Feral Park (26 page)

Anna also began to put together the earliest ingredients that would ultimately comprise a scheme to bring Sir Thomas to consummate justice. First Charles Quarrels (Good God! Her own cousin!) and now Sir Thomas, into whose hands she had delivered poor Miss Younge, whose only fault was that she herself took perhaps a mite too much pleasure in paddling the buttocks of men who entreated her pressingly to do so. Anna now knew of two men in her very own parish who dined and cavorted at table with the Devil himself—two men whom Anna had now set her mind to serve their just desserts.

“But I must enlist Mrs. Taptoe to help me here,” she thought to herself. “I will see her to-morrow when I go to the dwarf cottage to welcome Miss Godby, and I will discuss the matter with her as circumstances permit. This day, however, I owe to my aunt and to my mother. ‘Mother.’ What a sound to the word! I will spend the morning with my Aunt Samantha and the afternoon with my very own newly-found mother. But how will she receive me? How will
Gemma
receive me knowing that I know now what she has perhaps long known: that two best friends are also two half-sisters! I have never had a sister—whole or half. I should not know what to make of it at first. But sisters will be good things to have, I should think!”

Anna went to her room to dress for the morning. As she was wriggling out of her bed clothes with the assistance of Miss Leeds, she became overtaken by sadness for the frightened inmates of the Stornaway Asylum. It was difficult for her to believe that God had not yet stricken dead by lightning Sir Thomas Turnington for perpetrating such deliberate harm upon the most vulnerable amongst His terrestrial flock. How are such men allowed to live and never to suffer punishment for their horridly calculated transgressions? This is a question she wished most earnestly to put to the philosophizing Dr. Bosworthy upon his arrival the next week. He was not a very good vivisector, but he was, she had heard, a most wise and learned student of humankind.

Mr. Peppercorn had business to which he needed attend in the village of Smithcoat for the chief of the morning, and Anna was not down in time to tell him good-bye and kiss his cheek as had become their matutinal custom. This was perhaps for the good, since she had decided that she would tell him nothing of what was told to her by her Aunt Samantha, neither the night before nor that morning in her apartment, and so it was best, perhaps, to keep a temporary distance. “He has kept some very important things from me,” thought Anna, “and so I will keep my
own
secrets from him. After I find my way into his library cabinet, I will raise these things and every thing else he has kept from me, and we shall discuss them all without recess!”

“Good-bye, Papa, and have a lovely day!” Anna cheerfully called from her dressing-room window as Mr. Peppercorn climbed into the carriage.

“Good-bye, daughter,” said he in an equally pleasant, yet also unknowing manner.

Miss Pints was content to spend the morning sitting in her room and pretending to play at charades with Mr. Hodges, and so aunt and niece left the breakfast table with a clear conscience to stroll at their leisure through the Feral Park plantation, where each would catch the other up on all that had occurred in the twelvemonth passage since Miss Drone’s last visit. In the aftermath of all the large disclosures and revelations, not much at all had been said of the little things that had occupied the interstices of their separate lives. Had they been sitting rather than walking Anna might have been put to sleep by the somnolence of her own prosing voice as she recounted all the details large and small—but mostly small—which had characterised her existence before suddenly she had a life of intrigue and adventure to live. She felt herself dull and stupid and could not believe what follies and trifles had engaged her for the whole year since last she had seen her aunt.

“But now to the present, my dear, for that is where all the excitement dwells, and let us speak of things that are not so darkly-coloured as that which we discussed in my room. Your father tells me you are planning a ball. I am sorry that we should miss it, Miss Pints and I. Oh, look—Henry has made such lovely improvements here. There is variety, yet symmetry as well. Nature has been tamed at Feral Park! Soon the ‘Feral’ in Feral Park will be a most misapplied appellation, indeed.”Aunt Drone said this whilst stepping ironically over a furry cony.

Anna had her own rabbit to avoid, for the grounds were filled with them. “I am—hop away, Mr. Floppy-ear—I am thinking, Aunt, that perhaps you may not miss the ball, after all, should you chuse to postpone your journey to Eastbourne.”

“Or
perhaps…
” thought Miss Drone aloud, “Miss Pints and I should simply
not
go to Eastbourne this year, for there is much happening here in this parish that may prove appreciably more entertaining than lying on one’s back upon the sand and attending a fish-scented breeze.”

“You do not bathe?”

“Oh, mercy, no. Not since the time that Miss Pints became trapped in a bathing machine when the door would not unlatch. Nor do we go to the assemblies or any of the fêtes, you see, as they give Miss Pints the wobbles— too many people,
far
too many people for her ease and comfort. And it is an additional bother to find something for my little friend to eat, for she does not like fish and there is not much else to put upon a plate in a seaside town other than that which once swam and breathed through its gills.”

“So you may spend the remainder of your summer here?” asked Anna, her voice rising in anticipation.

“If you would not mind having us.”

“Mind? I should say not!”

“And if, that is, you think there will be no objection from your father.”

“I will talk to him, but I cannot see how he could object when he sees how happy you and I are together,” said Anna, taking her aunt’s hand. Anna could not believe that after so many years of dreading her Aunt Samantha’s visits, she now wanted nothing more than to have her near for as long as possible. Perhaps it was because she had now come to think of this woman, who was both her aunt and
not
her aunt, in a very different way altogether. It seemed that Aunt Samantha was additionally, from this visit forward, also her friend. Apart from Gemma and perhaps Mrs. Taptoe, Anna had never experienced such easy and close society with another woman. Her life was replete with men—her father and his friends and her father’s man James and the butler Mr. Maxwell and Elwood Epping and the vicar Mr. Nevers and a good many others. She knew not sometimes how to comport herself with other women, and she certainly would not confide in most of the members of her sex with any great ease. A friendship with someone other than Gemma or Mrs. Taptoe was a bonus for her and something that she very much desired. A longer stay would give her the chance to know her aunt—whom she only saw for a brief fortnight once a year—a great deal better. It would also shew her aunt that she could be a friend to Miss Pints in spite of all there was to the strange little rabbit-faced woman that customarily vexed her. It was a lumping good plan— as one of her servants would say—and she expressed this opinion to her aunt again with an even stronger endorsement.

