ICAP 2 - The Hidden Gallery Page 6

  “Frond,” Alexander corrected, for the plant in question was, in fact, a fern, and thus its leaves were properly called fronds. Ordinarily Penelope would have been very proud of his pteridomaniacal expertise, but at the word “letter” her mind had skipped off on a tangent from which it had not yet returned.

  “Not only is the General Post Office a handsome building, it is a model of brisk efficiency as well,” she thought. “For I only just mailed my letter to Miss Mortimer this morning, and look: The reply has already come.” The very idea of such prompt, no-nonsense execution of one’s responsibilities was so admirably Swanburne-like that Penelope’s spirits were quite lifted.

  As well they should be, for in Miss Penelope Lumley’s day the London post office was nothing if not efficient. Deliveries were made five times daily, thanks to a fleet-footed army of postal workers who whisked the mail from here to there before one could say jack-rabbit. Affixed with a one-cent stamp bearing the likeness of Queen Victoria herself, a letter would reach its destination within hours of the time it was sent.

  Penelope was so dazzled by this marvelous display of postal competence—and for a mere penny, mind you, as long as the letter weighed less than half on ounce—she did not even notice that the correspondence in her hand was not from Miss Mortimer at all. Only after she had made her way upstairs, set the children to work on their journals, added two sugars and a splash of cream to her tea, and given it a stir (to her credit, Margaret had delivered the tea tray without spilling a single drop, and managed a small plate of biscuits, too)—only then did Penelope settle herself in a chair, slit open the envelope, and begin to read.

  Dear Miss Lumley,

  Well, it was a treat to meet you and the children. Wanted to tell you I’ve begun work on several new plays at once; thanks for all the inspiration!

  Just a reminder: If you keep the North Star in view, and the wind at your back, you’ll have no problem at all navigating wherever you please.

  Cheers,

  SHD

  “Why, this is from Simon Harley-Dickinson!” she exclaimed. Then she clapped her hand over her mouth, for even she did not fully understand why she would be made so excited by the receipt of this brief correspondence from the wrong person.

  “Lumawoo happy,” Beowulf observed as he dabbed at his watercolors.

  “New friend,” Alexander agreed, pausing to sharpen a pencil.

  “Simawoo,” Cassiopeia chanted absently as she drew. “Simawoo, Simawoo, Simahwooooooo—”

  “Tut-tut, children! That is enough conversation for now; please attend to your journals.” Penelope tucked the letter into her apron pocket and quickly regained her professional composure, on the outside, at least.

  For a few minutes, the scratching of pens and swirling of paintbrushes were the only sounds in the tiny, makeshift nursery. Then:

  “As Agatha Swanawoo say: Less talk, more do.” Alexander sounded completely serious, and he and his siblings had their heads bent over their work, but it seemed to Penelope that all three of the Incorrigibles were suppressing giggles. She put on her sternest governess voice.

  “No doubt Agatha Swanburne did say something along those lines, but whether she did or not, it is advice well worth taking. Now, how are your journal entries about our trip to Buckingham Palace coming along? Do you have any questions about neoclassical architecture? The use of pediments? The practice of primogeniture in the British hereditary monarchy?” Penelope knew she was babbling, but she could not help it. The unexpected letter from Simon seemed to have made her brain go all fizzy.

  “Done.” Alexander put down his pencil and proudly held out the paper to Penelope. At a much larger scale, Alexander had sketched his own childlike version of the type of alpine scenery depicted in the tiny watercolors of the Hixby’s Guide. His landscape featured a crystal blue lake and a meadow dotted with pretty white flowers, with snowcapped peaks in the distance.

  The drawing took Penelope by surprise, but she could hardly say she was disappointed, for it was a very charming picture. “Alexander, how delightful!” she said warmly. “When I look at this, I feel as if I can smell the fresh mountain air.” She demonstrated by sniffing. “See? It is so vivid as to seem almost like a familiar place to me. Let us put it somewhere safe to dry.”

  Pleased, Alexander spread the picture on a window-sill and weighed the corners down with books so it would not blow away.

