Daniel Plainway - Or The Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League Page 13

  “We have a letter,” said Eagleton, ever helpful.

  “A letter?” said the woman. She held out her hand for the missive. “I suppose Roger has found some reason why he can’t escort Uncle Ezra to Hallowell!”

  “I have not been apprised of its contents,” said Ephram meekly. He placed the letter in the woman’s hand.

  “You can tell Roger that he will not find me unguarded or alone! I shall take Uncle myself if needs be!” The woman never for a moment looked angry, but only deeply hurt. The stricken expressions of those before her, however, reminded her that this outburst was not in keeping with so public a venue, and she glanced about the room, color rising in her face.

  Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump were greatly distressed; people were watching them suspiciously, as if they were persecuting this woman. One man, at least, looked ready to come over and see what was wrong.

  Miss Burnbrake snapped the letter from its envelope and applied herself to it. Their mission accomplished (however unpleasantly) the members of the club wondered, in collective silence, if they should be moving on to other things, primarily any other things that would take them some distance from the present scene.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Miss Burnbrake. Her expression softened to wonder as she perused Mister Walton’s pleasant hand. When she reached the bottom of the note, she considered the crabbed signature from two or three angles before looking up. “I do thoroughly beg your pardon,” she said.

  The three men made sounds prefatory to remarks denying any need for an apology.

  “This is from Mr. Tempest?” she said.

  “I believe that is his name,” said Ephram.

  “Adam Tempest?”

  “I am embarrassed to say…” began Ephram when he had, by way of wide eyes and raised eyebrows, entreated his friends in vain for information on this count. “I am sorry to say that we never learned his Christian name.”

  “We didn’t meet him, actually,” explained Ephram. “It was our chairman.”

  “Wonderful fellow!” exclaimed Thump.

  “Oh, yes, marvelous,” agreed Ephram.

  “Our chairman!” declared Eagleton, and it was difficult to say if he were clarifying whom they were speaking of or simply invoking the man as a sort of salute.

  “It has fallen to us,” explained Ephram, “by way of our chairman, to deliver a letter from Mr. Tempest to Mr. Burnbrake, who I gather is your uncle.”

  “Ezra Burnbrake,” she said to avoid any confusion.

  “Ezra Burnbrake,” said the three men all at once.

  “Mr. Tempest dictated the letter to Mister Walton,” said Eagleton, as if this were a happy thought, “as you will see; the signature and the body of the note will not be in the same hand.”

  The woman read the letter again, and the three men did everything but watch her. Ephram peered at the fire across the room, Eagleton looked up at the ceiling, and Thump considered the carpet immediately below him. (There was an unusual pattern in the carpet in which Thump thought he could see a series of Indian elephants in porkpie hats.)

  “I don’t understand all of this,” she said when she had perused the letter again.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Ephram.

  “Please do excuse us,” said Eagleton. It sounded like the statement before leaving. “Best regards from the Moosepath League.”

  “The Moosepath League?” she said. There was something disarming in the name itself.

  “Seventeen,” said Thump (he had been counting the elephants).

  “A errand for our chairman,” Eagleton was saying. He and Ephram waved their hats before them as they backed away; they bowed several times and all out of pace with one another. (Thump was still captivated by the chapeaued pachyderms.)

  “Oh, my!” she said. “What have I done? I beg your forgiveness for my abrupt behavior.”

  “Good heavens!” said Ephram. “Never abrupt. Would you say, Eagleton?”

  “Certainly not abrupt,” said Eagleton. “Rather we were abrupt, if anyone, wouldn’t you say, Thump?”

  “Indian elephants are the ones with smallish ears, aren’t they?” asked Thump, and when he realized that this was not the expected response, he added, “I beg your pardon?” a smile had brightened Miss Burnbrake’s already pretty face, and Thump struggled, in its light, to recall what had been discussed in his absence.

