All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred thirty)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Eight

Things Relative

(part two hundred thirty)

“Well, Mr. Thacker, I give you the story secondhand. They spoke, by Mr. Thigpen’s accounting, of a matter troubling to Mr. Demrose. Mr. Thigpen…is it so, Phelan? reports that he too had counselled Mrs. Demrose, and that her spending, since the marriage, had grown more reckless.”

Shuffling the notes that rested under his cufflink, Monaghan muttered: “And what did Demrose say, Mr. Thacker, when I questioned him?”

Weem exhaled, and Monaghan told them Mr. Demrose had disliked his wife laying out extravagances on his behalf. That he had not proposed these world travels, and could have found contentment in married life without them.

And had he feared for the future?

What, of all humanity? Of wretched Mother Earth? Yes. I did discourage Regina, where I was able. She often was unwell, however much she painted on the brave face. I reminded her that I was not at all capable of managing property, of how readily the newest enthusiasm…whatever it might have been…would come to bore her. You wrong me if you suppose venality played any role. From the start I held that the money was my wife’s, her fortune hers to squander. I did not stand idly by, but I did not rate to excess my own importance as spouse. I did not count myself entitled.

“Did he say all that?”

“He did.”

“You needled him.”

“Was he given to speechifying when he felt needled?”

“Not so I knew. When he felt theatrical.”

Monaghan laughed, but from her father’s side of the table came a stiffening…or a gathering. Of all anxieties raised by this teasing way she could speak of Manfred Ryan-Neville.

Phelan took up. “Mrs. Demrose, again per Mr. Thigpen, had learnt the magicality of borrowing, that of having the wanted article, and paying less for the enjoyment of it today, than the price of owning of it outright, though patience and saving are far cheaper.”

“Mrs. Demrose had got indebted to the limits the goodhearted Thigpen would fork across, collecting only the usual rate of interest, and this state of affairs…Mr. Phelan? Was a fixture, yes, when the Saint Jerome’s asylum, the orphan’s home, sent a delegation to McCoy’s. That is the fine hotel the Demroses had taken their suite at, before leasing the Hyde Park property. Father Baker is close with his information, but the boy was…is…two years of age, parents married, dead together in a rail mishap. Bavarian cheesemaker, the father.”

Élucide could think of only crass remarks. That fate had converged at last, to Regina’s specifications; that the child, returned to circulation, must have gone to the “B” set of parents. That with luck, no one would tell him how close he’d come to being rich.

Of course the adults in his life would, and often.

242

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part two hundred thirty-one)

(2025, Stephanie Foster)