Maggie MacKeever (26 page)

“That is much better!” she said, as the silence stretched to screaming-point. “The rest of you will now refrain from interruption while Rosemary Tells Me All.” She paused expectantly.

“I am undone!” Rosemary replied, in failing tones. “Not that it’s to be wondered at, when Chalmers makes me read things like
Take Your Choice
and lectures me on things like soup kitchens for the poor. He does, I assure you! Just this morning over the breakfast cups he was telling me about some English Jacobins who have taken to meeting secretly and plotting revolution and drinking toasts to the strangling of the last king with the guts of the last priest. Which is quite enough to spoil anyone’s appetite! And so I would have told him, had not he received a note and gone out.”  Looking, though Rosemary did not say so to her mama, very much like a thundercloud.

That a discussion of such distasteful matters over the breakfast cups might impair one’s appetite, Marigold would concede. Nonetheless she did not perceive why Rosemary should consider her husband’s failure to enter into her sentiments as the crack of doom. Nor did she understand why Rosemary was cradling in her arms so hideous a cat. Would Rosemary please explain?

“It’s the kitchen cat. I didn’t even know we had one until Chalmers accused me of having no regard for the dignities he’d bestowed upon me, which I do!” Rosemary cuddled the cat, which did not appear to especially appreciate this singular mark of esteem.
“
I cannot be blamed because the man is a nipfarthing. As if that were not enough to bear, what must Fennel do but go frolicking among the muslin company, and Angelica sneak off for clandestine meetings with an ineligible
parti
, and Lily fly into the boughs because she’d meant Angelica to marry Kingscote! Lud, it’s not
me
that’ll make us food for scandal. All I did was—”

“Vinaigrette!” moaned Marigold, and stretched out a frail hand. “An ineligible
parti,
the muslin company,
Angelica!
I beg you will compose yourself and explain, Rosemary!”

No more than any of her siblings was Rosemary in the habit of thwarting Marigold who, languid as she was, had a very forceful way with a hairbrush. As coherently as she could, Rosemary explained first Lily’s relationship with Kingscote, which she considered the least exceptionable affair, and consequently the least likely to send her parent into convulsion fits.

Nor did it; Marigold laughed. “Kingscote marry Angelica?” she echoed. “The ugly duckling? Lily is a pudding-head, although one supposes she must mean well. Now what is this about Angelica and an ineligible
parti?”

Again Rosemary explained. “I never heard such a farrago of nonsense!” gasped Marigold, after Rosemary had revealed that Angelica had come by her just deserts. “That thankless girl! I trusted her to look after the rest of you!” She applied herself to the vinaigrette.

“I’m sure Angelica did her best!” soothed Rosemary, lest her mother succumb to one of the spasms to which she was prone, and to which she would doubtless fall prey before Rosemary’s account was done. “Perhaps it is not so bad as it may look.”

“No?” mocked Marigold, faintly. “Shockingly irregular conduct? To think that Angelica, whom I have trusted, should exhibit such a deviousness of mind—oh! Was there ever such a sorry thing?”

“Now you’ve done it!” hissed Hysop, who was leaning against the back of the sofa. “Mama’s on the fidgets again, and it’s all your fault, Rosemary. I must say, it’s awfully paltry of you to send her off when we’ve just got here. It would serve you right if she
did
go off in an apoplexy!”

At this dire suggestion Rosemary blanched, not only because she was sincerely devoted to her parent, but because Rosemary feared Marigold’s premature demise would result in the permanent attachment of her younger siblings to Chalmers House. Though Rosemary was also sincerely devoted to her siblings, she did not think she could bear to be constantly in the company of four younger sisters who promised to be at least as lovely as she. Therefore Rosemary applied herself to Marigold’s revival with more than ordinary energy.

If brutal, Rosemary’s methods were effective; never before had Marigold been roused so quickly from a shocked swoon. She winced, pushed Rosemary away, sat up and touched her stinging cheeks. Then she put forth an opinion that Rosemary had grown positively demented during her short absence from the bosom of her family. For this, Marigold could only blame Rosemary’s husband; a lady of delicate sensibilities must be overset by the discovery that the man of substance whom she’d married was in the habit of cheeseparing.

