“Say, that’s a funny coincidence! The ticket envelope my acquaintance at the Drury Lane gave me, the one that had our tickets to the premiere—it had that same sort of fancy A marked on it….”
Penelope only half heard Simon’s musings, for her gaze was drawn back to the face of Diana. “I have seen that woman before—but where?” she murmured.
Beowulf firmly shook his head. “Ominous Landscape. Mythic lady. Wrong gallery,” he concluded.
He would have been right, too, if the goddess Diana had simply been plopped in the middle of an Ominous Landscape. Then the painting would have belonged in Gallery Eleven, Use of Mythic Figures in Ominous Landscapes.
Yet this painting was, in fact, a portrait (which is to say, a picture of a real person, not a made-up one). The realization struck Penelope with the strength of an epiphany. True, this “Diana” looked quite a bit younger, but Penelope had gazed so many times at the image that hung in Miss Mortimer’s study at school, she knew there could be no mistake.
It was Agatha Swanburne. There she was: the pretty, no-nonsense features, the impish yet wise expression in those wide, sea green eyes, the smooth, distinctively auburn-colored hair—
Penelope gasped.
“What is it, Lumawoo?” Cassiopeia was at her side in an instant.
“See ghost?” asked Beowulf.
“Burbage, maybe?” added Alexander hopefully. Truth be told, he had rather enjoyed his brief moment of speaking on the professional stage.
“No—not a ghost,” Penelope said, after a moment. But the skin on the back of her neck prickled, and her arms were covered with goose bumps.
For receiving a message, of a sort, from a person who is long dead—why, if that did not count as seeing a ghost, then what did?
THE SEVENTEENTH AND FINAL CHAPTER
A dreadful faux pas leads
to a hasty retreat.
TO KNOW WHERE YOU ARE going is always a great comfort to travelers, which is one reason that skilled navigators were as highly prized in Miss Penelope Lumley’s day as those clever, robot-voiced, direction-giving gadgets are today. It also explains the enduring popularity of guidebooks, and the fact that crawling back through that dark, damp tunnel was not nearly as frightening as the first trip had been. This time Penelope, Simon, and the Incorrigibles knew precisely where they would end up.
Soon they were outside the museum once more. Just as they had hoped, the sword-wielding thespians had scattered; presumably they had returned to the Drury Lane Theater to perform the second act of Pirates on Holiday. Madame Ionesco had disappeared as well. Penelope wondered if the pirates’ second-act performances would be at all improved by their lesson with Richard Burbage, but alas, she would not be there to see it.
“Ah, well,” she thought to herself, with a twinge of disappointment. “Half of a West End premiere is better than none, I suppose. The important thing is that the Incorrigibles are safe from those silly pirates. And we did manage a trip to the British Museum, finally! The children will have much to write about in their journals tonight.”
The children, indeed. Their russet hair looked almost gray in the color-stealing light of the moon, but each time they passed beneath a street lamp the auburn sheen glowed like an ember. It was same color as her own natural, unpoulticed hair, and of Agatha Swanburne’s, too. What could it mean? The whole moonlit walk back to Muffinshire Lane, Penelope looked at the Incorrigible children with fresh eyes.
Alexander, Beowulf, and Cassiopeia. Lost, or perhaps stolen, from their parents. Left in the woods at Ashton Place—but by whom?
Improbably, unexpectedly found by Lord Fredrick Ashton, and taken in as his wards.
Then, of all the governesses in the wide, unfathomable world, Miss Penelope Lumley, of the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, had been chosen to raise them, educate them, and as she now understood better than ever, protect them from harm.
Somehow, it was all connected. They were all connected; she and the children, and perhaps even Agatha Swanburne, too. But how? What did Miss Mortimer know that Penelope did not? And how did this inhuman curse that Madame Ionesco spoke of figure into things?
“Moon, moon, moon,” the children chanted expectantly as they marched home. And then, “Where moons?” they wondered. For now that the hour was late, the full moon had risen too high in the sky to be reflected in the windows of the buildings. The glass rectangles were dark as inky pools.
