Feral Park

Payton Parish lay in the south of England in the county of Hampshire (or “Hants,” as it was more informally denominated). The parish offered pleasant prospects from nearly every knoll and brow of charming rusticity, of verdant rolling downs studded with munching and bleating sheep, and hills and vales stippled with chewing and lowing cattle. It was hay-making season, and the fresh stacks stood all about like little straw houses upon the mowed fields.

A large thick wood occupied the northern reach of the parish, and through it passed two or three meandrous streams of note. Together they laced the green countryside like fine brocade.

Nestled in the east was the quiet and retiring village of Smithcoat; in the west was the bustling village of Berryknell where the cottagers of Payton Parish went to market. One would also find within the parish several commanding estates of some expanse separated one from the next by improved shrubberies and leafy hedgerows: Thistlethorn and Moseley Manor and Turnington Lodge and Grantley Court and Feral Park, the last—named for its abundance of small and lop-eared wildlife—being the home of Miss Anna Peppercorn, soon to turn two-and-twenty, and her father, Henry Peppercorn, the former being about the business, as our tale begins, of daydreaming of eventual attachment to a solicitor’s clerk by the name of Aubrey Waitwaithe, her feelings for the young man being most carefully guarded and known only to her own heart, in addition to three other hearts—variously receptive—the first being that of her pet mottle-cat Miss Pittypaws (who audited most of Anna’s looking-glass confessions without commentary); the second being her father (who nodded vigourously but absorbed little of the intelligence); and the last being her oldest, dearest and most attentive friend Gemma Dray of Thistlethorn, whose own heart at times seemed to Anna, in the main, far more liberal than her own.

This is the story of Miss Anna Peppercorn’s odyssey of discovery about certain pertinent particulars pertaining to her family and to her neighbours within the parish, of whom Anna had little opinion in that first week of June in the year 1817, but about which by Midsummer Eve she was to own every sort of studied opinion, having found that which was good and worthy within some, and that which was sinful and depraved and unkempt within a good many others, such as to earn both her reprobation and her fixed curiosity. And
here
, she would say at the end of her journey, one discerns the very Janus face of human nature. She would say even more when all was done, for she was to learn things even about herself that were agreeable and disagreeable at the very same time.

Anna Peppercorn had lived all of her life in the company of her bookish father, the permanently widowed Henry Peppercorn, a man of comfortable means, she having lost her mother and he having lost his dear and devoted wife when Anna was still cradled, through a carriage calamity that not only removed the mother from a terrestrial existence but bruised one of the fetlocks of the horse known affectionately to Peppercorn as Mr. Weems. The tragedy occurred when the family chaise was stopt before the vicarage in Berryknell so that its other passenger, Mrs. Peppercorn’s unmarried sister Miss Samantha Drone, could go inside to give the hungry young vicar Mr. Nevers a parishioner’s gift of a basket of fresh eggs (for the vicar liked his eggs not only newly gathered but bestowed in a basket done up with parti-coloured ribbon and presented with a deferential bow fully from the waist). In the absence of her sister, who had taken longer than she intended to discharge her eggs when her skirts snagged on an errant nail upon the front stair, the blunder prompting the resourceful vicar to fetch his huswife and put himself most diligently but protractedly to the task of mending the minor rent, Mrs. Peppercorn had whiled away the interval singing softly to herself,

“Little Lamb, I’m out of ham,
And cannot have just tea and jam.
So I do thank you for this yank
To pinch a shank to join me dram!”

until such time as she spied a shilling gleaming in the lane a few feet ahead of the carriage horses, and whilst James the driver was closely attending a bloody cuticle upon his right hand, Mrs. Peppercorn suspended her private recital and quitted the safety of the carriage to retrieve the pretty, shimmering coin that had captured her eye. In so doing she disconcerted both the skittish Mr. Weems and his equally skittish companion Blackie-Black-Mare to such a degree that the head and shoulders of Mrs. Peppercorn were instantly stamped and stomped under heavy hoof and in a repetitive fashion, both horses, no doubt, mistaking the crouched Mrs. Peppercorn for a non-human creature bent upon doing them harm in the lane. James was unable to make proper restraint of the terrified beasts until after the brain of Mrs. Peppercorn had been rattled insentient and then had stopt functioning altogether, and her soul had, alas, withdrawn to its next address.

As a result of the tragedy before the vicarage, Henry Peppercorn was placed in the unenviable position of raising his only child alone, and although he fulfilled his duties as both father and mother with admirable effort, attempting through the years to shape within the young girl all those traits that would recommend her upon reaching womanhood, the daughter, instead, cultivated a predilection for occasional ill-humour, a suspicion of four-legged beasts of transport, a general mistrust of all those outside her greater family circle (and even some of those within it)—with the exception of the aforementioned Mr. Waitwaithe—and, finally, an unrelated aversion to greens due to their indigestibility within her delicate tract.

“‘
Mr. Waitwaithe! Mr. Waitwaithe
!’ Have you no other topic with which to engage me to-day?” enquired Anna’s impatient friend Gemma, who was not wont to inflict her unalloyed admonishments on Anna except on rare occasion, although she found much that was in need of correction to Anna’s character, and even now modified her pet with the palliative tinctures of her own good nature and generally cordial disposition.

“Perhaps his look
was not
fixed on me alone,” replied Anna, “but I wager that there was interest of
some
sort, for he continued to gaze out of the solicitor’s office window all the while that I stood fully within his view.”

“And this, in your estimation, indicates interest?”

“What else
could
it be?”

“Perhaps, Anna, he was merely observing the movement of the minute hand on the tower clock, for I myself have stood there and studied it and discerned that it
does
move before the eye if one is patient.”

“Pooh!”

