Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  “It would be impolite to ignore charming prospects,” added Eagleton, quoting dance mistress Mrs. De Riche.

  “And here we have charming prospects of the first rank, I say,” agreed Ephram. He turned to Thump and took the man’s hand, shaking it vigorously. “You must wish me luck, my friend,” he said.

  “Hmmm?” said Thump.

  Ephram took Eagleton’s hand and shook it vigorously.

  Eagleton took Thump’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Perhaps they have a friend,” he hoped aloud.

  “Hmmm?” said Thump.

  The current waltz had ended, the musicians paused for breath, and shoulder to shoulder, Ephram and Eagleton marched across the dance floor. Halfway to their intended destination, however, a certain palsy affected their limbs, so that neither of them could actually put one foot ahead of the other, unless that foot was headed in the direction of the punch bowl, exactly ninety degrees from the two young women, who smiled at their eccentric progress.

  They did not see the expressions of the two young women as they turned away, but no punch, however tasty, could quell Ephram and Eagleton’s sense of disappointment as they filled their cups. “Feeling a bit dry,” said Ephram.

  “Hot weather brings on thirst,” philosophized Ephram. He was checking his timepiece.

  “How did you know that we were dying for a glass of punch?” came a feminine voice, from behind Eagleton. He swung about on one heel and, magically, managed not to spill his cup by extending it at arm’s length. The young woman took the cup deftly from his hands, as if it were meant for her. “Thank you so much.”

  The second female raised an eyebrow in Ephram’s direction.

  “Twelve minutes past eleven,” he said. He dropped three cups before managing to fill one, then gingerly handed it to her.

  “Continued thundershowers and heavy rain expected till morning, followed by partial clearing,” said Eagleton.

  “No telling what the tide is without Thump,” said Ephram, ever ready to remember an absent friend.

  The young women, delighted with this information, laughed so uproariously, some people thought that Mister Walton had returned. Ephram and Eagleton glanced at one another, each hoping that the other might have the slightest idea what to say next. Fortunately, the two young ladies, Sallie and Ophelia, were more than ready to do the talking for them. Ephram and Eagleton stood at the punch table and nodded and smiled at everything the young women said. Sallie and Ophelia were flattered by the gentlemen’s kind attention and quite sparkled the rest of the evening.

  In their own profound pleasure, Ephram and Eagleton did not, at first, see a more-than-stunned Thump gliding past them on the dance floor with the extraordinary Mrs. Roberto.

  17 The Wake of the Dash

  THE STAIRWELL THAT LED TO ENOCH DILL’S BEDROOM WAS STEEP AND dark and narrow; and it was airless with that musty stillness often found in places in between. Two small pictures from an old calendar hung upon the right-hand wall: the first was of a barefoot boy leading a cow along a meadow path; the second of a young woman sitting beneath a willow tree by a brook.

  A peal of thunder rumbled softly through the walls of the stairwell as Mister Walton followed Dr. Moriarty to the second floor of the house. A door at the head of the stairs opened with a short creak and they ascended the last steps to an unfinished chamber where nothing but roof boards and shingles lay above and the downpour sounded loud and comforting. One window at the end of the house was opened just a crack, letting welcome drafts of cool air into the close space and rain upon a sea chest beneath the sill.

  A single lamp sat upon a stand by a bed. Mister Walton was almost startled to see a young woman sitting nearby, an open book in her lap. It had not occurred to him—though it seemed sensible—that someone would be with the dying man at all times.

  “Annie,” said the doctor, “This is Mister Walton.”

  “Have you come to keep the doctor company, Mister Walton?” she said, after a gentle nod of acknowledgment.

  “Yes, ma’am, if it is not an intrusion.”

  “Well, I’m glad, for the doctor’s sake, that you could come. Uncle will be keeping other company tonight.” She rose from her chair now. “Will you be needing anything, Doctor?”

  “Another pot of tea, perhaps. In an hour or so, Annie. What do you say, Mister Walton?”

  “That would be fine.”

