Moss Farm Page 2

  “Good heavens! What a thing to say!”

  “Besides, Jack liked this dress.”

  Given time, Constance might have come up with a rejoinder to this statement but Actonia pressed on.

  “And he liked me in it,” she said with that odd, sly look that had charmed so many in its time and certainly had waylaid the burly, strapping Captain Jonathan Mint.

  There was a third statement that hovered in the air and Constance knew Actonia was capable of voicing it. She made a small noise as if her sister-in-law had said it. “Well,” she said, “you’re not going anywhere, I suppose,” and bustled down the hall toward the stairs.

  “Don’t be too sure,” said Actonia in a stage whisper before she closed the door.

  Constance heard her plainly but chose to ignore her, and yet she couldn’t quite keep from letting out another huffy exhalation, not unlike that of a steam locomotive gaining speed. Indeed, her fairly substantial self tilted away from the wall as she rounded the top of the front stairs the way an engine might an unbanked curve. She clumped the treads down to the front hall, which was broad, high-ceilinged, and a little chilly.

  Millard came out of the front parlor looking dark.

  “Millard, your sister!” said Constance.

  “Have you seen my newspaper, Constance?” he asked.

  “Actonia!” said Constance.

  “Yes, I know my sister’s name, dear,” he said. “Have you seen my newspaper? I thought it was on the table, there,” and he waved a finger at the round stand to one side of the broad door.

  “Millard! She is wearing coral!”

  Millard Seams closed his eyes and imagined what this newest outrage meant to his wife. He opened them again, looked at his wife, and thought, She really is a pretty woman! She was, in fact, a woman in the full-figure of her prime and twelve years younger than he, with a strong nose and handsome eyes and a great pile of black hair. But severity was aging her, he feared. “Coral,” he said. “That’s a bit of pink and a bit of orange, isn’t it?” He had guessed the problem but played the fool.

  “It’s not proper for a widow!”

  “But how long has Jack been dead?”

  “Three years, but still—”

  “We’re not Vikings, Constance. We don’t bury the bride with the chief.”

  “Millard! That’s just what she said!”

  “There you go, then! Lord knows that might be kinder than what we do to people these days.”

  “Millard!” She had his attention now. “What would you want me to do?”

  “Not hie thee to a nunnery, dear,” said Millard mildly. “You’re leaving for your sister’s in an hour. We’re not expecting company. What’s the harm?”

  “Where’s the harm, you say! She’s talking about . . . going somewhere again!”

  “Oh, that,” he grumbled. For weeks, now, dear, dotty Actonia had been talking about leaving without word like a runaway kid. At dinner one night, Millard had jokingly asked her if she were running off to the circus and she said she might. The troubling thing was that there was a degree of iron in her fey, wayward features when she said it. Millard had seen it many times before, sitting at their parents’ table when she had upset their father with all manner of nonsense—fairies in the garden, a ghost at the well, women’s rights. She had always been different from the rest of the Seams—like a beautiful, barely tamable colt. Only Jack Mint had caught the reins and to some degree—even three years after his death—he still had them.

  Actonia had always been out of step but her charm and beauty (which about half the people could see and be struck by) carried her till marriage to that force-of-nature Captain Mint had taken the burden. They’d been absolute lions of society when he was ashore and lions of society set the step rather than follow. Then it all had run aground. Jack and Actonia had been brought to financial ruin by a stew of bad weather and bad investment just months before he died, and now she was impounded as a fifth wheel in the humdrum household of her humdrum merchantman and financier of a brother in the somewhat staid town of Saco.

  “Millard?”

  “Have you seen my newspaper?” he said. “It was right over there, I’m sure.”

  “Doddery,” said Constance to the butler, who had just entered the front hall. “Have you seen Matilda?”

  “She may have been in the library, ma’am,” said the man.

  “Oh!” she said with more than a touch of the indignant and broke away from Millard to go in search of their seventeen-year-old daughter.

