Authors: Mark Dunn
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #British & Irish, #Historical, #Dramas & Plays, #Genre Fiction, #Drama & Plays, #Historical Fiction, #Irish, #Scottish
Feral Park (17 page)
“Anna, you equally stupid simpleton: one so hideous-looking as Eliza should not be
permitted
to come out. It would constitute a terrible waste of beverage and victual and hired musicians and scalloped lace; and would prove a most gruesome joke overall upon the parish. In fact, do you not recollect how useless it was for each of her equally revolting sisters to be brought out? Their balls were attended by few, if any, of the eligible men in the county. Neither of you were there, as I recall, but
I
was in attendance at Nancy’s coming out, to both my great discomfort and greater mortification, and I must say that it was the most dismal evening I have ever spent in my life: musicians playing and no one to dance, punch that met few lips, white soup so desperately strengthened with negus to raise the spirits, yet each who drank it falling into such a heavy slumber as to thoroughly drown out the music through a competing concert of snoring! I recollect from Sophia’s ball that the Master of Ceremonies was so desperate to form a set that he allowed all the women who were willing to partner with one another to do so for as long as they wished, and even the female servants were pressganged onto the dance floor, such that the evening came quickly to resemble ‘Terpsichorean Night’ at Miss Pennyworth’s Boarding School for Cross-eyed Young Ladies! I vowed that if I had any thing to do with young Eliza’s coming out, that there should
be
none. I would put a stop to such nonsense in the name of simple Christian charity.”
Response to this lengthy and bilious disparagement of the Misses Henshawe came not from Anna, but from her friend Gemma, who had lost some of her spunk and mettle, so weighed down was she by all that she had heard her aunt say: “Madam, I note that you have called me niece several times in this interview, yet I have not once heard the word used in reference to any of the Misses Henshawe. Are you so contemptuous of these three young women that you cannot bring yourself to claim them rightfully as your nieces as well? Whilst ours is a connexion by marriage only—your marriage to my uncle—
they
are the daughters of your very own brother. There is much the same blood in each of you, even as you malign and mistreat them as if they were trespassing strangers.”
“Blood be damned. I do not consider myself connected to them in any manner or fashion. It is better this way, and aids in the digestion.” “But whilst you disown your nieces in your heart, does not your son Charles pursue in hypocrisy
full claim
to their home and to the Henshawe estate in general, including all of its effects?”
“That is not so. The Misses Henshawe may have their china. It is theirs by the terms of the inheritance. The china, yes, and two books on beauty and comportment for young ladies—a waste of space upon a Henshawe library shelf, if you ask me, but it is not for
me
to take issue with the terms of the legal arrangement. Moreover, my son and I may have it both ways simply
because
we can. That is the law, and the law is most clear on this point. Now, this interview has become tiresome and I must say most unsettling at intervals, and as it is obvious to me now that your purpose this morning was not to see
me
or, Heaven forbid, to extend your mother’s apologies for a lifetime of illtreatment of myself…”
Gemma coloured in anger but did not speak.
“…but only to pay a charity call upon the Misses Henshawe and slaver over them with your disgusting pity, I shall ask you to quit my house, never to return. And should you attempt on this day to proceed against my wishes to the summerhouse to seek a tête-à-tête with any of the Henshawes, I shall be compelled to call out the hounds.”
Anna looked to Gemma. Neither was aware that there were hounds at Moseley Manor. As horrible as the visit to the manor had been for Anna and Gemma, there was something good which came from it. Upon quitting the drawing-room, the two were able to draw Bella into one corner of the hall and engage in a hasty private counsel.
“Tomorrow is Monday,” said Gemma. “Is that not one of the days you go to Berryknell to do marketing for your housekeeper?”
“Aye.”
“Then you must feign illness tomorrow, Bella, and Miss Henshawe must volunteer to go in your stead.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You understand that it is important for Anna and me to see Nancy—to speak to her without her aunt nearby.”