  “We were saying,” said Eagleton helpfully, “that Miss Burnbrake was never abrupt.”

  “Certainly not,” he insisted.

  “We were perhaps abrupt in our presentation of the letter,” thought Ephram aloud.

  “Giving you no reason to be otherwise, I fear,” added Eagleton.

  “Not that you were abrupt,” assured Ephram.

  “Oh, dear, no!” said Eagleton.

  “You are too kind,” she said, for it was clear to her now that they were just that. Her smile remained soft, but its effect was profound. She indicated the letter, saying, “It is clearly out of your way and a favor for strangers all the way around.”

  Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump found themselves blushing.

  “In fact,” she continued, “if you will indulge me a little more, I would ask you to come up to our rooms and meet my uncle.”

  Mr. Ezra Burnbrake looked fragile and ancient when he lifted himself from his chair; but his grip was firm, and his eyes had a certain clarity when he considered each of their faces. The old man’s breathing came in short, shallow intervals; his head shook slightly upon his thin neck. He was surprised that his niece had returned with these three strangers but was the gracious host and asked them to sit by the fire.

  Miss Burnbrake, as it turned out, was pleased to share such congenial company with her uncle, and she insisted that the members of the club have coffee or tea with them, whereupon she called down on the apartment telephone for service.

  Mr. Burnbrake read the note from Adam Tempest with little expression, and when he finished, he nodded and peered at the signature. “And you wrote this for him?” asked the old man, looking from one to the other of them.

  “Our chairman, actually,” informed Ephram. “Mister Walton.”

  “They are from the Moosepath League, Uncle,”said Miss Burnbrake, who could not pronounce this without the hint of a smile.

  “Are they?” said the elderly fellow. He had never heard of the club but seemed to think it sounded impressive. He returned to the letter in his hand, however, and said a little sadly, “It is all a little mysterious, isn’t it? And you have done Mr. Tempest a kindness, Charlotte,” he added.

  “He is right in that I don’t recall,” said Miss Burnbrake. She sat in a chair opposite her uncle and their guests. The old man passed her the note, and she considered it again.

  “I am not surprised,” he said. “Those quickest to kindness are also quickest to forget when they are kind.”

  Their guests considered Miss Bumbrake’s expression, her almost serene features, and they could believe that these words applied to her quite accurately.

  “But our trip seems unnecessary now,” said the niece.

  “Do you think?” replied her uncle.

  “I think that Mr. Tempest has backed out of his agreement,” she said, stating that which appeared pretty obvious.

  “I think that I should like to know why.”

  “Do you think Mr. Tollback will be able to tell you?”

  “And what about these ‘others unnamed who will take up’ Mr. Tempest’s ‘intended mission’?”

  “It does make one curious,” she admitted.

  “I shall go to see Mr. Tollback, and Roger will go with me,” stated Mr. Burn brake. “It was very kind of you to bring this to us,” he said to the Moosepathians.

  Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump mumbled their embarrassment in chorus.

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t very gracious to these gentlemen when I first met them,” admitted the niece. This admission to her uncle was a renewed form of apology, and the three friends continued to look abashed.r />
  “Please forgive Charlotte if her reception was other than congenial,” said the older man. “She and I are half expecting some communication from her cousin and my nephew Roger Noble, which by its nature must have been troublesome.”

  Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump knew about troublesome cousins, since they had each recently read The Misery of Millicent Babbington by their favorite writer, Mrs. Rudolpha Limington Harold. (“Our fathers might share parentage,” declared Miss Babbington, “but there is that which is unnatural about you, Dirk, like the oak limb, raised in winter and necessarily withered!” Eagleton shuddered a little even now as he recalled this passage and the dire events that followed.)

  “I have some errands in Hallowell,” continued the old man, “and while Charlotte visits with friends, my nephew Roger Noble is to escort me to my appointments. I am an old man, but I could certainly make my way by myself.” He said this with a meaningful glance at Charlotte. “Conscripting Roger’s company was the only way with which I was able to convince my dear niece to leave off the self-imposed task of watching after her ancient uncle and to take some pleasure and leisure here, where she spent much of her childhood.”