  The door closed behind the girl and they could hear her light footsteps on the treads. Dr. Moriarty found a chair in the corner of the room and drew it up for his companion, then sat down in the chair beside the bed. He reached beneath the covers, gently drew out a thin arm, and gazed toward the window as he felt the dying man’s pulse.

  Mister Walton could see little of the quiet form in the bed but a nose made prominent with age and a short gray beard. “He’s weak,” said Dr. Moriarty. “I can hardly feel his pulse.”

  “Has he been sick long?”

  “He’s been old long. Old and tired. I wonder he lasted till now.” The doctor smiled down at the man. “I certainly don’t think he wanted to. Enoch Dill is the last of an unusual fellowship.”

  “Indeed?”

  Moriarty slipped Enoch’s hand back beneath the covers. “I think the storm is blowing past,” he said, and the thunder did seem to have sneaked away when they were not listening. There was only rain now—still insistent upon the roof—and the occasional low rumble to the west. “That window looks over the water, Mister Walton. Can you see anything from it?”

  Standing by the window, Mister Walton could see the darkness of the water as a separate darkness from the land. Strangely, he could sense the motion of the river—the surge of the wind-driven swells—though the night was dark enough to hide even the froth of the whitecaps, and that intuition of movement carried with it an understanding of the water’s depth and chill. One corner of the window reflected the light of the room’s single lamp, warm in contrast to the wet night, and in that reflection he saw the doctor watching him. Moriarty lowered the shade of the lamp so that Mister Walton might better see.

  “Nothing but rain and the night,” said the man at the window. He adjusted his spectacles on his nose and squinted through them. A brief glimmer of lightning barely delineated the contours of cliffs and trees, making the resurgent darkness more inscrutable than before. “Nothing,” he said again, turning back to the room.

  The doctor glanced at his watch and tucked it back into his pocket. “It’s early yet, perhaps. We’ll keep an eye closer at the turn of the tide.”

  Mister Walton pulled at his own watch fob and checked the hour as he returned to his chair. It was nearly half past eleven and low tide had been predicted to occur shortly after midnight. He was more mystified than ever, but was amused rather than bothered; Dr. Moriarty inspired trust, and with that trust was the understanding that all would be revealed in its time.

  He watched the small form in the bed, trying to discern some indication of breath, but the man’s respiration was so shallow as to leave the bed-clothes undisturbed. “He seems peaceful,” said Mister Walton.

  “Yes, I truly believe he is,” said the doctor. “As I hope I will be, when my time comes.”

  “You say he is the last of an unusual fellowship.

  “He is indeed.”

  Mister Walton glanced about the room for some clues, and his eyes fell upon the netting of an ancient ship’s hammock folded neatly on a shelf in one corner. That, and the sea chest beneath the sill, made him think of Mr. Privy sleeping soundly in his bed at the Mariners Hospital. “Was he a sailor, then?” he asked.

  “No, he was a shipbuilder, though he had family who sailed. Have you heard of the Dash, Mister Walton?”

  “Ah, the great privateer! Was Mr. Dill a builder, then, upon the Dash?”

  “He may have seen some work upon it, though he was still young.” The doctor glanced for a moment over the quiet form of the dying man, as if to include him in the conversation. “Mr. Dill was born with the century, so
he would have only been thirteen or so when it was built, and hardly fifteen when it disappeared.”

  “I remember, now, that it came to an unknown end. My father, who was just the smallest sort of lad when it disappeared, used to tell me about it.”

  “The fastest and deadliest ship ever built on these shores,” said the doctor, “or so I’ve been told. She was long since gone before my own father was born, so I have had to take other folks’ word for her history. No equal in speed, it was said. She never attacked an enemy ship in vain, and was never injured by a hostile shot.”

  “I have heard those exact words on my father’s lap.”

  “She foiled the British blockade, outran His Majesty’s ships, and captured fourteen vessels in less than two years. Saved the Porter family from bankruptcy and any number of Freeport families from consequent penury.”

  “She simply disappeared, if I remember.”

