Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

“I’ve had a thought myself,” said Mercia.

  “I thought you might. What have you come up with?”

  “Well, it occurred to me after you told me that this Minmaneth of yours was known for, among other things, burying treasure.”

  “Yes,” said James, encouraging her to continue.

  “A young goat, as Mr. Pue would tell you, is a kid.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “The term young goat here is spelt with two t’s. It would seem that kid with two d’s would correspond nicely.” James was nodding emphatically. “It sounds rather silly, really, but then you have kidd with two d’s, and when you connect the word kidd with treasure, you must think of Captain Kidd.”

  James slapped his thigh with satisfaction. “That is just exactly what I arrived at! And I felt just as silly.”

  “You mustn’t feel lonely, then, for your daughter is feeling silly too.”

  “You told Cordelia what you were thinking?”

  “No, she came up with it quite separately.”

  “But you see?” said James, taken by a wave of sudden enthusiasm. “This would make sense, not only of the sentence itself, but of Basil’s reasons for writing such a cryptic note in the first place. So very few people have ever heard of Minmaneth, and only Basil and I ever heard our mother’s stories about him. Without the notion of buried treasure the term young goatt gets you nowhere.”

  “And where does it get us?” wondered Mercia honestly.

  “I’m not sure. But it puts an even darker shade to the motives of the fellow—whoever he is—that came to our house a week ago. And adds some mystery to this land Cordelia has inherited.”

  “I would still like to know,” said Mercia, “why Mr. Pseudo-Stimply saw fit to do us a favor under a false name.”

  “We had better keep our eyes out,” said James. “Peeled, I think, is the authorial turn of phrase. No doubt it will fall out that Captain Coyle was mistaken, or that there is some simple, unremarkable explanation.” James took the piece of paper again and let out a short sigh of frustration as he looked at it for the hundredth time. “My first thought may have been correct after all—that this is just a product of Basil’s fevered mind.”

  “Well, I am just as glad that we’re to be a large party. And this Benning fellow seems an able young man.”

  James gave no heed to her teasing. “Your sister, Grace, should prove a good deterrent, I think, to any rascals. And that’s not to mention your Aunt Delia. I’ll feel safe sandwiched between them.”

  39 Thoughts on a Pirate

  CORDELIA WOULD HAVE GONE FOR A WALK IN THE RAIN IF HER AUNT GRACE had allowed it. Priscilla, of course, was absolutely prohibited from such capricious behavior, and for Cordelia to walk alone at night in the rain was out of the question. In Priscilla’s room, Cordelia sat at an open window, chin to hand, elbow to sill. The rain was fine and warm and the slight mist from it that reached her face felt soft and cooling.

  She needed cooling, she thought. Her mind has been racing all day.

  Fluttering behind Cordelia, her shadow dancing about like that of a moth in the gaslight, Priscilla made ready to leave in the morning. “Oh, I just can’t believe it! It’s so exciting! It’s happened so fast!” she was saying over and over, with several variations and the occasional addition of: “Oh, Cordelia, we’re going to have such a time!”

  Cordelia’s mind was occupied with other business; they were, after all, venturing out for the purpose of visiting her newly inherited land. She had certain convictions regarding this bequest; indeed, she was more convinced than ever that some sort of buried treasure awaited them within the precincts of her recent estate.

  But to be perfectly honest, these considerations were greatly overshadowed by the sudden participation of John Benning. She had thought a great deal about Mr. Benning these last few days, and had even put herself to sleep with those late-night imaginings so conducive to pleasant dreams.

  It is very well to dream, to be sure, or even to anticipate a romantic encounter when the time and place of its occurrence remain in the abstract; it is another hod of clams when that appointing is suddenly lurched into the here and now.

  Cordelia considered sneaking out into the rain by herself, just to stand out on the lawn, her arms outstretched, her face lifted to the sky. She felt strangely heavy in her heart and knew that she was feeling something like fear. A sigh escaped her, and Priscilla stopped in her rotations.

  “Good heavens, Cord, you sound just like my mother!”

  “Do I?”

