by Van Reid
“If they are that fearful of what we might know, Mr. Gaines,” said Frederick quietly, while his wife was otherwise engaged, “I fear what they might attempt still. And if they’ve guessed that I haven’t been able to translate the figures,” he surmised, “they’ll realize they have only to stop me and get the photographs to keep anyone else from doing so.”
“I believe,” said Sundry, who had stepped up to this conversation, “that I have an idea how to make your knowledge in the matter a moot point.”
“I have always been amused by that word, Mr. Noggin,” said Mr. Noel.
The two men had joined Capital and Frederick and Sundry. “Moot.”
“I am not familiar with it, I don’t think, Mr. Noel,” said Mr. Noggin.
Someone was lighting a lantern. Mister Walton looked into the mill of snow. “It’s getting dark,” he said to Sundry.
Daniel’s Story (July–November 1891)
“It’s a shame we hadn’t known all along Nell was that kind of girl.”
Joel Parson couldn’t have realized that Daniel was nearing the porch of the general store, or he wouldn’t have said it; some of the other boys facing Daniel were a little uncertain, inf act, when the statement fell from the young man)-lips, and Joel himself looked as if he had been caught poaching by the sheriff himself Joel Parson was a nice young man, really, though like most young men (and most people, to bef air), he spoke from time to time without thinking.
Daniel had dreaded hearing something like it, ever since it had become common knowledge that Nell Linnett was spending every available hour with Asher Willum, and now that the thought was in the air, he simply mounted the steps to the store and confronted the boys. Joel Parson was the ultimate focus of his attention, and there was silence for a moment.
Daniel said, “I have never had the inclination to strike a person, Joel, but I might have just now if I wasn’t so sure that you are a better man than your word would indicate.”
Joel looked almost sick as he stared down at his feet. Daniel knew that Joel would carry this blunder with him the rest of his life and that it would raise it head at unexpected moments to trouble him time and again; Daniel knew this because he had blundered enough himself.
“I don’t think one of you boys,” said Daniel to the rest of the crowd there, “have ever had so much as an unkind word from that girl.”
There was the sound of shuffling feet and the sight of several nodding heads, which irritated Daniel vaguely, so without another word he went about his business. Gemma Clyde didn’t say much to Daniel when he made his purchases, and he knew that she had heard him; it wasn’t only the young folk who had something to say about the fall of Ian Linnett, which was how recent events were perceived by some in town.
There were others, however, who were simply concerned about the safety of Nell Linnett, and no one saw anything but tragedy rising out of any association with Asher Willum. Asher himself would walk the porch with more than his usual measure of conceit and smile at people as if he had discovered something indecent about them all.
Word had gotten round that Asher and Nell had been seen dallying in the tall grass by Trafton Pond, and the heartbreak of it to Daniel Plainway was the pure sweetness of the image by itself: a young man and a young woman, handsome and beautiful, lingering in the warm July sun beside a calm water, amid the sounds of bees and warblers. How absolutely sweet might Nell think Asher Willum’s attentions, and how absolutely undeserving Asher was.
Word also floated about that Asher was still keeping time with at least two other girls in Brownfield, and there were days when Nell was seen without him, looking lonely. She said very little the few times that she and Daniel saw each other, and Daniel could not bring himself to speak to her about anything more profound than the weather.
It amazed everyone that Ian Linnett had not thrown his granddaughter out of the house, but when Daniel visited one Saturday, he found the place silent and sad. Aunt Dora had left to stay with relatives in Rockport, and the old man himself looked like a man furious, who yet is unable to vent that fury. Daniel had never seen such bitterness. There was very little said between them, and Daniel did not stay long.
Summer came to an end, and Asher Willum disappeared from public view.
For days Nell was sighted along the paths and roads, wandering listlessly on her own. Daniel himself saw her walk past his house, on the outskirts of town, with Jeram. Some wondered, not silently, if something “had happened” to Asher, which euphemism was pointed toward old man Linnett himself, but Asher was spotted some towns away by a drummer who knew the parties in question, and it was conjectured that he had tired of Nell and cast her aside.
The leaves began to turn, and weeks went by; Asher seemed to have quit the area entirely. Daniel began to hope that some lessons had been learned and that if Nell were to visit relatives herself, she might start over. When he found her at home one evening, and while her grand father occupied the other end of the house in granitic silence, she cried the entire time Daniel talked with her, otherwise revealing nothing of herself, of her relationship with Asher Willum, or her plans.
A week later, during the early days of a cold November, Nell left home, and Daniel heard that she was living at the Willums’ place. a few days later he barged into the old man presence to ask if it were true that Nell had married Jeram Willum and that Ian himself had signed the papers of consent.
“I beg your pardon,” said the old man, without looking at Daniel, “if I have offended you with my presumption.”
27. The Span Between Trains
Daniel Plainway was not sure what he should do, once Charlotte Burnbrake inadvertently seated herself across the aisle from him. While he suspected, after what had happened at the City Hotel barely an hour before, that his presence might be a source of embarrassment to her, it seemed that by removing himself to another car, he would appear to suggest she had reason to be ashamed.
