Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  “Well, you’re going to have to leave me if you don’t go,” said the dowager simply. “Put us in your book, or on your list, or whatever it is,” she ordered Miss McCannon.

  “You’re not going, surely, Mrs. Eccles!” said an astonished Mr. Berkeley.

  “I certainly am!” snapped the old woman. “And Mister Walton here will hold my hand if need be, won’t you, sir!”

  “I would deem it an honor and a pleasure, ma’am,” said Mister Walton with all sincerity.

  “Oh, go away!” she said, waving a hand at him, but she looked gratified.

  “Do you think this is wise, Mrs. Eccles?” wondered Mr. Hansbach.

  “What? Do you think we’ll see any silly monster? I daresay the chances are slim. But if we do I’ll look him in the eye and we’ll see who blinks first.”

  “There’s something in that,” said Mr. Berkeley, under his breath.

  BOOK SEVENJULY 9, 1896

  41 Fishing for Information

  GRACE WAS APPALLED TO DISCOVER THAT HER BROTHER-IN-LAW HAD BEEN serious about leaving on their expedition the next morning. James and Mercia and Cordelia were packed to go, of course; Aunt Delia as well; and foreseeing this possibility, Cordelia had supervised Priscilla’s readiness. Ethan had his bag at the door. Grace was aghast at such precipitate behavior and staged a short and unsuccessful rebellion.

  “For goodness sakes, it can’t be done!” she pronounced.

  “I will help you, Grace,” said Mercia.

  “Well, there is no help for it! Why didn’t you tell me last night?”

  “I was sure that I had,” said James dryly.

  “I suppose there are hotels in the middle of this wilderness,” said Grace with more irony than he would have credited.

  “To my knowledge, no,” he said.

  “And what are we to sleep in?”

  “Tents and sleeping tackle await us at Millinocket. There is a flush business in the rustic amenities there. People use the town as a jumping-off spot for hunting and fishing. The lumberjacks provision there as well.”

  None of this sounded very promising to the decorous lady. “And food?”

  “Taken care of. I wired first thing this morning that our party had increased.”

  Grace capitulated, but as she mounted the stairs—head erect, back stiff—it was clear that she had second thoughts about roughing it.

  Young Ethan let out a slow whistle. It had seemed a near thing and it would be more than he could bear to miss this trip now. Priscilla and Cordelia also looked relieved.

  “Please, Aunt Delia,” said Mercia. “I think we’ll need all the help we can get.” The older woman followed her niece up the stairs to assist in Grace’s packing.

  All things considered, Grace did marvelously well, and they were no more than three hours behind James’s timetable when they reached the station. They had missed two trains, and had to run only moderately fast to catch the third.

  John Benning had been waiting for them at the station those three hours, but he greeted them happily and with admirable patience. He directed the stowing of their baggage; and Grace allowed him to find her a seat, softening slightly with his promise of protection. Cordelia thought him very funny.

  The train itself helped to mollify Grace’s overburdened sensibilities; the line to Bangor was as finely appointed as any in the country, and her delicate eyes were briefly soothed by the sight of finely polished brass and richly colored fabrics in the private cars.

  Mutiny suffused those delicate eyes, however, when James ushered them on toward more public accommodations, and only the presence of several genteel ladies in the first-class riding coach convinced her to be seated there. The conductor spotted her as a needy customer almost immediately and let it be known amongst his subordinates that she was to be waited upon with the utmost deference.

  Now, there is a great deal of difference between a person who requires assistance or looks to be served, and one who is needy. The average person meets his or her fellow on more or less equal ground; needy individuals imagine their demands to be broadcast from a position of height, when in fact anyone coming to their aid usually views them as lacking in either intelligence or ambition—possibly both. The needy person, becoming a needy customer, is often the first to be waited upon and probably the first to be despised. Grace habitually emanated such weary neediness; she would ask the price of an object without first scrutinizing the tag hanging from it.

