Feral Park (19 page)
Authors: Mark Dunn
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #British & Irish, #Historical, #Dramas & Plays, #Genre Fiction, #Drama & Plays, #Historical Fiction, #Irish, #Scottish
Anna did not answer, preferring silence to the honest answer: “My dear, you still look ugly.”
Having now gained the three, the gentleman bowed.
“Good day, ladies,” said he. “And what brings you each to this shrubbery? Have you lost your way into the village?”
“Yes,” replied Anna with a sly smile. “Hopelessly lost. You must direct us. But first you must identify yourself so that we will know who comes to our rescue.”
With a second bow: “I am Wallace Alford. My brothers and I have just taken occupancy of one of the two cottages in Turnington Lodge. Not the miniature cottage where the elves once lived and where Mrs. Taptoe is now tightly wedged, but the larger one more suitable for three strapping young men.”
“So you are the oldest,” said Gemma with great interest, “the brother who formerly served with the regulars.”
“Aye. I still carry my title of lieutenant in deference to my many years of armed service to my country and king. I must own, however, that after so long a period in military harness, I much prefer my own traces these days. How much better it is to rise from a featherbed instead of a dusty army cot, or to don working habiliments suitable for farming and horse husbandry rather than the starchy, scratchy uniform of gun bearer. How sweet is the country life when one has previously followed the rigid daily dictates of the regular army! But enough of me. May I now know the identity of the three fair maidens who have so successfully captured my notice in this delightfully unexpected rencontre?”
“I am Miss Gemma Dray of Thistlethorn,” said Gemma with a curtsey and a blush.
“And I am Miss Anna Peppercorn of Feral Park,” said Anna, executing her own curtsey but colouring less.
“And I hunhg humma hebba fluuum,” said Nancy, whose mortification had turned quickly to blathering unintelligibility. No sooner had Nancy said her gibberish than her knees buckled and her eyes rolled slightly back in her head. Anna and Gemma were required to catch their friend under each arm to prevent her falling unconscious upon the ground.
“Is there something the matter with—hum—Miss Fluuum?” whispered Lieutenant Alford of Anna and Gemma in a delicate tone whilst studying the victim with great interest.
“She is not used to taking herself out and about,” volunteered Gemma. “She is quite retiring.”
“But in other situations she speaks in a less nonsensical fashion?”
“Aye!” said Gemma. “In most situations there is little gibberish to her speech at all. She is, in fact, a veritable magpie!”
“Perhaps the magpie will be feeling better next time we meet,” said the lieutenant, who still had not removed his gaze from the face of the wilted woman suspended before him. “For I would like to know her true name delivered to me by her very own lips and perhaps more even than that. Good day, ladies…and the village lies in
that
direction. You should gain it in no time at all.”
And with this, the lieutenant bowed, then turned upon his heel in slightly martial fashion and departed.
There was nothing to be said in the moments that immediately followed Lieutenant Alford’s going, for the time was spent in slowing down the breath to a normal rhythm for each of the three, and for fanning poor Nancy back to some level of consciousness.
“What did I say? What did I do?” sought the aforementioned in groggy abashment.
“You said little that one could successfully decipher,” replied Anna.
“Once he began to speak, a gloaming came over me and there was nothing but silence and darkness. What did
he
say? What did
you
say?”
“We exchanged a pleasant greeting,” said Gemma,“and he spoke of hoping to see us all again. Or something of that nature.”
“Gemma, how you dissemble!” protested Anna. “Have you the memory of a flea? He said that he would like to know
Nancy’s
true name and even more about her than that. He was clearly more interested in her than either you or me.”
“But that cannot be true!” Gemma countered. “For she was too busy fainting and ‘humma hebba’ing and presenting a most undesirable picture of herself. Am I not correct on this account, Nancy?”
“I recall little of what I did, but I would not doubt the account, for I was terribly undone. I would surmise that Lieutenant Alford shewed little interest in me at all. It is Gemma, I have no doubt, whom he wishes to see again.”
“I cannot disagree more,” said Anna sharply. “The lieutenant clearly asked
your
name and enquired after
your
health.”
“Naturally he would enquire after the health of one who appeared so ill!” snapped Gemma.
There was something that was not being said, and so Nancy took it upon herself to say it: “With regard to me, I am certain that he was merely being courteous and polite as military officers are trained to be. Why else would he be at all interested in one who tongue-twaddles and well-nigh faints away? It makes no sense.”