“No, no!” Once more Rosemary caught up the long-suffering cat against her breast. “It is all
my
fault! If Chalmers wished to keep me without money for common necessaries, I should have abided by his whim instead of being so wildly extravagant. Because if I hadn’t run counter to his advice, he wouldn’t have given me all those terrible trimmings, and in our last turn-up he wouldn’t have turned me—ah! Er, turned me so furious!”

Marigold greeted these excessively fatiguing dramatics with a visible shudder; Hysop stated his opinion that Rosemary had made a rare mull of the thing. He further suggested that his sister might go on easier if she could but decide whether Lord Chalmers was a devilish ugly customer or a great gun. To this kindly meant advice, Rosemary responded with an eloquent gesture toward the door. “Jupiter!” grumbled Hysop, as he departed. Though he had not yet decided what to do with the friendly little grass-snake he’d also smuggled in from the country, he thought it might enjoy a brief sojourn in a baroness’s boudoir.

Next to be dispatched were Hyacinth and Violet, Amaryllis and Camilla, at Marigold’s command. Then Marigold turned to her remaining daughter, whose tears were making damp splotches on the cat’s head, a proceeding of which the cat obviously took a very adverse view. “Now we may speak without roundaboutation,” said Marigold. “I have the distinct impression that you have been indulging in shocking wrong-headedness. Don’t get in the sullens; you will put me all out of humor with you!”

Damply, Rosemary regarded her mother. Impossible to resent Marigold’s selfish viewpoint that no one was entitled to indulge in thunderstorms but herself; impossible, in fact, to resent any of Marigold’s various little megrims, even while realizing Marigold’s primary concern was and always would be herself. She looked the merest girl in her cambric high gown and Spanish robe, with her hair drawn back from her face into a crown of curls atop her lovely head. She was also looking unusually sympathetic. “Oh, Mama!” wailed Rosemary.

Marigold winced at this inelegant turn of speech, but did not protest. On rare occasions Marigold was capable of expenditures of great energy. Those occasions invariably centered on matters of the heart. Since she had been prohibited by an unkind fate from enjoying such matters herself, Marigold might as well turn her energy to her daughter’s muddled marriage, even though it was a very poor second-best. Therefore she said: “My poor little Rosie! You are
éprise
?”

“Éprise!”
moaned Rosemary. “Mama, if you only knew—”

Marigold laughed, archly. “But of course I know, my foolish child. Am I not a widowed lady with six children? You were not delivered down the chimney, my pet! Perhaps I should have warned you, but I did not think any of my girls would shrink from—you certainly were not brought up to consider—well, there it is and we must make the best of it! Unless he is of unnatural—”

“No, no!” Rosemary turned bright red with embarrassment. “I do not—he has not—Chalmers is always very proper and you do him a great disservice by inferring he is not! It is merely that I have been imprudent. Chalmers seemed so cruelly unfeeling—oh, I know it is no excuse—but he is in such very easy circumstances, and so well-connected, and I was grown by no means insensible to him—in short, I have been very indiscreet! Though not so indiscreet that I deserve Chalmers should accuse me of attaching a disagreeable stigma to his name, or scold me for my profligacies!”

With each of her daughter’s words, Marigold had grown more ashen. “Rosemary! You didn’t—you couldn’t! None of my daughters would be so very commonplace! Have you no consideration of my mother’s heart, my sensibilities? Apparently you have not! It is a source of great distress.”

Rosemary, not certain what her mother was fussing about, said cautiously, “I’m sure I’d like to mend my fences! If only it were possible. Chalmers has no heart-strings
to
touch so it avails nothing to try and make him sorry for failing to provide properly for me.”

“Provide properly?” Marigold sank down further on the couch. “You shameless child!”

Bewildered, Rosemary could but persevere. “I’ve tried flinging myself upon his mercy, and hanging round his neck in tears; I even professed myself very fond of him—and what did
he
do but turn me over his knee!”

Perhaps, decided Marigold, there was some excuse for her daughter’s shocking misconduct; to be precise, her mate’s brutality. Marigold personally approved a slight exhibition of manly strength—or she had used to do so in the days before a large young family left her too encumbered to enjoy anything very much—but she could not expect so delicately nourished a damsel to likewise savor so masterful an attitude. “My poor Rosie! This is a very shocking thing indeed! I make no doubt that in your situation anyone would take a distempered freak. After all, he offered you violence!”

