Moss farm, p.7
Moss Farm, page 7
“I finished breakfast,” said Sundry.
When they arrived at Portland’s Grand Trunk Station with time to spare, Mister Walton dismissed some of his feelings of things undone by sending a telegram each to Messrs. Ephram, Eagleton, and Thump, informing them of his and Sundry’s hastily prepared expedition to the wilds of Edgecomb. “Whether that was the trouble or not, I feel a little less uncertain,” he said when Sundry met him on the platform with their tickets. All around, people pulled their collars tight about their necks, stamped their feet, and shook the damp from their sleeves.
“My mother would say that doing something is the cure for a good lot of ills.”
“I look forward to meeting such a wise woman,” replied Mister Walton with a small and amused bow of the head.
Other passengers were boarding and people were saying goodbye. Drummers climbed on with less ceremony. Porters swept past. The conductor stood by—aloof, peering at a large pocket watch. The engine terminal and boarding platform were housed in a great covered structure so the day was not entirely apparent, but wind and damp blew from end to end so that people’s coat tails were tugged and the feathers in women’s hats showed signs of life.
Mister Walton was considering his somewhat eased but not entirely dispelled unease when he realized that Sundry’s attention had been taken by something or someone further down the platform. Following the direction of his young friend’s gaze, the portly fellow’s eyes first fell upon a young woman in a blue dress and a darker blue jacket. Her gloves were pale and her hat wide, colorful, and complex. Her hair was bright yellow and if she were not entirely beautiful, her round face was yet very pleasant and her demeanor gentle. She was tipping a porter and then looking for something deeper within her purse.
But just beyond this demoiselle, standing below the door to the next passenger car, was a pair of men who appeared to be discussing something with undisguised earnestness and gravity of purpose. Each held a hat—the one a fedora and the other a wide-brimmed affair of a more rustic nature—and while Mister Walton watched, they traded these toppers back and forth three or four times. They fingered the brims, they peered into the crowns, and inspected the bands.
These two men were of a height and of similar build but otherwise distinct in appearance, age, and dress. The younger one—at least as young as Sundry—was clean-shaven and curly-haired and cut out in the latest and most expensive fashion. The second man was gaining on or caught up with middle-age, sported a bushy beard and mustaches that would have done Mr. Thump proud, and wore the neat but rougher clothes of a laborer who was not on the job.
The all aboard was called and a litany of towns and junctions spilled from the conductor as he paced the platform. The young woman who had first caught Mister Walton’s eye, closed her purse and walked with sudden purpose in his and Sundry’s direction. A drummer with his sample case came up behind the two earnestly conversing men and indicated that he would like to get past them and gain the steps to the passenger car. They seemed suddenly aware that other people were about and they took back their respective hats, stepped aside for the salesman, and followed him up the steps.
Sundry touched his cap and smiled as the young woman passed them, and he even glanced after her with a kind of cheerful appreciation, but he gave a broader smile to Mister Walton and nodded after the two earnest men.
“By all means,” said Mister Walton, and with Mrs. Baffin’s well-laded picnic basket in one hand and a traveling valise in the other, Sundry led the way.
The standard and expected mix of people was seated or finding seats when Mister Walton and Sundry entered the car. “Right up there,” said Sundry with a reverse nod to indicate while his hands were busy. Mister Walton doffed his hat for the first woman he came to, smiled and spoke a sincere good morning, then offered similar greetings to the other passengers—a pleasant-faced matron with a bag bristling with knitting needles, a sporty fellow with a fuming cigar and a newspaper, the previously noted drummer jamming his oversized sample case on the shelf above his seat, and a skeptical-looking man in a clerical collar. Mister Walton followed Sundry down the aisle till they came to the two men they had seen discussing hats on the platform, and who now seemed to be discussing footwear as they sat opposite one another.
“They’re more broken in than broken down,” the older man with the broad beard was saying. “I’d still wear them for a good year or more,” he averred, lifting one of his boots onto the other knee so that his companion could inspect it, which the younger fellow did with a curiosity bordering on the scientific.
Sundry never halted in his purpose till he had reached the seats across the aisle from these two; then he hefted the picnic basket onto the shelf above and tossed the valise lightly after it.
“Well, they look like use,” admitted the younger man. “But will they answer when snow falls?”
“I’d just grease them up with lard,” said the other and they both nodded sagely.
Sundry sat down without difficulty, but Mister Walton was so fascinated by the strange conversation that he almost missed his seat. The drummer and the cleric, too, were paying attention to this unusual dialogue and a few rows down, the older woman with the knitting bag was peering over the seat opposite her with a puzzled frown.
“I do think our coats will trade nicely,” the young man was saying.
“Well, let’s start there,” the older one replied.
Quite to everyone else’s astonishment, they began to unbutton their coats—the young man his fine-looking herringbone and the older man his heavy corduroy—and pull at their sleeves. The older man stood up in order to undress his upper self down to his shirt and suspenders. The younger man was a little more agile and was able to do the same while he remained seated. When they had both taken off their coats, they traded the articles and (in Sundry’s words) “redressed the situation.”
