Daniel Plainway - Or The Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League Read online

  “Not to speak of the Dash-It-All Boys,” added Sundry.

  “I had forgot,” said Mister Walton. “And what did you think of those gentlemen?”

  “I think that club was invented for our benefit,” said Sundry.

  “I think you are right.”

  “My father would say that Messrs. Durwood, Waverley, and Brink could be trusted about as far as you could throw the lot of them at once.”

  “A wise man, your father.”

  “I was a little surprised,” said Sundry, “when Mr. Covington mentioned that his trip to Skowhegan was urgent somehow.”

  “I took note of that as well,” said Mister Walton. “Considering an object that may have remained in one place for several centuries, it is surprising that any urgency should be attached to reaching it.”

  “It did make me curious,” admitted Sundry, “though it didn’t seem polite to inquire.”

  “Perhaps he only meant that it was urgent he get back to his church,” thought Mister Walton.

  “That was probably it. I liked Moxie,” said Sundry, as if he were ready to forgive the Covingtons for any mystery for the sake of their dog.

  “She is a beautiful animal,” agreed Mister Walton.

  “It is too bad we didn’t meet the Covingtons at the top of the hill,” said Sundry. “I once had a dog that liked to go sledding.”

  “Did you?” Mister Walton was pleased with the image this raised.

  While they indulged in Mrs. Baffin’s apple pandowdy, Sundry reminisced. “Yes,” he said. “I called him Plummet, he liked sliding so much. He wasn’t a big dog, but he was all for it! He would take the front of the sled and stick his nose out, and his ears flapped behind him like flags in a wind.” Mister Walton was chuckling now as Sundry warmed to his tale. “When we got to the bottom of the hill, that dog would take the rope in his teeth and pull the sled up, he was so eager to go it again.

  “One day, in the middle of January, I happened to notice my sled had been moved, and there were dog prints all around it, which made me suspicious. The dogs all sleep in the barn, and that night I went out to feed them, and sure enough, Plummet wasn’t among them. I went out and found the sled missing from behind the woodshed, and I followed a set of dog tracks and the marks left by the runners to the big hill behind our house.

  “What do you think!” said Sundry, “but Plummet was out there sliding the hill all by himself. There was a bright moon out, and I watched him for half an hour from a stand of trees. He’d take that sled down the hill, drag it back up, and go it again.

  “Well, it was a cold night, and I knew he would put the sled back more or less where he found it, so I left him and went inside.”

  Mister Walton thoroughly enjoyed this narrative, the more so since he understood that Sundry was purposely drawing his mind away from more melancholy concerns. These days thoughts of Phileda McCannon were never far away, nor did many hours pass before he glimpsed once again (in his mind) the portrait of the unknown woman standing by itself in his parlor. “You’ve said there were many dogs at your parents’ farm,” observed the bespectacled fellow. “Did none of them take up the sport once they saw what fun Plummet was having?”

  “That’s a story in itself,” said Sundry, as Mister Walton might have guessed. “One night some neighbors showed up at our house, kicked their feet at the stoop, and came in to gather at the stove. There were sleds and toboggans missing at several houses nearby, and all tracks led to our farm, as it turned out. I knew immediately what had happened and led everyone up to the hill, where every dog for three miles was on the slope and having a sledding party.”

  “Plummet had been talking, it seems,” said Mister Walton with something like a straight face.

  “Word had gotten around, I guess. Everyone kept their sleds locked up, after that, which I thought was too bad. This is fine apple pandowdy!”

  “It is indeed.”

  “My aunt put out a fire with a kettle of the stuff once.”

  “Did she!”

  “It’s where that old saying comes from, I think,” Sundry was saying.

  “I don’t believe I know that ‘old saying,’” said Mister Walton, and this time he laughed heartily.

  Sundry’s expression remained almost bland, but the light in his eye gave him away. “Well,” he replied, “my uncle was always saying it. ‘Great smoldering apple pandowdy!’”

