Somehow the Egg had vanished from the club, and not a few of the lot speculated that it had done so before Madam's steadfast departure. No longer taking her punctual march through the orange grove, it had become something of a card–table inquiry to deduce her newly bombarded panorama. The bets were in.
"A fiver on Ascot," grumbled the stately, though seldom well–versed, Lord Fitzhugh. "The season! Natural."
"Bogs on the season. She was never a bird for schedules," spat the conversational sprinkler. "The Egg . . . something's amiss, and not only among the oranges."
The Egg was certainly something of a muddle. Was it a whim? Or was it the nascent scandal? Madam with the Egg. Was there ever a more scurrilous couple? No word had come through from the croplands of Madam's wanderings, and none would. Once adrift, this ship would respond to no signal, flag or flare.
The steward arrived with the new cucumber sandwiches and swollen knees fought their way out of armchairs to tackle the onslaught of nourishment. Whether pretending to read in order to avoid the literary hyenas lurking the carpeted rooms, trapped in stale conversation with mindless seniors or, even worse, mindless contemporaries, or openly basking in the self–reflected light of their loquaciously effulgent erudition while squeezing the lifeblood out of their listeners, the club regulars pondered the status of their departed grand commander.
For it certainly had always seemed as if she was in command, without any responsible superiors to assess her perpetuance in that position. Always entering from the rear, garden door, carrying her wet raincoat over the carpets, and seizing not only a cup of tea, but the entire pot, Madam planted her structure stolidly in the stately seat of maximum exposure, at the center of a circle of would–be followers.
"A lovely day," she would mutter, despite the state of the weather. "How nice of you all to come," she would greet her fellow club members. The succeeding conversation, or more likely monologue, was intended to arouse both admiration –– both Madam– and sometimes even more Madam–directed –– and a desire to be nowhere else but in the presence of this feature.
"A lovely day," she glanced around at Lord Fitzhugh, a peacock or two, and the young Mr. Wallows. "How nice of you all to come. Are both of these lovely sandwiches with you, Mr. Wallows?" The poor bloke was trapped and he knew it. He looked rapidly between the sandwiches in front of him and the two young ladies sitting to his right, huddled together with heads close and gleaming smiles of abject terror. Madam was wont to refer to both sandwiches and young ladies as 'sandwiches'. What could she mean? His mind was a frantic mess.
"Eh, yes, I–"
"You are accustomed to bringing both sandwiches to the same club at the same time, Mr. Wallows? You have not learned the game properly, has he, Fitzhugh?" Lord Fitzhugh grumbled a staunch laugh and turned back to his tea. The young ladies giggled like drunken nightingales.
"Oh, no, Madam, I just–"
"Right, right, it's all in good order, I'm sure. The delicate balance of one with the other must be gained by foresight and cunning, young sir, not by innocent aspirations of your own–"
"Foolish boys are these days, positively foolish," blurted Lord Fitzhugh to Madam's evident distaste. She shot him a glance from the coldest, wettest corner of Malebolge.
"I was to say something of a more constructive nature for the young man, my dear fellow, but you have dashed all our hopes for a conversation of stature." Lord Fitzhugh almost bowed his head in shame for his reckless transgression.
Mr. Wallows sat with his mouth open, glancing rapidly between the sandwiches and the birds. "Mr. Wallows," Madam restored her reign, "are you driven more by stomach or heart? You puzzle me terribly. Where is the game at, my young man? The game is to be played on a field of your choosing, so choose it."
"Oh, uh, eh, cricket's lovely this time of year. I can handle a wicket as well as the next chap, I, eh," he stopped with a grin of despair as the birds flittered in flights of frivolity.
"You seem pleasantly amused today," Madam silenced their chirping. "That is the issue with those of our sex today –– no capacity for discernment. There is variety in the world, so grasp it! Sunrise to Sunset, Weddings to Funerals, Bombay to Yorkshire, it's all one flag–topped circus to you." The young ladies obediently fell silent. "I would not be surprised to find your entire inner monologues written by Will Gilbert on one of his off–days."
"There, there," Lord Fitzhugh grumbled with a mischievous smile at the girls. "Madam, you don't mean to–"
"So now everyone knows what I mean to do?! Mr. Wallows, lend me something of your insight in matters of the mind. Where do my intentions, desires come from, and can Lord Fitzhugh deduce them?"
