The Interrupted Tale Page 8

  “Hopeless case!” Cassiopeia pointed.

  “Do not be dramatic, Cassiopeia. Perhaps the gardener is on vacation. Ivy can grow very—ugh!—quickly.” Penelope tugged harder, but still it would not come down.

  “But, Lumawoo, look. No motto.” Cassiopeia pointed with both hands this time, high above the door. Instead of carved letters bearing noble sentiments, there was only ivy.

  “The motto is . . . gone!” Penelope could scarcely believe it. “At least, it has been hidden by all this shrubbery. Where is it?” She grunted, pulling hard on the vines. “Where is the motto?”

  “Maybe in the motto grotto?” Alexander suggested. No doubt he was still thinking of the Spooky Grotto of Tygers.

  Beowulf shook his head. “Not even a spotto of a motto.”

  “Motto, notto,” Cassiopeia concluded sadly.

  “It is still there. It has to be. They would never have removed the school motto.” Penelope yanked at the overgrowth, but the vines were as thick around as her wrist. “Help me, children! Together we can manage it. Heave-ho!”

  The four of them struggled and pulled, but the ivy would not budge. Incensed, Penelope rang the doorbell, first once, then twice, then a third time. “Never fear, children. We will not be outwitted by vegetation. I will speak to Miss Mortimer, and all will be made well. If the gardeners are away, the girls themselves are more than capable of forming a work party. I will organize it myself if need be. We shall require a ladder, and some shears, and a broom to sweep up the mess. . . .”

  The door swung open. “Good evening, Miss Lumley,” said a deep, melodious, and all-too-familiar voice.

  “Quinzawoo!” Alexander gasped. The children recoiled. Penelope felt as if the temperature had dropped twenty degrees.

  Judge Quinzy stepped out from the shadows. “And the Incorrigible children, too. What an unexpected pleasure to find all four of you huddled on the doorstep like a litter of abandoned kittens—almost as if you had been left here by unfeeling parents whom you would never, ever see again.”

  Quinzy smiled, and the last ray of flame-colored light glinted off his glasses as the sun disappeared over the valley’s edge. “But let us not think of unhappy things. I bid you welcome.” He opened the door fully and gestured for them to enter. “Welcome to my school.”

  “Quinzawoo!” Alexander gasped.

  The Sixth Chapter

  Proof that Penelope is not a princess in disguise.

  MANY YEARS INTO THE FUTURE, and in an entirely different country than the one in which Miss Penelope Lumley and the Incorrigibles had their adventures, a book titled You Can’t Go Home Again would be published to great acclaim. (As it happens, the book was written by a Mr. Thomas Wolfe. However, the wolfiness of his name is purely coincidental to our discussion.)

  At first glance, to say “You can’t go home again” seems absurd, for most of us go home every day, assuming we have left our houses in the first place. But let us take a leap of the imagination. Say that you have not merely gone out to walk your prize Pomeranian, or ridden your velocipede to the corner store to purchase a doughnut and the newspaper, or hopped on the omnibus to bring soup and some headache lozenges to an ailing neighbor.

  Instead, imagine that you have actually moved away, to a distant city in a faraway land, and had to make your way among strangers. With crampons and pickax you have scaled the slippery summits that life has placed in front of you, and now here you stand, weather-beaten and freckled by the sun, with impressive biceps and dressed in a parka. Your friends might recognize you if they saw you, but you are not so sure you recognize yourself. That is the moment when the words “You can’t go home again” toll their sad bell of truth. You leave your home in Constantinople; by the time you return, all the signs read ISTANBUL, and there is no going back to the way things were before.

  So it was for Penelope. An overgrowth of ivy could be trimmed away with garden shears, but to see Judge Quinzy, Edward Ashton, or whoever he was looming in the doorway to her beloved Swanburne made her feel like a marionette whose crucial strings had just been cut. She could not move; she could scarcely breathe. Where was Miss Mortimer? Where were the Swanburne girls?

  The Incorrigible children had a different reaction.

  “Tygawooo!” Cassiopeia yelled as she and her brothers hurtled through the door.

  “Ahhhhh!” Quinzy cried, reeling backward, out of sight.