  “I really must have refreshment,” she said before the train had started, as if the journey from Morningside House to the station had something in common with the Oregon Trail. The refreshment vendor, with his cart, was several coaches away, but the conductor sent for lemonade forthwith.

  And so they were off—a jolly group on the whole. Cordelia looked past Priscilla at the window while the more populated section of Ellsworth fell away. By a trick of the light, however, she could see John Benning’s reflection there. She watched him surreptitiously till he looked in her direction.

  She was situated—by way of her aunt’s careful seating arrangement—across the aisle from him, but they were facing one another, and she blushed to find him smiling at her.

  “It was a lucky catch that I had on the wharf last Thursday,” he said, his smile never losing its frankness, nor its appeal.

  Priscilla, sitting next to Cordelia, cleared her throat.

  Cordelia continued to gaze innocently at the passing outskirts of the town. “Did you catch something?” said Cordelia.

  “Briefly, at any rate.”

  “Was it a big fish?”

  “Not a fish, really.” He glanced at Grace, sitting opposite him, but Cordelia’s aunt was explaining some point of propriety to Mercia.

  “Was it a cold, then?” asked Cordelia wickedly as she turned her wry expression toward John Benning. “Did you catch a cold?”

  “Not yet,” he said, and the sight of a slightly raised eyebrow on that handsome face shot through her like a dart.

  It was true: without being entirely shameless, she had encouraged him from the beginning. This was not a chase—or if it was, it was a mutual one. Cordelia possessed a mischievous wit, which was generally couched in a dry delivery. Once, when she had frightened off a prospective suitor with her droll repartee, her father had termed her a saber rattler and she had thought briefly of letting her blade dull a little.

  Some things are not to be changed, however, and Cordelia was one of them. She was rather glad now, for there is nothing more joyful to a good fencer than a worthy opponent.

  “Well, you best be cautious,” she said. “Especially if you’re used to climates that are too warm. It can be chilly where we are going.” Her eyes belied her words, for there were deep pools of laughter there.

  “As I say,” replied John Benning, “I’m used to roughing it. I quite relish it, actually.”

  “But you must be careful, Mr. Benning,” said Aunt Grace, who had caught the tail end of this conversation. She was so forward as to touch the young man’s arm. “Cordelia is right. It is easy to imagine that one place is as congenial as another, but I know from my reading that it is not so. You will think me rough around the edges, I am sure, but I have read Stanley’s adventures—well, there were parts I did pass over—but I was impressed with how unlike two places can be. Boston and Ellsworth are much the same by comparison.” A man arrived with her lemonade at this point and she accepted it with stately poise.

  “I don’t think you rough at all, Mrs. Morningside,” said John Benning. “But only braver than some.”

  This was a new sort of compliment for Grace, but she was thoroughly pleased with it. “You are very kind,” she replied. “It was a volume in my late husband’s library, that’s all.”

  Cordelia thought there was something very pretty about her aunt, just then, and imagined that John Benning saw it as well. He smiled winningly, first at the aunt, then at Cordelia.

  Feeling a renewed streak of mischief coursing through her, Cordelia matc
hed his smile. “I understand there is good fishing in the lakes around Millinocket, Mr. Benning.”

  “Yes,” he replied. “But the water may be too cold for bathing,” referring to her near-dunking off the Custom House Wharf.

  Priscilla went into a sudden coughing fit that Grace concluded was brought on by leaving the house without a hat the night before.

  James, who with Ethan and Aunt Delia sat a row away from the rest of the party, lowered his paper and exchanged an amused glance with his wife. “I’m not sure that we’ll have time for either fishing or bathing,” he said before disappearing again behind the newsprint.

  Cordelia caught a glimpse of her father’s eye and found herself blushing again; yet she was not finished—this new reference to the incident on the wharf brought to mind the lovely woman who had been John Benning’s companion that day, and who had haunted Cordelia’s natural optimism this past week whenever an opportunity to daydream about this young man had presented itself.

