Feral Park (8 page)

Upon their arrival at Thistlethorn the following evening, Anna and her father were met by a flurry of commotion and disorder spilling out of the house and onto the steps and graveled drive. Gemma’s older sister May Dray was foremost in the picture, waving her arms above her head and stalking this way and that in a state of great flutter and agitation. Gemma was attempting to settle her hands upon the shoulders of her distressed younger sibling to stabilise and calm her. Shuffling their feet and wringing their hands near the front door were the other members of the Dray family, whom Anna recognised from previous visits: two of Gemma’s three double cousins, John and Marie, as well as an utterly discomposed Mrs. Dray, the mistress of the hurly-burly house. There was also present within the disarranged assembly another young woman with whom Anna was not acquainted. Anna was about to ask her father if he knew the girl’s identity since, in the midst of the chaos and confusion, his eyes were fixed only upon this pretty girl, but stopt the words before they were said, conceding to herself that a casual conversational aside to her father within the general climate of commotion would have appeared odd. Absent from those gathered in front of the Thistlethorn mansion was the very object of the present family derangement: John’s older sister Rose Ellen.

Now attentive to the arrival of the carriage and to the two who had just stepped from it, Gemma sat her younger sister down upon a bench and gestured for her mother to tranquilise herself and then to tranquilise her daughter May in that specified order, and having passed her sister off to the less-steady hands of her mother, Gemma hastened to welcome, as well as circumstances would allow it, the Peppercorns to Thistlethorn.

“Hullo, hullo,” she said breathlessly with one hand pressed in fret and near wilt to the brow. “There has been an accident and everyone is behaving so badly over it. The squall has all but ruined the evening.”

“Dear girl,” said Mr. Peppercorn, “shall we know the particulars?” “Yes, of course. Come and walk with me. Let us allow time for all within the house to collect and compose themselves, and then we shall return, and if we are lucky we may all pretend that nothing untoward or disagreeable has even transpired.”

Anna and her father walked along on either side of Gemma, who took the arm of each and with purposed self-possession related the dismal details of the whole business. “The Drays of Cowpens Acres arrived not two hours ago. Did you not see John standing at the door, Anna?”

Anna owned that she had.

“And he was smiling—was he not—even in the midst of all the pandemonium. He has been very much looking forward to seeing you, and, of course, here I am stealing you away, but never mind, it could not be helped and you will enjoy the company of one another for the chief of the evening upon our return. Now, where was I? My cousin Rose Ellen was travel-sick upon arrival, the trip having mistreated her stomach, you see. Indeed, her whole digestive system was affected; she has a delicate tract, not unlike you, Anna. Now, I was passing through the drawing-room to escort my cousin up stairs so that she should lie down and repair herself when she espied the new Broadwood pianoforte Mamma had just bought for my sister May in reward for the completion of her music studies in town. You should hear her play, Mr. Peppercorn. Upon my word, I have heard no one better. And upon the new instrument, she excels beyond anyone you would hear in London, excepting her instructor, who, to own the truth, is not even English, but, I believe, Italian. Yet he is very, very good, and two years of instruction and much practise and diligent self-application have made May an object of pride and joy to all of us at Thistlethorn—even down to the chambermaids, who sometimes suspend their mop-pushing to lean upon their sticks and sigh over the delicacy to May’s caress of the keys. The instrument, I should add, is nearly the best that is made. It is much more beautiful and its tones far more mellifluous than the one my sister used to have, and it arrived only yesterday. May has, in fact, had little time to play on it, for it was only tuned this morning. My cousin Rose Ellen, seeing the grand instrument, was taken with it at an instant, and rather than go up to lie down and settle her stomach, she turned and crossed without delay to the pianoforte instead, and sat down at it and opened it and touched the keys as if she might play something herself and then stood up and promptly vomited all over it!”

“Merciful heavens!” exclaimed Anna.

“Oh, Good Lord in a chaise!” exclaimed Anna’s father.

