Daniel Plainway - Or The Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League Page 4

  “I think not,” opined Waverley. “It looks to me like a very lowly hat.”

  “It’s very high for a lowly hat,” said Brink.

  “I hope you thank me for making that so easy for you.”

  “You meant nothing of the sort, I am sure.”

  “Who do you suppose belongs to it?” wondered Durwood.

  “I’m not in the habit of recognizing people by their hats,” informed Waverley. “I have enough difficulty recognizing most people, if you must know, and sometimes I confuse the two of you.”

  “Confuse the two of us with what?” queried Brink.

  “Is the hat descending?” asked Durwood.

  “Blast the hat!” said Waverley.

  “No, really,” said Durwood, “the hat is coming down.” And so it did, right into his hands.

  “And here, I think,” said Brink, “is the attendant—or, as it were, nonattendant—head approaching us now.” Brink snatched the hat from Durwood and stuffed it under the back of Waverley’s coat.

  They took note of a hatless fellow who was hurrying along the ridge of the hill and excusing himself as he weaved through the crowd. Just ahead of the bareheaded man, there was a younger man (still in possession of his own headgear) who appeared to be searching the sky for the truant hat. “He has a friend, I think,” said Durwood.

  “Ah, yes,” said Waverley. “Perhaps his friend will lend him his hat.”

  Durwood, Waverley, and Brink took such interest in these two that the younger man addressed them with a “Good afternoon.”

  “Hello,” said Durwood. It was a greeting that had gained some vogue, since the advent of the telephone.

  “There was a hat,” said the young man, even as the hatless individual caught up with him.

  “A hat?” said Durwood.

  “Was there?” said Waverley.

  “A hat and no head?” wondered Brink.

  “The head is here,” said the bareheaded fellow. Indeed, he was bareheaded in almost every sense of the word, for without a hat he was left with only the slightest fringe of brown hair; a portly man of middle age, he wore round spectacles that sat at the end of his nose. He smiled as he pointed to his bald pate, which shone rather handsomely in the light of the westering sun. “It is a head that must harbor some aversion to hats,” he admitted, “since it does so little to hang on to them.” He laughed as several young children nearly bowled him over in their hurry to reach the hilltop.

  “You have lost hats before,” said Durwood.

  “The very same, in fact,” said the jolly fellow. He extended his hand and introduced himself. “Tobias Walton.” There was some need to speak above normal tones with such a raucous crowd about them.

  “Durwood,” said the man who had caught the hat. “Aldicott Durwood.”

  “Roderick Waverley,” said the man who had the hat beneath his coat.

  “Humphrey Brink,” said the man who had put the hat where it presently resided.

  “I am Mister Walton’s gentleman’s gentleman,” said the young man.

  “He is my good friend,” said Mister Walton, indicating good-humored disagreement with his companion.

  “Sundry Moss,” said the young man.

  Durwood, Waverley, and Brink did not formally beg the young man’s pardon, but their frowns made it clear that further elucidation was necessary.

  “My name is Sundry Moss,” explained the young man.

  “You don’t say,” said Durwood.

  “He did,” said Waverley.

  “Do you speak to your parents?” wondered Brink.

  Sundry smiled with one comer of his mouth.

  “Do you know his parents?” asked Waverley of Brink. He was a little concerned that the shaking of hands, prompted by these introductions, would loosen the hat from beneath his coat.

  “I confess to an unfamiliarity with mosses in general,” said Brink, who was wondering how he might actually cause the hat to drop.

  “Walton,” Durwood was saying. “The Walton whose family once owned the shoe factory?”

  “Yes, indeed,” said that man, who was doing his best to show polite attention to the conversation, though he was still concerned with the whereabouts of his hat and more than a little distracted by the flurry of activity around them.

  Sundry had been watching the progress of an odd expression as it crossed Brink’s face, and finally he asked, “Is something the matter?”

  “There was a Walton, I think,” interrupted Waverley, “who recently drew the chairmanship of a new society.” He regarded his companions. “A club, in fact. The Beaverwood Guild!”