The older man shrugged into the newer coat, fastened the buttons and held the sleeves out before him with evident satisfaction. The younger man donned the older article with a little less ceremony but similar approval. He felt of his clean-shaven chin and considered the other fellow’s brush as if they might exchange their states of beard (or lack thereof). He left off his chin after a moment and looked down, saying, “I’m still not sure about the boots.”
“I think you’d find it hard to find another pair,” said the other. “People tend to wear a shoe till it’s no use to anyone. And then there’s the problem of size. Too big or too small and you’ll likely hobble yourself at a day’s work.”
The last call to board the train had been shouted and the engine proceeded to shift its burden forward in a series of increasingly long and less jolting lurches until a steady rhythm and hum of wheel and track was apparent beneath them, rising in pitch and speed as the long line of cars left the station and the engine let forth a great whistle in between chuffs of steam. Another man had entered the car, wobbling with the shimmy of the train as he made his way down the aisle to the nearest available seat.
“I think you may be right,” said the younger man. “But your hat seems awfully new.”
“Well, I told you it is new. I told you I’d just bought it. If I’d have known, I’d have left off and saved you my old felt.”
“What do you think?” said the young fellow, turning to Mister Walton and Sundry and pointing at the other man’s headgear. “Is that hat too fresh looking for a timber man?”
Mister Walton was abashed to have been so obviously listening to the two men and he let out a confused syllable or two before saying, “While I must admit to great interest in your conversation, I cannot say that I entirely understand it.”
“Oh?” said the young man, as if this surprised him. Their car just then came out from under the canopy of the station and the day (dulled as it was by cloud and rain), glowing pale through the windows caused him to blink. Rain asked to be let in with small insistent taps.
“It was the chancest meeting,” said the bearded man, sitting down again.
“Was it?” said Mister Walton.
“I was just considering a suit in a store window when Mr. June, here, came up and said how he wished he could buy clothes that had the look of experience, like mine.”
“Oh?”
“And I told him I was marketing for something new.”
“I see,” said Mister Walton, which was perhaps an optimistic statement, as he followed it with, “I think.”
“So why buy when you can barter?” offered Sundry, as if this were the most usual thing in the world.
“Yes, indeed!” said the young Mr. June.
“I suppose,” said Mister Walton, “the desire to refit oneself comes upon us all. Though, buying new seems a little more to be expected.”
“But when one’s purse is limited in coin, it might amount to the difference between wedding bower and Bachelor’s Hall,” said the bearded one.
“Might it?”
It would eventually come to surface that this older man was a farmer from the inland town of Buckfield, which may be why he took interest in even a gray, disappearing view of the harbor. “Hannah said as much,” he pronounced with the slow cadence of someone who is not entirely considering their words.
“I see. And Hannah would be your intended.”
“No,” said the man, bringing himself back to the present conversation. “That would be my intended’s sister. Gretchen would be my intended.” The syntax was conditional but the inflection sounded definite.
“And Hannah suggested new attire?” continued Mister Walton’s line of query.
“She was quite sure that Gretchen would not listen to a proposal of marriage from farmer’s garments.”
“Clothes make the man,” quoted Mister Walton. “Shakespeare, I think.” He couldn’t recall which character had actually used the phrase or if it were meant to be taken at face value, but he was also put in mind of the Quaker’s favorite Roman warning: fronti nulla fides.
They were rounding the southeastern corner of the peninsula now, and the farmer once again let his attention wander toward the diminishing water. “Charlie Wren,” he said, finally, and offered his hand.
“Tobias Walton,” said the portly gentleman and shook with the man.
“Donald June,” said the younger man as he greeted Sundry.
“Sundry Moss,” said that worthy while Mr. June reached for Mister Walton’s hand and Sundry reached for Mr. Wren’s.
“You don’t say so?” said Mr. Wren as he shook Sundry’s hand.
“Many a man would buy a new suit of clothes if it engaged him to the woman he pined for,” said Sundry.
Charlie Wren was not averse to expressing further details of his situation. He had been an apprenticed blacksmith in East Peru, he explained. Then four years ago, his uncle died and left him his farm in Buckfield and Charlie decided to try his worth at apple growing, about which he had learned a great deal and had a great deal more to learn. He passed on some of this arcane knowledge and Mister Walton and Sundry were attentive. By the time they had made a stop at Falmouth and were pulling out of the station, Charlie had got back on the track of his life’s tale, informing them that Gretchen and Hannah were daughters of the next farm over and that he had been courting the former for three years. “Three years and the cost of a new suit should warrant some yield,” he told them, as if he were still talking about raising apples. He was, in fact, bringing produce to market when he decided to purchase a new suit for purposes of proposal and during which pursuit he had met Mr. June.
Falmouth was falling behind them and the ocean was temporarily lost from view, when a family that had boarded at the last stop came barging up the aisle, jumpy and out of sorts from the rain, the mother and (presumably) an older sister each carrying an infant and a grip while trying to keep up with a trio of bouncing children. This throng found seats just a row or two up from Mister Walton and his companions and the neighborhood became a good deal more hectic; the children were playing a game that seemed to include much shouting and pointing and the rules of which they couldn’t seem to agree on. Almost as noisily, the mother and older sister were trying to corral them into a definable area. One of the infants began to cry.