“And now there is this business of the paintings to puzzle over as well,” Penelope mused. She recalled the night she and the children had discovered that strange mural in the attic of Ashton Place. She thought of the mysterious howling sound that they had faintly heard from some hidden place behind the wall.
“What is the connection?” She scrunched her eyebrows together, to better summon her powers of deduction. “What, what, what?”
“Moon, moon, moon,” the sleepy children mumbled. It had been a very long day; Cassiopeia had run out of pep completely and was now riding on Simon’s shoulders.
“Moon?” Penelope realized, with growing excitement. “Moon, moon, moon!” Yes! For it had been a full moon the night of the Christmas ball, and it was a full moon now, on the night of the Pirates on Holiday premiere.
Both nights had ended in mayhem, with the children being pursued—or hunted, if you will.
Lord Fredrick had been absent from both occasions: the holiday ball and the premiere.
And, earlier that very night, Penelope had gotten a howlingly good clue as to why.
“Either there were wolves living in the attic,” she thought, recalling Lord Fredrick’s bizarre behavior, “or Lord Fredrick was hiding inside, having a peculiar fit of itching, barking, and howling that is in some way related to the full moon!”
“Voilà!” she exclaimed, feeling thoroughly pleased with herself.
Simon and the children looked at her questioningly.
“No French lesson, Lumawoo. Too tired,” Cassiopeia begged.
Penelope smiled. “French can wait until tomorrow. I merely had an epiphany of sorts, about something I have been wondering about for some months. Now, shall we sing that muffin man song as we walk?” Unlike the children, Penelope was feeling quite energetic all at once. “It is a lively little tune, and will keep our spirits up. Look, everyone, we are almost home!”
“VOILÀ,” AS YOU MAY ALREADY know, is a French word that means “there you are.” Like “Eureka” or “By Jove, I’ve got it,” “voilà” is sometimes exclaimed by people who have figured out the answer to some sort of problem or riddle that has been vexing them to no end.
But why would Penelope use a French word like “voilà” when she was nowhere near France? It is a reasonable question, and the answer is this: There are French words and phrases that only French-speaking people use, and there are French words and phrases that everyone uses. This is because some ideas are so perfectly described en français that no other language dares try to top it.
As an example, consider the phrase “joie de vivre.” It means “the joy of living,” and refers to the kind of cheerful, nonstop zest for life that stops just short of optoomuchism and makes a person a sheer pleasure to be around. “Gauche” means terribly awkward. A “provocateur” is a person who tries to stir up trouble. And then there is “faux pas,” which is an embarrassing blunder or lapse of good manners.
Translated into English, “faux pas” means “false step,” but faux pas are done all the time. Everyone makes mistakes now and then. Simple errors can be fixed with an eraser; more complicated blunders require an apology and a sincere effort to make things right. Either way, most mistakes are soon both forgiven and forgotten; they are a fact of life, and one ought not to lose sleep over them.
Sometimes, however, for no reason that science can yet explain, a perfectly ordinary faux pas is not forgotten at all. It becomes the subject of gossip and soon attracts the attention of the media, after which it escalates into a crisis of vast and humiliating proportions.
It was not part of the paper’s scathing review of the show itself (which, despite the enthusiasm of the audience, was deemed “A colossal failure, sure to fold in a week, what were they thinking?” by the Times’s chief theater critic, who had never been wrong about such things—although, to be fair, the critic also wrote that “some unexpectedly fine acting in the second half was not enough to salvage this barnacle-encrusted wreck of a show”).
No, the scandale du jour was reported on the Times society page, which, after a few lines speculating about why the King of Belgium was a no-show, devoted the rest of the column to mocking the tasteless garb worn to the premiere by one Lady Constance Ashton.