  “I wish you gentlemen could talk Uncle Ezra into allowing me to take him instead.”

  “Nonsense!” said the old man.

  “Roger’s reliability is in question,” she added.

  The old man considered his gnarled hands, which lay folded in his lap. “Unfortunately Roger is something of a dark sheep-”

  The withered limb of the oak! thought Eagleton.

  “-and a trial for his cousin.”

  “Uncle,” said Charlotte Burnbrake, who thought too much had been said already.

  The three friends consulted wordlessly with one another; then Eagleton straightened in his seat before saying, “We would be greatly honored, Mr. Burnbrake, if you would allow us to join your nephew in escorting you.”

  “No, no, no,” said the old man.

  Miss Burnbrake was shaking her head. “It is marvelous of you, but we simply couldn’t, Mr. Eagleton, and I’m sorry that we have burdened you with any of our problems.”

  The members of the club were convinced they had stumbled upon a matter of urgency and distress and were just as convinced (more convinced probably) of what Mister Walton would have done in their place.

  Thump stood to his less than moderate height, said, “Ahem!” and proceeded with the following, after an awkward silence. “Miss Burnbrake,” he said (and she could not know how difficult it was for him to address her so directly), “as you are concerned for your uncle’s well-being, you must allow us to accompany him.” Then he turned to the elderly man. “Mr. Burnbrake, as you surely want to mitigate your niece’s worry, you must do the same.”

  It was positively Waltonian!

  “Good heavens, Thump!” said Ephram.

  “How marvelous!” declared Eagleton.

  Thump had captured the essence of the chairman himself in that. single inspired moment: the sharpness of mind, the forthright kindness, the insistence upon doing the right thing! Why, he even resembled the chairman at that moment! Except (as Eagleton later pointed out) for his full head of hair, his magnificent beard, and his height-not to mention the lack of spectacles. Thump was barrel-chested as well (it was conceded later on), whereas Mister Walton had the advantage of being portly.

  But the very sight inspired Thump’s friends.

  “I can’t tell you,” insisted Eagleton to the old man and his niece, “how pleased we will be to visit Hallowell, where our chairman has met several people and where we might view the vicinity of some of his recent adventures.”

  “Of course,” added Ephram, “we will make our own way, linger on the bench”-the Moosepathians had begun to pick up some baseball parlance since attending several games with Mister Walton-“and be there as needed.”

  “We will take the train,” said Eagleton, who stood now with Thump, “and you may consider us a separate yet interested party.”

  Ephram stood, then, and said, “When do we leave?”

  Uncle and niece looked up from their seats in astonishment. More than considering themselves or each other, the Bumbrakes could not bear to disappoint such generous intentions.

  “Well,” said Ezra Burnbrake with a chuckle, “it seems you have no reason to worry at all, my dear.” He looked to the men apologetically. “I was planning to leave tomorrow,” he said.

  “Snow beginning by morning,” said Eagleton. “Expected moderate to large accumulations. Wind in the northwest.”

  “High tide at twelve minutes to six,” said Thump.

  “It’s twenty-three minutes before the hour of three,” said Ephram.

  “He’s not to suppose that he has been relieved of his duty,” said Charlotte after the members of the Moosepath League had bowed their way out. She was standing at a window with the curtain pulled aside so that she might watch them leave the hotel, and she was a little astonished, now that they were gone, that three strangers had stepped into their apartment and garnered such complete trust.

  “He’s not relieved of anything,” answered her uncle. “The important business is to keep him well away from you.” The old man felt tired, though he thought he should rise from his chair and tend the fire. “It has been a strange affair from the moment Mr. Tempest first wrote,” he mumbled. “But I shall go with Roger as planned; only now there will be company along the way to make the travel pleasant and someone to call upon for a day or two if Roger proves difficult.”