  “Children, remember your manners!” Fearing the worst, Penelope dashed inside. Quinzy had his back pressed against one wall, but there were no signs of bloodshed or torn clothing. Indeed, the children paid him no mind. Their attention was fixed a few yards farther on, down the long, dim hallway that led to the first-floor classrooms.

  “Quiet, please!” Penelope clapped her hands for attention. “Children, what on earth are you barking at?”

  As if in answer, a horrible hissing sound issued from the hall. The children stopped yapping and turned pale.

  “King cobra!” Alexander whispered. “Native to India. Far off course.”

  “Or Burmese python,” Beowulf hypothesized. “Unusual for Heathcote.”

  Cassiopeia, who was tired and cranky from the long day of travel, cupped her hands to her mouth and hissed right back. “Sssss! What do you say to that, snakey?”

  “Meowwwwwwwww!” A pair of eyes glinted in the dark, quite low to the ground.

  “It is Miss Mortimer’s cat, Shantaloo!” Penelope darted ahead of the children and sank to her knees, one hand extended toward the shadows. “Come, Shantaloo. It is me, Penny Lumley. Remember all those afternoons we sat in the window seat, me reading among the pillows and you in my lap, purring? How we both loved the tales of Edith-Anne and her pony friend, Rainbow! I used to call you my Rainbow kitty sometimes. Don’t you remember?”

  “Meow!” Blinking, the creature inched forward into the light. It was quite a small cat, as cats go, with a white ruff under its neck, and orange and black stripes everywhere else. Delicately, it touched the tip of its nose to Penelope’s outstretched finger.

  “Tiny tygawoo!” Cassiopeia cried in delight.

  “Ah-choo!” Quinzy sneezed, and his hands flew up to his face. “Ah-choo!”

  Alexander and Beowulf searched their pockets for clean handkerchiefs, but they had used all theirs on the long journey from Ashton Place. The boys shrugged apologetically, but Quinzy turned away.

  “Clever kitty! She is always first to know when visitors arrive. Ah, my dear Penny, at last!” Miss Mortimer came rushing out of the hallway into the light and threw her arms tight around Penelope. “Thank goodness you are here,” she whispered in Penelope’s ear as they embraced. “Safe and sound, and the children, too.”

  The kind headmistress stood straight. “Welcome to Swanburne, Incorrigible children! I am Miss Mortimer, and you have just met my little lap cat, Shantaloo. She is infallibly shrewd. See how she already thinks of you as friends?”

  Indeed, now that the cat had recognized Penelope, there was no more hissing. The arch of her back softened, and she rubbed up against the children’s legs, demanding to be petted. Naturally, they were happy to oblige.

  “Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,” Cassiopeia recited, for in addition to that attractively striped coat, the cat had gleaming amber eyes that burned bright as candles.

  That made Miss Mortimer smile. “You may call her Tyger if you like. She will not mind. In fact, she is very fond of poetry, just as a Swanburne cat should be.”

  “Ah-choo!” A snuffling, wheezing sound came from the corner.

  Miss Mortimer turned. “Are you all right, Judge Quinzy? It sounds as if you have come down with a dreadful cold.”

  Quinzy’s hands covered the lower part of his face, and his eyes bulged behind his glasses. He stayed hunched against the wall and spoke in a muffled voice. “Forgive me. I have a strong . . . aversion . . . to cats. They make me quite ill. I happened to be passing by when I heard the door chime. I meant only to welcome our guests. Now that Miss Mortimer is here, she w
ill see to your comfort.” Head down, he scuttled away like a nervous crab and disappeared into the shadowed hall.

  Miss Mortimer scooped the cat into her arms and tickled it behind the ears. “Imagine having an aversion to cats! Poor fellow, we shall have to ask the girls to embroider an extra supply of handkerchiefs for him. Look how tall and grown-up you are, Penelope! And the children, too—my, my.” Her expression grew soft and dreamy. “How easy it is to imagine you as you might have been some years ago, when these two strapping fellows were tiny boys in short pants . . . and baby Cassiopeia! If I close my eyes, I can just picture you as a bright-eyed infant, with scarlet hair that stood up like a plume in a lady’s hat.”