“What I fail to understand is how the Incorrigible children could behave so abominably, and yet all they care to criticize is my outfit!” Lady Constance had read and reread the society page so many times and dropped so many salty tears upon it, she now had black ink smudges all over her hands and face. “Fredrick, listen to this: ‘Clearly unused to London’s citified ways, the childlike (or is she just simple?) Lady Ashton attended the theater in the most absurd fancy dress imaginable. A word to the wise: Only the actors wear costumes, dear!’
“And this: ‘Lady Ashton’s pirate getup was so gauche as to be illegal; quick, somebody, throw her in the brig!’
“You missed one, dear.” Lord Fredrick shook open the business section of the London Times, drew it close enough to see, and read, “‘The London stock market showed modest gains yesterday—and speaking of stock, Lady Constance Ashton was the laughingstock of the West End last night—’”
“Enough!” she shrieked, and buried her head in her hands, weeping.
It got worse. The eleven o’clock post brought floods of mail, as did the next post and the one after that. Letter after letter arrived, all addressed to Lady Ashton, and all withdrawing the social invitations that had so recently been extended. Plans had changed, unexpected houseguests had arrived, hosts had suddenly contracted malaria, dangerous tornadoes were expected—the excuses piled on.
None of the date cancelers was so bold as to pin it on the eye patch, but the message was clear: Because of a single, rhinestone-studded faux pas, overnight Lady Constance had become a “social pariah,” which is to say, the sort of person absolutely no one who cared deeply about being popular would have anything to do with.
“Now, now, dear. It will soon blow over, what?” Lord Fredrick looked a bit worse for wear himself, with scratches on his hands and face and a lingering tendency to clear his throat in a particularly barky way, but at least the itching and howling seemed to have subsided. “The papers are just having a bit of fun, that’s all. Can’t take it personally, what?”
PENELOPE, TOO, WAS IN A bit of muddle. She and the children had made it home without incident. Simon—she called him Simon now, imagine that!—had parted with fond good-nights and mutual words of admiration for each other’s pluck in a tough spot. She had slept like a rock and dreamed only of alpine meadows filled with appealing little songbirds.
But now it was morning, and she had to decide what to say to Lady Constance about the previous evening’s mishaps. Rather than wait around to be fired, or for Lady Constance to threaten to ship the children off to an orphanage or dump them back in the forest (as she had quite rudely proposed after the wreckage of the holiday ball), Penelope wanted to take the bull by the horns, matadorlike, as it were, and offer her own side of the story. For, really, who had ever heard of a parrot trained to howl? Some provocateur was behind it all, and the children could hardly be blamed—at least, not entirely.
She sent word through Mrs. Clarke, requesting an audience, but no reply was forthcoming. It seemed Lord Fredrick was spending the day at home for a change; he and Lady Constance had not left their private rooms since the arrival of the morning paper.
“Perhaps he is still in the throes of his moon-induced ‘condition.’ If so, at least it is keeping him near his wife,” Penelope thought. “No doubt she will be in a better mood because of this much-overdue attention, and our conversation will not be difficult.” Was she being optoomuchstic? The possibility did not cross her mind.
Finally, well after teatime, Penelope received word that Lord and Lady Ashton would receive her. She smoothed her drab, blackberry-colored hair and proceeded to the dining room. There was a large pile of unopened mail on the table, near Lady Constance. With a maniacal look in her eye, Lady Constance slit open each letter, quickly skimmed its contents, and then proceeded to tear it into bits, which she carelessly let fall to the floor. By this time there was a snowdrift of torn-up paper heaped around her chair.
Lord Fredrick sat at the far end of the table with a hot-water bottle on his head, an ice pack pressed against his eyes, a glass of schnapps in front of him, and a small pill bottle of headache lozenges next to the schnapps.
Too nervous to wait to be asked to sit, Penelope began to explain and apologize the moment she entered the room. Lady Constance simply opened and ripped, opened and ripped, like a human shredding machine. When Penelope finished speaking, Lady Constance stood. She handed Penelope what was left of the society page of the Times, which of course Penelope had not seen, as it had been in Lady Constance’s agonized clutches since the moment it arrived.
Lady Constance waited as Penelope digested the awful contents of the page. Then she spoke.