“It was no
small
delivery of egesta which disgorged from the mouth of John’s sister, but a spray and spew of great volume and proportion. I turned away, for I could not even witness this horrible intestinal attack upon my sister’s expensive new pianoforte with inlaid appointments. The evacuation of Rose Ellen’s stomach continued in full rolling force for a long session with no effort by the perpetrator to turn from the instrument and spare it further defilement—the egesta placed with almost calculated design upon the keyboard and the music desk and upon all the hammers and strings within. I stole a peek to confirm the latter and discerned an undulating Rose Ellen bent over the pianoforte’s interior and deliberately depositing her half-digested luncheon—a large meal of cold beef and cheese and cake and grapes and bites of nectarine (for her brother later confirmed that she had previously had a very filling traveller’s luncheon as she was quite hungry)—depositing it all within the pianoforte’s interior with seemingly directed purpose, I think not with malice, but perhaps with a vomiting woman’s misplaced sense of order and tidiness—for, to be sure, the chief of it went upon and within the instrument and not upon the floor.”

“And May must have been mortified to find the results upon her new instrument!” cried Anna. She and her father were both amazement in human form, Anna being much more vocal in her own expression of mortification. Mr. Peppercorn merely stood in his spot rubbing his abdomen and looking queasy and unwell himself.

“Oh, it was worse than that, I should say!” Gemma replied. “For May arrived upon the scene even before the curtain had fallen! Rose Ellen was still discharging into the instrument and even afterwards came a long period of vomiturition sometimes with product but generally without. I must say that I have never seen my sister so thoroughly incommoded. She opened her lungs and released a curdling scream of considerable volume—a clarion call to all in Thistlethorn to drop whatever they were doing and rush posthaste to the hubble-bubble centre of the crisis and the tumult, and very soon everyone was running about shouting and accusing, and Rose Ellen, who was feeling better after having disgorged herself, was fleeing for her safety with May in swift and violent pursuit, throwing bolsters at her from various sofas, and our maid Jane-Anne, with mop in hand, was slipping and falling face-forward into the single place where Rose Ellen’s product had puddled the parquet, and a second maidservant Ruth began her own bit of retching upon viewing the full scene, first within her mouth and then directing the stomach broth into her cupped hands—for she is tidy—and an incidental footman, who had been hired to serve at table tonight, was taking the opportunity of releasing loud and noxious-smelling cheeser-farts without recess, thinking, no doubt, that none would notice the sound and stench amidst the cacophony and fetor. Yet
I
noticed and I fired him on the spot.”

Gemma took a deep breath and continued her report: “And oh, what a harsh exchange of words came then quickly from the tongues of both the Cowpens Acres Drays and the Thistlethorn Drays, each participant coming to the aid of her respective family member! Why did Rose Ellen not have sense enough to aim her gastric missiles away from the instrument? This from my own mother, who seemed almost as deranged over the incident as was my sister. And then Rose Ellen making a response which did not bear upon logic, and May saying something along the lines of ‘sparing the floor, my arse!’ and then John, rising to his sister’s defence and talking of the Cowpens Acres Drays quitting Thistlethorn without another moment’s delay. Oh, how horrible
that
would have been! I took my turn to try to reason with everyone and to cool every head, and finally, I believe, reason and calm have begun their reign, for the Drays are
not
gone, as you can see, and Jane-Anne and Ruth are working with every ounce of soap and elbow grease to restore the pianoforte, and to-morrow a man will come to tell us if there has been damage sufficient to compromise the instrument, and we will all hope that his answer is no. It is my profoundest wish that when we three return to the house, peace will have been reinstated, and perhaps we may all have the opportunity of beginning the visit anew.”

Upon their return, Gemma was indeed rewarded for her optimism by finding some degree of tranquillity returned to the house. Rose Ellen was reconciled to spending the evening within her guest apartment and taking only light nourishment which could be easily kept down, and as for the others, dinner would be taken not in the dining–parlour because it was much too close to the fetid smell of the drawing-room, but instead would be served within the saloon, where the diners gathered to eat upon two card tables, and the informality of this assembly placed most everyone in less agitated spirits and calmed the nerves to an even greater extent. Even Gemma’s sister May found her customary good temperament much revived and further improved by three glasses of wine and the eschewal of all talk of music and pianofortes in particular.

