Everyone bundled to the chin, rushing about with packages, and wishing one another Merry Christmas.”

  Olin smiled. “That sounds nice. Do you suppose it’s like that?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps I shouldn’t go and be disappointed.”

  “I’m guessing you wouldn’t be. Christmas is the sort of thing one brings with them.” He looked at her. “It’s something you learn, I think.”

  “I think my Mom and Uncle Fale did teach me.” Dee had a brief image of how this bachelor might spend the Yuletide—a presentiment of the vast space and quiet and darkness of one person alone in a big farmhouse on Christmas Eve. “You must come and have Christmas dinner with us!” she declared.

  He laughed. “That’s a long ways away.”

  Then she laughed, too, and the snow and the hurrying people with their glittering presents and the boughs of evergreen and bright ribbons vanished in the reality of the moment and the green fields and trees of May.

  The sun rushed from behind a cloud and bathed them in warmth. Dee closed her eyes and raised her face to the light. Olin watched her for just a moment before turning back to the road. They came to a wet place and he nickered at the horse and veered the wagon up the short bank. Another farm appeared in the distance. Hank did not tire in his pace or fall off his elegant stride. He was a beautiful horse and kept his dignity even while pulling an old farm wagon.

  “I might take you up on that,” said Olin, this time without smiling.

  “We’ll go tobogganing after,” said Dee.

  41. Rescued After the Fact

  The disguise was off. It mattered not that Melanie Ring was still in a boy’s shirt and trousers; the scrubbed face, the shining hair, short as it was, and, most of all, everyone’s knowledge picked her out for a little girl—even a pretty little girl. The Spark family did their best to remember what she had been like as a street urchin and a boy, but ignorance, like innocence, is a difficult thing to recapture. Some of the family tried to understand how they could have been fooled for so long into thinking she was a boy, it seemed so obvious to them now that she was a girl—now that she was a girl.

  The disguise was off, and soon word got about the tavern, and then the street, that the dirty waif in ragged clothes was not what he seemed. These whispered tidings bred rumor, of course, and soon the former Mailon Ring was the long-lost daughter of royalty and wealth.

  Sitting at his customary place at the Faithful Mermaid that afternoon, Tom Todd, one of the Todd brothers (who weren’t related), wondered if the former Mailon wasn’t the Dauphin himself, who was said to have escaped from a dungeon in France.

  “The Dauphin was a boy,” said Captains Broad and Huffle at the same time.

  “That’s what they told everyone,” said Patrick Todd (the other Todd brother), his wide eyes meant to indicate how much they could be trusted.

  “You might have something there,” said Captain Huffle with a philosophic nod and a puff on his pipe. He blew a cloud of smoke and added, “If the child was about a hundred years old.”

  “We weren’t yet a state when that fellow was lost,” Captain Broad informed the brothers.

  Tom and Patrick Todd looked as if they might invoke the untrustworthy they once again but finished off mumbling into their mugs.

  Most people were content to construct castles of wealth for the child, uncomplicated by celebrated bloodlines, but some watched for her in hopes of divining whether she really did take after her father Grover Cleveland, who had once, purportedly, admitted to having sired an illegitimate child. (In this case she would only have to have been about fifteen years of age.)

  Rumors continued throughout the afternoon, waxing and waning with the inspiration and credibility of the teller. Some unimaginative soul suggested that everyone knew the girl’s father, and that he might be seen most nights prowling the streets and saloons of Danforth Streets, so the tale demanded further assembly, and it was decided among the sager heads that this purported father had actually worked for a wealthy individual (to be named after subsequent deliberation) who paid this man to abscond with an unwanted child. Perhaps he had even been ordered to “do her in” (in one of the laundresses’ colorful manner of speech) but he hadn’t the heart. The whole sordid business, of course, had driven him to drink, so there you were!

  “She might have stayed a boy, for all the ridiculous stories going around!” Annabelle stood in the kitchen with her fists on her hips and looked like her mother of a sudden.

  Mrs. Spark stopped rolling dough long enough to look distressed.

  “People will talk,” said Minerva.

  “The poor child had reason enough to be confused when she got up this morning!” grumbled Annabelle. “Daddy should be out there telling people how foolish they are.”

  “Where is your father?” wondered Mabel Spark.

  “I haven’t seen him,” said Minerva.

  Annabelle shook her head. Mabel looked about the kitchen as if Thaddeus might be lurking in a corner somewhere. Things had been topsy-turvy of late, what with Fuzz Hadley chasing people over roofs and children altering their gender.