  BOOK TWO

  December 4, 1896

  9. Several People Recently Met

  The sun had not risen above the ocean when Sundry set his feet upon the braided rug beside his bed, but the herald of the day, reflected from clouds out over the harbor, caused enough light to lift the snowy darkness outside his window to a gray-blue. He drew the curtain and leaned upon the sill. a small bird stirred below his window; the house across the way was silent and sleepy. He heard stirrings in the room across the hall while he splashed his face in the cold water from the bowl on his washstand. He considered his face in the mirror and wished it would give him more reason to shave or none at all; next to a prodigious growth, like that of Mr. Thump’s, his crop of pale stubble was hardly more than chick down.

  Sundry’s mind pattered around several objects while he dealt with his cheeks and chin. He often considered the possibility of growing a mustache and thereby decreasing the area to be tended. Some small vanity would not allow him to begin such a project, however, when there was the promise of female company, and he added his upper lip to his razor’s itinerary.

  Uppermost in his mind that morning was not their forthcoming mission, but the morning routine at his family’s farm in Edgecomb. It was yet early, but his father would be up soon, stoking the fire. He would start the bacon. Sundry’s youngest brother would no doubt be up next, and then his mother. He was feeling homesick perhaps and he realized that it was the early hour of his rising that made him so; it was too much like farm hours, too much like country living from dawn to dusk.

  He had shaken off the weightiest of this sensation by the time he had his shirt on, tucking in the tails as he knocked on Mister Walton’s door. It opened quickly, and the portly fellow, himself at his morning ablutions, stuck a lathered face without spectacles into the hall. “Good morning,” he sang melodically.

  “Good morning, mister,” said Sundry. It was a droll greeting and also one with some history between them since it was the first Sundry had ever spoken to Mister Walton.

  “I was wondering if a compass was not a good idea,” Mister Walton said.

  “I think I packed one.”

  “Of course.”

  Sundry chuckled wryly; he hoped he never disappointed Mister Walton’s faith in his abilities and foresight. “Breakfast?” he asked.

  “It would serve very nicely,” admitted the portly fellow. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up and his collar opened as he applied his razor. “I’ll be right down to help you.”

  “Take your time,” said Sundry, and he clumped down the stairs and out into the kitchen, where the stove needed refiring. The house was cold, and it would take an hour or so to make things comfortable. Sundry liked to have the stoves at least ticking before the Baffins arrived, but on most mornings he left the cooking to the offices of the capable Mrs. Baffin.

  In the kitchen Mister Walton opened the oven door and sat before it while he put on his boots. “You don’t think that I made an error giving over that letter to Mr. Ephram, do you?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” said Sundry. “I believe he was eager to be of service.”

  “Yes,” said Mister Walton. “But Mr. Tempest said something to me, just before I left him, that has had me wondering.”

  “All night no doubt.”

  “Some of it.” Mister Walton rose up and got the coffeepot. “He said something to the effect of ‘I may have returned the favor’-that is, the favor of delivering the letter-‘by introducing you to the Burnbrakes’-that is, the people to whom the letter is to be delivered.”

  “Yes?”

&n
bsp; “I couldn’t help wonder, when I thought of it, if he were being ironic.”

  “Meaning that he wouldn’t be doing you a favor at all.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And therefore, you wouldn’t be doing our friends of the Moosepath League a favor by passing on the errand.”

  “In a nutshell.” Mister Walton did admire his friend’s ability to understand.

  “It seems that a brief explanation followed by the dispatch of the letter would constitute the most of their involvement.”

  Mister Walton chuckled as he dolloped coffee grounds into the pot. “I must say, I was curious about these people myself.”

  “Was there anything in the letter that indicated trouble for the bearer?” wondered Sundry.

  “It is strange,” said Mister Walton, “but I don’t remember the contents of the letter very well. I wrote down the words and tried not to pay much attention to them. They were not very happy, is what I remember most of all, though they didn’t seem to represent bad news per se. It seems weeks ago instead of last night.” Sundry was working the pump, and Mister Walton went to the sink with the coffeepot. They heard the back door and knew that the Baffins had arrived.

  “They’re early,” said Sundry.

  “I’m not surprised somehow. I think Mrs. Baffin has premonitions.”

  “We are going to Skowhegan, Mrs. Baffin,” said Sundry when the elderly couple entered the kitchen.