  “Aren’t you excited? I had hoped that you were pleased that I am going with you. Or are you less pleased now that John is coming along?”

  Cordelia woke up to this accusation. “Of course not!” she exclaimed. “How could you suggest such a thing? I’m just not sure what it all means, that’s all.”

  “Oh, you’re nervous. I would be too.” Priscilla took stock of her own feelings. “I am nervous!” she announced. “I almost laughed out loud when he winked at you.”

  “You did laugh out loud.”

  “Well, it was a quiet laugh.”

  “And I’m not sure what I think of being winked at.”

  “You are sounding like mother!”

  “He’s so . . .”

  “Handsome?”

  Another sort of expression prowled Cordelia’s eyes. “Yes, he is that.”

  “Intelligent? Witty?”

  Cordelia could not deny this assessment.

  “Genteel? Able to handle my mother?”

  “He’s very forward.”

  “Thank goodness! You’re nervous, that’s all. I am too. To go anywhere, but to make an expedition! And to have a prospective lover along! I hope you don’t mind if I enjoy this romance a little bit alongside of you.”

  “Your chaperonage is required,” said Cordelia gravely, not yet able to imagine herself alone with John Benning now that he had made his interest in her so obvious. She wondered what he might be doing, even now; no offer had been made to him for staying at the Morningside home, and he had not waited for one, curtailing any awkwardness over the question by announcing early on that he had rooms at the Ellsworth Hotel.

  Cordelia thought of him perhaps thinking of her.

  The afternoon and evening had been pleasant the way George Ferris’s enormous amusement wheel might be pleasant if you weren’t quite sure of heights; one doesn’t court romance for its calming effect. After tea, John Benning had been invited to walk in the arbor behind the house; and Aunt Grace, despite great-aunt Delia’s attempts at stalling her, advanced herself as a member of this party.

  The arbor was a handsome little park of shade trees overhanging a circular footpath; and though the clouds greatly outranked clear sky that afternoon, it was refreshing to stroll aimlessly with congenial company. John Benning made himself extremely amusing to Grace, and soon she had his arm as Cordelia and Priscilla walked with them. Cordelia was almost grateful for the chance to observe him, as it were, from a distance.

  Grace, despite her prim attitude and mature years, was pleased by John’s attentions, but soon she insisted that she was feeling light-headed and that she must sit. A nearby bench was conscripted for this purpose and he retrieved chairs from a corner of the arbor for the two cousins.

  From his place beside Aunt Grace, John Benning was able to speak to all three women while lavishing a certain sense of attention on Cordelia; and yet, he managed this so artfully that Cordelia alone was fully aware of it. While John managed Aunt Grace, Cordelia managed simply not to blush.

  He had traveled a great deal, and seen much of life for a man of his years, but the tribulations of living at such a peak did not show upon his face. It was his self-deprecating humor that most attracted Cordelia; he might have seemed too sure of himself, too forward in his desires, if not for this ability to churn the grandest of adventures into grist for the mill of comedy. And in the midst of a droll anecdote, he might turn a phrase or a word to double meaning.

 
Even Grace had laughed aloud as he demonstrated his attempts to survey a small island during a series of vigorous earth tremors. “Several major landmarks on the island did all but switch places,” he maintained. “Before the worst of the tremors hit, my back was to the ocean; and when the ground had finished shaking my back was to the mainland.”

  “You had been completely turned around, Mr. Benning?” asked Grace.

  “No, the island had.”

  “The experience seems to have shaken you, sir,” said Cordelia, laughing.

  “I have been shaken worse since,” he answered.

  Cordelia blushed even now, thinking of it.

  A knock came at the door, and Ethan barely waited for his sister’s “Come in” before bustling into the room with Teacup. Ethan was helping everyone to prepare for the expedition, as if any delay might cause the promised excursion to slip from their hands. “Can I help with anything? Can I put anything in the carriage?” he asked, keen on making himself indispensable.

  Cordelia called to Teacup and lifted the dog onto her lap.

  “I’ve hardly started my packing,” Priscilla was saying to her brother.

