Chapter Text
The library must have been the calmest and most sedate room in Bag End. Calm and sedate, of course, were relative; it was mostly that the rest of Bag End left one with the distinct impression of being swallowed up in some sort of brocade-and-chintz tornado. The library was crammed floor to ceiling with books on all five walls (the room was, for some unremembered reason, pentagonal) so thickly that the shelves were more implied than actually seen. What floor space was not taken up by additional stacks of unsorted books was filled by an eclectic assortment of threadbare chairs and cushions. However, most of the incredible number of objects stuffed into the library were all wood and leather and paper, overall brownish in color, so it was comparatively quite restful to the eye. Sam, tucked in one of the overstuffed armchairs in the center of the room with a book open on her lap, fit into the space with such harmony that Frodo didn’t notice her until she twitched and leapt to her feet.
“Pardon me, Miss Frodo!” she said, sketching a hasty curtsy with her book clutched to her chest. Her hair fell over her face as she did so, and she shoved it back with one hand and flushed terribly out to the tips of her ears.
“Oh goodness, Sam!” said Frodo. “Don’t let me disturb your reading, really. I only came in here to fetch a few volumes.”
“Kind of you to say, Miss, but I really oughtn’t be sitting in front of the quality.”
Frodo laughed. “Please, Bilbo only fits that description every third Thursday if he’s in a certain mood, and I’m sure I never do. The library’s for sitting and for reading.”
Really it wasn’t as if Sam had never sat to read in the library before. It had only been a few years since the cessation of her reading lessons, and if Frodo was not mistaken they had all been seated when Bilbo had declared Sam as good a reader as any hobbit and more capable of appreciating good poetry than most. Recently, however, Sam had become curiously fixated on matters of propriety and good manners. Hobbits did not, as a rule, stand on any kind of ceremony within Bag End. Gamgees especially did no such thing; not two days prior May Gamgee had smacked Frodo upside the head for eating jam that had been set aside for a cake filling.
Sam, by contrast, was now constantly jumping to her feet when Frodo or Bilbo entered rooms, slipping in and out the back door in silence instead of the usual Gamgee clatter, bowing her head and minding her tongue. Frodo couldn’t imagine what had happened to cause this sudden attack of decorum. Deference made her nervous. If Sam weren’t so entirely good, Frodo would suspect she was making fun.
“Sorry Miss Frodo. Good afternoon Miss Frodo,” Sam said. She curtsied again, not much more smoothly, and scampered out of the room backwards, shoving her book into an open spot on the shelf as she went. Frodo squinted at the empty doorway in her wake. It was unlike Sam to be careless with a book, and it was strange that she hadn’t just brought it with her if she wasn’t finished. It was no real concern if she wanted to borrow a book. Bag End functioned as a sort of lending library for Frodo and Bilbo’s set, being probably the most thorough collection of unusual literature in the Shire. Frodo herself had wandered into the library in search of several items she’d promised to deliver to a friend. But Sam’s secrecy was intriguing.
It would, of course, be a bizarre waste of time to examine the shelves in search of the volume Sam had just abandoned; Frodo, for several stupid moments, honestly considered throwing her entire day out the window and into the ash heap in order to waste her time in just such a manner. For Sam was behaving so strangely, and Frodo had always adored her for her honesty and sweetness and greatly desired to know where those qualities of Sam’s had gotten off to. There was a loud-and-growing-louder part of Frodo which longed to better know the inside of Sam’s head, to see what could possibly be flowing beneath her good nature, for it certainly could not only be old-fashioned courtesy and manners. Frodo was curious and, having been so long in the sphere of Bilbo’s influence, she had certain nosy impulses which that book might perhaps satisfy. One’s taste in literature, after all, was terribly revealing. And one’s taste in literature that one felt the need to read in secret—well.
But never mind those unwise instincts, because Frodo did have an appointment to keep, and there was a reason she had entered the library besides catching Sam in whichever misdeed she believed herself to have been caught. Frodo made a slow circuit of the room, plucking from the shelves the volumes she had promised to fetch for Rhododendron. Rhododendron Peapack was a dear friend of Frodo’s and another a member of the Shire’s particular community of violet-tinted lasses, and she and Frodo had similar tastes in the sort of poetry which had to be published in secret. Frodo gathered up an armful of Rhododendron’s requests: ‘Close of the Day’ by Anonymous, ‘Lilies in the Moonlight, Or, The Elf Queen’s Lover’ by a different Anonymous, ‘Some Collected Verses And Essays vol. II’ by A Discreet Lady.