  “Skowhegan!” said Mrs. Baffin as if this sounded like an outlandish place.

  Mister Walton chuckled softly. “In search of Viking treasure.”

  “Goodness’sakes, Toby!” said Mrs. Baffin. “No more treasure, please!” When Mrs. Baffin got excited, the burr of her Nova Scotian childhood returned to her voice. “If my hair wasn’t white already,” she said, but her admonishments were not without humor.

  “Perhaps we will meet the Vikings themselves,” teased Mister Walton. He moved away from the stove so that she could stand before it and warm herself. Her husband was chuckling as he hung his coat by the kitchen door.

  “A Lost City of Gold,” said Sundry.

  “The Northwest Passage!”

  “We are poised for action!”

  “I’ll make you some sandwiches,” said Mrs. Baffin.

  The Grand Trunk Station, situated at the Eastern end of Commercial Street by the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Wharf, had a sleepy aspect when Mister Walton and Sundry Moss arrived by carriage. The light of day was itself sleepy, casting a rosy sheen upon the snowy roof of the station and blue shadows in the surrounding streets.

  The first train was waiting; the engineer and the fireman were firing her up, and there were lazy hints of wakefulness about the engine: a quiet huff of steam, a puff of smoke and ash from her stack.

  Inside the station there was little sign of vigilance. The ticket taker sat frowning in his booth, another man looked as if he were resting upon his broom rather than applying it, and to complete the picture, three figures were stretched out upon benches and sound asleep. Mister Walton knew that many a stationmaster wouldn’t have allowed vagrants a warm place on a winter’s night, and he said as much to the man in the booth.

  “They each gave him a five-dollar piece to leave them alone,” said the man.

  “Good heavens,” said Mister Walton with a laugh. “It’s a steep price for a bench and no pillow.” But when he looked at the prone figures again, he realized that the cut of their coats did not suggest the frugalities of the hobo life.

  Sundry took a closer look at one of these fellows and made a noise of discovery. “I believe it’s the Dash-It-All Boys,” he said.

  Indeed, this seemed to be the case as one of them lifted his hat from his face and peered, with one eye, at the morning. The clock on the other side of the station did not encourage him. Humphrey Brink considered Mister Walton and Sundry and asked, “It is yesterday afternoon again?” He gave a kick with one foot and dislodged the hat of the man on the next bench.

  The light disturbed Aldicott Durwood’s repose, and he made a face.

  “It’s Mister Walton and Mr. Moss,” said Brink.

  “Then it is yesterday afternoon,” said Roderick Waverley from beneath his own hat, and for some moments there were no further signs of his being awake.

  Durwood sat up, however, and blinked. Clearly the Dash-It-All Boys had never spoken truer words than when they disassociated themselves from the temperance group the Dash-Away Boys; they had been in such a pickled state, the previous evening, that they had been unable to get themselves home. “Mister Walton has a hat,” said Durwood, his tongue sounding thick.

  “Then it is either before yesterday afternoon, prior to his losing it,” suggested Brink, “or he has acquired a new hat or found the old one, which would make this the following day.”

  This logic suited Durwood. “It is tomorrow then,” he said, and ceased to consider the problem.

  “Good morning,” said Mister Walton amiably.

  “Thank you,” said Durwood.

  “Did you find your hat?” wondered Brink. His eyes were closed again.

  “We didn’t,” said Mister Walton. “But I had a spare on hand.”

  “Very wise,” said Durwood.

  “I wish I had a spare on hand,” said Brink, though he may not have been referring to hats.

  “I trust you gentlemen had a good night,” said Mister Walton, somewhere between a mild scold and a chuckle.

  “We didn’t want to miss seeing you off,” explained Durwood, who hadn’t known until this moment that Mister Walton would be going anywhere.

  “It was very good of you,” said Mister Walton, who was up to this.

  The Covingtons arrived, and while Frederick waited outside with Moxie, Isabelle came in for their tickets. She was only too pleased to see Mister Walton and Sundry but accepted introductions to Durwood, Waverley, and Brink from a cautious distance. The three men stood for this honor, and Sundry was ready to catch any of them, as they were a little unsteady on their feet.