“Yes, ma’am. I understand perfectly what is needed. I will do exactly as you wish. The butcher’s is a good place for a rendezvous, if I may suggest it, for I have a long list of meats that must be procured there. Mr. Quarrels insists on slaughtering our animals himself, but he is a half-wit about it and merely cripples and maims them. You cannot roast a beef cow that is still ambulant and vocal, ma’am.”
Anna felt her stomach do the flipping thing that her stomach generally did when her brain contemplated depraved insensitivity to animals. Gemma seemed equally put off by the retail, but was not deterred from completing the necessary arrangements for the next day’s meeting. It impressed Anna to see her friend Gemma devising so quickly a plan to meet on the morrow with Miss Nancy Henshawe. Gemma Dray: the resourceful intrigant! Who could have thought it?
In the curricle ride that succeeded the visit, there was much talk between the two young women of the plan to engage Nancy Henshawe in a private têteà-tête at Ellis Meats and Sausages.
“What if Nancy cannot get herself away?” asked Anna, as she explored each of the possible disruptions to the plan. “Surely she will find a way. The servants will help her. Indeed, the Henshawes have always been most kind to their servants, and the contrast between the former and present masters and mistresses of Moseley Manor is quite dramatic. The allegiance prevails in many private ways for which Mrs. Henshawe and the Misses Henshawe are all most grateful.”
“And yet even with the assistance of Bella and the other servants, Nancy may still have trouble getting away.”
“Perhaps my aunt’s lady’s maid will put a charta of sleeping powder into her mistress’ late morning tea!”
Anna nodded her approval of this scheme. Then she spoke again as she removed a bug blown by the wind into her teeth: “You were to tell me something about your terrible Aunt Quarrels that you wished me to know.
Our arrival silenced you, as I recollect.”
“Yes, yes. Upon the subject of my disreputable Aunt Lydia, I wanted to relate the curious fact that she has taken down every looking glass in the house except for the one that hangs within her apartment and another within the apartment of my vain cousin.”
“And for what reason has she done this?”
“It is as equally monstrous to consider as every thing else that oozes mephitically from the woman: she feels that young women as unsightly in their looks as the Misses Henshawe would have no reason to attend themselves before a looking glass. She says that by removing the glass she extends charity to each of her nieces (whom she refuses to regard as nieces), for to gaze at their own reflections would only serve as a daily reminder of their repellent features. Is that not a horrid thing?”
“Amongst the other horrid things of which I have learnt of late, dear Gemma, it seems no worse than any thing else, but merely constitutes an additional symptom of the disease that visits the manor by the odious name of Quarrels.”
“To be sure,” said Gemma.
The women fell silent. There was much to be done, but for the moment, Anna allowed her eyelids to drop and her thoughts to wander. The creasing air stroked her cheeks and brow. In her easy peripatetic reverie she saw faces: first that of her “Auntie’s” groom Tripp as she moved to kiss it, then a second face, this one belonging to Mr. Waitwaithe as he put a spoon of custard into his mouth and registered its sapidity with a grin, and then she imagined what the face of the second oldest of the three Alford brothers Perry should look like as he recited a poem. Before her mind’s eye also passed the face of John Dray, and she imagined the woman who resided behind the pretense.
Each face materialized quickly and just as quickly vanished, until the last.
It was this final countenance which lingered until the curricle dipped one of its wheels into a hole in the road and juggled and roused her from her daydream: the face of Mrs. Taptoe’s son Maurice. Anna had just the day before been shewn a picture of the boy at fifteen, sketched only a few weeks before his departure. Although ostensibly the face of a child, there was much of the aspect and the apparent demeanour of the man he was to become present in the crayoned lines. It was this look of all those looks that had passed before her mind’s eye which now most interested her. Anna wondered how Maurice had aged in the intervening years. And she wondered how he would regard her upon his destined return. Would they become friends? She was only six years of age when he departed. She could not remember him. But surely he would remember
her
.