  “No, no!” declared Brink. “It was a bigger animal than that, the White-Tailed Deer Society, I am certain of it!”

  “No, no, no!” contradicted Durwood. “It was a moose, I am sure, the Moosejaw Lodge!”

  “I have the honor of being the chairman of the Moosepath League,” said Mister Walton, with a bow. “We meet on Thursday nights at the Shipswood Restaurant. You must drop by sometime.”

  “We have our own club, actually,” said Brink dryly.

  “Do you?” asked the hatless man.

  “Do we?” chorused Durwood and Waverley.

  “Our club!” said Brink, as if wounded by the question.

  “Ah, yes!” said Durwood.

  “Our club!” said Waverley.

  Mister Walton and Sundry were more than a little suspicious by now. “And the name of your club?” asked Mister Walton.

  “The name?” said Durwood.

  “The name!” declared Waverley.

  “We are the Dash-It-All Boys!” announced Brink.

  “Good heavens!” said Mister Walton with a laugh.

  “How very right!” agreed Durwood.

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself,” said Waverley.

  “Not the temperance group?” said Sundry.

  “Not at all,” said Brink, “that’s the Dash-Away Boys.”

  “And you are?” said Sundry.

  “The Dash-It-All Boys,” said Brink again. “Not to be confused.”

  “We are very glad to make your acquaintance,” said Mister Walton.

  “Are you here for the commotion?” wondered Waverley. He waved a hand toward the activity on the slope.

  “Alas,” said the portly fellow with surprising sincerity, “we did not bring our sleds,” and he touched his bare head to indicate that he must continue his search.

  “I did think there may have been a hat,”said Durwood suddenly. “It went over the slope, I think.”

  “Did it?” asked Mister Walton.

  Sundry looked skeptical, but he wandered to the brow of the hill.

  “I think Durwood may be right,” said Waverley. “There was something floating about.”

  “Thank you for your help,” said Mister Walton, and he reached up to tip his hat before remembering that it wasn’t on its customary perch.

  Sundry was considering the busy slope when Mister Walton joined him. “It would be hard to say,” he opined. The hill was alive with swif sleds, overburdened toboggans, and mid-hill collisions. Dark coats peppered the snowy bank.

  Mister Walton beamed at the sight of it all. “The breeze might have taken it down there.”

  “I’ll go down,” said Sundry. “Someone may have seen it.”

  “Look, over there!” said Mister Walton, pointing.

  “Your hat?”

  “No, a very sparsely populated toboggan! Quick, Sundry, we may be able to catch the train!” The portly man was hurrying along the ridge, past several groups of people readying their vehicles, to the place where two youngsters eyed the course of their imminent descent. “Boys!” he shouted. “Young fellows!”

  The two children with the toboggan did not at first connect Mister Walton’s shouts with themselves, but as he drew closer, they looked with alarm at his approach and would have fled down the slope if not for the absolutely pleasing smile upon his face. One of the young fellows in fact was a little sister, an
d after a gracious apology for his error he revealed his purpose in hailing them, saying with a laugh, “I was always told that a toboggan will run faster with more weight in the front. What do you say?”

  The children gaped at the portly fellow. Sundry drew up beside his employer. “You want to take the hill?” wondered the brother. He could not have been more than nine or ten, his sister perhaps seven.

  “I do, indeed,” said Mister Walton, who was a little out of breath. “I have been told that my hat may have blown down there, and I should like to retrieve it.”

  “We’ll get it for you,” offered the boy.

  “It is splendid of you to offer,” said Mister Walton sincerely. “But I haven’t ridden a toboggan in years!” Clearly the portly fellow thought this state of affairs had gone on long enough.

  “All aboard!” cried out the little girl.

  With surprising agility Mister Walton leaped to the fore of the toboggan and sat down heavily. The vehicle tipped a little at the crest of the slope. “Climb on, Sundry!” declared the older fellow. He resituated his glasses upon his nose. Several people in the vicinity shouted with surprise to see him take his place on the toboggan.