Charlotte was not unaware of his quandary and true to human convolution felt a sympathetic discomfort for him on top of her own. They were doing their best to appear interested in whatever was before them, Daniel scanning (without reading) the sentences in a copy of Silas Marner, Charlotte considering a piece of paper (consisting of a list of errands she had written for herself several months ago) that she had taken from her purse.
It did seem that this might be the last train out of Portland before the end of the storm, and there were few people on it; as if persecuted by the Imp of Perverse, Daniel and Charlotte found themselves nearly alone in the car as they pulled out of the station. The car shivered with a sudden gust of wind; the station and the surrounding yard disappeared behind a white blind, but Charlotte was so concerned about the awkward circumstances that she had hardly room in her mind to worry about the inclemency without.
She felt deadened by the events of the past two hours and by her inability to rise to the present challenge; then it occurred to her to consider what Pacif a Means would do. She looked out her window at the white squall, took some deep breaths, and, before she knew what she was about, said, “It was agreed between Pacif a and myself that we were fortunate in your arrival this afternoon.” She said this loud enough but said it while still looking out the window. After a moment she turned and gave Mr. Plainway as bland and as brave an expression as she could muster.
“You are kind to say so,” he replied, still staring at his book, “but another person would have been of more assistance than I.” Quite by accident he mimicked her movement by taking off his half spectacles, once he had said this, and looking at her.
Charlotte was struck by something that had not occurred to her till that moment, her voice revealing the process of her thought. “I am not sure that is true, Mr. Plainway. You understood, I think, however instinctively, that a steady presence was required rather than active assistance. Another less circumspect man would have said more and made matters worse.”
Every ounce of compliment, stated or implied in these words, had its
effect on Daniel, and he was moved to blush. He realized then that she was smiling and (not for the first time) that she was beautiful.
She in turn surprised herself by experiencing an almost puckish delight in making him redden.
The conductor came through the car, punching tickets. “There is a chance that the rails will be closed between here and Hallowell,” he said when he saw their destination. They simply nodded in reply, and he looked from one to the other of them, clearly wondering what they were doing on opposite sides of the aisle. When he was gone, Daniel tried to think of what to say next.
Again Charlotte found her voice. “Do you believe, Mr. Plainway,” she said, “that some people are, by nature and their very being, unhappy?”
“I have known folk who have suffered terrible misfortune,” he ventured to say, after some thought, “who yet knew some measure of content, who were perhaps grateful for small blessings, and others who might be embarrassed by their riches, worldly and otherwise, and who rarely smiled.”
“My cousin, then, is one of these,” she said, meaning the latter.
“Mr. Noble?”
She nodded.
“A stone thrown in the lake.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It is an Indian proverb. ‘Each is a stone thrown in the lake.’ The lake is life, and everything we do or say causes a ripple. The Abenaki would say that a person might cause good ripples or bad. I represented an Indian in a land dispute, and it was his own brother that brought his interests down. No one was entirely happy with the outcome of the case, but my client was philosophical. When I remarked on the damage his brother had done, he only said,’A stone in the lake.’ It was not meant, I think, as a direct criticism but only as a general statement about us all.”
“It was perhaps a warning,” said Charlotte, who liked the ambiguous nature of the proverb, “a reminder to himself.”
“That is it exactly, I think.”
“Roger and I were very close when we were children,” said the woman. She looked down at the aisle between them now, as if she were speaking to herself. “He is three years younger than I, but he always carried himself things. There was something foolish and romantic in me that was flattered like an older child and was precocious in his understanding…of certain by his attention, and I was only seventeen when he cajoled from me a promise of faithfulness to him. I thought it was all simply a chapter in one of the books I read with such passion. Cousins often fall in love in books.”
It would have taken more time than their trip allowed to explain all that had happened between Roger Noble and her, to explain the physical beauty of his youth, the rugged athleticism matched with his curly blond hair and almost girlish handsomeness. He had been precocious, and she had allowed him to kiss her behind his father’s garden wall at the house in Cape Elizabeth-first chastely, then with more passion, till finally he had wrested from her such an indiscreet promise.
She had hardly thought of him when her family was not visiting his or when she was not reading one of his barely restrained letters, and in retrospect she felt a terrible guilt for this. To her it had been a game played with a cousin seen three or four times in a year.
One night, as she neared her eighteenth birthday, she walked again (and as it happened, for the last time) in her uncle’s garden with Roger. The game had begun to pale for her by then; she was more aware and even a little fearful of his single-minded passion; she was more sensible to his temper, his petulance to everyone but herself, and her pleasure in his company had withered slightly as she considered how they had deceived their families. Yet as they strolled beside the moonlit roses and as he held her hand, a culpable excitement reawakened within her.
In a shadowed nook of the garden they stopped, and she had willingly lifted her face to his. The warm night, the scent of roses, the salt breeze from off the cape were like rhymes in a soft sonnet. She put her hands in his curly hair; she felt the weight of him press her shoulders against the brick of the garden wall. She could still remember every sensation, the thrill and the absolute fear, all these years later.
