Feral Park (12 page)

Mr. Nevers, the vicar of Payton Parish, agreed to see Anna on Friday morning. She arrived promptly and was admitted with all civility into his library, where he had, prior to her entry, been reading
The Vicar of Wakefield
, his dull expression indicating that he found little within the book to resemble in irony his own office, nor did his composed expression demonstrate that he perceived irony in the simple fact that he was a vicar reading about a vicar within a vicarage. Anna may have found humour there herself had she not been running along within her mind all that she wished to say to Mr. Nevers in her effort to enlist him in that part of John Dray and Felicity Godby’s marital plan which betrayed least its more dangerous aspects. In disobedience of Dray’s instructions, she chose
not
to open the meeting with the presentation of the first payment. “I simply cannot throw money upon a desk without prelude,” thought she. “It would seem untoward. I will proceed my own way.”

“Please sit down, my dear. How is your good father? May I ring for tea?”

“I should like some tea, thank you. Papa is well. I have just left him tending his cutting garden. I am sorry; I should have brought flowers.”

“I will come by and pick a bouquet for myself. It has been a long while since I have reciprocated his diligent attendance to services with a visit of my own to Feral Park. Your father is so healthy for his age that I cannot remember having ever made a call upon his sick bed.”

“Indeed you have not, but I wager that he would welcome a visit from you for any reason,” said Anna with more formality to her address than would be her wish. “I should try to relax the arms,” she said to herself. “The arms are stiff and will certainly take his mind from the purpose of my visit.”

After calling for tea, Mr. Nevers asked, “Why are your arms so stiff? You resemble a scarecrow in half repose.”

Thought Anna, “What an unpardonably rude thing to say to a guest and a dutiful parishioner! Why does not our vicar ever behave as would a normal man, with politeness and comity, and not go about calling his female visitors scarecrows? Next he will ask why I cannot keep my left leg quiet.”

“Miss Peppercorn, is there something the matter as well with your leg? The left one.”

“There is nothing the matter with any part of me, Mr. Nevers.”

“I note a sharpness to your tone. You seem wrought up. How may I help you find relief from that which troubles you to such an extent that you must stiffen your arms in a rigid and strangely comical manner and wriggle the left leg as if there be a worm within the sandal?”

Thought Anna at that moment, “I should turn my apparent discomfort to my advantage.”

“Mr. Nevers,” said she, “I commend your perspicacity, for I
am
troubled. I should like to tell you every thing about it if you so chuse to hear it and especially if you may be able to offer me succour and counsel.”

“I offer subvention as my wont, and clearly as my office requires. Tell me every thing you wish to tell me and I shall listen and do my best to be of assistance.”

“Do you know of John Dray of Cowpens Acres in Somerset?”

“I do indeed. He is the cousin of our Drays here in Payton Parish. The Thistlethorn Drays do not attend services as often as I would wish, but I am familiar with both families and with their histories and with most of their misfortunes and intrigues, even the ones which have been largely kept from public bruit.”

“Then you must know that Mr. Dray has asked for the hand of the daughter of Lord and Lady Godby.”

With a sober nod: “I have also been told that the matter is to be kept in strict confidence lest the parents learn of the engagement and Lord Godby take punitive measures against Mr. Dray for his efforts to make an attachment so lopsided as to constitute an egregious affront and a permanent embarrassment to the Godby name.”

“And how would you feel about
continuing
to keep the engagement a secret from Lord and Lady Godby until such time as you have pronounced Mr. Dray and Miss Godby man and wife?”

“I?”

“Yes, you.”

The vicar did not answer right away. Anna drew the money and the promissory letter from her reticule and placed it all upon the surface of the desk. Mr. Nevers’ eyes grew large, and larger still after he had perused the letter.

“They love each other, these two?”

“Very much so,” Anna now answered.

“She wishes to attach even knowing that the match would be a precipitous descent for her?”

“She does indeed.”

“Curious what love will compel one to do—the sacrifices one must make. She could very well be disowned, you know.”

“She has her own fortune from her grandmother, which cannot be touched.”

“So there is some mitigation to the circumstances…”

“Aye. Some.”

The vicar ruminated upon what he was being asked to do, and, no doubt, upon the risk it carried to him in particular. As he turned the letter over and over in his hands, he said, “Setting the young woman’s fortune aside, she would still be giving up a great deal in detaching herself from the support and offices and appurtenances of her family—one of the wealthiest in the kingdom. Because Mr. Dray, as I understand it, has little to offer his betrothed other than his humble affection. There is a respectable income on her side, to be sure, but it is meager when placed next to the interest that would be passed along by the father to his son-in-law in a more suitable and approved match: a house in town, a separate place for shooting, a cottage in the lakes, all of the trappings and extravagant delectations that derive from the Godby family and the Godby name, participation in every advantage of high rank and station, both in society and in government. A marriage between John Dray and Miss Felicity Godby absent the requisite parental endorsement and approbation would offer none of these things.”

“Yet there would still be
some
financial comfort, and sufficient income to provide for generous tithes of gratitude to the succouring clergy.”

Mr. Nevers nodded and smiled. But the vicar’s pleasant countenance did not endure: “There is also the matter, Miss Peppercorn, of the previous Dray family scandal. Do you know of it?”

With a nod: “Only recently was I made aware of all of its particulars.”

“And such odious particulars! The adultery! The incest! Two brothers, each partaking in Biblically-proscribed carnality with the other brother’s wife, and then the ensuing punishment dealt by the hand of our avenging Heavenly Father to nearly all who participated in the familial debauchery. Though the blotch of ill repute upon the Dray escutcheon has been nearly polished away by the sacrifice of the lives of three of the four malefactors, memory prevents its relegation to total oblivion. And if Lord and Lady Godby do not know now how Mr. Dray’s mother and father came to their sad end, they will come to learn it in short order, and there will then be yet one more—in this case
significant—
addition to the long list of impediments to the connexion.”

