Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  Mrs. Baffin was taking a pan of biscuits from the oven when Mister Walton trotted into the kitchen, and she nearly dropped them in her eagerness to embrace him. “We took a carriage in first thing,” she said, eyes brimming. “I could hardly sleep last night, just waiting to look at you.” There was a slight burr in Lucinda’s speech, redolent of the Nova Scotian coast, where she had spent her girlhood. Her husband came in with some fresh strawberries, purchased from a peddler who had been passing by, and laid them on the table beside Mister Walton’s breakfast. The Baffins had already breakfasted at home, but Mister Walton insisted that they sit with him and have a cup of coffee.

  The back door and the kitchen windows were open to the promise of another gently warm day, and the song of a sparrow could be heard in the tall oak behind the house. An overwhelming sense of gratitude filled Mister Walton up to the top of his balding pate, and he found that he could not stop smiling as he ate the large breakfast that Mrs. Baffin had cooked for him.

  Three-quarters of an hour had passed in this fine manner, with genial talk and a soft breeze and birdsong, when Horace McQuinn appeared at the back door.

  “Good morning,” said Mister Walton; then, recognizing Horace from the day before, he rose from the table and went to the door. “Well, goodness sakes! It’s the gentleman from the wharf. How may I help you?”

  “Morning,” said Horace. “I think I have something here for you.” He lifted the missing valise into view.

  “Why, my goodness sakes!” exclaimed Mister Walton. “My bag! Come in. Come in.” He stepped up to the door and shook the newcomer’s hand. “Tobias Walton, and I am at your service, sir.”

  “Horace McQuinn,” said the man. As he entered the kitchen, he brought with him the acrid scent of tobacco, which hung about his clothes and his person and clung to his hands with a tenacity that any eau de cologne would have envied. He handed Mister Walton his valise, then nodded to Cedric and Lucinda.

  “Have you had breakfast, Mr. McQuinn?” asked Mister Walton. He ushered the man to the kitchen table, but Horace preferred to stand beside the stove.

  “I don’t tend toward breakfast these days,” he said. “But that coffee smells likable.” In another moment he was leaning against the kitchen counter, coffee in hand, as if he’d done it all his life and from this vantage commenced (more or less accurately) the tale of the prodigal valise.

  “It has been a terrific inconvenience to you,” insisted Mister Walton.

  “Oh, it was nothing,” said Horace with a wave of his hand. He took a drink of his coffee and smacked his lips.

  “I would like to give you something for your trouble,” said Mister Walton. He was reaching into his vest pocket for some coins.

  Horace made a face and waved his hand again. “Oh, ridiculous,” he said, and “No, no, no,” when Mister Walton tried to press him with a reward. He pushed the offer away with his hand, saying:

  “I like that very much,” said Mister Walton, “Who wrote that?”

  “I don’t think anybody’s written it yet.” Horace made a sound that Mister Walton first took to be a wheezing cough, but the man was only laughing with a short snicker.

  In the next moment, Mister Walton understood Horace’s meaning and laughed himself. “You don’t think anybody’s written it yet,” he repeated as he chuckled, patting Horace’s shoulder.

  “Good coffee,” said Horace, by way of thanks. He set his cup in the sink and saluted the Baffins with a nod before turning to leave. “Glad to meet you folk.”

  Mister Walton followed him to the back door. “If there’s ever anything I can do for you, Mr. McQuinn . . .” he began.

  Horace paused for a moment with his back turned. He had sized up his man. He turned slowly, his face filled with the expression of someone who doesn’t like to ask, but . . . “Well,” he said slowly. “There is one thing, if you were to know how to drive a rig.”

  “Why, yes,” said Mister Walton. “I can drive a rig.”

  Horace rubbed his chin. He had even shaved for this occasion. “I’ve got a sore shoulder, you see, and it hurts to chuck the reins. I drove over, you know, to drop off your bag, but I’ve got to go up to the Mariners’ Hospital, you see, and . . .”

  “Say no more. Say no more.” Mister Walton raised his hand like a defendant being sworn in. “Just give me a moment to get my coat.”