The young man's head bobbed as the blood rushed out. He smiled, made a glance toward the sandwiches, and then smiled even more broadly. "Still more hungry for cucumber sandwiches than Mr. Freud, are we not? Imbibe, dear sir, imbibe!"
With this, she rose to her feet, glared down as her companions struggled to rise out of cushioned chairs themselves, and before they could, was gone.
Mr. Wallows, for one, was hardly put off at all by the absence with which Madam had made them all suffer so dreadfully. And he cared not a fig for the Egg either, nor was he restrained in saying so.
"I think this is a far more Scottish place without her," he beamed one afternoon to Lord Fitzhugh.
"Scottish? What do you want that for, my chap? Are you one of the spotty English who find those rugged barbarians romantic and such? There, there, we can't have–"
"Oh, but they are! They are a jolly bunch. I was in Edinburgh once, and saw–"
"Edinburgh?!" He grunted the grunt of a Lord. "Where are the birds?" He nodded contentedly as the steward filled his cup of tea.
"My cousins, you mean? Madam need not have bothered the poor dears such. They are so ever impressionable and this was a fine time at the club until she descended upon them. Madam could not help but fix her impression upon such new fodder."
"What is your stand on that front?"
"I have not taken one, nor will I. I care not for her placement in Ascot nor Yorkshire nor Los Angeles. And I definitely do not give a fig" he fondled that word, "for the Egg."
"The Egg?! And Madam is the bastion of this very club–"
"And how finely we have carried on without her! And without that ... Egg!" He gestured to the members all around, ensconced in their endless ensconcements. "Except for those who continue to ponder her new terrain, the terrain here seems clear of the minefields that once littered it. And the orange grove has certainly breathed a huge sigh of relief, I am sure."
"So you care not. I can assure you they do." He pointed with a gleeful smile at a huddled team of conspirators in the next room.
They had no tea nor cinnamon toast in front of them. Their business required far more intensity. "I assure you she has left the country entirely," exclaimed the young and vivacious Lady Weatherby with the gleaming pride of a conqueror and the glimmer of a coquette. The steward quietly crept up to their table and placed a plate of biscuits at their close reach.
"And taken the Egg! Away! To another country!" the puppy dog at her right nodded with endless fervor, as if the jouncing of his head would capture the raptures of his life's dreams. "Oh, I am sure you do know!Í You do know!"
"What poppycock!" Mr. Teller, the banker who never left his bank, grumbled. "How does she know? She knows nothing of Madam's whereabouts. The idea of the Egg leaving this island, this blessed plot, is beyond reason."
"Surely not even Madam would conceive such an embarrassment," agreed Professor Blakey.
Lady Weatherby stared back and forth at those who so bluntly blasphemed.
"You underestimate her audacity. I am positive that she and the Egg have ventured forth together to pursue their new ventures!" exclaimed the puppy dog. "Oh, Lady
Weatherby, you have calculated all the–"
"Calculated?!" Prof. Blakey was stunned. "Where did that come from? She has calculated nothing. Her guess is as good as mine or yours or the steward's."
Across the living room, near the fireplace, the budding Cole Porter grasped his cup of hot tea. "Splendid day in the neighborhood! I just came from a long walk through the orange grove. A wonderful time to harness the beautiful music in my head into my nascent composition. Troubadours and Villains! Pirates and Giants! A musical in the vein of Arthur Sullivan!"
"Your last show was anything but, Howard, I am sure none here is at all otherwise informed."
"Janet, the trials and challenges of the stage are not to be mocked! It is the musical tradition that drives my spirit!"
"All the way to a rubishheap of prancing tenors and cackling sopranos. Madam would have squashed your ambitions at their core, dear Howard, if only her astute musical acumen, resplendent in her ongoing vigor of the orchestra and the theater, were with us now!!"
"Janet, your doting on that dot is sheer drudgery at this club. From you we hear nothing but Madam's praise and from Madam we hear nothing but lambasting of everyone else but you--"
"Don't be jealous of my mentor, she is dear to me, Howard, she possesses a sensitivity for grace and refinement and erudition of which your 'musicals' are entirely bereft."
"Sirens and their serenaders! The rhythm and pause of the theater!"