  “Bobby!” called Mabel, and, after two or three similar vocalizations, the boy came rushing in th
rough the backdoor. “Where’s your father?” she asked.

  Bobby shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said with an odd look on his face. “He went out with Mr. Thump’s clothes.”

  “Oh,” said Mabel, then, frowning, she added, “But Mr. Thump won’t be home,” and, finally, “It doesn’t matter, I guess.” She had hoped that Thaddeus would deliver them directly to Mr. Thump so that he might hear the fellow’s praise of her mending.

  “I’d like to see him when he comes back,” said Bobby, still with that odd expression.

  “Mr. Thump?”

  “No. Dad.” Bobby was peering at a stray bit of uncooked pie dough.

  “And why is that?” said his mother, swatting his hand away.

  “Because he was wearing them,” said Bobby, who’d gotten hold of the dough, popped it into his mouth, and was now chewing on it.

  “Get away!” said Mabel Spark. “No. Come here. What do you mean ‘wearing them?’”

  “He was wearing them. I thought it was Mr. Thump had come back when I saw him in the hall upstairs.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Annabelle.

  “Daddy was in Mr. Thump’s suit. And he never looked more like him.”

  There was a moment or two of silence while the women of the household took in this image. “What in the world is that man about!” said Mabel Spark, and she threw off her apron. “Goodness’ sakes alive!”

  “Mom?” said Annabelle, who only vaguely understood what her mother had so quickly apprehended. She stepped around the counter, and Minerva, too, was rushing toward the door.

  “Put the pies together!” said Mabel as she hurried out the back and disappeared down the alley. Bobby hurried after her, but the girls heard Mabel shout, “You get back inside!” and he came dawdling back, glancing over his shoulder before he returned to the kitchen looking puzzled and uneasy.

  “‘The apparel oft proclaims the man,’” Peacock Hope said to Thaddeus when they met outside the Weary Sailor. Thaddeus was yet a little shaken from his brush with Fuzz Hadley, and he would have appeared shocked if Peacock had been able to see past his beard. As it happened, Peacock had the notion that the hirsute face before him was filled with sudden offense.

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Thump,” said the ne’er-do-well with a tip of his hat. “I was simply noting that despite a certain resemblance to Thaddeus Spark, your raiment shines forth to announce your separate self.”

  Thaddeus frowned while he thought on this. He cleared his throat as a means of testing his voice but decided not to press his recent luck by speaking to Peacock. Instead, he nodded, grunted, and walked away. Thaddeus had the distinct sensation that Peacock watched him as he went, but he did not look back, and he ambled away as if he hadn’t a care in creation.

  Thaddeus may have been overdressed for Danforth Street that afternoon, where canvas trousers and workmen’s aprons were de rigueur. People watched him pass, and occasionally a hand was raised in a tentative wave. Most everyone had heard and talked of the gentleman from India Street who looked so like Thaddeus Spark and they were interested to have a peek at him. One entrepreneurial young lady gave Thaddeus a wink and attempted to engage him in conversation. Thaddeus moved on, though it was tempting to simply (and just for a brief moment) bask in this woman’s attention.

  Ah, well, thought Thaddeus, Mr. Thump’s reputation has taken beating enough. Thaddeus did not want to cause the good man any more difficulty.

  Strangely, he felt invisible. It was himself, of course, hidden beneath unaccustomed clothes, and he peered out from them like a spy. He saw people with a particularity he had never experienced before—their rough hands and rugged garments. A man spat on the sidewalk, a woman laughed uproariously at another woman’s ribaldry. The streets on this end of the city were cobbled for the ease of traffic and business, but they were uneven and unwashed. Scrubby sailors and toughs blinked in the sunshine, recently roused from the drunken riots of the night before. Thaddeus knew with a sudden and unexpected conviction that the young woman who had chanced a wink in his direction, thinking him stout and wealthy instead of simply stout, was wearing an old dress that had once belonged to someone else.

  But there was a sturdiness about some of these unpolished folk—the shopkeepers and laborers, the sailor come home to family instead of drink, the craftsman practicing his art in a shopwindow. (Thaddeus did not know it, but Mister Walton himself, the very chairman of the Moosepath League, could trace his Portland origins to an old shoemaker’s shop not a block away!) There was good cheer along the street; there was hard work and wry good humor, on the whole. Thaddeus moved like a spirit among them, watching and almost understanding that here was the main strength that drove the tangible wheel of life, here was the rudimentary foundation of more prosperous men and institutions (who had better deserve it!), and here was the vital pool that flag and country would call upon in times of war and need.

