Fri, May 18 2012
| TITLE: | The First Suit: A Suitable Ending |
|---|---|
| AUTHOR: | Susan M. Garrett |
| CATEGORY/TYPE: | Short Story, Humor |
| RATING/WARNINGS: | G, Gen |
| MAIN CHARACTERS: | Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne, Rebecca Fogg, Passepartout |
| DESCRIPTION: | Phileas |
| STATUS: | Complete |
Ignoring the breakfast remnants that Passepartout had yet to clear from the salon table, Phileas Fogg perused the crisp pages of the London Times. The Aurora was safely settled, staked down to a perfectly bucolic green field; he was grateful for the momentary peace and quiet. And yet . . . .
They were up to something. He was certain of it.
His eyes fixed on a story about with rail improvements at Paddington station, but his attention kept wandering to the sounds drifting into the salon from outside.
"Not like that! Here, let me - it's broken the shears!"
"You're useless, the pair of you," declared Rebecca. "It's not elephant hide, after all. How diffi-cult- should-it-be-to-cut--"
Shaking the paper into place - the upper right corner had dared to defy its carefully ironed position and had begun to curl ever-so-slightly inward - Fogg tried to focus his attention on the Paddington rail improvements yet again.
They'd all been unusually subdued at breakfast, entirely out of character. Verne had nearly bolted from his seat when Passepartout had unexpectedly rattled a cup against a saucer. And Rebecca, who'd never met an omelet she didn't like, had eaten nothing save for a solitary piece of toast she'd nibbled while staring into the distance with an unsettled look. Even Passepartout had been abnormally reticent. The burn imprint of the iron on the letters to the editor column was less a mark of critical expression than an obvious sign of his valet's distraction.
"Careful!" Verne's voice drifted in with the breeze. "Rebecca, you'll cut--"
"Damn!"
"Miss Rebecca - you should be giving the knife to me. You shouldn't be bleeding--"
"Of course, I shouldn't be bleeding!"
His cousin's outrage was plain, but probably less directed at Passepartout than--
What in God's name were they DOING?
Fogg carefully set aside the paper, rose to his feet, then paused. No. Best to let them deal with whatever it might be. If they'd wanted his help, they would have asked.
The thought proved enough of a comfort for him to get settled again on the salon couch and make it to page four of the Times before he realized that Rebecca always had rationalizations for NOT asking his help. Unfortunately, those rationalizations usually turned on the premise that he would try to forbid her from attempting something that was foolhardy and dizzyingly dangerous to both life and limb.
Fogg nearly laid his paper aside for the second time, but paused when he realized it had suddenly grown very quiet. Whispers between Verne and Rebecca were being arbitrated by Passepartout - his name was the only recognizable word.
It would be serious, then, if even Rebecca had unbent her spine enough to concede that they needed the benefit of his worldly wisdom. Probably wanted to take the Aurora to some God-forsaken Himalayan village, no doubt. Well, he'd soon put a stop to that.
A quick snap set his paper to rights. Fogg pretended to be engrossed in the Tannhauser scandal, the paper held before him as if it were a shield, fully aware that Passepartout was stealthily crossing the cabin. He waited until his manservant had reached the sideboard. "Passepartout?"
There was no need to lower the paper - the slight thump as Passepartout jumped and the breathless, "Yes, Master?" let him know that this was, indeed, supposed to have been a secret mission.
It was only then that Fogg lowered the paper, folding it deliberately as he realized that Passepartout was clutching a decanter of extremely fine, and prohibitively expensive, port. "It's a little early, even for me."
"Master?" Passepartout blinked and then brightened, suddenly realizing Fogg's reference. "Oh, the decanter. yes. I was fetching this for Miss Rebecca."
Before Passepartout could terminate the conversation - and escape with the port - Fogg tossed his paper to the couch and moved to block his valet's exit. "Now, why," he asked thoughtfully, "would Rebecca want a glass of port this early in the morning?"
"Oh, not a glass, master," corrected Passepartout. "She was telling me to bring the decanter--"
It was obvious from his expression that he'd let slip something of vital importance. "The decanter? At this hour? Is she ill?"
"No, master. Not . . . ill." Passepartout was biting his lip, as if afraid what other secret tidbits he might let fly if he continued speaking.
"Ah." Fogg half-turned and caught movement from the corner of his eye - Rebecca and Verne were watching from the doorway. And not offering Passepartout even a modicum of support . . . unless there had been frantic signals while his back was turned.
A quick shift to face Passepartout confirmed it; his valet straightened suddenly with an apologetic half- smile, his fingers caught in a mid-wave, then resettling around the middle of the crystal decanter.
"Ah," said Fogg again, more to discomfort Passepartout than for any other reason. "Although you know how hard it is for me to-" he raised his voice to account for his hidden audience, "to DENY my cousin anything, I think I'd better take custody of the decanter. If you will be so kind."
Passepartout hesitated, pulling the decanter to his body with the death-defying embrace a mother would use to protect her only child. "Master--"
"IF you would be SO kind, Passepartout." Reaching forward, Fogg half-wrested the decanter from Passepartout's grip before it was released voluntarily. Only his reflexes managed to prevent the sudden loss of the port.
Passepartout cleared his throat, his lips drawing into a grim and determined line. "This is not something you want to do, I think, Master."
Before he could even begin to frame a reply, he heard the swish of skirts and saw Rebecca standing in the doorway, with Verne beside her. "Oh, come, Phileas. Stop playing and give the man the decanter."
"I'll be more than happy to give Passepartout the decanter - if you can give me a very good reason why I should hand over a sixty-year-old vintage port on faith, as it were, that I'll get it back." Fogg nodded toward Verne, adding, "I thought you might like to sample this before we took you back to Paris, tonight."
