The Interrupted Tale (22 page)

Once more she surveyed the room. Her audience was rapt, ready to spring to their feet in a thunderous ovation. “My years at Swanburne have given me so much!” she said with passion. “Good memories, good friends, good posture, excellent penmanship, and a deep love of poetry and all its meters. For example, iambic pentameter, which, as you may know, sounds like this:
ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM, ta-TUM.
”

She clapped her hands to demonstrate the rhythm. “Let me offer an example. I HAVE a FURry FRIEND called NUTSaWOO. Might you all say that with me? Feel free to clap if you like.”

Puzzled, the audience chanted and clapped: “I HAVE a FURry FRIEND called NUTSaWOO.”

Penelope smiled. “Well done! You are natural-born poets, each and every one of you. Of course, iambic pentameter should not be confused with anapestic tetrameter, as I am sure you already know. Would anyone care to demonstrate?”

There was an audible scuffling of chairs. Students and alumnae alike looked worried, as if suddenly confronted with an unexpected quiz in a topic they had never studied.

“Or even dactylic hexameter,” Penelope added.

Edward Ashton's voice boomed from the trustee's table. “All right, Miss Lumley, that is quite enough—”

Penelope held up a hand. “Please, save your questions for the end. Now I shall recite the beginning of one of my favorite poems. See if you can guess the meter. It is called ‘Wanderlust.'

 

“I wander through the meadows green

Made happy by the verdant scene.”

 

Nobody volunteered the answer, but Penelope was all too happy to explain. “It is iambic quadrameter, you see? Four
ta-TUM
s per line, instead of five. And a rhyming couplet as well, which hardly bears mentioning, for I am sure you do not need me to point out that ‘green' and ‘scene' rhyme with each other, as well as with many other words. Like ‘string bean,' and ‘soup tureen,' and ‘Byzantine,' and—well, there are far too many to list. For now, let me simply recite the poem for your enjoyment. No further interruptions, I promise!”

As good as her word, Penelope recited “Wanderlust,” and several other poems as well. She analyzed their meter, rhyme schemes, and anything else she could think of. By the time she had finished exhausting her knowledge of poetry, she had been speaking for an hour. Members of the audience were fanning themselves, and she saw a few yawns in the back.

“But so much for my introductory remarks.” She leaned against the podium for support. “At last it is time to address the true subject of my talk. It is a subject about which I had scarcely given a second thought before coming to Swanburne. Happily, my education here lit a bonfire of interest within me that burns brightly to this very day.”

The candlelight flickered in the lenses of Edward Ashton's glasses as if his eyes might shoot flaming arrows at her. Penelope looked away, so as not to lose heart. “I will keep you in suspense no longer. The subject of my speech is ferns. Ferns!” she repeated, raising one hand in the air as if she were addressing the Roman Senate. “Yes, ferns, or Pteridophyta, as they are scientifically known. A topic about which I think I may humbly call myself an expert.”

After a lengthy preamble, in which Penelope talked about fronds, spores, roots, rhizomes, and the impressive knack ferns have for growing in the shade, she began to catalog the varieties. “One of my favorites is the interrupted fern. In this curious specimen, the brown sporangia do not grow from the tops of the frond stalks. Nor do they grow on their own separate stalks, as they do on the ostrich fern. I am sure you will be as shocked and amazed as I was to learn that, on the interrupted fern, the brown sporangia grow right in the middle of the stalk, ‘interrupting' the pattern of green fronds, so to speak. Hence, the name.”

Penelope looked out at the audience. The normally straight-backed Swanburne girls were slumped in their chairs. Some of the faculty were asleep; others pinched their own cheeks to stay awake. Only Miss Charlotte Mortimer sat upright and cheerful, with her hands calmly folded in her lap. She listened attentively to every word Penelope uttered. At times she nodded, and a secret smile seemed to play about her lips.

“In the early stages of growth, before the appearance of the sporangia, the interrupted fern is easily confused with the cinnamon fern. Luckily, there are several ways the careful observer might tell them apart. . . .”

On and on she went. She spoke of the maidenhair fern, with its striking black stems, and the hay-scented fern that smelled, remarkably, like hay. When she ran out of ferns that were real, she invented fictional ferns: the quilted fern, which died down each winter into a soft and cozy clump. The Dalmatian fern, with its dappled fronds and alert bearing. The earlobe fern, with its pendulous, spore-bearing clusters.