Having settled the matter of where Miss Drone and Miss Pints would spend the rest of their summer, aunt and niece walked on in very comfortable silence. Anna’s thoughts turned to Sir Thomas and to Mr. Quarrels and to the fact that she would erelong be seeing her birth mother for the first time since she had been told that the woman was indeed her birth mother. Anna was about to solicit her aunt’s opinion on how she must approach her mother when she tripped upon a stump and fell down.

“What a clumsy, clumsy fool am I!” exclaimed Anna, rubbing her throbbing foot.

“No, you are not, my darling girl. You are merely a young woman with a great deal on her mind. And the stump was so low that I should not have even detected it myself. Indeed, one who is walking about this plantation thinking
only
of stumps and improvements and improvements-not-so-verywell-improved in the case of this stump would not even have seen it. Does it hurt much?”

“Not terribly much. (Oh, that last throb was painful!) Perhaps, a little.”

Anna was still rubbing herself on the ankle when she looked up to see, not one hundred yards away, a young man doing the very same thing as herself!

“Halloo! Halloo!” called Aunt Drone to the young man. “Is this the spot where we are all to trip and fall? Who is the more injured party?”

“I am quite all right,” said the man, setting his spectacles aright and retrieving his book from the grass. “But how is the young lady?”

“My niece has a damaged ankle, it now appears,” answered Aunt Drone, whilst examining her niece’s foot. “It is sure to swell in no time at all. Stay put, Anna. I will fetch James to transport you to the house. Young man, what is your name?”

“Perry Alford.”

“Are you harmless?”

“Most would think so.”

“Then take good care of my niece until I return.”

And she was off.

“I believe,” said he, now finding himself alone with Anna, “that were
I
your aunt I would not have placed my niece so readily into the society of a solitary stranger.”

“I can think only that my Aunt Drone took a quick measure of you and drew conclusions about your character that acquitted you of all potential mischief.”

“Then she is quite the percipient one, for I
am
quite harmless. Have I permission to sit next to you, Miss Peppercorn?”

“You know who I am?”

“Of course. You are Miss Anna Peppercorn of Feral Park.” Perry Alford was poised to sit, his legs bent at the knees. “May I?”

Anna nodded. He sat down, putting his book upon the grass next to him.

“And how are you so certain that I am she?”

“Who else
could
you be? Do I not find myself upon the grounds of Feral Park?”

Anna nodded, then smiled mischievously. “Trespassing, in fact. Did you wander into the park intentionally, sir, or was this a wholly innocent incursion?”

“Oh, terribly innocent!” he proclaimed, extending his hand to shake hers. As they shook, he said, “I confess that oftentimes in my rambles I lose track of every thing that is not upon the open pages of my book. Once I walked straight into a stew pond and found myself reading aloud to the fish.”

“That is droll. You are a droll one.”

“Yes, I do believe that I have been called the ‘droll brother,’ on occasion although it is never my chief intention to entertain others through my vocalized wit. Things tend to pop out of my mouth and then it is generally all but impossible to reclaim them so that I may varnish them with any measure of sobriety. I wager that the Miss Drone who has just made her hasty retreat from us is the very same Miss Drone who, according to our mutual friend Mrs. Taptoe, arrived in the parish only yesterday along with her companion Miss Pints.”

“Who was herself accompanied by a no-longer extant ovine gentleman— who is actually a no-longer extant, stuffed ewe-lady—by the name of Mr. Hodges.”

“I should like to meet Mr. Hodges. I am quite fond of stuffed sheep. My father painted sheep—pastoral scenes, I should amend. He kept a gallery in Bond Street in town—one of the poorer shops in the neighbourhood, made even poorer still by the fact that he was more painter himself than shopman.”

“If you will forgive me, I have also heard that he was a forger.”

“That is what his rivals in the trade would have you to believe. And quite successful they were in driving him out of business through the broadcast of that malicious calumny. But enough about my poor father. I prefer, instead, to learn more about
you
, Miss Anna Peppercorn. Do
you
paint or draw?”

“I do neither. Nor do I play the harp or the pianoforte, or sing. I am without any talent whatsoever excepting a facility for some mischief and for making unsolicited opinions which sometimes put me in the way of difficulty with others.”

“I should like to hear some of your dangerous opinions, both unsolicited and those solicited expressly by me for my own enlightenment and amusement. I do not draw or play or sing myself, by-the-bye. But I do write. I happen to write a great deal, in fact.”

“I have heard this about you.”

“And what else have you heard? I should like to know what the people of the parish are saying about their three newest neighbours.”

“They do not say much, for I believe there to be few who have met all three of you so far. Your younger brother gets about, though.”

“Colin is a leaf. He blows wherever the wind will take him and he greatly enjoys his journey upon the breeze. He is a dancer but he does not limit himself. If he were
not
a dancer I should think that he would be a pugilist. My brother is—if I may speak boldly—a man who loves his own body and what he may do with it to win and astound.”

“And the oldest: I
have
met
him.
”

“Yes. Wallace has told me of his pleasant rencontre with you and your friend Miss Dray and another by the name of Miss Henshawe, with whom he was quite taken.”

“Then you must not have heard the report correctly, for it would not have been
Miss Henshawe
with whom he was most taken.”

“And how could this be?”

“Should I say?
Must
I say?”