Roger had not been content with promises and stolen kisses behind their parents’ backs but had pressed on to other familiarities, and here her better judgment had risen up, and she had pushed him away.
A gust of wind drove snow with the sound of scattered sand against the side of the train. The entire affair, from childish sweetness to mature reflection, had traveled and occupied her thoughts for the span of about ten seconds.
Daniel only surmised the details of her story but felt as awkward as he would have had she told him everything. During this minor lapse in the conversation he wished he could think of something to say. It seemed incredible that her cousin could have been persecuting her for all these years, yet he considered her beauty and what he thought he understood of her nature and remembered what he knew of men like Roger Noble. He decided that it was time to change the subject.
“Your uncle has business in Hallowell?” he asked, not realizing that this was as close to not changing the subject as he could have gotten.
She looked almost startled, for it had been her bachelor uncle, Ezra Burnbrake, who had been sitting in the darkened garden, not ten yards self struggling with Roger, and Uncle Ezra in his prime who had raised his away, and Uncle Ezra who had come running when Charlotte found herwalking stick and thrashed his fifteen-year-old nephew to within an inch of his life.
“It was the last time we ever came to Cape Elizabeth,” she said aloud. Then she said, “I am sorry.”
“Not at all.”
“What do you do, Mr. Plain way?” she asked, falling back upon a lifetime of polite conversation.
“I’m a lawyer,” he said simply. “I live in Hiram.”
“And do you have family there?”
“A sister. The town is like family, you know.” He had been so absorbed by this lovely woman and her melancholy state that he had, for the first time in several days, momentarily forgotten the sad tale of the Linnetts and the plight of the little boy named Bird. Mentioning family brought them back again.
Charlotte caught the flash of this remembrance in his eyes and said, “I hope there isn’t bad news for the Moosepath League,” and she could not help smiling when she pronounced the name of the club. “In the short time I knew them I liked them very much. And they have high regard for their chairman, it seems,” she added with continued good humor.
“I’ve never met the man, but he certainly leaves an impression wherever he goes,” said Daniel. “No, I hope I have good news for them, Miss Burnbrake.”
There was a reservation in his words that caused her a moment of sympathetic apprehension. “I hope so then,” she said.
Some alliance of spent emotion and the rhythmic shiver of the train conquered Charlotte Burnbrake, and she drifted to sleep, quite unintentionally, while they talked about weather and travel and anything that did not directly touch upon whatever truly concerned them.
Daniel returned to his book and was able to concentrate, after some effort, upon the sorrows and joys of the old miser. He occasionally looked across the aisle at her, taking advantage of her sleeping to view her pretty features and feeling a little dubious about it.
The first and only warning of something wrong was when, three or four miles out of Richmond, there came a sudden blast of steam and the squeal of braking wheels upon the rails. The initial tug toward the front of the train frightened Charlotte awake. Daniel gripped the back of his own seat with one arm and poised himself as best he could against the inertial force while readying himself to catch Miss Burnbrake if the car should lurch in another direction.
Someone at the other end of the car let out a frightened cry. Past Charlotte, through the windows, Daniel had the glimpse of a man with a red lantern hurrying away from the tracks. The brakes had taken on a scream of their own. The train was slowing. Daniel held his breath, his eyes wide, his heart pounding. They seemed to be crawling, but the great mass of the en
gine and its several cars continued to push them, and when they were hardly moving at all, there was a sudden jolt.
For an awful moment, the car (and presumably the rest of the train) leaned, as if it were going to tip over altogether. Charlotte reached across the aisle and took hold of Daniel’s hand; they froze in apprehension.
With a shudder the train settled back onto the tracks, and they were stopped. Great gouts of steam sped past their windows, roiling the falling snow in hectic spirals. Shouts came from outside, and someone shouted out a prayerful thank-you.
“Are you all right?” asked Daniel.
“A little shaken,” Charlotte admitted, and realizing that she still had hold of his hand, she let him go.
This contact had a profound effect on Daniel, but he only said, “I’ll go see what has happened,” and hurried down the aisle.
The conductor appeared at the end of the car, all unhurried business, and inquired if everyone was safe.
“Yes, thank you,” said Charlotte, for herself.
“What is it?” asked Daniel, who stood at the door.
“The train ahead of us is off the track.”
“We didn’t hit anything?” offered Daniel.
“No, but the other train kicked the rails out when the caboose tipped over, and our engine was almost stopped when it wheeled off the break. The other train knocked down the lines between here and Richmond, so a wire wasn’t able to get through.”
“Could it have been the train my uncle was on?” wondered Charlotte before considering the time elapsed since Ezra Burnbrake and his party left Portland.
“I think there have been several trains since this morning,” assured Daniel. He was half out the door by now, and he pulled his collar about his neck as he clomped down the steps. He had not thought to take his hat or coat, and the driving snow stung his face. Up ahead there were lights and the shadows of men in the snow. a man with a lantern stopped by the next car to crane his head and answer a question from an opened window. With the storm, evening came early, and the lamp of day turned down with almost visible speed; even as he watched, the lanterns up ahead burned more fiercely, and a grove of trees nearby was lost against the approach of night.