The sporty-looking fellow with the cigar and a newspaper rose from his seat and went in search of quieter quarters. The clergyman turned and offered a frown to the noisy clan. Charlie Wren watched the scene with what might be called deep concern and Mister Walton wondered if the farmer was thinking on the more tranquil aspects of keeping Bachelor’s Hall. A sleepy-looking man in clean but well-worn clothes and a short-brimmed cap came trudging up the aisle and settled himself with the boisterous family. The younger woman offered the protesting child in her arms and he relieved her of the squirming bundle. The older woman said something to him and he took off his cap and set it on his knee. Charlie seemed to exchange brief looks with this fellow and the farmer’s attitude of deep thought deepened further still.
But Yarmouth Junction, where Mr. Wren planned to part company with his present companions, was not far ahead and decisions needed to be made. He and Mr. June exchanged boots just as the station name was being hailed through the train.
“Good luck!” Mister Walton called after the farmer, who walked uncertainly down the aisle. Only the farmer’s trousers seemed out of order with the rest of him.
In the midst of their conversation Mister Walton hadn’t noticed that the car had grown quieter. Now he considered the previously raucous family and discovered that the father had produced some apples (perhaps Mr. Wren’s very pippins) from a paper bag and successfully quieted his children with them. The weary-seeming fellow was eating one himself as he stared out the rain-freckled window beside him.
“He won’t get himself engaged on half measures,” came a new voice and Mister Walton turned to see that the woman with the bag of knitting had moved closer by a row or two. She had needles whirling but barely clicking in her hands and a great ream of finished work rolling off her efforts.
Through the train windows, they caught a glimpse of the farmer hurrying into the stationhouse and Mister Walton smiled over his spectacles. “I’ll be sorry to miss the sequel,” he said but the woman offered no further comment for the time being.
“Yes, well,” Mr. June was saying to nobody in particular. “I will have to resume my search for the proper attire.”
“Do I understand correctly, sir,” said Mister Walton while the train began to move again, “that you are wanting someone else’s old clothes.”
“I am indeed,” said the young man.
“Trading down, as it were,” said Sundry.
“I’m sure that is how many would see it.”
“It’s not the expected thing,” said Mister Walton. “Bartering the new for the old.”
“Mr. Wren was trading for a new life, whereas I am looking to put away an old one.”
“Ah!” said Mister Walton. When he considered the fellow’s youth, it seemed to him that it couldn’t be very old.
“I have been cast out from family and home!” said Mr. June in as deep and impressive a voice as he could summon.
“Oh, dear!”
“Well, actually, I left. But it amounts to the same thing.”
“They are home and you are here,” agreed Sundry.
Mr. June thought about this.
“You must have argued with them,” said Mister Walton with quiet gravity.
“I did. My clothes—! Well, some of my clothes,” he corrected himself by acknowledging his recent change of attire. “Some of my clothes bespeak the privilege of my family’s social circles.”
“Well-to-do,” said Sundry.
“To say the least, yet not doing well. Or, more properly, good.”
“You might say that you cast them out.”
“You might!” said the young man, quite warming to this dramatic notion. “And I have trod forth in search of the labor by which common man justifies his existence.”
“Have you?” said a mildly astonished Mister Walton.
“I will hunt the wild timber,” said Mr. June.
“Hunt?”
“The wild timber.”
“You did say a timber man! And you desire to look the part.”
“I was told that my former weeds would neither answer for proper labor nor aid me in slipping unobtrusively among those men who do so!”
Mister Walton’s mouth hung open, just on the verge of speech that would not quite start.
“You’re almost there,” said Sundry. “Change your hat and I don’t think you even have to worry about the trousers.”
“How is your hat?” Mr. June asked Sundry Moss.
“Happy with my head, thank you,” said Sundry.
“Sir?”
Mister Walton, to whom this last up-sliding syllable had been directed, indicated his Homburg on the shelf above him. “It’s quite new, really,” he said with a note of apology in his voice, “more suited for city streets than forest corridors, and I fear I’m rather fond of it.”
Mr. June nodded, resigned if not entirely content.
“Between here and the woods,” said Sundry, pointing at the headgear in Mr. June’s lap, “someone will like that hat.”
“Next stop, Freeport!” called the conductor on his latest walk down the aisle.
The name of this town put Mister Walton in mind of the place where he had picnicked the previous Fourth of July and where some imagine his adventures of that summer began. The genial fellow proceeded to lose himself in the memory of those days, just as he had at the Shipswood Restaurant while reminiscing with the Members of the Club. He meant only to look at nothing down the aisle while mental images of those recent days flashed upon his mind’s eye, but his gaze fell upon the family that had entered with such commotion. An infant slept in the arms of each parent, and the older sister gazed dreamily at the passing landscape while a younger sibling rested his ruffled towhead in her lap. One of the children had her face pressed to a window and seemed to be talking or singing to herself. The only real noise now rising from that quarter was an occasional snore from the somnolent father until his wife leaned forward and tapped his knee, whereupon he shifted a little in his seat, lowered his head, and fell quiet.
