by Van Reid
Sundry’s recent experience still troubled him, however, and he was conscious of their voices as they must sound in nearby (and presumably empty) rooms. He had the notion that the house itself must be alert to their negligent words and that quiet presences in dark corners must wonder who had roused them from dreams of past evenings and celebrations, echoes of which might answer the conversation at the table if the living but stopped to listen. Normally a gregarious fellow and also a hungry one, Sundry found neither the talk nor the meal making much of an impression upon him.
The wind had risen with the moon, and for Sundry this complicated matters; the house now spoke with a dozen voices, and he was conscious of every groan and creak.
Mister Walton was aware of his friend’s preoccupation and wondered that Sundry, who so willingly pounced upon an armed man back at Council Hill, would be unnerved by the quiet lullaby from a restless spirit. He himself was more concerned than frightened with a soul that had not found peace-if the entire affair had not simply been the wind in a flue.
The fire in the parlor was cheery and warm; Mrs. Cutler and her son went home, and the Moosepathians were of a camplike spirit, as if they were in the deep woods, picking the day’s game from their teeth and telling rough-hewn tales. Eagleton in fact was telling of his attempt to ride a rented bicycle and explaining how it was that he ended, feet up, in a flower seller’s cart.
“Being Eagleton,” assured Ephram, “he reimbursed the flower lady very handsomely.”
“I was distressed when I detected tears on her face,” said Eagleton.
“Though she sounded as if she were laughing,” added a still-puzzled Ephram.
“Some ladies react to difficult situations in this manner,” said Thump sagely. The memory was a confounding one. They had been dutiful in their attentions to the woman but were forced to quit their usual prognostications of the weather, time, and tide since these announcements seemed to excite her hysterics. Eagleton had returned the bicycle.
But the excitements of the day and their magnificent meal, not to mention the hypnotizing light of the fire and the warmth that it imparted to their sated forms, had its effect. Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump took turns, for half an hour or so, waking one another with the odd unexpected snore, till Mister Walton, himself drowsy, suggested that they call it a night.
Sundry banked the fire in the parlor while Daniel tended the kitchen stove and the dining room hearth. They were climbing the stairs when Daniel said to Sundry, “The house has a good many noises in the wind, but Mrs. Cutler says there was someone staying in the attic till she and her family showed up to start cleaning.”
“Do you think he would come back?”
“I think someone might come back.”
54. Parley’s Plan
Parley Willum wasn’t so drunk that he couldn’t keep an eye on his cousin Mathom. Mathom Beasely had taken an interest in the old horse collar that hung rotting from one of the trees in front of the house, and Parley was more than a little sure that Mathom intended to leave with it. What Parley did share with his cousin was an acquisitive and jealous nature, and though he had called upon Mathom and several other relatives to go with him to the Linnett house, he didn’t have to trust them in the meantime.
He watched Mathom from his shadowy eyes and his shadowy corner. George Beasely was deep in his cups and growing louder and fiercer with every draft, till one might think, listening to him, he killed bears with his bare hands. Parley’s boys-Asher was not among them-were allowed but a pint apiece, Parley growled at them when they came back for more.
But Parley Willum himself had drunk enough to take the edge off his fear. He’d been up to the Linnett place once since Jeram died, with two of his boys and his middle girl, and what they had seen through the window, in the night, while the house was empty, he didn’t like to think about.
The place was empty then, he told himself. It’ll be lit up when the lawyer comes back with the boy.
Word had spread that Plainway had found Parley’s grandson, Asher’s son, and that the lawyer had hired the Cutler people to ready the house for a homecoming. Parley was convinced that the boy would be coming and that Plainway intended to set himself up as the kid’s guardian, in which position he would be able to get his hands on the Linnett fortune, which everyone knew lay buried somewhere on the grounds or stashed in a secret drawer or cubby.
But Plainway wouldn’t get so far without the boy, who was Parley’s grandson. Possession was eleven points of the law, and once he had the boy in hand Parley would have a means of haggling.