  Thaddeus was actually moving away from the Faithful Mermaid. He wanted to be sure not to give himself away, now that he had fooled Fuzz Hadley, and he must look as if he was strolling home “to India Street.” He paused now and again, ostensibly to consider the wares in a storefront window or to spot a bird in a tree but actually to glance back down the street to be sure he wasn’t being followed, or perhaps he was simply taking in the street with these newfound perceptions.

  It was during one of these profound glances that he was startled by the sight of his wife stalking up the sidewalk. Thaddeus gaped momentarily, not sure if she had actually spotted him, then he ducked into a sweetshop and bent over a display of colorful meringues.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” said Hadley Schmidt from the other side of the counter. Thaddeus knew Hadley just a little, so there was just a little confusion on the shop owner’s face when the bearded man glanced up briefly to grunt his reply. “Is there something I can help you with?” asked Mr. Schmidt as he studied Thaddeus’s downturned features. “Mr.—?”

  “Mr. Thump,” came a voice at the door, and Thaddeus froze.

  “Thump?” said Mr. Schmidt.

  “Mr. Thump,” said the voice again, manifest with the sort of note that only a husband might decipher.

  Thaddeus turned slowly and said, “Mabel,” which in hindsight was not well considered.

  “Thump?” said Mr. Schmidt again.

  Mabel was quick, however. “I thought that was you. Mr. Schmidt, have you met my husband’s cousin, though, I dare say, if you haven’t you could still pick him out.”

  “Ah, Mr. Thump!” said Mr. Schmidt as the pieces came together.

  “You remembered,” said Mabel to Thaddeus with an odd smile.

  “Remembered?” He wished she wouldn’t move so swiftly from one startling thought to the next.

  “How much I love meringue!”

  “Ah, Mr. Thump,” said the storekeeper, “you cannot let your cousin do without!”

  “No, no,” said Thaddeus. He realized with great relief, and then an even greater weight of love and reverence, that his wife was not angry or perturbed but only relieved herself to find him safe and sound. She had discovered his intent and rushed after him. He could conceal nothing from her, and this was, in large part, because he never wanted to.

  Thaddeus cleared his throat, modulated his voice as best he could, and said, “Do I recall that orange meringue is your favorite?”

  “Mr. Thump, your memory is wonderful!”

  Thaddeus laughed.

  Mr. Schmidt might have thought it terribly formal for Mabel Spark to be calling her husband’s cousin “Mr. Thump,” but she was, perhaps, being jocular.

  Thaddeus purchased a bagful of meringues, and some chocolates besides, and soon they were back on the street, wandering without obvious purpose in the direction of home. There was nothing untoward that he would offer her his arm, and that she would take it, husband’s cousin though he might be; it was, in fact, his duty to offer protection in the most ancient and approved manner.

  But he was not invisible an
ymore. He was transformed by her presence, by her touch, as Scrooge by his visiting spirits. As they walked Danforth Street, he was addendum to Mabel Hicks Spark, a codicil to her intent and whatever she had inspired him to be. He didn’t care who he was as long as he had her hand upon his arm like an anchor.

  Thaddeus Q. Spark was an easygoing man, and so he was wont to travel the days easily and wander from thought to incident without expressing how he felt about it all. But if the well was covered, it was yet a deep well. On those rare occasions when he thought to lift the trap and peek below, he was himself always a little surprised by what he saw.

  “I look a sight, walking alongside such a grand specimen,” said Mabel, and he might have thought she was being entirely wry if she hadn’t brushed at her hair and then at the dusting of flour on her sleeve.

  Thaddeus said, “The governor might wish he were Thaddeus Q. Spark or Joseph Thump, whoever’s arm you were on.”

  She squeezed his arm. “Did you fool Fuzz Hadley? Or did I catch you in time?”

  “I did,” said Thaddeus, having recaptured his customarily high-pitched voice. “And you didn’t.” There was a silence of several paces’ length. “Fuzz Hadley will steer clear of the Faithful Mermaid, I warrant,” he said.

  “I rather wonder what Mr. Thump will think of it,” she said with the smallest hint of reproval.

  “I rather wonder what he will think of being my cousin?” he replied.

  “I rather wonder he wouldn’t be pleased,” came her quick reply. She was as much addendum as he and perhaps had thought about it a little more. She’d been very frightened when she understood what he had set out to do and had almost gone into the Weary Sailor looking for him. Then she had caught sight of Mr. Thump’s fine suit.

  They walked past interested folk. They nodded and waved to people they knew. “I hope Mr. Thump and his friends have found Mrs. Roberto,” said Mable when they came to the corner and the roof of the Faithful Mermaid was visible down Brackett Street. “Or found that she is safe.”