The Unseen Guest Read online

  The more Penelope turned it over in her mind, the more convinced she became that the children might actually be better off in the forest. “Think how marvelous it would be to live among so many fascinating ferns, growing in their native habitats,” she thought with quivering lip. “And the children will still have one another, and the wolves, too…I am the one who will be left, all alone, once more….” Elk, elk, elk—now that the distraction of the chase was done, there it was; like so many other matters about which one is tempted to put one’s head in the sand, the problem of the long-lost Lumleys was no closer to solving itself than it had been before.

  The four wolves and three children exchanged many hugs and licks, friendly barks and gentle nips. Penelope’s feelings spun in such rapid succession she could not even name them; it was like a pinwheel of emotions whirling inside her, faster and faster, until each blended into the next.

  “So long,” said Cassiopeia, kissing one wolf on the nose.

  “Farewell,” said Beowulf as he let his face be washed once more.

  “Auf Wiedersehen,” said Alexander. He clicked his heels and bowed to the wolves.

  “Good-bye, Mama Woof,” Penelope whispered. “I hope we meet again quite soon.” When or where that meeting might take place, she did not dare imagine. The wolves would not be welcome in the nursery; that much was certain.

  The four wolves sat and offered their paws for a final shake. The beagles bayed a mournful parting song. Even Bertha raised a wing in salute. Then the wolves of Ashton Place were off, slipping like four shadows through the meadow grass and over the rolling fields until they disappeared beyond the tree line into the mysterious woods beyond.

  Penelope scarcely dared look at the Incorrigibles. Six shining eyes gazed longingly at the forest; at least, that is what she imagined the children felt. “Surely they should be allowed to choose,” she thought, bravely blinking away her tears. “If not, then I am no better than the admiral, to keep living creatures locked up in places where they would rather not be.” The nursery at Ashton Place was a pleasant room, well stocked with books and toys, not to mention a fond and dedicated governess, but Penelope had no intention of turning it into a PIE—a Permanent Incorrigible Enclosure from which there was no chance of escape.

  “Children, you do not have to stay,” she tried to say, but scarcely any sound came out, for her voice was choked with feeling.

  The Incorrigibles looked at her with an expression of joyful surprise. “Lumawoo, you have learned how to make rabbit call!” Beowulf said in admiration, but the thunder of approaching hooves prevented Penelope from correcting him. It was Lord Fredrick and his party, arriving at last. The men and their horses looked winded and unhappy. Lord Fredrick seemed particularly unwell; his eyes were bleary and red, and there were dark, puffy circles beneath them, as if he had been up all night.

  Six shining eyes gazed longingly at the forest…

  He was snappily dressed, at least, like all the other men. They were clothed for the hunt in scarlet coats, white trousers, and neat black caps. Penelope saw familiar faces among them: the Earl of Maytag was there, and Baron Hoover, both friends of Lord Fredrick from his gentlemen’s club. She scanned the rest of the party to see if the man who called himself Judge Quinzy was also present. As far as she could see, he was not.

  “Ostrich chase! More like a wild goose chase, that’s what this was!” Lord Fredrick was in the midst of vigorously scolding some unfortunate person; his voice was hoarse and froggy, and now and then he made an odd, sneezy, barky sort of sound. “I may not be able to see much, yap! But I should think a pack of experienced bird hounds would be able to sniff out the one and only ostrich in England. Woof! Instead they lead us to geese, ducks, warblers, nuthatches—I’ve never known the dogs to have such trouble telling one bird from another. Next time, bring a guidebook, what? Ah-whoo!” he sneezed as they approached the POE. “And then the blasted beagles run off and disappear altogether, yap! Yap, yap!”

  “Very sorry, my lord. Not sure what went amiss with the hounds today. I promise it won’t happen again.”

  The speaker dismounted with a thud. It was Old Timothy! He wore the green waistcoat that marked him as the master of hounds. The hunting horn was slung at his hip.

  Penelope thought quickly. If Old Timothy had served as master of hounds for the day, that meant it was Old Timothy who had blown the horn that warned her and the children that Lord Fredrick was coming. And it was Old Timothy who had apparently directed the dogs to lead this well-dressed hunting party everywhere but where Bertha might be found.