  Mrs. Covington explained to the ticket man that she needed a freight tag for her dog, and soon-with all the proper tickets and papers and farewells to the Dash-It-All Boys-Mister Walton and Sundry escorted her out to the platform where Frederick and Moxie greeted them cheerfully.

  “I trust you slept well,” said Mister Walton as he shook the man’s hand and the dog’s paw.

  “Not a wink, sir,” said the clergyman.

  “We’d all do with a nap on the train,” said Mister Walton.

  Inside the station the ticket man peered over the counter of his booth at Durwood, Waverley, and Brink. The three men stood uncertainly in the middle of the station. Waverley looked back at his bench longingly.

  Daniel’s Story (1874–1891)

  It had been raining all the morning and most of the afternoon on the day that Daniel Plainway first saw the Linnett house; but the western clouds had broken up as the day waned, and the sun blushed from behind the estate. The trunks of the great oaks along the drive were as dark as their shadows; their rain-wet crowns glowed in the late light. Ian Linnett himself greeted Daniel at the front door and led him to the back porch, where everyone was watching for a rainbow. There was a cry of discovery as the old man and Daniel stepped out into the golden afternoon.

  It had begun for Daniel Plainway only a few days before, when Ian Linnett first came calling; the lawyer had recently arrived in Hiram, and he was in the process of unpacking his books when a knock rang at the front door. Daniel was green from school and had chosen not to settle in his native Cornish since two attorneys practiced there already; conversely, the only other lawyer in Hiram was eighty-four years old and asleep most of the time. Daniel set up practice in his new home on the outskirts of the village and owed much of his success, in the end, to Ian Linnett’s obvious trust.

  But that first day he was daunted by the big man with the white beard and the dark, overhanging brow. Linnett was nearing sixty at the time and had already developed a reputa
tion as the old oak of local society. He had a terrific rumble of a voice, and his most pleasing compliment or blandest observation sounded like the growl of a bear. There were only the two chairs in the study then, and they sat in the nearly bare room while Daniel worried that the tea was too weak and the pound cake his mother had sent him a little dry.

  The old man took up half the room, it seemed to Daniel, and was graciously pleased with everything. Linnett had investments in lumber concerns (which had made his fortune), but he was a man to look ahead and was interested in turning some of this over into railroad stock. He had called upon Daniel, however, to invite him to dinner as much as to initiate business, and the next afternoon, after a day of rain, a nervous young man appeared at the Linnet ts’ front door on the appointed hour.

  The Linnett estate was a fine example of the Greek Revival, with a large two storied kitchen ell concealed from the drive by the broad facade of the house, as well as an unconnected barn. Four expansive rooms stood at the corners of the main building and as many others, longer and narrower, occupied the upper story of the ell. There were still servants in those early days, who were quartered in attic rooms.

  That was a household then, and a stranger might not tell the friends from the family. All were welcome, and even the kitchen door was open for the men of the road and the less fortunate. It was a merry place, though Ian Linnett enjoyed playing the old gripe. Simple pleasures were prized at the Linnetts’: lemonade on the back porch, watching the sun set over Clemons Pond on a summer afternoon; someone banging at the piano in the front room while everyone sang old tunes, or carols as Christmas drew near; long winter evenings by the parlor fire, watching the shadows dance and telling old stories to make one another shiver or laugh; walking the nearby woods with Ian and his grown son Bertram and their dogs. It was not long before Daniel felt at home there, and soon he was fishing with Ian and Bertram on a Saturday morning and eating at their table of a Sunday afternoon.

  There was Ian (his wife, Elspeth, had died some years previous), Bertram (another son had left home under a cloud years before) and Bertram’s wife, Gwendolyne, and more often than not there were cousins and aunts and uncles. And there was Gwendolyne’s Aunt Dora, who often came to care for her niece whenever she took sick, as was often. When it became clear that Gwendolyne was expecting a child, the joy was muted, and Gwendolyne spent much of her confinement out of sight. Aunt Dora became a regular resident of the estate and was herself seldom seen by the rest of the family.