  “Thank you, Doddery,” said Millard. The butler’s appearance had been all the interruption required to switch Mrs. Seams onto another track.

  The butler’s long, glum features softened as he gave a slight bow.

  “Have you seen my newspaper?”

  “I haven’t, sir,” said the butler. “But I will seek it out. Sometimes Mrs. Umley is too enthusiastic when she tidies up,” he added. As Mr. Seams returned to the parlor, Doddery moved toward the servants’ quarters, where the head housekeeper might be found. It was while striding down the back hall that he met the daughter of the household. “Miss,” he said. “Mrs. Seams is looking for you.”

  Matilda appeared startled by Doddery. She stepped back against one wall and gave him more than ample room to pass, obviously concealing something behind her. A younger version of her mother without the severity, Matilda had not the guile to hide guilt. The butler, however, had made lack of personal curiosity a lifetime policy (and, he thought, a successful one). He continued on his way through the pantry to the kitchen, where something good was cooking.

  When he was gone, Matilda took a few steps toward the front of the house, then glancing up and down the hall, opened a small door to her right and, walking down three steps, entered the room beyond. She had a newspaper in her hand.

  The laundry closet was long and narrow and smelt of lye and linen. Bridget was stacking folded sheets and pillowcases on the shelves by a single dangling electric light at one end. She cast a side-long glance at Matilda. “Miss,” she said.

  “Oh, Bridget! Please call me Matilda.”

  “That’s not a custom I’d covet, Miss,” said Bridget, her inflection wavering a little with her brisk movement. “Let slip once in front of your mother and she’d have my ears.”

  Matilda made no direct reply to this. She waited for a moment, then walked down the length of the narrow room. “Do you have it?”

  “Yes,” said Bridget. She was the picture of youthful domesticity with her white-blonde hair wrapped in braids behind her head and her nose dusted with numerous freckles. She was tall and lithe and Matilda was ever-so-slightly afraid of her, which may have been why the otherwise proper Miss Seams was so pleased to be the potent confidante in Bridget’s romantic schemes. Bridget ran an expert hand over the topmost sheet, then with a kind of emboldening breath, undid a button on her blouse and took from hiding an envelope, which she held out to Matilda.

  Matilda was doubly struck that Bridget had carried the letter above her heart, and while Bridget made herself proper again, the daughter of the house considered the sealed, blank enclosure. “Should I write on it, like the other times?”

  “Yes,” said Bridget. “Just write Walter. If someone finds you with it, they won’t know it’s from me.” Her calm demeanor shifted, suddenly, and she took Matilda’s arm in her strong grip. “When you see him, look long and carefully and tell me all about him. If he could but put a little more aside then we might go away sooner.” Her blue eyes were wide and demanding. “If he speaks, Miss, let him know his Bridget pines for him.”

  “I will,” said a thunderstruck Matilda. “School is out tomorrow and I’m going to Portland. I’ll hide it in this,” she said, showing Bridget the day’s eight pages of the Portland Daily Advertiser.

  Bridget considered the newspaper for a moment, tilted her head and said,
“But that’s today’s. Your father will be looking for it.”

  “It’s the first thing I could find,” explained Matilda.

  Bridget looked exasperated and was about to say something when a woman’s voice called her name from the hall. “Quick, just fold it away!” she said to Matilda, then called back: “Yes, Mrs. Umley?”

  The door to the laundry closet opened and the broad, suspicious countenance of the head housekeeper peered inside. “Bridget? Mrs. Seams is looking—Oh, there you are Miss,” she said to Matilda. The scowl of doubt did not leave her face.

  Bridget had returned to her folding. “I’ll be sure to bring up the flannel sheets while you’re gone, Miss,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Matilda. “Thank you,” though not very convincingly. Bridget never cast her another glance as Matilda walked the narrow confines to the steps and the door. Mrs. Umley waited in the hall and disguised her curiosity about as well as Matilda disguised her unease.

