Faerie Fruit

Chapter One-3

‘Maggie!’ she called, rising from her seat. She felt rumpled and befuddled, and hastened to straighten her gown and shawl as she hurried down the stairs. ‘Maggie, where is my—’ She stopped, for Clover Waregrove herself was coming up the stairs, quick of step and bright of eye and overflowing with energy.

‘Oh, Clarimond!’ said she, with a smile full of sunlight. ‘What tender care you took of me in my illness! I am overcome with gratitude. What a dutiful daughter you have always been. I declare, I have never made enough of you before. I will make amends for it now. You have always admired my silver eardrops, have you not, and my amethysts? They are yours! I make them over to you with the greatest good will. Oh! And you shall have my pocket watch besides, which was your father’s, and the best of my porcelain.’ These extraordinary pronouncements made, she bestowed a tender salutation upon her speechless daughter and sailed on up the stairs, disappearing in a flurry of clattering footsteps.

Clarimond could only stare after her, lost for words. Here was extraordinary behaviour indeed! Not once had her mother given her a gift, and now several all together! It was unaccountable.

Moreover, not a trace of her dangerous illness remained in her face, her manner or her bearing. Her cheeks were plump with good health, her eyes bright, her figure upright and hale. She looked as though she had never known a day’s sickness in her life.

Clarimond followed her mother upstairs and watched in amazement as she bustled about, filling the back bedroom with pots and vases of flowers. Not the varieties that grew in her own garden, Clarimond noted with bemusement. ‘Now,’ said Clover, ‘I know that you gave up your own room for me but you must have it back at once!’

‘Where did you find the flowers?’ Clarimond said faintly.

‘I have but just returned from Market, where I bought them from old Ambrose Dale. How fine they are! Do you not think? I knew they would please you.’

They were very fine, and no doubt expensive, too. There were roses, butter-yellow and lavender; amber-golden poppies; sweetpeas blushing pink and white; clusters of scented honeysuckle; even a spray of crimson lilies from Farmer Dale’s coveted greenhouse.

‘They are beautiful,’ Clarimond said. ‘Mother… are you feeling quite well?’

‘Why, I have never felt better! Do I not look the very picture of health?’ Clover beamed upon her daughter and bustled out again, leaving Clarimond to reflect with wonder upon her swift recovery.

Maggie Muggwort was at work in the kitchen when at last Clarimond arrived downstairs. ‘You were prompt indeed with my mother’s room,’ Clarimond remembered to say. ‘And to contrive to tidy without waking me! It was most considerate of you.’

‘Yer welcome, madam,’ said Maggie, and bit her lip.

‘Does something trouble you?’

‘It is Mrs. Waregrove. She gave me…’ Maggie appeared unequal to completing the sentence, and merely gestured behind herself. Stacked upon a chair at the back of the kitchen was a great pile of dresses, lying in a heap of colourful fabrics.

‘Why, mother’s gowns!’ Clarimond recognised some few of the discarded garments, and could only gaze upon them in dismay. ‘How came she to do so?’

Maggie gave a helpless shrug. ‘She said as how I work so hard, I deserve a few nice things.’

A few? Clarimond counted at least six good dresses heaped upon the chair, and was obliged to sit down for a moment. What had come over Clover, for her to display such sudden and uncharacteristic largesse?

‘Do you think I ought to give ‘em back?’ said Maggie doubtfully.

‘No, I think not,’ said Clarimond. ‘They were freely given, and she is right: you certainly deserve them.’

But though she spoke composedly, her mind was awhirl with confusion. For all her finer qualities, Mrs. Waregrove had ever been miserly. What could possibly have come over her?

And how was it that, in a single night, she had risen from an acknowledged deathbed and come to exhibit a vitality she had not displayed in years?

Mrs. Waregrove’s generosity was not limited to the residents of Thistledown House. She departed soon afterwards to wander through the town, and bestowed some part of her personal possessions upon each person that she passed in the street. To Lavender Blackwood, she gave her best shawl; Nathaniel Roseberry received her second-best pocket watch, that had been her grandfather’s; Betony Summerfield walked away in proud possession of a good silver necklace; and Verity Wilkin was given a fine quill pen with an engraved nib.

She was later heard to have taken all of her savings and distributed every penny to the town’s poor. Not a word of refusal would she hear from anyone, nor did she stop until every pretty or valuable thing she owned had been bestowed elsewhere.

Clarimond could not account for it, and neither could the town. It was said at last that Clover Waregrove’s change of heart was due to her near demise, for a glimpse of death was known to take folk funny that way sometimes.

In the general puzzlement and wonder over her mother’s odd behaviour, Clarimond herself forgot about the apple.