  For it came to this: she liked John Benning more than a little. It did not harm his outlook that he was handsome, but Mr. Benning had other, more complex qualities that superseded (in her heart, if not in her eyes) his mere outward appearance. He had, to begin with, a definite panache about him without a jot of the foppishness that often accompanies such a degree of style and elegance. There was indeed something of the reckless about him, happily leavened with a strong measure of wit and humor.

  He was perhaps attracted to similar traits in her, and certainly she covered her apprehension concerning his beautiful companion with a degree of boldness and wit. “I am sorry that I didn’t have the chance to meet your . . . friend the other day,” she said, and gave him a look that was particularly blunt. Give the wrong reply, her expression seemed to say, and you might just as well get off at the next stop.

  It is fortunate that human ears do not independently cock toward interesting sounds, or those people in the immediate vicinity would have looked much like a kennel when the fox horn is blown.

  “Ann, you mean?” said John Benning, once he had translated the message in Cordelia’s eyes.

  “I suppose, yes,” said Cordelia, inwardly flinching at his use of another woman’s Christian name. “Is that her name?”

  “Ann—well, she’s more than a friend, actually.” John Benning’s own expression was absolutely unreadable; he did not blink, but regarded Cordelia with a sort of steady candor.

  Cordelia’s mouth felt dry suddenly and there was an involuntary hesitation to her response. “Oh?” She hated how the word sounded, weak in the air between them.

  Recklessness and humor: his expression was challenging, then suddenly droll. “Yes, she is my cousin.”

  Cordelia did not miss a beat. “Well, I hope I have the opportunity to meet her someday.”

  “I hope you do, Miss Underwood,” said he, his expression conspiratorial.

  Cordelia found herself laughing quietly to herself. They had left Ellsworth behind, and Priscilla was doing her best to appear interested in the treeless countryside. They dared not look at one another. Cordelia reached for the bag that she had brought on board with her, and took from it the copy of Tristram Shandy that she had been reading.

  And conversation ebbed for a while as they trundled northwest.

  42 Briefly with the Club

  “IT HAS BEEN A WEEK, THUMP,” SAID EAGLETON TO HIS FRIEND, WHO SAT TO his right at breakfast that morning. “Do you realize that it has been a week?” he said to Ephram, who sat to his left.

  “A week?” said both men, more or less in unison.

  “Well, a full week come this evening.” Light dawned gradually upon the faces of Ephram and Thump as Eagleton spoke. “It was one week ago today, Thursday the 2nd of July, 1896, that our esteemed friend first conceived the notion of . . . our club.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Ephram as if he were apprised of this intelligence for the first time. Thump appeared manfully embarrassed.

  “Of course,” continued Eagleton, “we still have no name for our order.”

  “True, true,” replied Ephram.

  “And we have not, as yet, gleaned a purpose for which this . . . club . . . might exist.”

  “Exactly so!”

  “It seems we will not meet, as planned, upon the appointed spot . . .”

  “No.”

  “ . . . nor upon the appointed hour.”

  “To be sure.”

  “And we have no idea as to the whereabouts of our chairman, nor he that he is our chairman.”

  Ephram made no reply to this thought; it was singular, how unlike a club they were.

  “I foresee great things!” declared Eagleton, undaunted—or perhaps incognizant—of the paradox he had so carefully proved.

  “Hear, hear!” said Ephram with renewed vigor. Thump, oddly quiet throughout this discourse, cleared his throat—a sound meant to indicate concurrence with his fellows.

  They were greatly affected by this conversation—Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump—and rising from the breakfast table, they did not say a word amongst themselves till they had reached Damariscotta’s Main Street.

  “I hesitate to say it,” said Ephram hesitantly, “but there is a certain indeterminacy regarding our organization.”

  “It is true,” agreed Eagleton.

  They stood upon the sidewalk for some minutes, looking exceedingly indeterminate, and would have stood there longer, no doubt, if not for the rousing nature of Thump’s vision.