  “Your mother is looking for you,” said the housekeeper. Mrs. Umley didn’t approve of hobnobbing between employers and employees. Both sides needed to know their place.

  Matilda kept herself between the newspaper (and the envelope folded into it) and Mrs. Umley, which made for a little physical awkwardness when she thanked the woman again and turned toward the front of the house. Behind her, Mrs. Umley opened the door to the laundry closet again and went inside. Matilda had a renewed jolt to her nerves at the sound of her father’s distinctive step coming toward the entrance to the back hall. Somehow she managed to emulate Bridget in unfastening a button on the bodice of her dress and cramming the newspaper and envelope round her middle.

  She met her father as he was crossing the hall entrance toward another part of the house. “There you are,” he said. “You’re mother’s shouting herself hoarse looking for you.” There wasn’t a hint of admonishment in his voice, only vaguely amused observation. “What, have you been to the kitchen to wheedle something from Mrs. Beale? I smell apple pie or I’m an ape!”

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” she said. “I forgot something in my room and I have to be at the Academy in half an hour!” She whisked by him and went straight for the front hall stairs.

  Millard checked his watch and wondered how he could feel so worn out at a little past eight in the morning. He wanted his newspaper and wondered if someone had brought it to the library which served, when he was home, as his office and study. He met Constance on his way.

  “Millard—!” she began.

  “Matilda just went tearing upstairs,” he told his wife. “Everyone will be late today. You’re due at the station in less than an hour.” Millard always missed his wife when she was away but he might welcome a few days of quiet, especially when Matilda followed her mother to Walnut Hill Saturday afternoon.

  “Yes, yes!” she said.

  Millard’s secretary, Mr. Daffer, would be arriving soon and he wanted to at least see the headlines and the waterfront news before the day’s business began. “Was my newspaper in the library?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know!” said Constance and hurried in the direction Matilda had taken. She was out of breath when she got to the top of the stairs and could see the door to Matilda’s room open at that end of the hall, so she did not stop, as planned, to speak with Actonia again. “Matilda?” she called.

  Actonia heard Constance’s hurried steps clump by and felt wearily relieved after a brief start of anxiety. The little person on her windowsill approved of Actonia’s dress, even if Constance didn’t. “You’re no fairy, you’re a pooka,” she said amusedly. “But you have good taste.” All her childhood she had seen them and now, these past few months, she was seeing them again. They were like old friends and, in fact, some of them were, and this morning they were plainer to sight than they had been in years.

  “Where is that other scamp?” she said. Then Actonia saw the scamp in question on the dresser, leaning over and half up to her waist and wings in the bowl of lavender water. “Oh, scoot!” said the woman. She rose from her chair and moved without hurry across the room. “You’re worse than a cat for getting into things. Scoot! Scoot!” The little figure on her dresser got away in time, and Actonia had to laugh at the face the creature made when she flitted off like a hummingbird. “Aren’t you pretty,” she said.

  Standing there, Actonia saw her reflection in the mirror atop the dresser. She still had pretty features. Age had not withered, nor custom staled. A tintype of Jack’s bold, handsome face and rugged shoulders sat propped upon the dresser-top. One of the little figures was sitting by it, unafraid of his braw and matter-of-fact approach to life. The one that had been on the windowsill was on her shoulder now. She hadn’t realized it but could see him in the mirror. His face was hidden as he leaned into her ear and when he whispered it tickled her.

  “No!” she said, with a laugh. “What are you saying? Are you sure?”

  The pooka pulled its face from her ear and sat down.

  I daren’t tell anyone, she thought.

  Actonia heard footsteps in the hall again. “I know it’s Doddery,” she said. The butler was a practiced dour—dry and rarely smiling—but she liked him and she had the odd presentiment that he rather liked her. The pooka leapt down when she hurried to the door. Doddery almost seemed to be expecting her when she appeared in the hall.

  “I’ll be taking a trip, Doddery,” she said quietly.

  “Yes, Mrs. Mint?” he said.