  “On a cruise to test the speed of a new privateer, called the Champlain. In a squall, much like this one, perhaps, though earlier in the year, the Champlain lost sight of her and she was never seen again. A Porter himself was her captain, then, and it was thought that he underrated her speed and that she foundered off George’s Bank.”

  “And Mr. Dill is the last person left to know something particular about the Dash?” asked Mister Walton.

  “He is the last to have known someone who was lost with her.”

  “This is the fellowship, then, of which you spoke.”

  “Yes. His beloved older brother, Chandler, was only nineteen when she sailed her last. And some portion of Enoch’s heart has been waiting to see him again ever since.” The physician reached beneath the covers to touch Enoch Dill’s wrist. A small sound came from Moriarty and he lifted his medical bag from the floor next to his feet and rummaged through it till he found a small mirror, which he held beneath the dying man’s nose. The smallest mist appeared there to indicate that the thread of life had not yet been severed.

  Mister Walton was thinking of what the doctor had said, still not sure why he had been asked to keep company at Enoch Dill’s deathbed. They talked some more of the Dash, of her short but extraordinary career, of the sixty men who were lost aboard her, and of the many families (in the Freeports) and in Porter’s Landing and Mast Landing—even where they now sat—who were bereaved by her untimely and unknown demise.

  At just a few minutes shy of midnight, footsteps could be heard on the stairs and the door opened to reveal Mrs. Dill with a cozy-covered pot of tea and three cups. She arranged these on the stand beside Uncle Enoch’s bed and served the two men before joining them.

  “Have you seen anything, Doctor?” she asked as she raised the cup to her lips.

  “Not yet. But perhaps Mister Walton would not mind taking another look. It’s less than an hour before the tide begins to turn.”

  Mister Walton still hadn’t the slightest idea what he was looking for, but went, with his cup of tea steaming before him, to the window and stood so that his own round silhouette formed a shadow against the light of the lamp. It was still raining, though not so hard as before, but the wind drove sprinkles against the window in wavelike rhythms. Outside, there was only darkness—if anything, blacker than before.

  “I can’t see a thing,” he said. “I must admit to some surprise that you expect me to, looking out over the river on a night like this.”

  “Just such a night as this,” said the doctor.

  “It won’t take long, I’m thinking, with the wind as it is,” said Mrs. Dill.

  Mister Walton wondered if they were waiting for some sight of her husband, coming in with the tide before the storm, but there was no look of concern to accompany that sort of vigil. He returned to his seat while the doctor and Mrs. Dill talked of local matters, not bothering to speak below normal tones. It seemed a shame, thought Mrs. Dill, to send her uncle out from a hushed house.

  Mister Walton fidgeted with his watch; he was anxious, now, to tend his place at the window. When another quarter of an hour had passed he rose, without being asked, and peered into the night a third time. The conversation behind him fell silent as he gently pressed his forehead to the cool glass and gazed out over the water.

  At first he saw nothing but the same black night as before; then, when his eyes had adjusted slightly to the gloom, he thought he saw, through the erratic sheets of rain, the slightest hint of something gray in the distance in the narrows between Porter’s Landing and Wolf ’s Neck. Then the rain fell between in a great gust and the undefined shape was gone.

  “Is something there?” asked the doctor, when Mister Walton continued to gaze into the rainy night.

  “Yes,” came the bespectacled man’s reply. He set his cup of tea down on the floor, for fear that it would steam the window. Then “Yes!” again, as he returned to his vigil, and caught a second glimpse of something gray and amorphous on the turbulent waters. He glanced back to see Dr. Moriarty with the mirror, testing the dying man’s breath again. Mrs. Dill took her uncle’s hand and held it, her expression thoughtful and distant. A chill of premonition passed through Mister Walton as it occurred to him that Enoch’s last moments and the object on the Harraseeket River were somehow linked.

  He watched through the stormy dark, catching an occasional glimpse of gray whenever the curtains of rain briefly parted. It was another, almost phosphorescent, glow—following the first—that made him realize what he was seeing; the pale line was a running wake, and the gray object was a ship at full sail, tearing before the wind of the storm and up the wide bay of the river. The vessel seemed unheedful of the strength of the wind or the propinquity of the shore, crashing through the swells of the river, blown up by the storm, its prow piercing the water with a courageous determination.