At least this is what she hoped. Although she could not say why.
“Oh, where is she?” asked Gemma, with a glance at her pendant watch. “We have been waiting here for ten minutes at the very least.”
“Perhaps she could not get away,” replied Anna, absently counting the links of sausage that dangled over her head. “This shop is much too fragrant. Let us step out into the street to clear our nostrils of the odor.”
The two quitted the shop under the scowl of the butcher, who was prepared to sell them a freshly baked meat pie, but now stood with the pie in hand and no customer to buy it.
As Anna closed the door behind her, she stepped directly into the path of Aubrey Waitwaithe. He stopt and executed a slight bow. “My dear Miss Peppercorn and Miss Dray—a good morning to you both.”
“Good morning,” said Anna with a deferential nod.
“I received your card. The hand is quite beautiful. Is it yours, Miss Peppercorn?”
Anna shook her head. “It belongs to Mrs. Lacey, our housekeeper, who writes all of our cards. I am pleased to learn that you will be able to dine with my father and me.”
“No more pleased than I will be to attend,” said he. “Will you be wearing the gown from the window—the one you have been inspecting through the glass for the last several days?”
“Alas, Mr. Waitwaithe, I chose not to buy it.”
“And alas for me, I must now take my leave. I have papers which Mr. Scourby asked me to deliver over an hour ago. Seeing you both was a brief but most pleasant diversion. Adieu.”
“Adieu to you,” said Anna, not thinking of any thing else to be said. And with this, the young man was gone.
“He was ever so polite and quite amiable, though concise,” commented Gemma after Mr. Waitwaithe had turned a corner. “Perhaps you were right to consider him an acceptable candidate for your hand.”
“Perhaps, perhaps. I do not know,” mused Anna, who did not betray her secret thoughts at that moment—thoughts of the kiss in the wood and the way it had made her feel, thoughts invigourated by “Possibility,” both in the general sense of future physical and romantic attachment and in the more specific sense of attachment to one of the Alford brothers, and most especially to the middle brother Perry, descriptions of which had intrigued her. Whereas the parish had erenow seemed an empty place for Anna, without even the hope of a connexion, a great many possibilities now made themselves known to her, some of which she dared not breathe to Gemma. Each put Anna in a most affable mood that was not diminished in the slightest by the non-appearance of Miss Nancy Henshawe. Her disposition had, in fact, lightened considerably and her step become quite lively. Perhaps Gemma could perceive the change that had come over her companion but she could certainly know nothing of its origin, and for her part Gemma seemed much too absorbed in the mysterious whereabouts of the delayed Miss Henshawe to give much thought to any thing else at the moment.
However, it was not long thereafter that the object of Gemma’s concern appeared in the lane, clip-clopping toward Anna and Gemma. The tall woman was possessed of a gangling carriage, and as she drew near, one noted a countenance that was all wide mouth and open grin. Nudging Anna, who need not be nudged for she could see the very same thing as her friend, Gemma, said, “I had all but given her up, but she has come through. Bella is such a dear for arranging this rendezvous and she should be rewarded. Do you think, Anna, that her features make her eligible for the ugly ball?”
“Whose features?”
“Bella’s features. Nancy’s look would never be at issue.”
“I am afraid, Gemma, that Bella is far too pretty as she naturally appears to dance a set at the ugly ball, but if she were to deliberately configure her look to hide or alter her fair features, we may certainly consider it.”
“Oh, look, Anna! See how happy Nancy is to meet us.” Nancy Henshawe
was
happy—so happy, in fact, that she had now lifted her skirts to race all the way down the hill to where Anna and Gemma stood waiting to receive her. There was such speed in her accession that Nancy not only gained the two in a trice, but exceeded the spot by several additional strides whilst attempting to rein herself to a stop. Next came some stumbling of the feet and then nearly a fall, but a proud recovery was the fortunate end to it all, this being followed by a long session of un-ladylike huffing and panting.