  “Not today, I don’t think, but soon.”

  “Very good, ma’am.”

  “So if anyone comes for me, be sure to let me know straight away. I’ll be packing.”

  With studied aplomb, Doddery bowed every so slightly and continued on his way.

  When she was back in her room and the door was shut, she saw the pooka was at the windowsill again. The other little figure—in fact a trio of little figures—were back in her lavender water. She was unperturbed and, in fact, had been making a small and rather elegant drawing of them on the back of an old letter. It might have been mistaken for a rendering of a graceful public fountain.

  “I suppose,” she said to the figure on the windowsill as she returned to this sketch, “that I will know them when I see them.”

  2

  How Did the Indian Summer?

  “They are here!” called one of the waiters into the kitchen of the Shipswood Restaurant.

  Mr. Pliny’s head came up from an inspection of the crème de potiron, declared it needed a touch more ginger (this from simply wafting the lid past his nose as he leaned over the pot), and clapped his hands in a way that seemed both a call to action and a form of glad applause. With a flourish he pulled the half-apron from his ample middle and passed it to whichever member of the kitchen staff stood nearest. Then he glanced at his distorted and coppery reflection in the shine of a hanging pan, patted his mustaches with the back of his hand, and strode through the double doors to the main dining room with its brightly lit chandeliers and red-clothed tables, its white linens and precise staff, the lively chatter of the Shipswood’s patrons and the clouds of smoke from many pipes and cigars. The violinist was sitting by the painting of the “First Volley between the Enterprise and the Boxer” but he stood to attention when Mr. Pliny entered, and upon Mr. Pliny’s curt nod set his instrument to his chin and began to play.

  The effect was very like a stage entrance as, with the sweet rising notes of the violin, the plump but dapper restaurateur weaved his way among the tables toward his favored guests. It seemed that all five of them had arrived at once, and this event and the resultant discussion over seating arrangements was engendering a genial kerfuffle. Chairs were being moved back and forth, and heads bobbed as decisions were second-guessed or at cross-purposes. Other diners were finding the good-natured confusion of puzzling interest and Mr. Pliny nodded sagely to these as he passed their tables. “Ma’am. Sir. Sir.”


  “Mister Walton!” said one of the newly arrived party. “Only the head of the table will serve!”

  “A chair for the chairman!” declared another—in the most polite and decorous form of a declamatory voice.

  “Very good, Ephram!” said the first fellow.

  “Thank you, Eagleton,” said the other.

  “Hmmm,” said a third gravely.

  “Allow me,” said the proprietor. He pulled out the chair at the head of the table and nodded to the aforementioned Mister Walton.

  This Mister Walton was a man of middle age—portly, balding, and bespectacled, but there was something robust about him that otherwise belied the physical appearance of a man of leisure (or, at least, a man not of labor). His round face settled naturally into a smile, his attention was always upon the rest of the world, and his conduct was as gallant as three knights. He did not deal in false courtesy or a dissembled modesty but treated the owner’s gesture with a sincere and gracious response. “Mr. Pliny,” he said with a bow and took the offered chair which the restaurateur situated deftly as his guest sat down.

  “Mr. Moss,” insisted Ephram. To the youngest among them he indicated the seat directly to Mister Walton’s right.

  This young man was long of limb and square of jaw; his nose was a tad wide, but he had a handsome way about him even if he wasn’t quite handsome (some thought him almost so) in physical effects. There was, as well, a manner about him that might be termed wry though not quite skeptical. He termed himself gentleman’s gentleman to Mister Walton. (Mister Walton termed the young man friend and boon companion.) Raising a forefinger in salute, Sundry Moss—for it was, of course, that worthy—sat with a likeable agility that had nothing to do with social etiquette.

  “Gentlemen,” said Mr. Pliny as he moved to assist the remaining three with their seats. They were inspired, however, by Sundry’s example of self-reliance and with one bow and one nod and one “Thank you anyway,” likewise secured their own chairs.