  “Cassawoof done, too.” Cassiopeia waved her page around, eager to hear her teacher’s praise. Penelope took hold of the drawing with a smile that quickly faded, for the child had filled the page with a tall, menacing scribble of brown. It had a white stripe across its middle and what looked like a red shirt above.

  The figure held up its arms in a most threatening way. Worse, it possessed long, sharp claws that dripped with streaks of red—was it supposed to be blood?

  “Ahbear,” Cassiopeia explained proudly. Then she held out her arms and stiffened her fingers, just like the claws in the picture. “Grrrrrrrr!” she growled, showing her teeth. She lurched toward her elder brother with bear arms outstretched.

  Alexander, playing along, lifted his arm as if it were a musket—

  “Yes, yes, I understand,” Penelope interrupted, as she anxiously pressed Alexander’s arm down and away. “You have drawn a bear, but you are also thinking of the guard’s uniform, so the bear is wearing clothes. But it is still a bear, and a frightening one, too.”

  “Ahbear,” Cassiopeia agreed. Playfully she added one last, bloodthirsty growl: “Ahbearrrrrrrrr!”

  “Such convincing bear noises, Cassiopeia! If you are not careful, you may well end up on the stage yourself. Now, let us see what Beowulf has done.” Penelope was determined to change the subject away from evil bears and dangerous muskets. And she knew Beowulf was quite talented at drawing; by now he had no doubt sketched a scale diagram of Buckingham Palace’s fluted columns and soothing symmetrical features, with no bloody claws to be seen. At least, that is what Penelope hoped.

  “Not finished,” he said humbly, then shrugged and held out the page.

  Beowulf’s picture was far more elaborate than those of his siblings, and it did need a bit more work coloring in the background, but the gist of it was on full, frightening view.

  In the sky: a full moon, its eerie glow partially obscured by dark, swirling clouds.

  In the foreground: the dense, ferny undergrowth of a forest, bordered by a few gnarled tree trunks rising upward.

  In the center of the page: an old woman, wrapped in a cloak. Her mouth hung open in a leering smile, and her teeth were large and razor sharp, with a prominent set of gleaming white incisors. From the back of her shroudlike garments poked a long, wolfish tail.

  Cassiopeia and Alexander clapped and barked with admiration, but Penelope’s skin went cold. “Is that the Gypsy woman we met yesterday?” she asked, already knowing it must be. The likeness was remarkable, except, of course, for the teeth and tail.

  Beowulf nodded. “The hunt is on,” he said tremulously. At the remark, both of his siblings sank into defensive crouches and began to whimper.

  “Why, Beowulf, whatever do you mean?” Penelope asked, looking with alarm at her three suddenly anxious pupils.

  The children did not answer, at least, not directly. “Ahwooooooo,” they began to cry softly. “Ahwooooo, ahwooooo!”

  The howls quickly gained in volume, which prompted Penelope to jump up and close the windows. Although she had little experience of city life, she was quite sure that three children baying and barking at full throttle would not be a welcome addition to the neighborhood.

  Returning to her chair, she drew the Incorrigibles close to her and tried her best to sound reassuring. “What a marvelous imagination you have, Beowulf, to have invented a scene so dramatic and frightening! Of course, the Gypsy woman was real enough,” she went on. “But the teeth, and tail, and that ominous moon—these are only make-believe, so there is no need to be upset.”

  The children did
not look convinced. Penelope was about to explain how a journal is a true record of events, and not a collection of alarming fantasies about sharp-toothed Gypsies with bristly tails—but something in the children’s faces made her stop and ask, “Wait…did something unpleasant happen when I left you alone with that strange woman?”

  “The hunt is on!” the Incorrigibles cried, followed by many urgent howls of “Ahwoooooooooo! Ahwoooooooooo!”

  Penelope stroked the children’s heads and murmured soothing noises. “‘The hunt is on.’ What a thing fo her to say! I should like to ask her what she meant by it,” she thought determinedly. “Perhaps Mr. Harley-Dickinson knows who she is, and how she can be reached; after all, she did frequent his neighborhood. I will write to him at once.”