"From the estate cellars?" asked Rebecca, her tongue flicking lightly over her lips, as if in memory.
"Yes. And this man-handling is playing merry-hell with the sediment." Fogg lifted the decanter up to the light and gazed steadily at the thick, reddish- brown wine, trying to discern whether Passepartout's antics had thoroughly disrupted the decanting process.
"Well, you WON'T get it back," said Rebecca sharply. When Fog shot her a sharp glance, she looked away, muttering, "We've at least a half-dozen more bottles from the '90 vintage in the cellar."
Fogg cleared his throat and lowered the decanter carefully. "The LAST half-dozen bottles of the '90 vintage. Imported by my father at a not- inconsiderable expense." His smile was brittle. "You were saying?"
Rebecca did seem chastened - or as chastened as Rebecca ever could seem. "We truly need it, Phileas," she said, in that earnest tone of voice that had gotten him into an inordinate number of scrapes throughout his boyhood . . . and beyond.
He was almost ready to hand over the decanter when Verne added, in his own brand of earnest tonality, "We need to start a fire."
"With sixty-year-old port?" He was too astonished to laugh, nearly choking on the words. Verne merely crossed his arms and scowled in that infuriating 'know-it-all' manner intrinsic to the young. "Is a match or touchstone not sufficient?"
"We tried - it won't burn!"
"WHAT won't burn?"
Verne mumbled something, his eyes downcast.
"I beg your pardon?"
"The suit," said Rebecca, quite firmly.
Fogg didn't miss the look Verne shot Rebecca, a mixture of fear and anger. "The suit?"
"THE suit," she corrected, her left eyebrow arching meaningfully.
Matching the look, he stared at her, waiting for even the slightest hint of understanding to strike.
It didn't. Rebecca jerked her head back in Verne's direction. "THE suit," she repeated.
Verne's reaction, a slight contraction of a cheek muscle, brought immediate understanding. "Ahhhh," said Fogg softly, and with far more sympathy than he'd shown up to that point as Verne nodded slightly in acknowledgment.
It was a sartorial situation, a matter between men. The suit in question was the color of soured cream, of a dubious and truly unfashionable cut, while the vest was best described as a cross between burnt umber and common, metallic rust. The shirt would not have been found on Saville row, certainly - no tailor worth his threads would ever admit to having stitched such a monstrosity.
"Ahhhh, indeed," said Rebecca, reaching for the decanter.
But Fogg held tightly to the crystal, taking a step backward and to one side, not forgetting that Passepartout - behind him - was also part of this plot. "Couldn't you simply . . . cut it into pieces?"
"We had been trying that, Master. But the shears--" Passepartout made a motion, to indicate something being snapped in two, "were shorn."
"It broke one of my knives," added Rebecca, somewhat petulantly. She waved her hand at him, which Fogg noticed with some chagrin was wrapped with one of his better handkerchiefs, spotted with blood. "One of MY knives."
Obviously, the loss of the knife was far more of a grievance than the injury, in Rebecca's eyes. "I see. Well, bury it, then."
"It MUST be destroyed," insisted Verne. "If we bury it, an animal might dig it up again." His shoulders slumped in defeat. "Fogg, please . . . it's the only way. If it's the cost of the port, I don't have much money--"
"You don't have ANY money," he corrected. "And it's not only the cost, it's the principle. Look at you, the three of you, trying to destroy a suit? It's an inanimate object. And it most certainly is not worth the loss of a sixty-year-old port."
When Rebecca stared at him in dismay, he thought he'd won, but the victory was short-lived. The slow smile that crept across her lips would have been enough to chill him to the very core, had not her words proved even more unnerving. "You know," she began, in a deceptively civil tone, "the suit could always be altered to fit YOU. And with your coloring--"
"Rebecca, really--"
But she was still smiling. And, so was Verne.
"There's certainly enough hem in the sleeves," Verne added. "Passepartout could do it."
"Of course I could," said Passepartout. "If the suit wasn't fighting me. It might like you, master."
Fogg couldn't answer at first, his mouth suddenly going dry. "I . . . see." He glanced down at the decanter in his arms. Sixty years wasn't THAT awfully long of a time, after all. And there were still at least a half dozen bottles of the '90 in the estate cellars . . . . "You're going to destroy it?"
"Utterly and completely."
Although her tone had been certain, Fogg let his gaze drift to Verne, whose eyes held a look of hatred reserved only for extreme injustice and the hellish escapades of the Legion of Darkness. "Every inch of it," he added, supporting Rebecca with a nod.
Even Passepartout seemed unusually grave, adding, "From the bottom to the tip-top."
He wondered if they could really do it.
Thrusting the decanter into Rebecca's hands, Fogg murmured, "God speed," then sank to the couch and raised the now rumpled paper before his eyes as if it could shield him from even the thought of the hideous creation. He found himself turning the page of the newspaper with deliberate care, aware that the slightest noise might inadvertently startle him into ripping the paper in two. The three crept out quietly, the decanter held with something akin to religious awe.
He found some pride in that - he'd managed to impart to them, at the very least, the true spiritual worth of a vintage port. And then again, perhaps it was the potential power of the wine as an accelerant that impressed them more?
With a sigh, he turned another page, his eyes drifting across columns of text, the words barely registering until, from outside, he could discern the initial snap and crackle of a conflagration. This was followed by a mighty whoosh, the flame consuming the very heart of that most potent of spirits, accompanied by a triumphant cheer from the vanquishers. The heady scent of port wafted into the salon on the breeze, mingled with an unwholesome scorched odor, reminiscent of machine oil.
Phileas Fogg lowered his paper and bowed his head in memory of the passing of the 1790 port, which had nobly given its existence to preserve the expected sartorial splendor of the Victorian male. It was, indeed, a truly suitable ending for such a splendid wine.
The End