  Penelope suppressed the urge to go throw her arms around the neck of this enigmatic fellow and give him a hug of thanks. Surely it all meant that the strange coachman truly was a friend to her and the Incorrigibles, in spite of his gruff manner and puzzling remarks. “On second thought, an embrace would be unseemly,” she concluded, “but perhaps I could invite him to tea, as a way of saying thank you.” Yet somehow she doubted he would accept such a friendly gesture. Still, she resolved to express her gratitude in some fashion.

  “Ah-whoo! Blast this head cold, yap!” Lord Fredrick scratched frantically at one ear. “As far as I’m concerned, the day’s been a total loss. Hardly worth dragging myself out of my sickbed—why, what’s this?” Lord Fredrick squinted in the direction of the POE. “It’s not a bird, what? Too big to be a swan, eh? The pigs haven’t begun to grow wings, have they? Har har!”

  “I’m no expert, of course, but I believe it may be the ostrich.” Baron Hoover guided his horse near Lord Fredrick’s. “Looks like the hounds have sniffed her out after all. Always find it in the last place you look, eh, Freddy? Ha!”

  The Earl of Maytag slid off his mount and walked right up to the edge of the POE. Before Bertha could evade him, he reached over the fence and plucked a plume from her tail, which made her hiss mightily.

  “Hoover’s right, Freddy. See for yourself.” He handed the long, arched feather to Lord Fredrick. “An exotic creature, to be sure. Once she’s stuffed she’ll make a handsome addition to your study. You can put her next to the elephant’s-foot umbrella stand.”

  Lord Fredrick held the feather close in front of his eyes, trying to focus. “Hmm,” he muttered. “I was expecting something bigger—woof!”

  “Stand back from my bird, if you please!” The bellow came from Admiral Faucet, who emerged from the POEHO and strode angrily toward the assembled hunting party. “The hounds did not find Bertha. I did—with a bit of help from the wolf children. So the ostrich is still mine, Ashton. Finders keepers, that’s what you said.” Faucet awkwardly petted the bird on the neck, which made her kick forward (for ostriches can only kick forward, due to the way their knees are built) and snap at him with her beak. He smiled through gritted teeth. “As you can see, she’s all out of sorts from being away from me, poor creature. I’ll thank everyone to leave her alone.”

  Lord Fredrick shrugged and scratched under his hunting cap. “Keep your blasted bird, Faucet. If I’d known the hunt would be such a bore, I’d have stayed in bed. Take my horse, Timothy; I’m done for the day. I need my headache lozenges, and a nap. And—woof!—keep Constance away from me, would you? She’s been bombarding me with questions ever since Mother told her all that nonsense about full moons, yap! Pardon me.” He glanced up at the sky with nervous, darting eyes. “Blasted head colds. They never last more than a day or so….”

  AFTER LORD FREDRICK LEFT, THE hunting party broke up. There was talk of a lavish dinner to be served later that evening, followed by cigars and brandy, card games and billiards. None of the men paid any mind to Penelope or the children, although Baron Hoover did tip his hat in her direction as he turned to ride off. She acknowledged his greeting with the merest nod. They had met twice before: once at the disastrous holiday ball at Ashton Place, and once at a gentlemen’s club in London, where Penelope and the children had been sent to deliver Lord Fredrick’s misplaced almanac and where she had hoped to get some helpful advice from Judge Quinzy—thi
s was before she learned that he was no judge, of course.

  Penelope did not like or trust any of Lord Fredrick’s society friends, but Baron Hoover seemed not quite as awful as the Earl of Maytag. However, his wife, the Baroness Hoover, was monstrous, rude, and condescending, and like the Earl of Maytag, she scarcely considered the Incorrigibles to be human. Penelope hoped that the presence of her husband did not mean the baroness was now being entertained at the house as well. Even Lady Constance, who seemed to naturally prefer phony, ill-mannered people over gentle, true-hearted ones, found the baroness to be unpleasant company.