“I don’t know why that boy of yours isn’t here,” said Parley’s brother Moses.
“What boy?” said Parley, glowering. For some reason Jeram’s face had come to mind, and this nettled him.
“The young rip that got the brat to start with, who do you think?”
Asher was not around; they hadn’t seen him in fact for a year and a half, and there were rumors that he had fled the county to get away from a man whose wife he’d insulted over in Steep Falls and who had offered to give Asher a fish-eye view of the village namesake. Parley didn’t care to have his son involved with this business; there would be enough hands in the pie when the kid was taken, and certainly he didn’t care to have someone who had more claim than he.
“Asher’s done his part,” said Mathom crudely and with enough emphasis to raise a chortle from several others among the men who sat about the table. Parley wished they wouldn’t drink so much as he raised his mug to his lips.
“I might know a man who’d give something for that horse collar you’ve got hanging out there,” said Mathom.
Parley was surprised; he had not been expecting Mathom to raise the subject. “I just bet you do,” he said into the bottom of his mug.
“I’d split what I got, if you were to let me take it over to him. Fellow over at Kezar Falls.”
Parley figured he’d never see a penny out of it. “They’ve got horse collars over Kezar Falls, I expect,” was all he said.
“It’s a mortification seeing it rot out there on a tree limb,” said Mathom, and he was going to say more when Parley stood up, bad rum like fire in his brain.
“It’ll rot too, for all you’ll get your hands on it!” he shouted.
Berne Beasely, who was almost asleep, fell backward in his chair. George and Mathom stood, defensive and tense with the hint of violence in the air.
Mathom shouted back at Parley, calling him a fool and a liar and some things less polite, and Parley wondered why he didn’t break his mug when he slammed it on the table.
Elizabeth Willum threw the curtain aside from the bedroom behind, and two of the younger children poked their heads down the open trap above the kitchen. Parley began to recite a litany of debts that Mathom owed him and threw in several items that had disappeared on previous occasions of Mathom’s visiting, most of which Parley had acquired by other than usual means. Mathom began to shout back and wave his fists above the table.
Then the front door was thrown open, and Morrel Willum barged in, shouting something that couldn’t be heard until the general din receded.
“He’s back,” said Morrel, who was Parley’s boy and thirteen. “They’ve lit the place up like a barn dance.”
The disagreement between Parley and Mathom was immediately laid aside, disagreements being neither rare nor hard to come by in that household.
“Who’s they?” said Parley.
“He had four or five fellows with him.”
“How about the boy?”
“I didn’t see him exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“The place was pretty dark when the first sleigh came, and I couldn’t make out too much, even with the moon out.”
“He’s there,” said Parley. He went to the fireplace and took the rifle down from its place above the mantel.
The other men had guns in the comers or propped beside the table, and they began to collect these.
“We’ll head
up and look the place over,” said Parley. “We might even get the boy before they know it, but we won’t flinch at touching someone’s nose with the barrel of a gun if it comes to that.”
There was an odd mixture of fear and bravado apparent in the room. Elizabeth Willum turned her back on the kitchen and let the curtain fall as she retreated to her room. a third face had appeared in the open trap. The men were shouldering themselves into coats and pulling hats over their ears. Mathom banged Morrel on the back.
“It was cold, waiting out there,” admitted the boy. He looked to the table hopefully, but there were no scraps left behind, not even a comer waiting in his father’s mug.
The door was opened again, and the night rushed in as they blustered and bounded down the steps. Morrel went with them. Dogs barked outside. The door slammed shut. “I saw a man outside the house,” Morrel was saying.
55. Expected Sentries Sleep
The kitchen adjunct to the Linnett house was more properly termed a wing than an ell, and large enough to accommodate four small rooms in the second story. The very far right room, when one was coming from the front of the house, was the smallest, some space taken up to house the stairway that ran from the pantry to the attic. The remaining three rooms had been furnished for guests, and though they were large enough for only a bed, a commode, and a chair, they were cozy little chambers, each with its own coal grate.
