Feral Park (25 page)

The next morning Anna went to see her aunt in her room. Aunt Drone had already risen and dresst herself and Anna found her looking out of the window at the sparkling green of the dewy high downs. The sun was low and the sky was exchanging its pink and orange sunrise hues for fluffy white and powder blue. Despite the promise of a beautiful day, the aunt seemed worried, and— Anna thought—somewhat dejected.

Anna knocked upon the open door and the window-gazer turned to acknowledge her visitor. “Good morning, Anna.”

“Good morning, Aunt. Is any thing the matter?”

“I will tell you what is the matter,” said Miss Drone with a grave expression unchanged upon her sunlit face. “I have awakened this morning to the realisation that I am not, in truth, your aunt at all.”

“Nonsense!” delivered Anna. “You are my aunt in every sense but one. Have you forgotten that you were older sister to the woman who was
by law
my mother?”

Miss Drone crossed the room and took Anna’s hand. She held it in a tender clasp. “True, she was by law your mother, my love, but not by blood. Therefore
I
am not your aunt except as may only be defined in a most narrow legal sense. The conclusion I now draw from my present state is that there is no one upon this earth to whom I am truly related by blood. How stark! That all those who
were
are now dead. And that those who
may
have been were never by fate allowed to be born.”

“But there are other ways in which two may be connected to one another besides blood and marriage. And for that reason I shall continue to call you ‘Aunt’ just as I call Mrs. Taptoe the same even though there is no blood between
us
. Our hearts—yours and mine—were mended together even ere I had memory, when I was so very young and you were so very kind to a lonely, motherless child. Upon those occasions in which I have regretted your visits, I did so only because I have never been, in truth, at ease in the presence of your Miss Pints, nor have I ever understood the reason for your undiminished devotion to her. She is most strange and yet you care for her so deeply that there must be something about the connexion which defies explanation.”

Miss Drone did not answer the observation in a direct way. She said instead, “Miss Pints. Oh, yes. Last night she was frightened by some small sound she could not identify. Upon her tiny clubbed feet she scampered pittypat, pitty-pat to my bed and burrowed herself beneath the sheets and there she waited for me to return. I was down stairs with you, as you recall, the two of us waiting for sleep to come and take us by the hand, after all that had opened wide the eyes and invigourated the brain in your maid’s room. When I finally came up to bed—dear me, was it not half past two at the very earliest?—there she was still waiting for me beneath the covers: my human bed warmer with a harelip. I brought her into my life, Anna, the same way that your father brought my sister into
his
life—because there are those whom God places upon this planet in need of tender custodianship by others, and there are likewise
others
of a different set who will do that with which Christian kindness and stewardship charges them: shelter and love and protect the weakest and meekest amongst us. For did not our Lord and Savior say, ‘Blessed be the meek, for they shall inherit the earth’? This, then, is
their
earth, is it not? We are merely its caretakers—
their
caretakers.”

“But you spend so
much
of your time in caring for Miss Pints. Have you ever thought to give yourself even a
brief
holiday from this most needful woman?”

“My holiday will come when the dear soul is gone from this Earth, for her frail health does not foretell a long life, my darling. I should not tell you, but I will nonetheless, if for no other reason than that I have been truthful and forthcoming with you about every thing
else
pertaining to me and to the strange journey of my life: you recollect my relating to you how your father rescued your legal mother from the asylum in the only way that was left to him by that odious Sir Thomas?”

“I do.”

“Well, it so happens that I rescued Miss Pints from the very same place.” “My word! From Stornaway Asylum?”

Miss Drone nodded. She lowered her voice to a grave whisper. “I told you last night that there were bad things that went on there. I did not tell you of their true diabolical nature. Had I
not
rescued Miss Pints, and had your father
not
himself rescued my sister, the frightful subjections directed by Sir Thomas upon these two would have persisted and the outcome would have been most tragic.”

“I am almost too afraid to ask—”

“I will put this in a way that will not discomfit you too terribly, and I will eschew the details for a more general description. Sir Thomas Turnington, as you may guess, has given large sums of money to the asylum over the years to keep it solvent. In exchange for his financial support, he has been allowed, nay,
encouraged
by its superintendent, Dr. Goulding, to take liberties—
whatever
liberties might come to an iniquitous mind—with any of the female inmates who appealed to his fancy.”

“Merciful Heaven! And my legal mother was included within this unfortunate group?”

A nod.

“But certainly not Miss Pints.”

“On the contrary.”

“But Miss Pints is not attractive by any definition, save that of one of the similarly muzzle-faced cony rabbits which have latterly invaded this park.”

“It did not matter, my dear girl, whether she was attractive to Sir Thomas or not.” Tears now began to form in the corners of Miss Drone’s eyes.

“Please do not cry, Aunt. Let us speak of something else. I am going to see my birth mother to-day to tell her that I know all. It will be a joyous occasion, will it not?”

“Aye.” The tears did not cease, even as Anna dabbed at them herself with her handkerchief.

“And then I plan to go to Turnington Lodge and take Miss Younge by the hand and lead her with all dispatch away from the vile man who has spread so much evil round the county.”

“No, no, no!” cried Miss Drone in a violent outburst, which retracted Anna’s touch and sent a shiver throughout her. “He is a dangerous, dangerous man, as we now see, and I will
not
allow you to place yourself anywhere near to his devilish reach.”

“Yet curiously, Papa has never warned me away from him.”