“Violence?” Rosemary still hugged the hissing cat. “Lud, Mama, I didn’t mind
that.
Indeed, had I known how to go about it, I might have intimated that I would have liked very well to—”

Appreciating something was one matter; to frankly admit that appreciation was quite another. “God bless my soul!” ejaculated Marigold, and swooned.

Into the
brouhaha
attendant upon this development walked Fennel, some moments later, narrowly avoiding collision with a fast-moving object that appeared to be a cat. He arrived just in time to see Rosemary abandon the vinaigrette, drop the wrist which she’d been chafing, grasp a flower-vase and empty the contents over her mother’s head. “By Jove!” said Fennel, and turned back to the door. “She ain’t going to like that, Rosemary!”

Already his sister had grasped his arm and was drawing him toward the couch. “You must help me, Fennel; Mama is very nearly in convulsions and I don’t know what to do. Beside, I wish
very
particularly to talk with you!”

To Fennel these latter words had a most ominous ring. Before he could inquire why Rosemary was sounding fit to murder him, Marigold had opened her eyes. She gazed soulfully upon Rosemary and announced that her daughter’s startling display of vulgarity had plunged her into grief.

“Vulgarity?” Rosemary tried with all her might to understand, and failed. “Because I admitted to a partiality for my husband? And I had thought
Chalmers
was wonderfully stiff-necked!”

“Not your husband!” gasped Marigold, in fading tones, as she dabbed delicately at the water that dripped down her brow. “Your profligacies! ‘Twould be easily enough understood if you’d taken Chalmers in dislike, but if you have a
tendre
for him—Rosemary, this simply will not do!”

“Oh, I say!” uttered Fennel, who was much quicker than Rosemary to achieve insight. “It was bad enough that you should be the first of the family to try and outrun the constable, but it ain’t at all the thing to go about having
affaires.
Rosemary.”

This, to a lady who had never even briefly contemplated playing her unkind husband false, was too much to bear. “I may have pawned the sapphires, and fallen into the clutches of a moneylender,” she said bitterly, “but
I’m
not the member of the family who indulges in
affaires.
In fact, I may be the only member of the family who does not! What with you and Angelica and maybe even Lily—”

Fennel cleared his throat. “About Lily—”

“Never mind Lily!” Rosemary snapped. “Fennel, what have you done with my sapphires? Don’t bother to deny that you’ve taken them! You wished to pawn them yourself to buy off your dragon, and I wouldn’t give them to you, and now they’re gone!”

“What dragon?” inquired Marigold, who now lay prone on the couch.

“The mother of a fine vulgar miss with whom Fennel has been frolicking!” Rosemary gazed irritably upon her brother. “Ingrate! To thusly use me even after I offered to explain to her why it would avail nothing to bring against you a breach of promise suit!”

“A
what
?” Marigold struggled upright on one elbow, the better to observe the fracas due to become shortly underway between these two of her offspring, and to insure that one did not murder the other.

“You’re a fine one to call the kettle black!” responded Fennel.
“I
ain’t badly dipped. Rosemary, does this mean you won’t intercede with the dragon on my behalf? Because I told her you were wishful of speaking with her and I’ll go bail she shows up this very day!”

“How dare you ask it of me?” cried Rosemary. “After you’ve stolen my sapphires!”

“But I
didn’t
steal them,” Fennel responded patiently.

Marigold’s children had underestimated her when they predicted a knowledge of their predicaments would inspire her to convulsion-fits. Certainly Marigold was tempted toward that very thing, but thirty-nine years of experience had taught her that there were certain situations in which convulsion-fits availed their enactor nothing but a headache. Therefore she swung her dainty feet to the floor, sat upright, and set out to be eminently practical. Her first step in that direction was to inform Rosemary, who was exhibiting a histrionic ability that had doubtless been inherited from her mama, that she believed Fennel to be speaking the truth. “Had he stolen your necklace, he would hardly show you his face,” Marigold explained. And then she frowned at her son. “Just why are you here, Fennel?”

Though impressed by his parent’s forbearance, Fennel had little hope that she would long remain self-possessed. Still, there was no hope for it, were he to clear himself of the suspicion of theft. Therefore he dropped into his mother’s lap a singularly splotchy piece of paper that he’d all this time held in his hand. Marigold perused it, shrieked, and swooned.