"The only tempo we need in this club is the tempo of Madam and the Egg! I've devised a scheme, Howard."
"But Janet, we know not where to look for her, the entire world must be suspect. Madam's wanderings can only be far and wide, for there the splendors of life are to be found!"
"Precisely. Thus I have devised a scheme of letters, written missives, to systematically be conveyed to the far corners of the Earth. Madam's presence cannot but inspire notice in all around her (as it so instantly sparked my notice the moment I stepped foot in this blessed club). If our letters are many, we cannot fail to capture her whereabouts!"
"How is it, my dear, that Madam wouldn't have shared her secret with her most loyal prodigy? You were intimately acquainted, were you not."
"It was an intimacy of the mind and spirit you only dream of in your ballads, Howard." She grimaced "As to why I was not privy to this knowledge, I know not, but one does not question the ways of Madam! We will enlist the labors of all in this club" she gestured to the banker's group and Mr. Wallows "to write these many letters."
And so Janet Fizzwizzle's clever expedient to discover the whereabouts of her mentor, the club's indispensable fixture and chief object of sentiment, was implemented. The hounds were baying. Madam and the Egg would be run to ground! Fortunately for her vision of hundreds of letters, the club members had enough tea to last them hours of tedium with stationary, nothing whatsoever more desirable to occupy themselves, and a steward who grimly nodded as he took their many letters to the post.
They each arrived each day at their own appointed time. They drank their tea. They ate the steward's cucumber sandwiches. They played croquet. They read their Punch. And most of all they waited. Their guesswork bred diatribes to each other of the merits of this or that corner of the world as the nesting ground of Madam and the Egg. She could have been in Johannesburg or Moscow or San Francisco. Her locale would be exposed!
A scarce few letters arrived, placed dutifully on the foyer table for their perusal. Lady Dunsmore, from within her husband's Bombay camp: "Madam and the Egg adrift. Surely we see no sign here, for I assure you the tigers and elephants would be running for the hills!". Roger Ducksuckle of Hampshire: "Since your note, I have walked the moors from dawn to dusk, and Madam nor her apparition have appeared. The Egg!!" Penelope Vignette of Wisconsin: "If she arrives I will send word. It is cold here for Madam's tastes. Although I would suggest a colder climate. Have you written to Siberia?"
The days and days passed and the conversations slowly shifted to the landscape of a club without her landmarks.
The garden door opened at 4 in the afternoon. Madam trudged in, grasped a teapot, plodded without a word or nod past Janet Fizzwizzle's stunned, smiling face, and planted herself at a table by the cucumber sandwiches. The steward brought her a napkin. Prof. Blakey and Mr. Teller stood in the doorway, speechless. Lady Weatherby fritted back and forth across the living room carpet, twittering to Mr. Wallows of the blessed occasion and the success of their letters!
"What? Where ....?" Lord Fitzhugh struggled to stay within his seat. "You?"
"I have been in the kitchen." Madam was gruff and direct. "The kitchen. Through that door."
"How did you-" Janet Fizzwizzle had tears in her eyes.
"I did. I escaped the doldrums of these carpeted rooms, with the books of poetry on the shelf, Cole Porter's self reviews of his own plays, Mr. Wallow's cricket stories. I wanted to know this club entirely!"
"But you do! You are here every day!"
"I knew not where the cucumber sandwiches came from. I knew not where the steward came from. I have been crafting your cucumber sandwiches myself for the past weeks."
"The steward never said-" Mr. Teller was stuttering.
"He has a name. It is Andrew." They all stared at the steward standing in the corner, and he nodded his confirmation that this was indeed his name. "He never told you. Since you did not ask him." The steward nodded again.
"Where is the Egg?!"
"Ah, the Egg--"
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A native of New Haven, CT., Erik D. Weiss grew up in a college town, and was accordingly nurtured by the artes liberales. He studied history at Yale College before pursuing a career in medicine/radiology. Having travelled extensively, Dr. Weiss has varied interests that span literature, history, and science, and is a keen devotee of music ranging from classical to jazz to bluegrass to classic rock. A fan of baseball and football (the greatest reality television!), he is a New York Yankees fan, since he needs an imperious, undying winner in his life, and a lifelong New York Jets fan, since he is an extremely tolerant and loyal person.
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