The fourth and final book on Rhododendron’s list, ‘Unquiet Philosophies’ by Unknown, however, eluded her. It was a newer title, which Bilbo had just ordered recopied, and it had already created a bit of a stir among those in the know for its unusual frankness in regards to the physical. Frodo could have sworn it was on the second shelf down two over from the door, but she found it eventually, haphazardly crammed one up and three to the right of where it was supposed to be. Though—surely not. Sam had never given any indication that she wished to acknowledge that Frodo’s eccentricities ran any deeper than an unusual dress sense, or that her own inclinations were similar. There was no good reason for Sam, whose tastes had always leaned towards the prosaic and pastoral, to have any interest in such a work. And yet. It certainly seemed that ‘Unquiet Philosophies’ had been incorrectly shelved very near to where Sam had placed whichever book she was reading before she fled. Interesting, Frodo thought as she packed all four books in a satchel and made to leave. Very interesting.
+
“Oi, Bilbo,” Frodo shouted from the foyer. “I’m off to deliver some books to Rhododendron. Might be back for supper, but don’t expect me for tea.”
Bilbo, as it turned out, was sitting in one of the parlor chairs that faced the fire rather than the door. He leaned backwards over the arm of the chair to pin her with an upside-down squint. He was quite spry still for his age.
“Remember when you first arrived, and you were so pleasant and quiet and polite? What a fine time that was. I often wish you were still afraid of me.”
Frodo laughed and flung the front door of the smial open. “It’s all part of my grand plan to convince you to disinherit me. I’ve no desire to be responsible for this old pile. The dusting alone!”
“No chance! I shall remain in your memory forever, haunting you from the beyond with many small repairs and enormous piles of paperwork,” Bilbo called after her, his voice carrying into the garden.
Frodo departed the smial with a friendly pat on the doorframe to reassure Bag End that she had not meant her insults. She shifted her satchel of verse to the other shoulder and went out through the garden gate. Sam, she saw, had at some point crept out the back door and was now knelt beside an empty bed with her skirts kilted up about her hips. Her bare, summer-darkened calves stood out against the grass as she did something with a bucket full of tulip bulbs. Frodo couldn’t tell whether she was burying them or digging them back up again.
“Farewell, Samwise,” Frodo called. “I hope you’ve time later to finish your book.”
Frodo hadn’t meant this as a jibe—or at least not fully as such—but Sam sat bolt upright as if something in the soil had bitten her.
“You mind your own eyes and I’ll mind mine, Miss Frodo,” said Sam with a familiar idle snap to her voice. Then she seemed to wilt a bit, and said, “I mean to say. Yes Miss. Sorry Miss.”
“Oh, don’t apologize, Sam,” Frodo sighed, and jogged off down the lane without giving into the temptation to look at Sam’s legs again.
The day had begun cool and damp, as most days did in September in the Shire , though by the time Frodo departed for Hobbiton proper the sun was high and bright and the morning’s crispness remained only in the shaded dips of the lane. By the time Frodo had completed the short walk to the Hobbiton market square at the bottom of Bagshot Row, she had begun to sweat. She thought longingly of undoing the high collar of her blouse, or at least loosening the jaunty coral ribbon she had optimistically tied about her neck before leaving. But she did not like to appear before the ordinary folk of Hobbiton looking any less than perfectly turned out. Wearing trousers to market made her a troublesome eccentric in their eyes, where an unbuttoned blouse or unstarched pleat would tip the scales of public opinion towards madness. So she’d keep her tie done up.
It was Wednesday, and Wednesday meant market day. The packed dirt of Hobbiton’s village square, ordinarily as quiet a thoroughfare as any in the Shire, was crammed with hobbits from all over the region hawking their wares underneath colorful awnings. Frodo made her rounds, purchasing a nice sheep’s cheese from one stall, a packet of fine rosehip tea from another, two jars of good honey (one to be delivered to Bag End, one to bring along), and then some ribbon from the usual haberdasher in the square who was well used to Bilbo and so carried a wider variety of colors in their trim than most in the Shire. Frodo was tempted by some lovely-looking squash offered by a fellow from one of the outlying farms, but resisted. Sam and the Gaffer would be put out by the perceived disrespect of Bag End’s own kitchen garden and the fine squash grown therein, and it would of course be unacceptable to offend them so. Bilbo and by extension Frodo believed that as landowners the Bagginses had a certain responsibility to support the crafts of the local smallholders, but that largesse could not be allowed to come at the expense of the Gamgees.
Well-laden with purchases, never mind the books that she had already been carrying, Frodo crossed the square towards Rhododendron’s cottage. It was a small dwelling, set back a bit from the lane and, of course, above ground, but it had an altogether cheerful aspect with yellow-painted shutters and a neatly thatched roof. Fortunately for Frodo and her assortment of breakables and droppables, the cottage door was ajar and she let herself in directly without knocking.
“Rhododendron, dearest, I come bearing gifts,” she called.