“Or perhaps,” continued Anna’s guest,“our friend was simply tracing a familiar voice in the street, or absently gathering wool. Mr. Waitwaithe’s expression, as I recall my own study of it in the past, has frequently a measure of vacuity to it, which to me could indicate an absence of any purpose whatsoever behind the gaze.”

“We may differ on this point all you like, Gemma, but I warrant that I was far from invisible to him yesterday afternoon.”

Gemma displayed her displeasure with the retort by contracting her lips and allowing her head a gentle half-oscillation to the left. If one were to come suddenly upon her, that person would be easily reminded of one following a fly as it made a lazy buzzing pass before the eyes.

A brief interval of suspended discourse elapsed between the two friends, during which Gemma seemed to hum, although it was not a hum in a melodious sense but the product of a vibration of the throat akin to a tic, which came most often when Gemma surrendered herself to a ponderous thought. The droning was erelong replaced by the following words, delivered in earnestness: “I still feel, Anna, that my cousin John would be the far better match for you. I so wish that you would consent at least to meet him when he comes with his sisters next week for his twelvemonth visit.”

“But I
have
met him.”

“That interview does not count! If I recollect it accurately, you were four and he was eight. There was little to be discussed between the two of you beyond your prospects for giving up the hobbyhorse. John is well-bred and good-looking and quite amiable. I own that you would find much profit in seeing him again, this time in adult form.”

“If he is as well-bred and good-looking and amiable as you say, Gemma, why is he not already married, or at least plighted?”

“If you must know the truth of it, Anna, his faith
has
been plighted, albeit privately so—or rather, he is pledged to another without the knowledge of the parents of the intended.”

“And why has the potential attachment been kept from the affianced young woman’s father and mother?”

“Because they would never approve of it! Nor is the match promoted within our own family. The connexion is, in fact, frowned on by everyone at Thistlethorn. Even our scullery maid Louise has ventured a negative opinion on the marriage, in spite of her servile station.”

“What, pray, Gemma, is so wrong with the young woman that you should all affiliate against her?”

“She is splenetic, for one thing—disposed to choleric-humour and frequent grumbling. And in appearance, there is little to commend in her countenance and gait. She is, in fact, mannish in aspect, hard in her address, and given to clumping about in boots as would a member of the opposing sex. We feel that my cousin has become encorcelled by a woman who would best be a man. It is
my
opinion, Anna, that John should attach, instead, to one much more like yourself, with a disposition and address more appropriate to her own sex.”

“Thank you for the compliment, Gemma. And since you have been known to reprobate my vinegary disposition on occasion, I may think then that my rival is odious indeed! How, may I ask, is she set in income and station?”

“As to station, her father is none other than Lord Godby of Godby Keep. She is presently fixed with nearly four thousand pounds
per annum
inherited from her maternal grandmother, and from the father would come above twenty thousand a year more should a suitable attachment be made. As the only offspring of Lord and Lady Godby, she stands to inherit the family’s manifold estates, without a single entailment. An approved match, as you can see, would place her one day amongst the wealthiest women in all the kingdom!”

“Gracious God, Gemma! I should think that the money alone would recommend her to your cousin even should she bear resemblance to a snubnosed pug.”

“But knowing my cousin John’s good character and liberal heart, I cannot think he pursues her for this reason alone, or even for this reason at all. He, in fact, speaks of a love for this mannish woman that can hardly be described.”

“Then your efforts to turn the heart of this lovesick fool to someone other than she will only prove futile. Why, then, do you persist in this lost cause of promoting
me
?”

“Because you are so much
better
than this woman, still and all, in spite of your own tendency to querulousness. And I will not retire my supposition that he has fallen under some sort of spell, which may be lifted by meeting a more logical candidate for his heart.”

“You continue to flatter me, Gemma, and so I must protest…a little. May I ask what you have told him about me to win his interest?”

“I have spoken to him of the piquancy of your wit and the rident drollness of your general demeanour, along with your frequently articulated low opinion of others, and he finds charm to every facet of your sweet and sour character! In fact, he has responded to my sportive description of you by jesting that he could take you as you are and delight in your mischievous pronouncements upon all that you find wanting in this world, if he does not chuse instead to tame the shrew for his own amusement.”

“Tame the shrew? What an offensive declaration!” Anna’s face coloured with indignation. “And to think that you would find the nerve even to
retail
such a thing to me! To speak of me behind my back in such a derisive manner places your vaunted cousin amongst the
least
meritorious candidates for my hand. I have always thought you to be smarter than that, Gemma, but, alas, I am mistaken, and you are apparently a fool.”

For a long moment another silence commanded the room. Gemma breathed heavily through her mouth, as her nostrils were occluded. Anna’s right hand trembled in badly-managed rage, such that her teacup rattled upon its saucer, and as she took it to sip, its hot liquid contents spattered her chin and gave minor injury.

Then Gemma said, “I shall expect you and your father on Friday at six.”

And Anna answered, “We will come at six-thirty and no sooner.”

“So be it.” (Sighing now with relief that the moment of harsh engagement between friends had passed.) “Be a dear now, Anna, and pass me that last biscuit. My wooden leg is more troublesome to-day than usual.”

“But you walked all the way hither upon it, did you not?”

Gemma shook her head. “I asked our stableman Rupert if he might carry me upon his back.”

“And did he consent to such a taxing request?”

“Yes, as is his custom whenever I offer a shilling in recompense. I also allow him in transit to sniff the lavender scent of my hair.”

“You allow your stableman to sniff your fragrant tresses?”

“Only in transit. He is not permitted to go about snuffling me at his leisure.”

“But I cannot believe—”

“Anna, dearest, it is not an inconvenience. Our heads are in such close proximity as he conveys me that it is simply a matter of turning his own head easily to the side and inhaling the ready redolence with his flaring, youthful nostrils.”