Anna sat at the card table nearest the full-length casement windows where she watched the sun illuminate in bright pre-twilight radiance the top branches of an arbor of oaks and Spanish chestnuts, the light that would not yet be put to bed dissolving itself into the waters of a small trout stream—the very stream from which had come the first course of the evening. It was a beautiful scene from which she was reluctant to divert her gaze, but it could only be had by avoiding altogether the consideration of John Dray, who could not have been distracted by the scenery since he faced inward to the rest of the cavernous room, and who easily encountered Anna’s countenance simply by looking straight ahead…which he did without much effort. To the left of Anna sat Mrs. Dray, and to Anna’s right was a friend of the Drays of Cowpens Acres—the girl of Mr. Peppercorn’s earlier interest—a youthful governess by the name of Georgiana Younge, who was on brief holiday from the care of three children belonging to a tanner and his wife in the town of Bath near to Cowpens Acres, and who was quite in raptures over the opportunity of removing herself from her demanding charges for a fortnight, even to the point of dismissing the episode of the degraded pianoforte as “not so very horrible in the main, and especially when compared to the sufferings of the world’s population at large, rather insignificant even, and I have seen far, far worse in my days as ministrant to the downtrodden and the badly infirmed in a society of the Methodist New Connexion in London.”

Across the room at the companion portative table sat Mr. Peppercorn, Gemma Dray, her sister May, and her cousin Marie Dray, Gemma having placed herself nearest the door to order the footmen about in the customary fashion.

“’Tis a pity,” said May, who was much more forthcoming with her opinions than her older sister Gemma, “that we are not all sharing the
same
table, for now we will have difficulty carrying on any sort of conversation betwixt us all. We are instead required in the present setting to prosecute two
separate
conversations or perhaps even more, and upon my word the mindless chatter that generally visits a game of whist or speculation will not be put too far from mind and may indeed insinuate itself upon us with impudence due in large part to the post-prandial-like atmosphere of our present circumstances.”

“Yet such, in my opinion, should not be so terrible a thing for the sake of variety,” said Marie, who generally said little of anything, and, no doubt, enjoyed the mindless discourse which usually accompanies a game of cards.

“We may even shout at one another if we like,” offered John with a grin, having overheard his cousin May’s prediction and speaking in a raised voice (both elevated in volume
and
in pitch). “And how would you like
that
, Miss Peppercorn?”

“How would I like
what
, Mr. Dray?” replied Anna, who was busy sliding something leafy and green to the area of her plate from which food would not be eaten.

“For us to spend the entire evening hallooing across the room as would importunate children sequestered from the parental dining room with their own miniature goose.”

“It is not my preferred means to conversation, sir,” answered Anna with a sly smirk over the drollness of the circumstances. “But I will make do.”

Gemma now turned to the overseeing butler standing nearby. “Please shut the door if you will, Collins. That revolting smell has worked its way into this room, as well.”

“Yes ma’am.” The door was promptly closed.

“And shall we later repair to the
dining
room to play cards?” enquired John with a sportive chuckle. Anna noted that, as with his earlier declaration, the question was highly pitched. She recollected Gemma’s mention of this feminine aspect to her cousin. Anna did not, however, find it wholly to his discredit or
too
unusual. She knew of other men who maintained characteristics of the softer sex, and in the case of the vicar and the milliner, seemed more womanly than manly, if truth be told. Yet the aspect was not so strong in Dray as to put her
totally
in mind of the other two. Still, it
was
queer.

“I find this room to be perfect for every purpose!” proclaimed Miss Younge, as she raised her glass for more wine. “A most capital room indeed! And so let us, therefore, drink and nourish ourselves and enjoy to the fullest the company of one another with less attention to rigorous convention than is customarily required.”