“Frodo, my best love, come through,” Rhododendron called in return. Frodo followed the sound of her voice to the kitchen, which was not difficult to find. Again, the cottage was very small. It was cosy, with the sturdy whitewashed walls and small windows typical of above-ground houses, simply and tastefully decorated and in every conceivable way the opposite of Bag End. But Frodo liked it despite its unsettling simplicity, because Rhododendron lived there.
Frodo and Rhododendron Peapack had met at a picnic at the tender mutual age of twenty-one, when Frodo discovered her crying inside of a large juniper bush because Pinny Goodbody-Took had cast her aside. Frodo’d had a rather similar experience the previous summer and was enormously sympathetic to her plight, and as such she and Rhododendron quickly became close as bobcats in a burrow. That closeness had periodically evolved into and then devolved from deeper intimacies, and after a constellation of minor heartbreaks they shook hands and decided they made better friends than lovers. So the status quo had now remained for several happy years.
Rhododendron was a small and stout lass with a head of wild of carrot-orange curls, which she had allowed to run wild in the privacy of her own kitchen. She liked to resist the inherent hobbitish tendency towards nicknames, which was unfortunate given the excessive length of her own name. Her mother had once hoped to marry a Took and settled for a Peapack; these things happened. Any and all attempts to call her Rhoda, or Dennie or Dodie or Odo, were firmly rebuffed.
“Good afternoon, dear,” she said when Frodo came in, and presented her cheek for a kiss. Frodo obliged before divesting herself of her burdens (except Bilbo’s ribbon, which she tucked in her trouser pocket) at the kitchen table. “I hope you’ll stay for some refreshments.”
“But of course.” Frodo sat at the head of the table, politely pretending that the bareness of the kitchen did not unsettle her.
“Oh, no,” said Rhododendron, bustling over with a plate of raisin buns and a pitcher of water with mint, “that doesn’t look like it’s all volumes of poetry.”
Frodo propped an elbow up on the jar of honey and accepted a bun. “You know how these things go. One walks idly through the square on market day, and one gets drawn into those small polite conversations, and then suddenly one is responsible for all manner of incidental purchases. And of course it doesn’t do to invite oneself to tea empty-handed,” she said.
“Of course. Frodo the benevolent squire-ess, deigning to bestow a visit on the tenants,” Rhododendron said drily, but she did not seem inclined to turn down the gifts. Frodo was pleased.
It was not uncommon for young gentlehobbits of their particular persuasion to be quietly and politely disowned by families hoping to avoid scandal, and such was Rhododendron’s situation. Rhododendron’s companion Tamsin received a small allowance from a sympathetic father (a distant cousin of Frodo’s about whom she had long harbored some suspicions, though that was beside the point) and so their genteel poverty was not so impoverished as it might have been. Still, it was no simple prospect for two lasses not quite of age to set up housekeeping on their own, and Frodo liked to help where she could.
Rhododendron sat across the kitchen table from Frodo and rifled through the bounty Frodo had delivered, snatching the honey jar out from under Frodo’s elbow and holding it up to the light.
“How does Tamsin like her new position? Bilbo was asking after her,” Frodo said. Bilbo had done no such thing, but he always did appreciate evidence that his meddling had been successful. He had recently found Tamsin a place as governess for some niece or great-niece or great-great-niece’s children, as his greatest joy in life was wearing silk in clashing colors but his second greatest joy was benevolently overinvolving himself in the lives of young folks in their little community.
“Oh, Tamsin’s happy, Tamsin’s always happy. She likes the faunts for some reason. She’s with the little terrors now.” Rhododendron had shifted to examining the books, and paused in her perusal. “Say, someone’s left a bookmark in Unquiet Philosophies. ”
“Oh, really? Perhaps Bilbo’s already lent it out to someone,” said Frodo. She did not share her brewing theory that Sam had been sneaking chapters. Firstly, because she had no real evidence that it had truly been Sam. And secondly, because Sam and Rhododendron did not run in the same circles, and Rhododendron had never evinced any particular interest in Frodo’s stories about Sam in the past.
Rhododendron frowned. “Drat. I’d hoped I could read it before that damned Hetty Grubb so I could ruin the best bits for her this time instead of the other way round. If Bilbo’s given it to her—”
“You know as well as I do that she and Bilbo haven’t spoken since last fall and the incident with the jellied trout. She certainly isn’t the one who’s gotten at the book. Anyhow, if you’re not the first to read it you’re at least the third, love, I swear,” said Frodo.
“Well I’m pleased we’ve got our hands on it now, because Tamsin desperately wants to read it once I’m done with it. I could forgive you for disappointing me, but never for disappointing Tamsin,” said Rhododendron.
“Yes, your devotion is touching,” Frodo said, taking a bite of raisin bun. It was a bit dry. “I’m glad you love her enough to let her read it second.”