Her imagination took leap after leap, and all the while she kept her eye on the clock. Fern by fern, the minute hand inched forward, until an hour and twenty minutes had passed . . . an hour and thirty minutes . . . forty minutes. . . . Now she was at one hour and forty-four minutes, with only one minute to go. . . .

She paused and took a sip of water from the glass that some kind soul had brought to the podium. She cleared her throat and dabbed her lips with her commemorative handkerchief.

“And so, there you have it: the mighty fern, in a nutshell,” she concluded at last. “Any questions?”

 

M
ISS
P
ENELOPE
L
UMLEY DID NOT
invent the filibuster, which, as you know, has been in use since the days of ancient Rome. However, she may fairly be credited with inventing the fernibuster. It is not a style of oration that has been often used since (ferns being not quite as popular nowadays as they were in Miss Lumley's day, a frankly inexplicable state of affairs). But on this occasion, a fernibuster was just what the doctor ordered.

It should be noted that Penelope's fernibuster did not plunge all her audience into a stupor. In fact, some of her listeners (all right, two) found it nothing short of riveting. Miss Mortimer seemed enthralled by the performance and approached the podium as soon as the applause died down, which, to be blunt, did not take very long.

“Penny, dear, you have outdone yourself! I had no idea you had grown so expert in the matter of spores and fronds. I only wish you could tell us more. But, as the saying goes, ‘So many ferns, so little time.'” (As you may recall, she was here paraphrasing a saying of Agatha Swanburne which originally had to do with cupcakes, but Miss Mortimer was well able to adapt the wisdom of the past to suit her present circumstances, and so should we all.) “Really, Penny, it was a tremendous display of pteridological expertise. I can honestly say I have never seen anything like it. And I am not the only one who thinks so. Here, allow me to introduce Mrs. Diane Worthington, of the Heathcote Amateur Pteridological Society.”

Miss Mortimer stepped aside to reveal an elderly lady with piercing blue eyes. Her white hair floated, cloudlike, atop her head, and a delicate pattern of creases fanned across her face like arching fronds, especially when she smiled. The crinkly-eye fern, Penelope could not help thinking.

“How do you do, Miss Lumley?” said Mrs. Worthington, clasping her hand. “Always a pleasure to meet a fellow fan of ferns! I wonder if you remember me. I spoke at Swanburne some years ago, when you were still a student here.”

Of course Penelope remembered her. In fact, it was the lecture by Mrs. Worthington that had prompted Penelope's interest in ferns to begin with. It would be a genuine pleasure to renew their acquaintance, but now was not the time, for she had to get to the chicken coop, quick!

“What a thrilling presentation!” the good lady continued. “I wonder if you might be available to address the members of our society at one of our monthly meetings. Your talk was impeccably thorough. I have a few quibbles, mind you. Do you really think the ostrich fern can grow to three meters? I have rarely seen a specimen that big.”

“I must have been thinking of actual ostriches. Mrs. Worthington, forgive me; I would be honored to speak to your society, but at this moment I must run to another engagement. Might we continue our conversation by post? And may I say, I will be sorry to miss your upcoming talk on Ferns Under Glass: Tips and Techniques for Indoor Growing. I have long wondered about the effectiveness of Wardian cases.”

Mrs. Worthington beamed. “A fascinating topic indeed. We meet the second Wednesday of every month. I shall send a letter proposing some dates.”

“Ferntastic.” Clearly it would take awhile for Penelope to shake the fronds out of her mind, so to speak. “That is to say, I shall look forward to your correspondence.” Giddy with triumph, Penelope made her way toward the door. Her speech was over, and Edward Ashton and his minions had been trapped here in the dining hall the whole time, just as she and Simon had planned. By the time Ashton discovered the cannibal book was missing, they would have visibilized it and read the whole thing twice, at least!

She was nearly to the door when a distinguished-looking woman seized her and kissed her firmly on both cheeks. “Speech good!” she proclaimed, and began to talk rapidly in a language Penelope could not understand. Then she stopped. “Wait,” she said. “My translator.”

A round-cheeked young lady stepped forward, beaming. Her thick, curly hair was tied in two long braids that hung down her back like ropes. The hair was a glossy strawberry blond, nothing like the drab, dark brown of days gone by. But there was no mistaking who it was.