“Perhaps, my dear Anna, it is because, in spite of your father’s access to all other intelligence within the parish, he is woefully ignorant of that which was done by Sir Thomas both to Miss Pulvis
and
to the female inmates of the Stornaway Asylum. Should he have known these details, I have no doubt that he would have proscribed even your visit to the dwarf cottage, leave alone the manse upon the hill. Yet it makes perfect sense that he would
not
know; it is only the girls themselves, as well as the repugnant Dr. Goulding, who have
reason
to know of Sir Thomas’ depraved tendencies—the young women being the unwilling recipients of his perversions and the doctor being witness and most enthusiastic endorser. Perhaps I
should
tell you with specificity what was done to Miss Pints, so that you will exercise all caution in your future dealings with this dangerous man.”

Anna began to experience a lightness in the head that required her to sit down.

“Yes, sit down, my dear girl. You may grow even more faint as I disclose all the particulars.”

“Aunt Samantha, I do not wish to hear all of the particulars. I do not wish to hear any more about it.”

“Nay, I believe now that you
should
hear of it. Grip the post next to you, my girl, to steady yourself.”

“Oh, stop it, stop it!” cried Anna in a petulant tone and with more than a tincture of fear to the voice.

“But you have thought Miss Pints to be a bother and an inconvenience during each of her previous visits to Feral Park. I see how even yesterday you stepped aside when the two of you passed in the gallery, and you did not even bother yourself to catch her eye and smile. Your low opinion of her manifests itself in your tendency toward only the most begrudging civility in your society with her. Therefore I now realise it is most important for you to know
why
such behaviour is unfair to her, is callous and unsympathetic of
you
. You must know
why
you should overlook all that vexes you about her and come to think of her as a creature to be pitied, but yes, also to be loved and cared for most tenderly, after all the abuse and denigration to which she was subjected at that baneful asylum, and most especially at the reprehensible hand of Sir Thomas.”

“But I know the chief of it now, Aunt, for have you not just told me? You need not say another thing. I can imagine all sorts of things with great success. I am already growing faint. I thought that I was strong. I should be quite embarrassed if Mrs. Taptoe were to see me now, for regrettably I see that the yoke upon my sensibilities has loosened. Perhaps it is because there has been too much revealed to me in much too short a span of time for eupeptic digestion. The odious revelations—they come each day now, and sometimes even more than once a day. They march toward me with their hideous countenances unmasked. They threaten and menace me and I must be strong, yet sometimes it is all too much for me to bear. So this much I must ask: do not tell me what it was that happened to my legal mother and to Miss Pints by the scurrilous offices of Sir Thomas, for it may very well be the final thing which sends me to a nuns’ convent.”

“Very well. Perhaps you
have
heard too much already. Run along then, my niece, and I will see you down stairs at breakfast.”

Anna nodded and proceeded from the room without another word. She stepped into the corridor. She took three or four strides to her own apartment. She stopt. She turned round and looked at the door to her aunt’s room. She thought to herself, “I must know this thing. I
should
be strong. I cannot permit myself to tremble and grow faint if I am to be about the business of righting the wrongs of this wicked parish. I should be stout and resilient for all of those who are pavid and weak and needful of my offices. The dividend of the disclosure is this: that I shall from this day forward be less critical of poor Miss Pints. When she brings fleas and lice into the house, I will dismiss the offence as a most minor infraction, for such a thing is trivial indeed when put next to all that she has been forced to endure for no reason other than a want of good fortune in her life.”

Anna took a step in the direction of her legal aunt’s room. “This is easy. I am doing it. Each step is puissant. I am conquering every fear and doubt. This the new Anna.” Within a brief moment she was knocking again upon that door, and within a trice her aunt was sitting her down upon the bed and telling her this: that Sir Thomas was partial to a certain sort of inmate at the asylum to which he bestowed his special version of charitable munificence, and it was the young women who fitted his taste in this respect whose bodies he would sully and defile in ways that may not be put upon
this
page. The preference had nothing to do with a favourable look upon the face, or an agreeable turn of the hip and thigh or an engaging sparkle within the eye (for Miss Pints clearly had none of these things!). What was required from each of the young women especially selected by him for his fiendish tendance was simply the following: that they should be afraid, and that they should display their fear without temperance or restraint. And it was the ones who were
most
afraid and
most
unsuccessful in hiding their trepidation who found themselves
most
often recipient of the man’s contemptible designs. The more frightened the girl, the more Sir Thomas enjoyed himself in the commerce. Miss Pints proved herself to be a special favourite of the master of Turnington Lodge, for she, amongst all of the most easily frightened female inmates of the Stornaway Asylum, lived a life which took as its very sustenance the curdled milk of fear. And so he came to her cell upon multiple occasions and did his abominable business, playing each time upon that terror which adumbrated the faint fraction of a person she had become, and laughing to see this shadow-girl quiver and cower and attempt to flee—as best as one could essay flight from a tiny room with only one locked door for egress. And this is why Miss Drone, when it was all imparted to her by Miss Pints upon a charity visit to the asylum through nearly unintelligible sobs (communication being complicated, in addition, by the harelip), gave all that was in her purse, emptied all that she was able from her bank account, liquidated all those additional holdings that would not place her into poverty, dismissed three of her servants, sold a favourite horse, made forty-three jars of apricot marmalade in her kitchen to sell at the market (and did sell them, every jar), and finally cheated her own parish out of three months’ tithes—all of these things so that she could pay Dr. Goulding
more
than Sir Thomas was paying for the malignant, contemptible privilege of preying upon Miss Pints for his own demented pleasure.

Anna listened to every thing which her legal aunt had to say and she did not grow any fainter than she had been when the story began. When it was finished she thanked her aunt for entrusting her with the secret and vowed to treat Miss Pints with love and compassion and to overlook her crotchets and foibles from that day forward.