  WHEN THE CARRIAGE from Ashton Place finally pulled up to the entrance of Number Twelve Muffinshire Lane, and Old Timothy, the coachman, held open the door, only Lady Constance emerged.

  Penelope watched from one of the windows upstairs. Was Old Timothy friend or foe? She still suspected that he might have been the culprit who released the squirrel at the holiday ball, in order to provoke the children into wolfish fits. And yet, if not for Old Timothy, the three Incorrigibles would never have been rescued from the forest of Ashton Place to begin with. Instead, they might have ended up in the same predicament as the many hunting trophies in Lord Fredrick’s study, with their shining glass eyes and stiff, taxidermic poses—oh, it was too awful to think about!

  The servants streamed out from the house like ants to remove Lady Constance’s many floral-upholstered trunks from the carriage. The children had worn themselves out with howling and were now quietly practicing their cursive letters, so Penelope opened the windows again and listened. Lady Constance’s voice carried clearly from the cobblestone street below.

  “Lord Fredrick will be here in time for supper. He has many acquaintances in the city, and wished to pay a call at his club’s accommodations in London before settling in. It is quite understandable.” Lady Constance sounded merry in the sort of brightly exaggerated way that made it clear she was trying not to cry, and perhaps not entirely succeeding.

  “Poor Lady Constance,” Penelope thought, with a rush of sympathy. “Lord Fredrick pays scarcely any attention to her at all. Perhaps that is why she is so ill-tempered so much of the time.”

  This may seem an astute observation for a fifteen-year-old girl with no personal experience of marriage to make (as previously mentioned, Penelope had had scarce contact with boys in general, never mind prospective husbands). But she had long ago learned from Dr. Westminster, the Swanburne veterinarian, that some creatures become perfectly miserable when left alone too much, and this misery can easily turn to viciousness. As a result, their caretakers and fellow creatures give them a wide berth, which only makes them more lonely, mistrustful, and snappish than before.

  A great deal of kindness and patience (not to mention quick reflexes and an ample supply of treats) are required to turn a situation like this around without getting badly bitten. Could such a cure be achieved with Lady Constance?

  If so, Penelope theorized, and if Lady Constance were not so terribly spoiled but had instead had the benefit of a more Swanburne-like education, she might well turn out to be a perfectly pleasant companion. She and Penelope might even be friends, were it not for the vast difference in their social stations, what with Lady Constance being a lady and Penelope being a lowly governess.

  “Dear me, that is a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘might have beens,’” Penelope concluded. “But still, there is no harm in offering a friendly greeting. Today she will be tired from her long journey, but perhaps tomorrow, after I have done with the children’s lessons for the day, I will go downstairs on some pretext or other and see if I can engage Lady Constance in pleasant conversation. It would be the kind and generous thing—the Swanburne thing—to do.”

  THE SEVENTH CHAPTER

  Lady Constance endures a series

  of postal disappointments.

  A WELL-KNOWN POET—not Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who wrote “The Wreck of the Hesperus,” a poem with which the Incorrigible children were already quite familiar, but a different poet, named Robert Burns—once wrote a poem called, simply, “To a Mouse.”

  Now, you might find this title silly and even a bit misleading, for what famous poet writes poems to mice? Especially when there are so many shipwrecks, headless horsemen, gloomy talking birds, and other equally fascinating topics to write poems about?

  On the other hand, perhaps Mr. Burns was using his poetic license. This is the license that allows poets to say things that are not precisely true without being accused of telling lies. Anyone may obtain such a license, but still, the powers it grants must be wielded responsibly. (A word to the wise: When asked, “Who put the empty milk carton back in the refrigerator?” if you reply, “My incorrigible sister, Lavinia,” when in fact it is you who are the guilty party, at the ensuing trial, the judge will not be impressed to hear you defend yourself by claiming that your whopper was merely “poetic license.”)