  “Hang on,” said Sundry to the children, who hunkered behind Mister Walton. Sundry took hold of the rear of the toboggan and gave it a proper shove before jumping on. The snow on the hill was well packed by now, and the toboggan was not long in realizing a startling velocity.

  Mister Walton had forgotten the dizzying effect of skimming the ground with one’s head leading in a flying dive for the bottom of the slope, and he let out a great joyful whoop. They were passing sleds and toboggans that had taken off before them, and the crowded slope suddenly seemed a more difficult path to manage. Occasionally they struck a dip in the hill that sent showers of white over their bow and prompted a series of happy shouts from them all, so that many climbing the bank heard them above the general din and leaped aside to clear the way.

  Durwood, Waverley, and Brink watched all this from their position at the top of the hill. “They are showing a good deal too much energy,” said Durwood, “when one considers the hour at which I retired last night.” The sight seemed to give them all a headache.

  Waverley led the way to their carriage, slipping the hat from beneath his coat. “It’s not such a bad hat.”

  “It’s a very wayward hat,” said Durwood.

  A cab was trotting past when they reached the road, and Waverley gave the hat a spin in the air. The hat met the head of the horse and bounced between the animal’s ears, then slid to one side, only to catch on the buckle of the animal’s browband. It made the horse, which was otherwise a rather ordinary creature, appear vaguely rakish. The driver, who had been turning into traffic, straightened in his seat and was startled to find his animal sporting a very neat homburg. Durwood looked after the chapeaued equine as if something in the sight made him melancholy.

  “We never did find out if Mr. Moss speaks to his parents,” said Durwood.

  “The Dash-It-All Boys,” said Brink.

  2. Meeting the Caleb Brown

  The toboggan continued to gain speed, and Sundry wondered if they would break through the drift of snow at the bottom of the long slope and find themselves merging with the traffic on Fore Street. They came to a hissing halt, however, some yards short of the snow heap but several yards further than anyone else had reached.

  The brother and sister were awed with the effect of Mister Walton’s mass on the velocity of their vehicle, and though his hat was nowhere to be found once they reached the foot of the grade, the bespectacled fellow was so very exhilarated by their descent that he suggested a second r. Fast friendships were quickly formed among this unlikely quartet, and soon every child with a toboggan was looking for a portly pilot. Not a few unlikely participants were encouraged by Mister Walton’s example, and despite the lateness of the hour, the revelers upon the slope were galvanized to action.

  Finally, at the foot of the hill (was it after the third or fourth r?), the two men bade farewell to the children; by this time the hill’s population and the level of noise seemed to have tripled.

  The eastern twilight had softened the brilliant hill to a dusky blue, fiery clouds of pink and orange hung in the west, and this last blaze limned the western ramparts of the city. But Mister Walton and Sundry’s attention was drawn to the waterfront and the arrival of the crippled schooner at this business, and as the fortunes of all seafaring ventures are of interest the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Wharf. They were not a great distance from to those who live in a seafaring town, they joined the crowd gathered there.

  Lamp and lantern light was gaining precedence on the wharf, and as the darkened sky drew down and the dockside buildings loomed on either side, Mister Walton and Sundry had the impression of walking into a vast room, the many voices echoing from walls and hulls lending credence to the notion. The damp harbor air formed a frosty mist as the temperature declined with daylight, and the surrounding shapes glinted with condensation.

  The tug was easing the Caleb Brown along the wharf as Mister Walton front: businessmen and idle onlookers, old salts and opportunists. The and Sundry walked among the disparate figures common to the water-front: businessmen and idle onlookers, old salts and opportunists. The crowd thwarted their view of the ship from the gunnels to the waterline, but the remaining masts rode by, as well as a mare’s nest of lines and broken spars. a sudden gust blew past the crowd, as if the schooner had brought with her the very storm that had taken her mizzenmast and foresail; Mister Walton, with his bare head, was particularly chilled by it.

  A gangplank was raised from the wharf, and as people moved aside to facilitate this work, an older gentleman turned slightly and met Mister Walton’s eye. “Toby!” he said in surprise.

  “Mr. Seacost!” replied the jovial fellow after only a moment’s hesitation.