  “Are you going to marry Mr. Benning?” asked Ethan frankly of Cordelia.

  “Ethan!” said Priscilla, nearly laughing.

  “I hardly know him!” exclaimed Cordelia as if the thought had never occurred to her.

  “I think you might,” said the boy. He laughed himself, pleased to have gotten a rise from them.

  “Here,” said Priscilla. “Take these bags and get away!”

  “He seems a nice fellow,” insisted Ethan as his sister ushered him from the room. Priscilla shut the door and laughed conspiratorially at the expression on Cordelia’s face.

  “I hope he doesn’t say something like that to your mother,” said Cordelia.

  “He knows better,” Priscilla assured her.

  Cordelia stroked Teacup’s ears gently, thinking nervously of what the next few days might unfold.

  “Well?” said Priscilla, and when her cousin looked up questioningly, she said: “Are you going to marry him?”

  Cordelia threw a hairbrush at her.

  40 Monstrous Rumors

  NOT KNOWING WHERE COLONEL TAVERNER CALLED HOME OR HEADQUARters, Mister Walton sent a telegram, regarding their sighting of Sir Eustace Pembleton and the Proclamation, to the customs agent by way of Sheriff Piper in Wiscasset, and might not have done that if not for the child on board the little steamer. “I have a suspicion,” he told Sundry, “that we are not forwarding any very surprising news. The colonel has many eyes, I think, and no doubt a pair or two right here in the harbor.”

  All possible duty seemed done once the cable was sent, though they felt incomplete in it and the need, for the time being, of some new source of diversion. Some people are lucky in this pursuit, and Mister Walton, it seems, was one of them. Trouble is one form of diversion that follows or is followed by certain members of the race, laughter another; but the purest form of diversion must be the pursuit of something new—laughter and trouble sometimes being included.

  Mister Walton (who had many adventures to tell of before this humble narrative commenced) understood that the surest way to experience some-thing new is to meet someone new. Having sent his telegram from the service desk in the lobby of the Weymouth House, he obeyed this formula for diver-tissement by leading the way to the hotel’s liveliest parlor.

  The liveliest parlor, as it turned out, was actually a porch overlooking (if one looked over several roofs) the sunlit harbor. All adjectives are subject to relative interpretation, of course, lively not excepted; Mister Walton and Sundry had been in more spirited company in the past few days, but none more interesting to the student of human nature.

  Some dozen or so people populated the porch, rendering but one chair for Mister Walton’s occupancy and a railing for Sundry’s leisure. An ancient woman held court there; her tiny wizened face nearly disappeared beneath the shade of a gigantic bonnet. “It was a very pleasant journal,” she was saying. “I don’t know why they ever stopped it. I still read the old numbers—I keep them at my table.”

  “What does she mean?” asked a thin bald fellow with large mustaches.

  “It’s not the paper they are talking about, Gran,” shouted a young woman to the lady.

  “The Squid,” said another person. “She’s speaking of the paper they printed during the summer months—years ago it was. The Squid was its name.”

  “What are you saying?” demanded the old woman.

  “They’re not talking about the paper, Gran,” shouted the young woman again. “They are talking about the monster that people have seen out to sea.”

  “Monster? I don’t know about any monster!” Gran looked put out. “What conversation! We never talked about monsters in my time.”

  “It was a two-sheet paper,” said a man with white whiskers. “I remember it. The locals called it The Squint. It’s the Squirrel Island Buoy now, though not as well thought of among the older folk.”

  “Who’s talking about monsters?” demanded Gran. “It’s not proper conversation.” One could see, however, that her interest was up.

  “Some sort of creature has been sighted off Monhegan, Mrs. Eccles!” said the white-whiskered man in a loud tone.

  “Oh?” She tucked a hand in her bonnet and cupped it behind one ear.

  “A great shadow was seen in the ocean and a long appendage came out of the water and slithered onto the deck of a ship. Something like it has been reported several times in the last few weeks.”

  “That’s all very well,” replied Mrs. Eccles. “But should you be talking about it, is my point.”