The fire in his room gave enough light for Daniel’s purposes, and he blew out his lamp. He had felt in an odd humor ever since arriving tonight, ever since Sundry had greeted them with a shout and the assertion that he had heard singing in Nell’s room. Daniel was not a credulous man when it came to portents and haunts; but as a true Yankee he was loath to throw anything out, and the charge to “take it with a grain of salt” counseled one to be skeptical, not dismissive-a distinction that other generations might fail to recognize.
But it was the night of the winter solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere was veered into the colder reaches of space and the sun remained hidden from the windows of the Linnett house longer than any other night of the year.
Daniel had never thought very much about this annual darkness, the silent cold hinge by which the door to summer would slowly open once again. Ian Linnett may have thought of it, for the old man had something of the Old World in him. Ian had marked the day with the evergreen from the forest and helped drive back the long night with the scores of candles upon his tree. Other visitors from the woods protected the house. The clinging ivy marked devotion to God, and the sharp leaves of the holly drove away witches and evil spirits. Many people, decorating their homes, did not know that they were creating a fortress against the influences of winter’s long dark night.
Daniel wrapped the comforter from the bed around him and sat in the chair by the door. Shadows waxed and waned in time with the dull glow from the coals. He wondered that he wasn’t more apprehensive, waiting alone in the near dark for some sign of those who had passed on, but strangely enough the thought of Charlotte Bumbrake eased his heart. What would she think to know that he sat in the length of that night thinking and dreaming of her? As he watched and contemplated the middle distances of his recent memory, he fell asleep as easily as a boat, unguided, might drift upon the tide.
He did indeed dream, but his dreams were shadowy without darkness, slow and filled with possibility rather than incident, and something might have moved through the room while he slept, willing to say good-bye but for a single bit of tidings.
Mister Walton, who led the way upstairs, found himself roused somewhat by the time he was in his nightshirt and snuggled beneath the crisp sheets, so he sat up in bed and turned up his lamp, by which light he found his place in Nicholas Nickleby, which he was rereading. Nicholas and Smike had just left the acting troupe of Mr. Crummles and (Mister Walton knew) were on the cusp of meeting the Cheeryble brothers. Here were the books’ heartiest and merriest moments, and he threw himself into it with great relish, chuckling at the good-natured badinage between the kindhearted Cheerybles.
The wind blew a little bit, rocking the windows in their sashes and piping softly at the eaves. He got up once to throw a coal or two upon the fire and warmed his toes while he stood there reading.
The wind came around to the northwest, and the sound in the eaves changed. Mister Walton lifted his head from his book and his elbow from the mantel. Was that what Sundry heard? he wondered. He listened but was not convinced. Sundry knew a tune when he heard one.
It was then that Mister Walton had a strange sensation that he was not alone in the room. He stood by the fire with the book open in his hands, looking from corner to darkened corner, half believing that some shadow in the room was not moving with the others. He felt a thrill up his arms and at the nape of his neck, but it was not entirely unpleasant.
For long minutes Mister Walton waited, listening to the wind and the thin occasional crackle of new coal on red embers and watching the shifting silhouettes of the furnishings and himself. Then it was gone, as if some curiosity not tethered to any physical thing had briefly visited him and, finding itself unsatisfied, left with as little warning or evidence as it had come.
Mister Walton returned to his bed then, pulled up the covers, and found it difficult to return to the legal offices of Charles and Edwin Cheeryble. The conceit that he had been attended fleetingly by something feminine led his thoughts to Phileda McCannon and the hapless manner in which he had conducted his friendship with her. It was difficult to think of Phileda, he being an optimistic soul, without warm feelings in close escort, and he was the second in that wing of the house to close his eyes and dwindle to sleep.