  The rig that waited for them was a large wagon with crude sides built like a split-rail fence. A gray mare—indeed, an old gray mare—stood sleepily in the harness and gave no visible notice when the two men climbed onto the rough bench that served as a seat. It took Mister Walton something of a running jump to secure his position at the reins, and then he had an uncomfortable sensation that the seat might tip backwards. He didn’t see Horace mount the wagon; the man was simply sitting there beside him once he had stationed himself firmly enough to look around.

  “Well,” said Mister Walton, blinking through his spectacles. He resituated his hat, which was dry by now, though not entirely recovered from its recent trials. “She seems a nice old horse.”

  “She won’t frighten you,” averred Horace.

  Mister Walton looked at the somnambulant creature before him and almost laughed. “No, I don’t suppose she will,” was his response. He clucked at the old horse and shook the reins. The mare raised her head and yawned, which was something Mister Walton had never seen a horse do; he was quite fascinated. Again he spoke to her and chucked the reins, and this time they began to move, though not at any great speed. Indeed, speed would be something of a misnomer, unless the pace of the mare was considered in terms of geological time. Eventually they did reach a rate of movement that Mister Walton might have matched on foot if he was tired.

  Horace seemed content; he wouldn’t miss much, traveling in this fashion. He pointed ahead of them, saying: “Saw a moose once, on this street.”

  “Goodness sakes! When was that?”

  “I was just in long pants, I guess,” said Horace. “Oh, he was a brute. His rack was six feet if it was an inch. Miss Vandemeer lived in this place then.” He pointed to a grand old colonial home on their right.

  “I know the name,” said Mister Walton, “but she died, I think, before I was old enough to remember.”

  “No wonder,” said Horace gravely. “That moose went and peered in through her parlor window. Scared her half to death while she was putting a jigsaw puzzle together. A week later, when she had partially recovered, she finished that puzzle, but was missing a single piece, and it was finally decided that the sight of that moose had somehow caused her to swallow it.”

  “Goodness sakes!” said Mister Walton again, almost laughing.

  “She was old even then, you know,” continued Horace, “but she was sweet on Humphrey Cleaves, who lived on the corner of Winter Street here . . .” And on Horace went, filling an appreciative Mister Walton with whimsical history and old gossip. There was hardly a landmark that did not have some memorable incident attached to it, and rare was the house that they passed in which some eccentric character had not lived.

  The gray mare pulled the wagon in the direction of Munjoy Hill and, following it, one could have heard Horace’s broad methodical speech punctuated by Mister Walton’s surprised and delighted exclamations of “Goodness sakes!”

  7 Minmaneth

  CORDELIA ROSE EARLY, THAT FRIDAY MORNING, WITH THE INTENTION OF writing a long-overdue letter to her cousin in Ellsworth. She had slept surprisingly well, when one considered the curiosity and excitement of the night before, and had wakened with a confidence that the day promised something pleasant.

  She descended the back stairs to the kitchen and quietly found some cold remains of last night’s dinner to nibble on before proceeding to the front room and her self-appointed task. Mrs. Feeney, their cook four days a week, had not yet arrived, so the stove was cold and there was no hot water for coffee. Feeling only moderately ambitious, Cordelia did without.

  The front room was unexpectedly airy when
she entered it, and from the sound of bees buzzing in the philodendrons, she realized that the windows were open. Her father, sitting in a chair by one of the windows, looked up from a letter unfolded on his knee and smiled at her.

  “And I thought I was getting the worm this morning,” said Cordelia. “Or have you been up all night?”

  “No, no,” said James, “But I’ve been up an hour or so.”

  “Looking through Uncle Basil’s things again?”

  “Yes. Trying to make some sort of story out of them.”

  “And the results?”

  “Brilliantly unsuccessful.”

  Cordelia saw, then, the card with the odd inscription upon it on the table beside her father’s chair. She took the card and read it, trying once more to make some sense of its single enigmatic sentence.

  Our Minmaneth is a young goatt.

  “It means no more by the light of day, does it,” said she. “You said that you heard about this Minmaneth from your mother.”