  Still cradling the squirming cat, she knelt before the children and gazed at each face in turn. “Yet even if a person had not laid eyes on you in all the years since, no matter how much they might have wished to see you and to know that you were safe . . . even after all this time, I am quite sure that person would never, ever mistake you three for anyone but who you really are. How dusty it is in here!” Miss Mortimer dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. “It seems I have something in my eye.”

  The children were hypnotized by her words, but Penelope felt uneasy. Could she be jealous of all this tender attention lavished on the Incorrigibles, who, despite their adorable eccentricities and mysterious background, were really perfect strangers to Miss Mortimer? She had always enjoyed being the kind headmistress’s favorite, but now she felt rather pushed to the side. “Like a big sister who everyone ignores when cooing over the new baby,” she scolded herself sternly. “A sentiment that is hardly appropriate to the occasion!”

  She shook off the feeling as best she could, for there were other, more important things to think about. Indeed, Penelope had so many questions she hardly knew which to ask first. “Miss Mortimer, why did Judge Quinzy say Swanburne was his school? Why are the walls overgrown with ivy? And is it true that the name of the school will be changed?”

  “I hope you have not been reading the newspapers, Penny! They seem to print all kinds of inaccuracies nowadays.” Miss Mortimer stood once more, the cat squirming in her arms. “Tomorrow we shall discuss your concerns. Tonight is for happy homecomings only. First you must unpack your suitcases and get a good night’s rest. The dinner hour is over, but I will have a bedtime snack brought to your room. In the morning you may have breakfast in the dining hall, with the Swanburne girls.”

  “Birthday parties! Porridge and jam!” the children cried happily, for of course Penelope had told them all about it.

  Shantaloo would not stop wriggling. Miss Mortimer sighed and let the cat hop to the ground. “There might be jam, unless we have run out. But there will be porridge, without fail. After breakfast I will expect you in my office. Children, follow me, please. You will be staying in our guest quarters. The accommodations are humble, but ‘The warmer the welcome, the grander the palace,’ as Agatha Swanburne used to say.”

  Miss Mortimer held out her hand to Cassiopeia. The little girl took it without hesitation and gazed up at the kind headmistress with a trusting smile. The two of them led the way, with Alexander and Beowulf following eagerly behind. Shantaloo blinked a silent farewell and slipped off the way she had come.

  Flustered, Penelope grabbed her carpetbag and scurried after the children. “But . . . Miss Mortimer! What about the motto?”

  Miss Mortimer answered without breaking her stride. “‘No hopeless case is truly without hope.’ Remember it well, Penny, dear. It may be precisely the advice we need at present.”

  MISS MORTIMER WAS WISE TO show them to their room, for Penelope had rarely visited the guest quarters (she had been woefully short on visitors during her school years, and especially so on Parents’ Day), and she might well have made a wrong turn. They swiveled around corners, marched up flights of stairs and down again, and passed through doors that creaked as if they had not been opened in years.

  The children thought it all a great game; by turns they pretended they were moles in dark tunnels, or explorers charting an unmapped jungle, or Postal Tygers delivering the mail along an unfamiliar route. Miss Mortimer was charmed by their talent for make-believe and praised them for the fine condition of their imaginations.

  But to Penelope it was no game, and no happy homecoming, either. The well-worn stones of Swanburne were beneath her feet, but everything felt wrong. This was not the school she knew and loved. It was an impostor, like Quinzy; a labyrinth where a bloodthirsty minotaur might leap out from every shadow. “It is because of the new shoes,” she told herself uneasily. “They are bound to make even familiar ground feel strange.”

  Or perhaps it was the sight of Miss Mortimer leading Cassiopeia through the halls that made her feel so unsettled. The tiny hand nestled firmly inside the kind headmistress’s comforting grasp, the way Miss Mortimer inclined her head to hear the little girl’s observations—why, it was as if Penelope had traveled back in time to witness her own arrival at Swanburne! The sensation was so strong she had to resist the urge to look over her shoulder, to see if she could catch a final glimpse of her parents. If only she had known that they would not be coming back for her! She would have certainly taken a good long look, and imprinted it on her memory for safekeeping.