  Mister Walton wondered how he was seeing this ship at all; he perceived no particular light aboard her, nor could he imagine any light on shore strong enough to illumine her through the driving rain. But there she was, running before the storm—now so clear to the eye that he could see her for a three-masted schooner, oddly rigged like a brig at her forward mast; and there were men, perhaps, upon her deck, no more daunted by the storm or their approach to land than the vessel herself.

  “Good heavens, they shall crash!” he said.

  “Never fear, Mister Walton,” said Mrs. Dill. “They are a skillful crew, as well as gallant.”

  Such seemed to be the case, for the schooner was suddenly becalmed, though no sail was shortened, and no gust of wind decreased—indeed, the storm sounded larger as the vessel loomed below the steep shore and the small cape atop it. She rolled and tossed upon the waters, and Mister Walton gasped as a longboat, as gray to look at as if seen through a fog, was lowered from the schooner’s port side. In the gloom he could see oars shipped from the boat, and stalwart backs, small and gray in the distance, pulling against the waves.

  “The tide is turning,” said Dr. Moriarty.

  Mister Walton watched as the boat was oared toward the shore, disappearing from sight behind the small bulk of land between the house and the water. All the while, the great schooner held its place, tossing with the wind and waves. A stillness behind him caught Mister Walton’s attention and he turned to see the doctor arranging Enoch Dill’s arms upon his chest.

  “He is gone,” said the doctor, more quietly than he had spoken the entire night. Mrs. Dill pulled the sheets over the still form, while the doctor joined Mister Walton, for the first time, at the window. “Ah, yes,” he said, looking upon the river. “You have joined another sort of fellowship, my friend.”

  “So I suspected,” said Mister Walton. “But I am confounded to think what that fellowship might be.”

  “You have entered a small society among the living, Mister Walton, that have laid eyes upon the mighty Dash herself.”

  “The Dash, Dr. Moriarty?” Mister Walton tried vainly to suppress a shiver. Mrs. Dill’s reflection darkened the window further as she appeared at his shoulder.

  Mister Walto
n could see the gray longboat, now, pulling back toward the gray vessel. He peered to see the name upon its prow, but she was still tossing too swiftly, too far away, the night and the rain were too thick, and his eyes were misting slightly as he watched the figures in the longboat brought aboard and the longboat raised.

  “Do you suppose,” wondered Mister Walton, “that his brother was one of those manning the longboat?”

  “The old folk always spoke of Uncle Chandler as a great hand at the oars,” said Mrs. Dill.

  When boat and crew were all aboard, the ship hung in her place for a bit, shouldering the swells that splashed like surf against her bows and Mister Walton could imagine that she and her men might care for one last look upon the shores of Earth. The wind and rain slowed for a moment, then picked up with a strange roar, shifting suddenly in the opposite direction—a westerly wind to blow the storm back over the coast. The ship heeled about and caught the wind square in its sails. In a moment it was scudding down-river for the ocean and—if Doctor Moriarty was right—for eternity.

  BOOK FOURJULY 5-6, 1896

  18 The Unasked Question

  THERE HAD ALWAYS BEEN OAK TREES ON DELIA FROST’S LAND IN SOUTH Freeport: grand and solitary watchmen, spreading their presence and their shade over the grounds. But since her husband had left (never to return) in search of gold during the rush of ’49, and since her father and brother had left for the War Between the States (never to return), other growth had mastered the borders of the family property.

  The stone walls were partly hidden now; trees and bushes cloaked them against the weather, and the leaves of many years lay banked, like foot warmers along their windward sides. One stretch of stonework alone remained uncovered, and that was along the eastern border of the property, which overlooked Staples Cove and Bowman Island.

  James had often wondered if someone should be hired to reclear Aunt Delia’s land, but the old woman was uninterested. Her father and brother had built several of the walls, yet she did not mourn to see them disappear beneath the cover of tree and bush; she knew where they were.