Anna, who had taken Nancy’s side so that she should not take
Gemma’s
, knew in her heart that Nancy’s harsh self-assessment must be true. It was most certainly Gemma and Gemma alone whom the lieutenant found most interesting, and had not Anna thought this when he was first mentioned by Mr. Nevers on the previous Friday, and this when she had yet to even meet the man? Naturally, it was all as it should be. Now seeing the two together, Anna realised that they were most suited for one another. But it was best not to correct Nancy in this regard, for she seemed in spite of her protests (hollow to be sure) to be acquiring the notion (with some assistance from Anna) that Lieutenant Alford was, in fact, interested in
her
rather than her two far more handsome companions. What a ludicrous notion, thought Anna. It simply could not be so. Or he should be in need of spectacles. Anna admonished herself for her uncharitable thoughts. Yet was she not arranging for a ball in unflinching acknowledgment of the cruel realities of the parish—that some are born with attractive features and some such as Nancy are not? This, thought Anna, is simply one of the cold facts of life. But in the face of this icy verity, she would nonetheless find Nancy a match. The man who would ultimately ask for her hand would look nothing like Lieutenant Alford, she was certain, but it would not prove a tragedy, for Nancy herself had said that she would fain take for a husband one with a single brow or pits upon the face. Ask her if she would accept the hand of a halt man upon crutches, pop-eyed and underhung in such exaggeration as to make him look like a bulldog, and
still
she should say yes. Nancy was not stupid; she realised the true way of things.
Yet, thought Anna, it was curious that the lieutenant should say more about the one less blessed by agreeable countenance, unless, of course, he was merely demonstrating a concern for her disheveled state; she did, after all, say “humma hebba” when she should have said, “I am Miss Nancy Henshawe and am pleased to meet you.”
Upon the return stroll to Berryknell, plans were made for the ball. Nancy was helpful when she was not being most
un
helpful by thinking too much of Lieutenant Alford. It was not difficult for Anna to tell where Nancy’s private thoughts were taking her, for she smiled frequently and for no immediate reason, and at one point merrily capered several steps ahead before collecting herself.
It was all rather sad…
…thought Anna.
In the days that preceded the visit to Feral Park by her Aunt Drone and the formerly pediculous Miss Pints,Anna was busier than she had ever remembered herself being. There was the ball and all the planning that must be done, and there was assisting John Dray with his nuptial arrangements, and there was helping Mrs. Taptoe prepare the dwarf cottage for the imminent arrival of her temporary tenant, Miss Felicity Godby, and in a spare moment now and then in the absence of her father Anna would find herself in the library and about the additional task of peering behind the volumes and underneath the carpeting for the troublingly elusive key that would unlock the secret cabinet and thereby unlock all the mysteries about Henry Peppercorn which were held therein. From the cabinet Anna hoped not only to verify everything that her friend Gemma had told her, but to discover for herself the truth of that which her friend had purposefully
not
told her, much to Anna’s displeasure, because it was not a matter which she had any desire whatsoever to bring before her father. And had not Gemma said that Anna should find out certain things through her own industry?
As for the ball, there was little to have been dreaded; Henry Peppercorn raised not even the slightest objection when it was put to him. “I have no issue with the scheme, daughter, so long as all can be made ready by Midsummer Eve, which is now less than a fortnight away. Indeed, our private assembly may prove a special diversion for Dr. Bosworthy, who is perhaps already regretting having committed himself to spending the chief of his summer locked into one long tête-à-tête with dull, dull me.”
“You are not dull, Papa. Not by any definition of the word. So I may send out invitations on the morrow?”
“Of course you may. You do not, however, think that it will be hot?”
“Perhaps. But I cannot wait until October or November. It will have to be a hot ball or no ball at all.”
“I suppose that we can open all the windows in our saloon. On even the most stifling of nights a salubrious breeze will transverse that room to the benefit of the constitutions of those therein. We are fortunate, dear daughter, to have large casements with a northern aspect that swing wide and invite in the cool, clean night air. Indeed, this is why I believe that you and I both maintain our health when others in the parish must suffer periodic paroxysms of the ague. I wager that it is the windows, along with the fact that we have always taken our collutories and our collunaria with regularity, and that Miss Leeds administers a clyster to you once each month to thoroughly flush your tract.”
(Anna did not correct her father with regard to the monthly clyster. Ever since attaining the age of fourteen she had refused to submit to it as an infringement upon the dignity of her person, and, moreover, had successfully entreated her lady’s maid not to inform her father of this change in regimen. It was apparent to Anna that her father had learnt much about health and hygiene in his readings—and about the health and hygiene of young women in particular, as was confirmed by Gemma’s recent disclosure. Yet he did not know the degree to which Anna disdained the clyster, nor did Anna wish to tell him, the subject being so disagreeable to her.)