“Cecily!” Penelope forgot about everything else and squealed in pure delight. “Cecily Longstocking! Oh, look at you! How has it been so long? You have hardly changed a bit!”

Cecily hugged her so hard her feet left the ground. “Penny Lumley! I was so afraid we'd miss you! We suffered a broken wheel on the road from Witherslack, so we had to wait for a change of coach. But we made it just in time for a bit of dinner and your speech. Goodness, Penny, you gave me a workout! All those ferns! I couldn't think how to say ‘spores' in Hungarian, so I kept calling them ‘crumbs.' Close enough, I guess. But what on earth is a widget fern?”

“I wish I knew,” Penelope said, laughing. “And is this lady your employer? How kind of her to accompany you to the CAKE.”

“Well, she has business here as well. She's one of the trustees. She likes to keep her charitable causes quiet, though. Otherwise there's no end to people asking her for money. It's because of her the school has so many language teachers. She always insists on having a Swanburne girl as her translator.”

Cecily spoke rapidly in Hungarian to her employer; Penelope thought she heard her own name in the stream of words. Cecily turned back to her. “Miss Penelope Lumley, I am honored to present you to Her Grace, the Archduchess Ilona Laszlo, third cousin to Prince Franz-Fritz Spitz-Wilhelm, Count Palatine of the Spotted Cavern of Dalmatia.”

At hearing her title, the archduchess stood straight and clicked her heels together. Then she replied to Cecily, who listened attentively before explaining, “She wants you to know that dinner was excellent. Very rarely does she taste an authentic Hungarian goulash in England. She says it was nearly as good as the one she makes herself.”

That the dinner had been made from the archduchess's own recipe seemed like a revelation best saved for another day, so Penelope said only, “Thank you,” and curtsied deeply.

“Good goulash makes good school,” the archduchess declared. “I vote no change.”

Cecily's smile faded. “Yes, what's this about changing the name of the school? They're not serious, are they?”

Penelope's face fell. The vote! In her relief at surviving the fernibuster she had forgotten about that. “Perhaps it is too late now,” she said, hoping against hope. And indeed, Miss Mortimer was trying desperately to dismiss everyone, with handshakes all around and many exclamations of “Good night now, sleep well, sweet dreams!”

“Silence!” It was the baroness, forcing her way back to the podium. “Nobody leaves this room! I don't care about your early bedtimes. The board of trustees must vote, and vote we will, despite having to endure that exhausting display of expertise! Trustees, gather at the front of the room!”

The seven trustees came forward as requested. Penelope gasped with surprise to see Mrs. Worthington take her place among them. She was the first to speak and declared, “Any school that could produce such a well-rounded aficionado of ferns must be doing a superb job. I vote to keep Swanburne Swanburne!” Her face crinkled wonderfully as she smiled, and all the girls cheered.

Next was Mr. Felix Trundle, a well-off solicitor from Heathcote, and as it happened, an amateur singer of light opera. “When I heard there was to be no more singing, I thought, ‘Well, that is not going to sit well.' And why have we not heard the school song tonight? It's very catchy, in my opinion.” In his rich bass voice, he sang, “All hail to our founder, Agatha!” Some of the girls started to join in, but the baroness shushed them.

The third vote came from the archduchess. “Good goulash, good school!” she said, as she, too, voted in favor of keeping the school as it had always been.

That made three votes in defense of the school, and everyone looked hopeful. But Baroness Hoover and the Earl of Maytag voted firmly in favor of changing the name to the School for Miserable Girls. So did the chairman, from behind his bandit's kerchief. Now there were three for, three against.

“And how do you vote, Baron Hoover?” Edward Ashton asked, his voice so smooth as to sound indifferent.

The baroness checked her watch, as if the whole business would soon be over. But Baron Hoover did not answer straightaway; he hemmed and hawed and cleared his throat. When he did speak, he kept his eyes downcast, as if he were talking to the carpet. “Well, I must say, I keep thinking about that motto. ‘No hopeless case is truly without hope.' I remember feeling rather like a hopeless case at times, when I was a lad. Still have dark days, to tell the truth! Could use a true friend or two, but people lack sympathy for your problems when you have a title and an estate and pots of money. As if a rich fellow never gets the toothache or misses his mum!” He looked up from his shoes. “It's not my fault I was born a baron. I'd have made a good gardener, I think. Flowers are so cheery.”