“Miss Lumley. I will be blunt. Last night was the worst night of my life. My humiliation is complete; my friends have cut me off, and my reputation is in a shambles. I am convinced it was no accident. Someone is to blame.” Her eyes narrowed. “And I know exactly who is responsible.”
“You do?” Penelope was amazed to hear it. Were all the many mysteries that had accumulated since their arrival in London about to be solved?
“Yes, I do,” affirmed Lady Constance. “The source of all my troubles, past, present, and future, is those three…Incorrigible…children!”
“The children? But they had nothing to do with…” Penelope might have said, “your ill-chosen outfit, the rudeness of the gossip columnist, and the faithlessness of your so-called friends,” but she did not, for Lady Constance was clearly in no mood to hear the truth.
“Of course it was the children!” the lady declared. “Nothing good happens when they are near. They are unbearable! Intolerable! Incorrigible!” She turned to her husband, who had his feet propped on the table and looked only half conscious. “If only you had been there, Fredrick! You would have seen how wild and uncontrollable they were—why, they actually stormed the stage and attacked the pirates! They disrupted the performance completely.”
Lord Fredrick yawned, then grunted from beneath his ice pack. “If I were a lad and stumbled across a gang of pirates it’d be bad enough, but if the ruffians burst into song—why, I’d be scared out of my wits! I’d probably start shooting just to settle my nerves, what?”
“Hmph!” Lady Constance retorted. Lord Fredrick lifted the corner of the ice pack and looked at Penelope with one eye; she could not help thinking it was rather as if he were wearing an eye patch himself.
“About those Incorrigibles—no loss of property? No damages to the wolf children? I’ve still got three of them, what?”
“Yes, Lord Ashton,” Penelope replied. How could he speak in such a careless way about the children? It never ceased to astonish her.
“That’s all right, then.” He yawned again, then groaned, then popped a lozenge in his mouth and washed it down with a sip of schnapps. “But Constance, dear. Given all this unpleasantness, what say we go home to Ashton Place? I’m done with London myself. Much rather be out in the woods, shooting, what?”
Lady Constance snatched the society page back from Penelope, tore it to bits, and threw the pieces to the floor on top of
all the rest of the mess. “A brilliant suggestion! We will leave at once.” She ran to the bell and pulled on it repeatedly as she spoke. “Paupers! Pirates! What a dreadful place London is. Wild horses could not induce me to return to this inhospitable city—Mrs. Clarke!”
The ringing and yelling continued until Mrs. Clarke arrived, not flustered and panting as she usually would be, but in her own time and with a serene expression on her face.
“Good afternoon, my lady. Dear me, what a mess of paper! Do you need help cleaning it up?”
“I have no intention of cleaning it up,” Lady Constance replied, momentarily thrown. “I merely summoned you to announce: We are leaving!”
“Are you, now?” Mrs. Clarke nodded and smiled. “Where are you going, then?”
“No, no, no! We are all leaving! We are returning to Ashton Place at once. Have the servants pack up the house. Why we ever came to London to begin with I cannot say; it has been a nightmare from start to finish, and I for one have had quite enough.”
“All of us? At once?” Penelope repeated. Her mind raced; surely she would get the chance to say good-bye to Simon? And Miss Mortimer had not yet replied to her letter—why, she had not even met the children yet—
“Yes, all of us, much as I would like to leave you and those Incorrigible creatures behind.” She glanced at the half-asleep Lord Fredrick, and lowered her voice. “And remember, my dear friend Baroness Hoover knows of some very fine orphanages for the poor. Take care, Miss Lumley—take care you do not lose your pupils to one of them!”
LADY CONSTANCE MAY HAVE WISHED to leave at once, but packing up a household is not done by wishing. And Mrs. Clarke did not panic and hurry the servants along the way she might once have done. Sure enough, staying calm and taking one’s time made the work go that much faster, for without all the scolding and rushing there were fewer mistakes made and everyone kept in good spirits.
ICAP 2 - The Hidden Gallery Page 18