  However, the title “To a Mouse” is not an example of poetic license, for the poem was, in fact, written to a mouse, which simply goes to prove that one never knows from what furry little rodent inspiration will strike. In Mr. Burns’s case, inspiration struck the poet soon after his plow struck the nest of a “wee beastie,” which is to say, a small field mouse, and tore it all to pieces. His eight-stanza apology includes the memorable lines:

  The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men

  Gang aft agley…

  It should be pointed out that the poem is written in an old Scottish dialect, and thus contains words that are rarely used nowadays, even in Scotland. To “gang aft agley” means to “often go astray.” What Mr. Burns was driving at was this: The mouse, who had built herself a cozy nest and was no doubt feeling quite smug about it, was now flat out of luck, and that is simply the way life goes, not only for mice but for people, too. One thing is planned, and yet something quite different actually occurs. A careless poet accidentally plows your mouse house to bits, an important appointment is missed due to a flat tire on one’s velocipede, or a well-intended and perfectly friendly overture is interpreted as something else altogether.

  Thus it was the next day, when Penelope eventually went downstairs to strike up a conversation with Lady Constance. Her impulse to offer some fellowship was a kind and noble one, and yet it was received in an entirely different spirit—for one of the disadvantages of having a postal delivery five times daily is that it creates so many opportunities to be disappointed when a much-longed-for invitation fails, and fails, and fails yet again, to arrive.

  The morning post had brought nothing to the house but the day’s newspaper. The midday post had brought an advertisement promoting the skills of a local chimney sweep. Now it was nearly three o’clock, and another post was due any moment. It was Margaret’s duty to await the postman by the front door, silver letter tray in hand.

  As was always the case at mail time, there were two sharp raps on the knocker, after which the mail came sliding through a brass mail slot in the lower part of the heavy wooden door.

  Knock! Knock!

  “Is it the post?” Lady Constance’s voice rang eagerly down the stairs.

  “Yes, my lady, but—”

  “The post! The post!” Lady Constance clattered down two flights at a dangerous pace. She ran so fast her hair came undone and popped up in yellow curlicues all ’round her head. “The afternoon post, at last! For this morning I sent word to all my acquaintances in town saying that I had arrived. I expect to be buried in luncheon invitations, and dinner parties, too, of course, and asked on all manner of excursions—Margaret, remind me to tell Mrs. Clarke: We ought to offer a small gratuity to the postman; his mailbag is bound to be extra heavy for the duration of our stay in London—”

  But there was nothing on Margaret’s tray except a brochure for Dr. Phelps’s Miracle Cream: “Guaranteed to Remove
Wrinkles, Spots, Warts, and Lumps!”

  The drama would be played out again at five o’clock, and finally at eight. By that point Lady Constance was in a foul mood; the lack of correspondence seemed to be taking a dreadful toll on her already delicate constitution. She refused her supper and instead demanded a particular type of marzipan that Mrs. Clarke had to send the young houseboy, Jasper, scurrying all over London to find. Then she very nearly scalded herself in the newfangled bathtub, and had to be lifted out red faced and yelling by two terrified ladies’ maids.

  Lord Fredrick had scarcely been home at all (“Business, dear,” he had explained as he rushed out the door right after breakfast). In short, Lady Constance was on her very last nerve, and the final post of the day was due in exactly one and one-half minutes.

  Alas, it was at this very moment, after the Incorrigibles had been tucked into their beds, that Penelope came downstairs. The intention to show a bit of warmth to her mistress was still firmly lodged in her mind. She knew nothing about Lady Constance’s postal disappointments, since she herself had been happily occupied all day, strolling the parks of London while studying latitude and longitude with the children. This was at Alexander’s request; he was quite taken with the topic of navigation all of a sudden and refused to go ten steps in any direction without referring to his compass. And the children had showed admirable restraint when it came to both squirrels and pigeons; Penelope had only had to offer a few cautionary reminders and the occasional distracting biscuit.

  Yes, Penelope was in quite a different mood than poor Lady Constance, for the very notion of navigation made her think of Simon, and the thought of Simon made her giddy—giddy enough to be idly whistling the same lilting sea chantey that Simon himself was prone to whistle when taking a reading on his sextant, as she skipped lightly down the stairs. And Penelope, too, was half expecting a letter, for she had written to Simon in that morning’s post inquiring about the Gypsy woman. Might a reply be on its way already? Clearly, in London, anything was possible.