“Oh, Nancy!” cried Gemma, taking Miss Henshawe by the hands and kissing her upon each cheek. “It has been so very long!”
“Indeed, it has been half a decade or more, dearest Gemma!” said Nancy in the laboured breaths of one unaccustomed to racing down a street. “I was in school and then I was traveling in Europe and then Papa’s death called me home and now my sisters and mother and I find ourselves in circumstances that may only be described as a Boschian nightmare.”
Anna was distracted: “You ran as if you were on stilts, Miss Henshawe. Why are you wearing pattens when it is not raining?”
“I had heard that it
might
rain and it has always been my desire to prepare myself for any contingency. They do make me rather tall, do they not?”
“Yes,” said Anna, her head tilted back upon her neck to meet Nancy’s eyes.
Gemma let drop one of Nancy’s hands but continued to squeeze the other with affection. “So Bella has told you how Anna and I asked to see you and your sisters and mother and were most rudely refused?”
“Aye. It is clear that Aunt Quarrels sent us to the hermitage yesterday for the sole purpose of preventing our intercourse.”
“Is she as terrible to you as we have been told?”
Nancy coloured a bit and answered, “Not even knowing what you have been told, I would posit that she is far worse. It is hard for me even to speak of her and of the things which she has done to my mother and to my sisters and me that have made us so dreadfully miserable. And to Sophia most especially. It is too mortifying even to put into words upon paper. Perhaps I could do a rebus.”
“And yet we hear from our aunt that Eliza will soon be taken to town for the same purpose as her sister and that she actually
wishes
to go!”
“That is a most vile calumny! Eliza’s dread of the trip and its reason wellnigh defies description. My younger sister has cried herself to sleep each night since being told what will be expected from her in Gracechurch Street. Oh, Gemma, the arrival of the Quarrels has proved to be a most disastrous turn in our lives, and their stay with us becomes more ghastly with each day.”
Mrs. Prowley now approached with a curious look. Empty civilities were exchanged, and then she went on her way, her countenance set, no doubt, in consideration of what must be afoot amongst the three fluttering conferees in the lane. Taking her companions by the arm, Anna said, “Come. Let us walk to the shrubbery at the foot of the village. We may speak with free license there for there are no shops to draw customers who will audit us.” The women began their stroll.“Your present state, Miss Henshawe, need not be interminable. This is why Gemma and I so urgently wished to speak with you. We will be giving a ball at Feral Park. Gemma is to be the mistress of ceremonies.”
“Oh, my! A woman emcee?”
“It is no matter. It is
our
ball and we shall give it however we see fit.”
“I have never been to a ball,” said Nancy with a retiring look. “Except my own coming out debacle and Sophia’s. Our kindest critics have compared them both to Opium Night in Sleepy House.”
“Well, you and your sisters
must
come to
this
ball for it is to be given in your honour, and will be anything but drowsy.”
“But Miss Peppercorn, I do not understand.”
“Its purpose is simple. It is to find each of you husbands.”
Nancy thought upon this statement for a moment and then said in a small voice, “Perhaps Sophia and Eliza may some day secure husbands for themselves, and hopefully not from amongst the men who will come to gawk at them at the M.P., but I am a lost cause. My aunt no longer allows looking glasses to be hung at Moseley Manor, so I do not even know how much more hideous I have recently become.”
“But you are
not
hideous!” protested Gemma, her eyes wet with tears. “Am
I
hideous because of my fabricated portions? I should think not! I am exotic. You too are exotic. We are two women from a place in which beauty is differently apprehended. In
our
kingdom Anna would be a snouty sow with tusks.”
“I would?”
“Odiferous as well. She would not be considered anything which approaches beautiful, that much is for certain—not in the kingdom of Gemma and Nancy.”
Nancy delighted in this imagining and clapped her hands together. “And she should also have two toes on each foot!”
“Yes, yes, and dewclaws like a dog.”