“We Peppercorns are as fit and robust as any who walk this planet, with perhaps the solitary exception of those sets of Asians who are given to drinking their own urine for the purpose of constitutional purification.”
“Oh, Papa!” cried Anna in mortification. “Because you have read it, does that always give you leave to
say
it?”
“I apologise, daughter, for discomfiting you in such a manner. But I should not think it too terrible a thing to prepare you through this sort of observation for all that will, no doubt, come without inhibition or attendance to propriety from the scientific mouth of Dr. Quentin Bosworthy. My friend will certainly wish to share with the two of us every detail of his many experiments and scientific discoveries, and will not quit Feral Park without having even invented a thing or two during his stay. With regard to purifying one’s tract through the reintroduction by mouth of one’s own urinary product, imbibed casually as one would a warm beverage, it was Dr. Bosworthy who told me of this strange habit, for he has witnessed it upon his travels in the Orient. He has witnessed and experienced a good many things related to the medical sciences during his frequent sojourns in places exotic. He once, as an example, stepped into a Parisian operatory to try the scalpel upon a dissection corpse only to discover
in medias res
that the body was not dead at all, but wholly alive and merely anaesthetized by very strong drink.”
“Horrors, Papa! What did he remove?”
“A great amount, in fact, from the hepatic region, and in the presence of several surgery students, who had gone into the operating theatre to engage in secret ether frolics, forbidden to them as a rule, and rather than cutting— themselves—into the unconscious man whom they had discovered amongst the rubbish in the alleyway, they had merely placed him upon the table to move his arms and legs about in the sort of dumbshow foolishness which ether gas promotes within the taker, and especially if the taker be a Frenchman. In the cloud of their ether-play the students believed Dr. Bosworthy (who, in truth, had merely wandered into the operatory to seek directions to the Luxembourg Palace) to be an eminent English anatomist, and this fact required the body to be a corpse. Once the cutting began the students gathered round to observe a thorough dissection of the presumed cadaver until such time as it began to twitch and moan (for recall that the patient was not dead but merely made insensible from some strong French intoxicant when he was procured from the alleyway). Dr. Bosworthy recoiled immediately—liver in hand—and all fell into a similar panic at the sight of the cadaver who refused to be a cadaver, gutted like a trout. And here I believe is the first documented case of ether being used to anesthetise a surgery patient. The gas was administered quickly and thoroughly, and the liver was put back and spliced into place as best as Dr. Bosworthy could manage it, his not being a surgeon and none of the students being capable in their disoriented, residually etherized state to assume the procedure themselves. The patient was then closed up and, in a miraculous denouement to the story, lived a full
four
days before expiring from liver necrosis and general putrefactive gangrene!”
“Papa, that entire story is odious. It makes me wonder if your friend Dr. Bosworthy is not a brilliant man with an idiot’s brain.”
“His ways sometimes appear strange to me, as well. But we shall profit from his visit nonetheless, for in spite of every thing repellent about him, he is a most interesting and intriguing man of science. And how often, Anna, do such individuals deign to spend their summer at Feral Park?”
“Just tell me that he does not drink his own product.”
“I am afraid that I cannot.”
Anna groaned.
“I admit that the habit will disconcert the upstairs maid, who will wonder why he does not release into the chamber pot each night, and who will go searching and sniffing throughout the upper floors to find the place he must be making his water instead. But once all is explained to her and she realises that there will be less product to dispose, we may actually see a smile upon that dour woman’s face for a change!”
“Oh, Papa, this conversation is revolting! I am pointing my body to the door, as you can very well see, and look, Papa, I have now taken one full stride in that direction.”
“Then let us, by all means, conclude our discussion of Dr. Bosworthy. Only promise me that as difficult as it may be for you, you will try to accommodate his odd habits with the utmost complaisance, for he is my friend and our guest, and it will not become you to treat him shabbily.”
“I will not treat him shabbily, Papa. You have my word.”
“Very well. Now enough talk of Dr. Bosworthy. I must say that the idea of a ball for the Misses Henshawe is a most capital idea. We have not had a ball since you came out four years ago. Oh, how radiant you looked! I was never so proud of you as I was on that most splendid night. I was well-nigh certain that you would be snatched up in an instant, not realising how very particular you would ultimately become in this business of marital attachment. But that is neither here nor there. Recall the frolic and festivity of that enchanted evening! The music and the gowns and everyone in their very best spirits. How quiet the house has become since then.”