  And speaking of hearts, true and not so true, Admiral Faucet’s lie about being the one to find Bertha did not sit well with Penelope. On the other hand, the bird was clearly better off with the admiral than with Lord Fredrick, so she had let it pass. Life in a POE was far from ideal, but it was better than being stuffed full of sawdust. At least, Penelope hoped Bertha would see it that way.

  “Next to the elephant’s-foot umbrella stand, he says. Why, the cheek!” the admiral fumed. “These men of the aristocracy have no vision—no heads for business! Life’s been too cushy for them; that’s the trouble. Once I come into possession of my start-up capital, and Faucet’s Ostrich Extravaganza is up and running, they’ll be falling over each other for tickets. Let’s see who has the upper hand then. And don’t forget, governess—ostrich racing is only the beginning.” Mumbling his grand schemes, the admiral strode back toward the house. Penelope could swear she saw Bertha sigh with relief as he went.

  “‘An apple with no worms is best, but the apple with one worm tastes better than the apple with two,’” she said to the bird, quoting the wisdom of Agatha Swanburne, although she had little hope that Bertha would understand. “And perhaps, someday, there will be a way to return you to your native habitat. Although Africa is certainly a long distance away.”

  “Come, dogs, come, dogs.” Old Timothy summoned the hounds with a low whistle. Until now they had been nosing around the POE, gobbling up dropped bits of SPOTs, and scampering between Bertha’s legs as if she were one of them, only taller and two legged and not nearly as smart. At the sound of his whistle, the dogs ran to Old Timothy’s feet and sat in four neat rows, tongues out, their droopy ears lifted, waiting for his next command.

  “You do have a knack with animals, Timothy,” Penelope said approvingly. “Dr. Westminster would be impressed with your training techniques….” But then her voice trailed off.

  “Westminster, eh? Sounds like a fine gent. Penny for your thoughts, miss?” The remark startled Penelope out of her reverie, for “Penny” is what Miss Mortimer always called her, and no one else ever did. In this case, of course, Old Timothy meant “penny” as in a small amount of money; “Penny for your thoughts” was his way of asking what Penelope was thinking about.

  In fact, she was thinking how unfortunate it was that poor Bertha had ended up so far from her original home and family, and how the bird might perhaps be worried that she would never see them again. “Just like me, and like the Incorrigible children as well,” she thought with a wave of sadness. Of course she had no idea if ostriches cared about that sort of thing; perhaps there was some advantage to having a skull full of eyeballs instead of brains. But to Old Timothy, she merely said, “I was thinking that the children have been working on a guidebook about birds. You may borrow it if you like.”

  “And why would I want to do that?” he said with a sneer.

  Penelope smiled through misty eyes. She could see through his gruffness now, or thought she could. “I heard Lord Fredrick say that all of these perfectly trained dogs could hardly tell one bird from another today.” She touched Timothy’s arm and gave him a knowing look. “Now, why do you suppose that was?”

  The enigmatic coachman tilted his head to one side. “Couldn’t say, miss. But even a bloodhound from Scotland Yard gets a head cold now and then. Say, looks like you’ve got a spot of mustard there on your skirt. Best ask Margaret to get that out for you, before the stain sets.”

  With another short, low whistle and the crook of a finger, he bade the dogs follow him. Then he wheeled and walked off without so much as a good-bye, but with two orderly columns of beagles marching in step behind him. Even their tails wagged in unison: hup, hup, hup, hup.

  It was not until much later, after Penelope and the children had removed their pith helmets and lined them up on the nursery shelf, taken off their stained and rumpled safari outfits, bathed and changed into fresh, clean clothes, eaten a hot, home-cooked supper in the nursery, and settled in for a bedtime read-aloud (Penelope put Robinson Crusoe away for the time being, and instead chose to read from her book of German poetry in translation, in particular the poem called “Wanderlust,” which was fast becoming the children’s favorite, as well as her own)—it was only then, after the poem had been read and the children tucked into bed, and Penelope had returned to the comforts of her own charming room to brush her dark, drab hair one hundred strokes before bedtime, that it occurred to her to wonder: “How did Old Timothy know it was mustard?”

  THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER

  A request for help of a supernatural kind is sent, by post.

  WHEN ADMIRAL FAUCET CLAIMED THAT nature is “red in tooth and claw,” he was actually quoting a Mr. Thomas Hobbes, who lived in England quite a long time before Miss Penelope Lumley’s day. To give you an idea of just how long, imagine Agatha Swanburne herself as a laughing, red-cheeked girl being given piggyback rides by the family gardener. On that distant, sunny summer afternoon, Mr. Hobbes had already been dead for nearly a century.

  No doubt some of you find it strange to picture little Agatha as a child, after hearing her described so many times as the wise old founder of the Swanburne Academy for Poor Bright Females, but it is a scientific fact: Everyone who is old was young once. Even the very last dodo on earth started out as a baby dodo, full of hope and promise. Of course, this raises the question: If Baby Last Dodo had known that he or she would be the final specimen of the dodo kind, would BLD have taken more precautions about avoiding head colds and looking both ways at street crossings and so forth? Alas, we shall never know, and it is too late to go back and change things now, but pondering such deep and unanswerable questions is the job of philosophers—which brings us back to Mr. Hobbes.

  For Mr. Thomas Hobbes was, in fact, a philosopher. When he claimed that nature was “red in tooth and claw,” he meant that in a true state of nature, without laws and governments to keep things orderly, without strict rules of good manners, firm bedtimes, fines for overdue library books, and so on, that all human beings would simply do anything and everything they wished, for there would be nothing to stop them. The strong would bully the weak, the hungry would devour the tasty, library books would never be returned, and general mayhem would surely ensue. As he phrased it in Latin, bellum omnium contra omnes, which is to say, everyone would be at war with everyone else.

  It sounds like a most unpleasant way to live, and one wonders what sort of dinner companion Mr. Hobbes would have made. Did he steal the last roll from the bread basket simply because he thought he could get away with it, or sneak out without paying his share of the check? Luckily, other philosophers had a more optimistic (no doubt Hobbes would say optoomuchstic) view of human nature. For example, Monsieur Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that people were basically generous and kind, and that disagreeable behavior was caused by a poor upbringing and the corrupting influence of civilization. He was born in Switzerland, and we can only guess how he felt about edelweiss and alpine scenery, but about one thing we can be certain: Monsieur Rousseau had never met Admiral Faucet.

  For one thing, they lived in different centuries. For another, the admiral was something straight out of Hobbes: Personal gain was his only motive, and the well-being of others did not figure into his thinking at all. This was made clear the day after Penelope and the children returned from their adventure in the forest, when Penelope overheard the admiral regaling Lady Constance and the Wi
dow Ashton about his business plans, now that Bertha was back in his possession.

  She did not mean to eavesdrop, of course. She was merely on her way back from a visit to Lord Fredrick’s library. There she had assembled an ambitious stack of books about stalactites, stalagmites, troglobites, and other cave-oriented topics, and one slim volume about cannibals, too. This last book was for her own edification and not the children’s. Even so, she promised herself that she would not read so much as a paragraph within an hour of her bedtime, for it seemed the kind of tale that was likely to cause bad dreams.

  “And truly, there is nothing to fret about,” she told herself as she made her way down the hall, arms laden with books. Now that she and the children were back among the comforts of civilization, with its well-stocked libraries, soft featherbeds, and endless cups of tea (served hot, in pretty china cups with matching saucers), Penelope felt quite pleased with how their adventure in the forest had turned out.

  For one thing, Bertha was safe from Lord Fredrick’s grasp. “It was a pity she was snatched away from her native habitat to begin with, but things could be far worse. Bertha can compete in a few races and then retire to a pleasant farm somewhere, just as the Derby horses do.” The books were stacked so high in front of her that she could barely see over them, but Penelope would know the way from the library to the nursery blindfolded, and she was lost in thought in any case. “The life of a professional athlete is a difficult one, but it has its rewards. The thrill of victory among them, of course! And she seemed to enjoy those SPOTs a great deal.”