  The two men shook hands with great warmth of feeling. Lawrence Seacost was taller than Mister Walton, unbent by his seventy-some years and evidently undaunted by the winter night. He had a grand beard, though no mustaches, and creases beneath his eyes that expressed (and had no doubt been caused by) an immense sympathy with all things. Mister Walton introduced the man to Sundry, saying, “I was a member of Mr. Seacost’s congregation some years ago.”

  “I retired many years ago, Toby,” said the older man.

  “I am very pleased to meet you, sir,” said Sundry.

  “Without the able tutelage of my former parson,” continued Mister Walton, “I would not have known a cedar waxwing from a tufted titmouse. He is an amateur ornithologist of extraordinary learning.”

  “We must have our hobbyhorses,” explained Mr. Seacost to Sundry. “Men of the cloth most especially, it seems. I am glad to meet you, Mr. Moss.”

  “You will be glad to know, Mr. Seacost,” said Mister Walton, “that Sundry has made a career, these past few months, of keeping me from trouble.”

  “Have you?” said the older man, as if this might be an extraordinary thing.

  “When humanly possible,” admitted Sundry.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised to find you here, Toby,” said Mr. Seacost. “The papers have you everywhere and all about!”

  “Oh, dear,” said Mister Walton, abashed at this unintentional notoriety.

  “Buried treasure,” continued Mr. Seacost. “Rescuing children. Is Mr. Moss a member of your club then?”

  “He is indeed.”

  “The Moosepath League,” said the minister, almost to himself.

  “Yes, sir,” said Sundry with evident humor as well as pride.

  The old man laughed. “Come, come. What I have to offer will pale before your recent adventures, but you will find worthy company in my friends who are just debarking now.”

  Several men whose concerns regarding the Caleb Brown were notably monetary had boarded the schooner and were talking with the captain at the rail, but the captain hailed past them to a man and a woman at the head of the plank, saying, “It�
��s been a pleasure having you aboard, ma’am, sir. I pray our misadventure with the wind hasn’t inconvenienced you.”

  The man at the gangplank tipped his hat, and the woman said something to merit a laugh from the captain. The man turned, after a step or two dow the plank, and called out a name, whereupon a dog of fairly large parts bounded over the rail and trotted alongside them to the wharf.

  “Here is a man after his own hobbyhorse,” Mr. Seacost was saying as he stepped up to the end of the plank. “And his wife along, thankfully, to keep his feet in the stirrups.”

  “Lawrence!” said the man, once he had scanned the crowd and set eyes upon the retired clergyman.

  “Frederick!” replied Mr. Seacost. “Izzy!” and he embraced the woman, who was first off the plank. He bent down to stroke the dog’s head. “Ah! It was you, Moxie, dear, that I wished to see.”

  “I knew it!” said the woman with mock hauteur.

  Mister Walton introduced himself when the man from the ship nodded to him, and the man took Mister Walton’s hand, saying, “Frederick Covington, sir.” He was of medium height, and his movement and firm grip evidenced some athletic ability and physical strength. He was somewhere between Mister Walton and Sundry-that is, between forty-nine and twenty-seven years in age. He wore a short round hat, but his clothes, including a fine cape, were black, with something of the cavalier about him that was contradicted only by the clerical collar at his neck. His eyes were dark, and when he took his hat off to greet Mister Walton and Sundry, he revealed curly dark hair and disclosed a good-humored, dean-shaven face from beneath the shadow of its brim. “This is my wife, Isabelle.”

  Mrs. Covington thrust out her hand and proved to have a strong grip as well, much practiced no doubt in the receiving lines outside church every Sunday. She had a humorous way of lifting her chin when she regarded a person, and Mister Walton found himself beaming back at her. Isabelle Covington had wide-spaced blue eyes and a nose that turned up handsomely at the end. Her complexion was fair, and her hair that darkened blond that accompanies near middle age, but her eyebrows were dark and expressive. “I am pleased to meet you, Mister Walton,” she said, “and trust you are here to see someone other than our dog.”