When Rhododendron laughed, she managed to spray crumbs on most, but not all, of the books on the table. Unfortunately the lone survivor was Lilies in the Moonlight, which Frodo hadn’t especially liked. “When you find someone who puts up with you as nicely as Tamsin does with me, you’ll understand,” Rhododendron said.
Frodo had heard this all before, and took a sufficiently large and gluey bite of her raisin bun that she would not be expected to respond.
+
Raisin buns for tea became raisin buns and cheese for supper as Frodo and Rhododendron chatted. But eventually the sun began to set and the air began to cool, and Frodo made to begin the walk back up to Bag End. Rhododendron attempted to lend Frodo a shawl in case the damp had set back in, and Frodo fought valiantly against her efforts.
Rhododendron released Frodo at the door with a kiss and one last attempt to toss the shawl over Frodo’s shoulders, which Frodo fended off by balling up the shawl and tossing it into the hedges outside the door.
Rhododendron laughed. “Look, Frodo,” she said, “if you won’t have the shawl at least take this with you. A little swap, as Tamsin and I have already read it.”
From a pocket in her cardigan, Rhododendron withdrew a worn piece of paper folded in thirds and titled ‘Runaway Verses’ by (of course) Anonymous. Little broadsheets of this type, poems passed casually hobbit to hobbit and recopied at will, were another component of the literary ecosystem of the Shire. Frodo examined the one she’d been given.
“Who’s the Anon?”
“A mysterious newcomer,” said Rhododendron. “No one knows who they are, and I’ve asked. A bit unpolished, I’ll grant, but really rather good.”
Frodo tucked the poem in her own pocket. “I’ll tell you my thoughts next time we meet.”
“Pass it on to Bilbo too, won’t you? It’s the sort of thing I think he might like to see.”
“Oh, it’s that good, is it? Well, I shall look forward to reading it.”
Frodo departed with a salute and one final kiss on the cheek. The marketers had all packed up and gone, and Hobbiton sat quiet again in the gathering darkness. It was getting dark earlier now, and the smell of the evening air had changed into something heavier and wetter.
Upon reaching the winding lane up the hill to Bag End, Frodo began to whistle. Not too quietly, as it was early enough that a little cheerful music on the walk home wasn’t rude. She conjured up a little jig in time to the song of a lazy late-season cricket. And just as her whistling became a bit reedy from the effort of walking uphill, the sound of another whistler came out of the dark before her to harmonize where she was lacking. An impromptu duet was always good fun, and Frodo sped up her pace to see who her partner was.
It was Sam, who stopped whistling the moment they were close enough to see each other’s faces in the purplish dusk. Her note trailed off with a sad, flatulent trill which would have been funny if Frodo were not so sorry that Sam had quit in the first place. The cricket sang alone for a terribly uncomfortable second.
“Good evening Sam,” said Frodo, to quiet the cricket. “I do hope Bilbo didn’t keep you this late.”
“Oh, no. Mister Bilbo knows better. I was—I was working on summat, is all.”
“Something exciting, I hope?” Frodo wished she had taken Rhododendron’s shawl if only so she would have something to fidget with.
Sam rocked backwards on her heels and shrugged. “Not hardly, Miss. Just trying to find a thing I lost, but it seems I’ve lost it too well and it won’t be found.”
Frodo didn’t consider herself un-brave. No shy and retiring lass could dress as she did or host the parties she had or put up with Bilbo half as long as she’d done. But she needed all the strange confidence and anonymity offered by the lowering dark to ask: “Samwise, was the thing you lost by any chance a book? A book of poems?”
Sam raised her head to look Frodo in the eyes, which was how Frodo realized she’d been looking more at Frodo’s left shoulder before. “Yes, Miss. It was a book.”
“Was the book called Unquiet Philosophies?”
“Yes, Miss.” Frodo waited for Sam to elaborate. She did not. The shell of politeness had descended once more over their conversation.
“I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve just lent that book to Miss Peapack,” Frodo said. “No wonder you couldn’t find it again. I’ll make certain she returns it once she’s done with it so you can finish it.”
Sam nodded. Frodo hesitated, and then decided it did no good to do the thing halfway.
“Unquiet Philosophies is—well. It’s a particular sort of book, Sam, and I’m not sure I knew you were a particular sort of person.”
“Could fill a lot of books with all that you lot don’t know, Miss Frodo,” Sam snapped. Frodo waited for the apology she was coming to expect, and did not receive it. Sam nodded at her, blushing in the dim light but her broad shoulders straight and firm, and brushed past Frodo as she walked away down the hill to her own home.
+
Frodo lay awake that night, a cool breeze through the open window touching her face, and thought deeply and nervously about previously unconsidered possibilities.