  “She was full of stories about him. It wasn’t till years later that I realized she must have invented most of them. I have yet to meet anybody besides my brother who had ever heard of him, and I’ve only found a brief mention of him in a single history.”

  “Minmaneth,” she said, reading from the card again. “It has an Indian sound to it.”

  “He was a Scot, actually. John McOrm was his real name, and Minmaneth was the title of his family estate, which his father lost through bad debts and gambling. According to my mother’s stories, the house was burned by his father when the law came to turn them out, and the elder McOrm died in the fire. John went to the New World in search of his fortune, and took on the name of his family lands with a pledge to win them back.”

  Cordelia found a seat opposite her father and encouraged him, with her obvious interest, to continue.

  “These events, you understand,” said James, “occurred in the days when France and England still vied for this part of the world. Portland was known as Falmouth then, and the forest was close by. It was the early part of the last century.

  “John—or Minmaneth, as my mother always spoke of him—eventually found himself on these shores and was soon involved in the war between the colonists and the natives. He was captured by a band of Abenakis, but it turned out that his adopted name—or some variation of it—held a mystical significance to the Indians, and he was spared.”

  “At the last moment, I am sure,” said Cordelia.

  James held a thumb and forefinger in front of one eye to indicate just how thin that last moment had been.

  “It’s no wonder that you and Uncle Basil played at this,” said his daughter. “There are no end of possibilities.”

  “Ah, but there is better still. Minmaneth, you see, was an invaluable liaison between settler and Indian, and eventually became more like an Indian himself. He shaved his beard, his hair grew long, he wore buckskins. His days of hunting as a boy in Scotland served him well, for he became like a force of nature in the woods—a formidable tracker and a deadly shot with both musket and bow. He was feared as much as respected by the colonists, and he was not always quick to choose sides between the two people, but weighed his opinion where he thought justice rested.”

  “My goodness!” said Cordelia. “He is Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, and Deer-slayer in a single suit!”

  “But there is better still,” said James again, and he smiled when his daughter laughed aloud. “Minmaneth never forgot his pledge to regain his family estate, and with this end in mind he pursued the legends of ancient treasure and lost cities. He struck further into the interior than any European before him and had more adventures than Arthur’s knights.”

  “I want to hear them all!” declared Cordelia sincerely.

  “Somewhere, the fruit of his labor lies buried—gold and jewels and ancient works of art. My brother and I tore up a good deal of countryside—half playing, but half believing we would find Minmaneth’s treasure.”

  “Did he never return to Scotland?”

  “He disappeared, you see. Something to do with an Indian maiden and a battle between warring tribes at the foot of Mount Katahdin.” James’s demeanor grew quiet as he looked into the middle distance of his memory. “I can remember night after winter night, sitting in the parlor of the old house at Cape Elizabeth, the fire the only light in the room and mother never looking up from her needlework as she told her stories. She was lonely, I think—my father was out to sea so much.

  “But she told these marvelous tales—and very land-bound they were too, now that I think of it. Marvelous tales: the French and Indian Wars, lost cities, blood friendships, the dark woods filled with game and lurking with danger. You would have thought she had been there, hearing her descriptions of hiding amongst the fern from an enemy tribe, or chasing game over the ancient hills. I think she enjoyed them as much as we did.”

  Cordelia was thinking about the end of Minmaneth’s story. “Isn’t Mount Katahdin somewhere near the land that Uncle Basil left me?”

  “You’ve been studying a map.”

  “But don’t you see? The land being so close to the mountain and the story of Minmaneth’s treasure?”

  James laughed, not unkindly. “I’ve thought about it myself, sitting here the last hour or so. But it doesn’t fit. Why would Basil be so cryptic? And a young goat? That’s not very romantic, even spelt correctly. It’s just not like my brother to be recondite. The answer is simple, I fear: our boyhood games returned to him in his last hours. Minmaneth must have been a product of his memory, but the rest a product of his fever.”

  Cordelia looked at the card again. “Our Minmaneth is a young goatt. Well, I am keeping my eye out for buried treasure,” she said, though this sounded something of a contradiction in terms.