  “There is nothing to do but wait,” he said. “There is no accomplishment to be had but mindful observation.” He had read this pronouncement in The Sister He Never Knew by Mrs. Liliva Albright, and never had a borrowed phrase seemed to him so apropos. Eagleton was so moved he had tears in his eyes and was forced to march ahead of his friends to save himself embarrassment.

  Despite Thump’s brave words, one thought marred the tenor of the moment. “Oh, would that Mister Walton were here to advise us!” said Ephram gravely.

  “Without the head,” said Thump, “the body must act through instinct!”

  “Good heavens, Thump!” said Ephram. “You are right!”

  “We must make our chairman proud!” continued the man, his beard thrust forward, one finger in the air. They were striding now with observable purpose. “We must uphold the tradition!” he declared.

  Eagleton brought them to a halt once again. “Is there a tradition?”

  “There will be,” said Thump, and hearing him say it with such conviction, they had faith that it would be so.

  The three friends had already explored Damariscotta’s Main Street to the minutest detail, so they retraced their steps slightly and climbed Elm Street on the other side of the Lincoln Hall. They passed through the shade of the titular trees and admired the handsome homes on either side till they came to the house of Mr. Springer, who was out by the street painting his fence.

  “We have been hearing about the Damariscotta Indians,” said Eagleton, shrewdly altering the focus of their immediate thoughts.

  “I have never heard of them,” said Mr. Springer.

  “Really!” said Ephram. He couldn’t imagine a man living in Damariscotta and not hearing about the tribe that gave the town its name.

  “They had a great sense of humor,” informed Eagleton.

  “Clearly someone does,” said Mr. Springer.

  “You missed a spot there,” said Eagleton amiably, and they were content to stand and watch Mr. Springer paint for the better part of half an hour.

  43 Cordial Mayhem

  NO PLACE IN THE STATE OF MAINE WAS EVER SO TANGLED IN CONTRADICtion as the city of Bangor. Incorporated in 1791, it had become by the mid-nineteenth century the major crossroad between the state’s two vast livelihoods, the sea and the forest; great trees were felled to the north and west, and within the city’s precincts they were fashioned into some of the finest vessels the world has ever seen. Set upon the western slopes of the Penobscot, Bangor had the feel of an inland town, with the
great woods nearby, and yet deep-water anchorage was only twenty-three miles away.

  The river itself could seem like a forest for all the vessels anchored within sight of the city limits. Walking along its side after church one Sunday morning in 1883, Jobadiah Lincoln, vice-president of the railroad, and his family counted more than seven hundred masts.

  Bangor was second to none, in Maine or anywhere else, for pure wild, caterwauling, fist-sweeping, rapid-riding, hard-swigging, swing-’em-from-the-yardarm-till-they-cry-uncle, and watch-out-you’re-in-the-wrong-part-of-town! Great fortunes were made between the ship and the shore, and the private mansions and public buildings of the city were designed by some of the country’s greatest architects; but from their third-story windows one could view the Devil’s Half-Acre, a cauldron of dark taverns, grog shops, larcenous flophouses, and brothels exuberant with business.

  There were merchants and tradesmen as well, of course, and their families; and churches, filled to the choir lofts of a Sabbath morning.

  Bangor is said to have been named by accident. When the Reverend Seth Noble was registering the town in Boston, back in 1791, he was humming a hymn by that title, and thinking the clerk had asked him what song it was (when the man had actually asked the name of the town), the Reverend Mr. Noble said: “Bangor.”

  “If it didn’t happen that way, it should have,” said John Benning, having told this story to his fellow travelers. They had just made a stop at Ellsworth Falls, and Green Lake was sparkling to their right.

  “Imagine if he had been humming the ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus!” said Cordelia.

  “Here we are,” said James, who was scanning his newspaper. “Do you remember that row at the Fourth of July picnic?”

  “The one the parachutist landed in the middle of?” asked Cordelia.

  “You should not end your sentences with a preposition, dear,” instructed Grace. “And I am not sure that a row is a proper subject for polite conversation. Don’t you agree, Mr. Benning.”