“But Mr. Nevers, I ask you: is it entirely fair that a son should be punished for the sins of the father—and in this case, mother?”

“In the eyes of the Almighty, certainly not, but Lord Godby, whilst not ‘all-mighty,’ is, nonetheless, ‘exceedingly mighty,’ and ‘exceedingly mighty,’ my child, is potent to a point!”

Anna did not rejoin. She thought, “He is looking for a reason to refuse my request, even as he pockets the money I have brought. He is an infuriatingly unctuous man, and I must sit here and endure his pothering and dithering until I should scream.”

Mr. Nevers stopt speaking and delivered himself into a period of serious and thoughtful reflection—Anna had no doubt—over whether performing a marriage ceremony for a woman out of bounds with her puissant father would redound badly against
him
and threaten his comfortable living within the parish, should some form of retaliation against the facilitator be sought. With the arrival of the tea things, the vicar received a most welcome reprieve from his wondering and worry.

“Ah! Tea. Is there any scent more pleasing to the nose than that of freshly brewed tea?”

“Perhaps coffee,” said Anna with a dull tone and some impatience.

“I am deciding which of these sweets will go best with the Indian blend, which I am certain will delight you as much as it delights me. Try it. Be careful. It is quite hot. Wait a moment.”

Anna sat and stared at the temporarily unimbibitional tea and then at the temporarily inscrutable vicar, having lost all the momentum that had been her partner in seeking the resolution so adamantly desired.

Finally, with an even voice and a deliberately inspid look, she said, “I am most eager to try the Indian blend. I feel, Mr. Nevers, that I have placed myself in the centre of Bengal and you are wearing a turban and we must soon dance with colourful veils. A frisson of anticipation runs through me, and I wonder if I shall ever be the same again. ”

“You are more droll than usual, my child. How your father abides you, I do not know! There. Try the cake with the plum slice atop. I find it is tastier than the others. Plums bring an extra something to a cake. So, where were we? Oh, my! Forgive the distraction, but one of the hands, who labours in the glebe, is walking into Berryknell to take his luncheon at the Three Horse. He does this every day at very nearly this same time. He is a most punctual lad. Observe his gait, how solid and sure-footed. He is a sturdy and charming fellow and wellcountenanced.
Extremely
well-countenanced. If you will but move your head slightly to the—yes, thank you. Note the firmness to his sthenic frame. Forgive me this digression. I am, I must confess, additionally distracted by thought of those who come on the morrow to Turnington Lodge—to take the larger cottage there.”

“Will you be keeping this intelligence to yourself, Mr. Nevers, or shall I know as well?”

“Of course you may, but patience, dear child.” (With another studied look out of the window,) “He looks especially hungry to-day—the young man. He could take something with his hands and gnaw upon it like a feral beast—this is what the hungry look tells me. You would watch such a scene with equal interest, would you not, my child?”

“A man gnawing at his food? No, Mr. Nevers, I should think not. Who arrives on the morrow?”

“Three young men by the name of Alford.”

“Three?”

“Yes, each in youthful manly bloom, and each unmarried.”

“To take the cottage near to Mrs. Taptoe’s?”

“This is what I have said. Look, my child. There is indeed a curiosity worth noting: the young farmhand unbuttons his shirt to cool his chest in the midday sun. It is not altogether necessary, for it is a mild and even blustery day, and yet—oh, rot! Look how the lubricious Mr. Groves ogles him from his own front walk. And look how the young man returns the milliner’s odious attention, as if he had no sense whatsoever! Now Groves preens and struts, no doubt, to secure the attention of the well-set young man! Oh, depend on it, I have never seen such a revolting display in all my days! I will shut the window to be done with the sight of such ridiculous doating and posturing from one who should know better!”

Anna thought Mr. Nevers a queer man, but it was not the unorthodox character of his secular interests and predilections that nettled her at this moment. Her present vexation had only to do with the fact that she had come to him with the single-hearted purpose of advocating for the marriage of John Dray and Felicity Godby, but that topic was now put upon a shelf, to be taken down
only
by Mr. Nevers and
only
when he chose to do so, for she could not push the issue herself.

“Still,” thought Anna, “it does not hurt in this long conversational interregnum to learn a little more about the Alford brothers, who are, at present, a true mystery to me.”

Returning from the shuttered window, Mr. Nevers said, “The three young men hail from London, having sold the house their father owned there to seek a more sedate life in a more sedate Arcadian setting. The father has closed his business—he owned an art gallery in Bond Street—and recently moved to Ramsgate with his second wife—stepmother to the three young men. I am told that he is in poor health and that the doctor has recommended the sea air, but there are those who say that he was put out of business for selling forgeries within his shop.”

“What know you of the three sons?”

“The oldest, Wallace, has been with the regulars, but has sold his commission and no longer soldiers. He desires now to work on the Turnington farm in some simple capacity. He is good with horses. He seeks a restoration of nerves and spirit after several years of war and blasting guns.”

“What of the middle son?”

“His name is Perry and he is a writer.”

“What does he write?”

“I have not been told. Poetry more than likely, for he is the starry-eyed sort. The youngest of the three, whose name is Colin, is a caper merchant.”

“Caper merchant?”

“Instructor of dance. I do not see how he can pursue such a profession here in this sparsely populated parish, but young Colin has nonetheless expressed an interest in setting up a small school in Berryknell—very near to here, in fact—in what was once the old butcher shop.”

“And how have you come to learn so much about the young men?”