  “Here we are,” Miss Mortimer announced at last. “It is off the beaten path, I know. Few people even know this wing of the school exists, so it ought to be nice and quiet.” She fitted a key in the lock and gave a hard twist.

  Penelope forgot her worries and laughed out loud at what she saw inside: four freshly made-up cots, lined up in a row. “Those are the beds all the Swanburne girls sleep in. It seems Miss Mortimer has given us our own Incorrigible dormitory,” she explained when the children wanted to know why she had laughed. She sat on the edge of one cot; the thin, lumpy mattress and pained squeak of the old springs made her sigh with contentment. This, at least, was exactly as she remembered.

  “No doubt you have become used to sleeping in a soft feather bed, and all the other luxuries of Ashton Place,” Miss Mortimer teased. “I hope our cots do not keep you up all night, as in the story of the princess and the pea.”

  The mere mention of peas caused the children to voice heartfelt objections, but Miss Mortimer smiled and assured them that something much tastier was on its way. A moment later the promised snack arrived: a basket of apples from the orchards, fresh-baked biscuits, and a pitcher of cream-topped milk from Swanburne’s very own cows. After they had eaten, she showed them where to put away their things and helped everyone find their nightclothes. Soon the children’s heads were nodding, but still Miss Mortimer’s hand lingered on the doorknob. “Look at you all,” she said softly. “What a joy to see you again.”

  “But, Miss Mortimer, you have never met the Incorrigibles before.” Penelope stifled a yawn. She, too, was more than ready for bed.

  Miss Mortimer paused. “It must be your letters, Penny. They are so vividly written, I feel as if I have met the children a hundred times. I know all about you three: Alexander the navigator, and Beowulf, with your skill for drawing and fine, strong teeth. And you, Cassiopeia, with your sweet little squirrel pet. Remind me, what is that furry scamp’s name again?”

  “Nutsahwoo!” the children howled sleepily from their beds.

  Miss Mortimer laughed so hard that tears formed in the crinkles of her eyes. “Ahwoo, indeed! Your wolf family did a fine job raising you. They even provided musical training. How I would love to stay and read you a bedtime story! But a headmistress’s work is never done, and there is much for me to attend to before my own bedtime comes. Miss Lumley will see that you have a story, of that I have no doubt. Our library is closed at this hour, but tomorrow you may help yourselves. Did you bring any books with you from Ashton Place?”

  “Of course,” Penelope said quickly, for no Swanburne girl would be caught out and about without something interesting to read tucked into her pocket or purse. Miss Mortimer nodded approvingly and left.

  Alas, t
he only books Penelope had close at hand were the cannibal book, her own book of melancholy German poetry in translation, Alexander’s book of Shakespeare sonnets, and Mr. Gibbon’s tome about the Roman Empire. None of these seemed quite right for bedtime. Yet a story was needed, so Penelope made up a tale on the spot. It was about a princess in disguise whose true identity is revealed when she cannot make herself fall asleep in a lumpy bed. Penelope called it “The Princess and the Very Tiny Biscuit,” and the children much preferred it to any story involving a pea.

  “MORNING MAY NOT PUT ONE’S problems in a new light, but at least it puts them in a new day,” as the wise founder of the Swanburne Academy liked to say. And it was true. By morning Penelope’s list of problems had in no way diminished, and yet they seemed more manageable, somehow, as if she might simply put them in a list and tick them off, one by one. There were her suspicions about what the impostor Quinzy (or the IQ, for short) was doing at the Swanburne Academy, and her misgivings about the cannibal book, which was now hidden in the bottom of the armoire, beneath her rolled-up stockings. There was her mounting anxiety about her unwritten CAKE speech—and what on earth was she to do about Lord Fredrick’s howling? In hindsight she realized she ought to have checked the almanac for the date of the next full moon, so she might be prepared to begin the HEP, as promised. Too late now, though. It would have to wait until she returned to Ashton Place.

  Yet despite all her worries, waking up in the deliciously familiar discomfort of a Swanburne cot made Penelope feel positively giddy. The sharp tips of feathers poking out of the pillow and the bracing smell of bleach from the sheets flooded her senses until they erased every bit of trouble and care that had cropped up since the day she left school. Rolling over, she half expected to get tickled across the face with the tip of one of Cecily’s long braids.