  The young woman smiled apologetically to the assemblage; there were some quiet, if respectful, chuckles among the group, and two or three pairs of rolling eyes.

  “In the interest of science, ma’am!” declared the bald man.

  “Oh, science. I’m not sure that science isn’t a lot of humbug. Germs and electric lights and ape men. In my day we had bad air, oil lamps, and a handful of dust—and I’m not sure that we weren’t better off!”

  Mister Walton, who couldn’t have disagreed more, thought the ancient lady’s opinion charming nonetheless. His pleasant smile caught Mrs. Eccles’ attention.

  “Who is this, Mary?” she asked impatiently. “You haven’t introduced me.”

  Mister Walton rose and bowed gallantly. “I am to blame, ma’am,” he said. “I have not yet introduced myself, nor my young friend here.” And he proceeded to answer this deficiency.

  “What is this creature they are talking about?” asked Mrs. Eccles, peering from the confines of her bonnet with rheumy eyes.

  “I fear that I know no more than you do, ma’am,” replied Mister Walton.

  “The object sighted was estimated at twenty-five to thirty feet long,” said the bald man, whose name was Hansbach. “Some think it was an enormous sea snake. Some say it was the tentacle of a giant squid.”

  “Good heavens!” said Mister Walton. “Is it possible?”

  “There are strange things lurking with Davy Jones,” said Mr. Berkeley, the white-whiskered man. One of the women shivered audibly, which encouraged him to tell of a small fishing vessel in Newfoundland that was nearly pulled under by a giant squid.

  Three or four pools of conversation swirled about this topic and several eerie legends, along with the opinions of local fishermen, were discussed. “My experience,” said Mister Walton, “is that the truth, when discovered, is almost always more astonishing than the legend.”

  “Well said!” agreed Mr. Hansbach, and Mr. Berkeley added his support to this notion.

  A woman of middle years came from inside the hotel, and she was brimming with such an air of business that she easily gained the attention of the entire group, including that of Mrs. Eccles, who held one hand to her ear and cried out “Eh?” every now and then.

  “I am pleased to inform you,” said this new arrival, brandishing an open cop
ybook and a pencil, “that after some difficulties I have chartered a boat—the Winter Harbor—for the purposes of viewing this creature.” (“Eh?” from Mrs. Eccles.) “There are only so many places available, but I am giving you the first opportunity to sign on.” She raised a pair of spectacles to her eyes and peered at the group.

  “I suppose the captain has guaranteed a close look at this phenomenon,” said a young man at the other end of the porch. (“What did he say?” from Mrs. Eccles.)

  “He has done nothing of the kind,” said the woman, undisturbed by irony. “But he does know where the beast has been sighted. Any number of people have seen this creature when they weren’t looking for it, so I see no reason why we shouldn’t find it who are.”

  “Bravo!” said Mr. Berkeley with some humor as he raised his hand. “Count me in.” (“Eh?” said Mrs. Eccles.)

  Two or three other brave souls, including a husband and wife; asked to be included. “When do we leave?” came another query.

  “Captain Pinkham believes that the direction of the tide is important. We will leave tomorrow at noon. Sir?”

  This last was directed toward Mister Walton, who rose with great enthusiasm and introduced himself. “Tobias Walton, ma’am.”

  “Phileda McCannon, Mister Walton.” She offered her hand and gave his a very firm and amiable shake.

  “Your expedition sounds highly amusing,” he said.

  “I can count on you, then?”

  “Oh, please do! And my friend here.”

  “Gentleman’s gentleman,” said Sundry, who looked anything but, lounging carelessly against the railing. (“What is that?” asked Mrs. Eccles. “Eh?”)

  “Really?” said Miss McCannon to Sundry with honest surprise. She penciled in Mister Walton and Sundry’s names, then Mr. Berkeley’s and several other persons’. Some wanted no part of the adventure and looked horror-struck with the very notion of such a monster watch.

  “You are going, aren’t you?” asked Mrs. Eccles of her great-granddaughter, Miss Bishop, when all had been explained.

  “Of course not, Gran,” said Miss Bishop. “I wouldn’t leave you.”