  “I hope you do,” said James, thinking she was treasure enough. It was clear, however, from his smile, that he would be looking too.

  From: Miss Cordelia M. Underwood

  High & Spring Streets

  Portland, Maine

  To: Miss Priscilla Morningside

  Ellsworth Falls, Maine

  Care of Mrs. Henry Morningside

  July 3, 1896

  My Dear Cousin,

  I have been thinking for a long time of writing you and now have really set myself about it. I wrote Emily and Charlotte more than a month ago, and thought I should have had an answer before now. How are you getting along in this beautiful summer weather? They say rain perhaps on Saturday, which is too bad. I do wish you could come down with Aunt Delia for the Fourth, but I suppose your mother could not make the trip and would be desolate without your company. At any rate, the Fourth will be a memory by the time you receive this, and it does look likely that we will be getting together later in the season.

  One reason that I have not written before this is that it is so difficult to put pen to paper when there is nothing to say. Nothing, unfortunately, is what has happened to me since I wrote you last (in May, I think)—nothing, that is, until yesterday. Let me tell you.

  An old sailor came to our house the night before last with news that my Uncle Basil’s last effects had been sailed up from Venezuela and were waiting at the Custom House to be claimed. Yesterday Mama and Papa and I went down to do just that, and I left them to it, in order to take the air on the wharf. (Don’t tell your mother that I went unescorted or Mama will never hear the end of it!) Well, the most extraordinary thing happened to me. An older gentleman, about Papa’s age, had just stepped onto the wharf from a ladder and his hat blew off! When he reached for it, he very nearly stepped off the wharf itself, and I very nearly went off, as well, when I grabbed his elbow.

  The most handsome man caught me by the waist, however, and rescued me. He was dark and tall, and there was something merry about him—his brown eyes positively struck me! Unfortunately, he was not without escort—a woman who was every bit his equal. I do wish I could have disliked her, but she was pleasant as well as beautiful, and quite ready to lend her
beau for a timely rescue. My red hair and freckles paled beside her, I am sure, and were not to be considered any sort of threat. I do have green eyes, however, as you know, which I have always thought my best asset, and I gave him a shot with them, I can tell you. (Perhaps you had better keep this letter away from your mother altogether.) He returned to his lady, which was to be expected, and they disappeared amongst the crowd. The worst of it is that I did not even get his name.

  I did make a friend, though. Mister Walton, the gentleman whose hat blew off is one of the most delightful people I have ever met. He is rather round, and wears spectacles, and laughs a great deal—mostly about himself. I would have been disconsolate over my too brief encounter with that handsome man if not for Mister Walton’s jolly company on the way back to the Custom House. There is more to tell, but I want to get to the most surprising news, which has to do with the contents of Uncle Basil’s sea chest.

  Have you ever heard of a town named Millinocket? I have, but only in passing, till yesterday. It seems that I own land there—a parcel purchased years ago by Uncle Basil and signed over to me in a legal document after he had taken ill. It is very sweet and very sad to think of him leaving me such a remarkable legacy, even as the yellow fever took him away. He never seemed very comfortable around me, but Mama says it was only the natural reticence of a bachelor and a sailor toward a young niece who he thought (mistakenly) to be highly breakable, but for whom he enjoyed a great fondness from afar. And since Mama said this I have remembered a time when we were all having Christmas dinner together, the only Christmas that I remember him spending with us, and he said to me: “If I had ever married, I would have wished for a daughter like you.” Looking back on it, it makes me think that he was a little sad.

  Papa himself seemed surprised that Uncle Basil left the land to me, rather than James and Brendan. Millinocket is in the northern interior of the state and he expects it to be somewhat rough and unsettled. It has been a settlement since around 1830, though—according to our almanac—and something of civilization must have creeped in by now. (I hope not too much.) I am in the process of talking Papa into bringing us up to see my land—imagine it, my land—and I give him about three days before he acquiesces. So, keep a good thought. Such an expedition would send us first in your general direction, and I am sure I can wheedle a few days’ rest in Ellsworth Falls, coming and going.