  “I’m very glad,” she said. She hadn’t seen the three men leave yet but gave a start when she saw the figure of her cousin Roger Noble gazing up at her from the other side of the street. She dropped the curtain and walked away from the window without saying anything to her uncle.

  15. The Reason Why

  “The connection came to us in a circuitous manner,” began Frederick when they had rails moving beneath them again. Counting the train they had arrived on, they had missed two departures, and the third arrived only after some delay. “It started with the simple curiosity of a student at Harvard who passed the home of the Broumnage Club five days a week on his way to his classes and one day a week on his way to church. He told a teacher last spring of a peculiar conversation he had with a member of this society. It seems he chanced to meet the man who was coming down the steps of the Broumnage Club.

  “The student tipped his hat to the fellow, wished him good morning, then inquired of the man the origin of the society’s unusual name.

  “‘It is the name of our founder,’said the man, but there was something off-put in his manner, as if he had been surprised by the question and even a little angered by it. ‘And what is your name?’ asked the man, as one might ask a miscreant caught at his crime.”

  “The question no one thought to ask our pickpockets,” said Isabelle.

  Frederick gave his wife a quick glance. “The student,” he continued, “told the man who he was, and the fellow turned on his heel and walked off. The student tipped his hat to the man’s back, said good day, and hurried off to school. When he turned a corner and glanced back, he saw the man standing some distance down the sidewalk, watching him.

  “The teacher, who is a fellow seminarian of mine, would have thought little of the incident if the student hadn’t been so taken by it. a day or so later he asked the young man if there was anything to add to the tale, and the student repeated his interest in the name of the club since he had been unable to find the name of Broumnage in any directory or history at the college library. He also thought that he had been followed on his way home the previous evening.”

  The car they occupied was less crowded than the previous one, and they had deliberately found themselves the loneliest seats. Frederick Covington spoke carefully, though it was not natural to him (he was a preacher, after all) or to his strength of nerve to speak in hushed tones.

  “It was about this time that I was first disappointed and appalled at the vandalism of a
possible artifact in Londonderry, New Hampshire, and during my brief investigation of the business, I happened to hear of a group of men who had been staying in a nearby inn, the Broumnage Club. I knew nothing of the student’s experiences at this point and thought nothing of them, of course, besides noting their odd sobriquet.

  “At Harvard, however, the teacher began to ask around the college if anyone had ever heard, or knew anything, of the Broumnage Club. The name had tickled his fancy, and it occurred to him (which suggestion he made to his student) that the name might be an anagram. The student and some friends, it seems, took this notion to heart and spent a Friday night rearranging the letters of the name, and they were able to come up with only a single sensible combination.

  “Norumbega,” said Sundry Moss, who had given no indication that he was doing anything other than listening.

  Covington looked startled. “Mister Walton,” he said, “you did not tell us that you had a prodigy in your employ.”

  Sundry himself seemed surprised. “Am I right?”

  “I would have long since ceased to be surprised by Sundry’s powers,” said Mister Walton, “if he did not … continue to surprise me.”

  Sundry was embarrassed. The engine gave out a long whistle as they neared a crossing. Augusta fell behind them as they hugged the easter shore of the Kennebec.

  “Norumbega,” Mister Walton was saying. “It was where Bangor is now, wasn’t it?”

  “That has been generally accepted,” said Frederick. “But for years it was known only as the City of Gold and thought to exist somewhere in the interior of the continent. Many believed that it was connected also to the great Northwest Passage.”

  Even the legend of such a place is a great satisfaction to contemplate, and Mister Walton’s expression was filled with pleasurable wonder.

  “But there are those,” explained Frederick, “who still insist that such a place as the City of Gold, the true Norumbega, existed and that it lies within the confines of some great forest or beneath the rubble of centuries.”