“And she should have a constellation of whelks all about the face— purulent ones that most offend!”
“And a shot hip that makes her walk like a crab. And warts with hairs, and webbed fingers, and each of her hands should be clubhands, so gnarled as to be of no use but to wipe the rheum-crust from her permanently weepy eyes!”
Both of Anna’s companions thought this a very amusing picture indeed, and laughed until they had to suspend their stroll, Gemma bending forward and holding her stomach, and Nancy throwing her head back and guffawing with her broad mouth.
Anna, watching them in a pique, could not believe that humour was being taken at her very own expense (as she was the prettiest of the three, without question), and so she frowned—an act which only contributed to the disagreeableness of her countenance. “You are deriving far too much pleasure—the both of you—from fancying me as some pig-dog witch.”
“With duck fingers!” subjoined Nancy whilst continuing to laugh immoderately.
“I command you to stop it this instant!”
“We are trying so very hard,” laughed Gemma, “but the picture is such a funny one, and when you stamp your foot like that you become even more like an angry pig in the mud.”
Anna could listen to no more of the description of herself as pig or dog or witch, or the three creatures all put together with webbed duck fingers. She seized Gemma’s ear—the detachable one—and ripped it from her head.
“It is
you
who is the sow!” she barked. “And I will go now and try to make a silk purse from this, but I will not succeed, as they say.”
“You are being ridiculous,” said Gemma, reclaiming her ear. “It has been a long time, I suspect, since Nancy has laughed so. Do you begrudge her this rare opportunity for frivolity in an otherwise bleak and despondent life?”
“But must
I
be the object of her moment of mirth?” cried Anna, frowning with petulance.
“It will do you no lasting harm,” grumbled Gemma. “Having been blessed with pretty features all of your life, and retaining all of the bodily parts with which you were born, you will never know the pain of being thought different and odd unless someone is to imagine you as a pig or a dog. How badly you take things, Anna, because you are spoilt. That is exactly what you are.”
“I am
not
spoilt. I am soft-skinned only. Granted, I have not been tested as have the two of you. Tested and tempered. But it is no fault of my own. I will attempt to understand what it must be like to live a desolate life. I am attempting it even as we stand here. Yes, I imagine it should be most difficult. Do forgive me in the mean time for pulling off your ear, Gemma. No harm was meant by the impulse.”
“I did not construe any thing from it, Anna, save the manifestation of a delicate sensibility. And yet, were it not for that delicate sensibility you would not be Anna Peppercorn and I should not be your friend, for I have become used to every thing there is to you—even the things that I do not always like.”
Said Anna, softening to an even greater degree, “Gemma, you are a dear friend.”
Said Nancy, “I should wish some day to have a friendship such as the one the two of you enjoy together. It is lonely in Moseley Manor with only my mother and my two sisters for constant company, and our society is a most unhappy one. Each room we occupy becomes the gloomy room. I go into a different room and even if it had earlier been a happy room, it becomes with my presence the gloomy room. Once I stepped into one of the offices of the manor and found two of the servants kissing covertly beneath the table. In that brief moment before I was detected I noted such joy upon their youthful faces—such smiles of unadulterated delight. I longed at that revelatory moment for all that life has denied me.”
“But you shall
have
those things which you thought were lost to you!” proclaimed Anna.“You shall have the eternal friendship of Gemma and myself, and the ball shall give you many friends, and if the plan is efficacious in its primary purpose, it should provide you with a husband, as well.”
“A husband? But it is an impossibility!” Nancy’s brow corrugated itself, then released.
“In matters of the heart,” Anna countered, “all things are possible. You see, Miss Henshawe: we are inviting from amongst the men in the parish only the most reasonable prospects for you and your sisters.”
“But the men of Payton Parish will not care three straws for me
or
my sisters.”
“Ah, but you are wrong on that account, Nancy. There are a
good many men
who would be happy and indeed grateful to have any one of you for his bride.”