“The house may be quiet, Papa, but my hands and feet are never still. I am already fagged and there is so much work still to be done.”
“All commendable work, still and all. I must say, Anna, that
all
of your current schemes are capital ones, as I think upon them one after the other. Facilitating the marriage of Mr. Dray and Miss Godsby: a most agreeable thing. And the Misses Henshawe deserve nothing better than the ball—such sweet girls each one. I do request, however, that you think of something other than ‘ugly ball’ as name for it. It is a most unflattering and unwelcoming referent. I suggest the ‘Feral Park Fête Galante,’ for the ball will be most elegant, will it not, and is it not to be presented within a park?
Our
park: Feral Park.”
“Oh, Papa, that was quite clever!
That
name will go on the cards this very day, for Mrs. Lacey is to begin lettering and directing them this afternoon.”
“I am happy to be of service. And now I suppose you are off on one of your many chores. Only take care to be home by the evening, my dear, to welcome your aunt and her companion Miss Pints to our home. Samantha will wish to see you the moment she steps into the vestibule.”
“I shall make every effort to be home in time for her arrival.”
“And what
is
on the list for Miss Anna Peppercorn to do to-day?”
“I am to see Mrs. Taptoe and help her prepare the dwarf cottage for the arrival of Miss Godby on Thursday.”
“You will take James with you as usual? I understand from Constable Whitaker that the gipsies are becoming much more brazen in their accessions to those who pass the woods.”
“I will take James as I always do.”
At that moment James himself entered to announce the arrival of an unexpected guest. The card was presented—hand-scrawled. “A Miss
Lunge
or
Younge
, sir.”
“To see
me
or to see my daughter?” asked Mr. Peppercorn, examining the card.
“The both, she says.”
The look of perplexity upon the face of Mr. Peppercorn turned in that instant to one of pleasant recollection. “Ah! ’Tis Miss Georgiana Younge with whom I spent the chief of our recent evening at Thistlethorn. Miss Peppercorn and I will see her in the drawing-room, James.”
With that, Mr. Peppercorn proceeded with a very light step to that room to await his visitor. Anna followed with a less animated gait.
Miss Younge seemed fretful and discomposed as she entered the room, and her troubled state did not abate even during the salutatory civilities. Nor did she sit herself comfortably upon the chair to which she had been assigned, but instead squirmed and wriggled about on the cushion with unremitting ill-ease. “May I pace?” she finally sought. “I am able to think better when I am in motion.”
“By all means,” said Mr. Peppercorn as he traded a puzzled glance with his daughter.
“You know that I was to return to Somerset to-day in the company of the Drays of Cowpens Acres.”
“Yes,” replied Anna. “And I know further that you have enjoyed your stay at Thistlethorn, as short as it has been, and are perhaps reluctant to go.”
“Depend on it, ma’am. It has been a terribly delightful respite from my duties as governess. They are good children whom I tend, each of the three, and I have been very good with the provision of their lessons, but it appears that in my brief absence I have been sacked.”
“
Sacked
?” Henry Peppercorn sat up very straight within his chair.
“Aye. A letter has just come to Thistlethorn telling me that I am not to return to Bath and that my things and my last wages will be sent on to me— will be sent to Thistlethorn—unless, of course, I desire that they be directed elsewhere. But I know not of any other place to go. It is generous of the Thistlethorn Drays to allow me to stay for a short time with them whilst I decide what I must do, but they will not have me for too long, as they do not abide spongers, and as I am not a sponger by any means, one still cannot argue against being
thought
a sponger if one is residing only upon the kind indulgence of her hosts and taking small bits of food to eat if only to keep herself from falling wan upon the floor.”
“Such a thing I hope we shall never see, my dear—you falling wan upon the floor. My poor, poor dear!” Mr. Peppercorn rose to take the young cashiered governess’ hand within his own. Anna noted that her father’s eyes had not left the countenance of the poor dear through the whole of her story and then through the transaction of the consoling hand.
Thought Anna,“He is going to ask her to stay at Feral Park whilst she seeks new employment here in Payton Parish, I am most certain that he is.”
Said he, “Dear girl, it is no trouble to have you here in this house until a situation can be secured for you in Payton Parish.”
Thought Anna, “He has only in a brief instant forgot that Aunt Samantha and her little shadow are soon to arrive, and the scalpel-wielding, urinedrinking Dr. Bosworthy shortly thereafter. He has said that we could not take in Miss Godby and here he is most willing to welcome Miss Younge into our very bosom!”