From his pillow Sundry Moss regarded the soft glow of the coal fire in his room upon the ceiling and listened to the sounds of the house around him: the song in the eaves, the breath in the chimney, the creaks and snaps of a seasoned dwelling in the dark and the cold.
He remained doubtful about the nature of what he heard earlier that evening but was hoping to perceive a comparable note that he might recognize and identify. He started out of a doze and sat up, expecting someone to be watching him from the foot of the bed. The face that entered his imagination, however, was not that of Nell Linnert (or her portrait) but of the young woman, Priscilla Morning side, whom he had met the previous summer and whose face had often accompanied him into sleep.
A little comforted by this separate apparition, he settled back onto his pillow. The strangeness of his present circumstances demanded his attention, however, and he fell to contemplating that voice again. He was not aware of drowsing, and contrarily the sounds of quiet creeping in the attic touched him like the unconnected elements of a dream.
56. A Solstice Carol
In the ivory light of the westering moon (and in that same light reflected from the snowy grounds) the Linnett house paled against the dark evergreens, a white face peering from a dark hood. The surrounding fields gleamed like silver, and perhaps only a fox cast a moving shadow down by Clemons Pond.
The house itself was strangely disturbed, shamming slumber.
I their separate rooms Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump drifted, but there was in the atmosphere the vague sensation of movement, and Thump in particular had the impression of being on a boat with water moving all about him.
Ephram listened to the wind rise.
Eagleton drowsed, the evening’s grand meal warming him like an extra comforter. He thought of his mother and Christmas Eve. He’d had a pleasant, tranquil childhood that did not at all hint at the marvelous adventures he would experience as a member of the Moosepath League. He thought his sweet mother would have approved, however, though she would have been concerned that he dressed warmly. He did not remember his father very well; but there had been a host of uncles and aunts, and he had been provided for, even doted upon.
His mother had been a graceful blond woman, with elegant, long hands that ran across the keys of the piano like laughter. Her pale, beautiful face glowed in the light from th
e hall when she kissed him good night. Even when he was perhaps too old for such a treat, she would sometimes hum a lullaby at the edge of his bed and he would pretend to drift to sleep. He heard it now.
“Yes,” said Eagleton, “I always pretended to sleep, so that I would hear the song, but then I really would fall asleep and-”
He awoke with something heavy on his heart. He had fallen asleep. He had always fallen asleep before she finished, and he had never felt the weight of her leave the side of his bed, or heard her soft footsteps reach the hall, or seen her backward glance as she closed the door.
There was something at his window. Eagleton raised himself up on his elbows and listened. He thought it must be the wind, but then it came again, like a cat pawing at a threshold. He was a little afraid but confusedly thought that his mother was just in the next room, and with this to embolden him, he swung himself out of bed and approached the curtains. The sound came again, more insistent than before.
He peeled the curtain back, and the cold air trapped against the glass touched him like a breath. He could not see the moon, but its light upon the snow made a great shadow of the owl sitting in the tree beside the window. The bird turned its head and blinked at him, startling him; then it flexed its wings in such a way that they brushed the cold panes. Eagleton dropped the curtain, and the room returned to near darkness, in which compass he was aware of someone singing softly.
He opened the door to put his head into the hall. The sound was a little louder. “Thump?” he said, in such a whisper that no one who wasn’t standing beside him could have heard it. (Since no one was standing beside him, the thought of someone’s hearing him filled him with a disquieting palpitation.) “Ephram?” he said in an even quieter tone; the delicate strain of melody was louder than his voice.
It was then he noticed that Ephram’s door, opposite his own, was open. Eagleton didn’t feel comfortable crossing the hall in his nightshirt, so he stumbled back into his room and pulled on his trousers and a pair of socks. He stopped in the midst of dressing one foot, one leg poised in the air, and listened for the song. It was like a voice on the wind, and now the wind was almost gone, and the voice with it. Good heavens.1 he thought. Ephram must have gotten up already to investigate! “Ever in the fore!” he whispered admiringly.
