Feral Park (24 page)

“If you doubt the truth of what I’m telling you, miss, I ask only that you speak with your aunt, who will educate you about what your father an’t.”

“I know that my mother was slow. He has told me
that
much. But he would never say that she possessed the mind of a six-year-old child. Nor would my Aunt Samantha.”

“Now that I think upon it, miss, a
five
-year-old child would be the better example.”

“Gracious God in Heaven! My head is unscrewing itself and about to fly off in a whirl from your outrageous statements about my mother. And what brazen impudence, what insubordinate cheek! I must lie down upon your bed to compose myself.
Your
bed for only one night longer, might I add, for as of daybreak to-morrow your tenure of service with Feral Park is ended!”

Miss Leeds helped Anna into bed and covered her up. “May I wet a cold cloth to place upon your forehead, miss?”

“No. I will lie here very still and the room will settle itself round me.”

“Shall I quit the room and go elsewhere whilst you take your rest?”

“No,” said Anna in a softer tone. “You may sit here. Play your patience. I will rest my eyes and attempt to remove from my thoughts the picture of my mother at a grown age stacking baby blocks.”

Miss Leeds repaired to her game of cards. For a long time the room was quiet except for the sound of playing cards being flipped and dealt and then a “drat” and then the sound of shuffling. At long last Anna said, without preamble, “Miss Leeds, why ever did my father marry my mother if he knew her to be imbecilic?”

“I believe that he took pity upon her when he paid himself a visit to the Stornaway Asylum. She was an inmate there and terribly mistreated, as were all the imbeciles and half-wits and lunatics what resided there. He tried to have her discharged as his ward, but came upon difficulty from Sir Thomas, who served at the head of the board of governors. It was only when your father agreed to marry her that the board voted to let her go. Even still, Sir Thomas opposed her going, although he be outvoted.”

“If this is true, then—if my mother did, as you say, have imbecilic amentia—then she and my father should not have had children. They should simply
not have had children
!”

Turning in her chair to face the bed and to face the worried face of her mistress, Miss Leeds responded, “And they
did not
, miss. They
did not
!”

Anna sat up. “What are you saying, Flora? Are you saying that my mother is
not
my mother?”

Miss Leeds nodded.

Anna did not know how to respond. She did not know even what to
think
. It was a long moment before she decided that she should go to her Aunt Samantha’s room and appeal for every fact about her birth that had hitherto been kept from her. Perhaps her father had only been protecting her from the severity of the truth, but it was time for her to know. She was ready to do this at that very moment when there came a tap upon the door. Anna, thrown into a panic, threw the covers over her head. “I am not here!” she said with a muffled voice from beneath the sheets.

Miss Leeds leant toward the door and solicited the identity of the owner of the knock.

“It is Miss Drone. May I come in, Miss Leeds?”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am. I am indisposed. I am…sitting upon my pot.”

“Then I will not intrude on you. But may I ask a question?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Have you any knowledge of your mistress’ whereabouts? I have been to her room to take her a cup of chocolate as I did when she was a girl, and I find that she is not there. I could not locate her
anywhere
within the house. Before I disturbed Mr. Peppercorn, I thought that I should ask
you
.”

“I left Miss Peppercorn over an hour ago in her room, ma’am. I don’t know why she an’t there still.”

“Then I shall have to go to her father. It is frightening that one should disappear so late at night and without a trace!”

Now Anna, having heard all of the conversation on both sides of the door, tossed back the covers and called, “Aunt Samantha! I am within, and Miss Leeds is not on the pot. Please enter.”

In walked Miss Drone, carrying her candle and wearing an expression of great relief.

She closed the door behind her and said, “I have been so very worried. Do you do this often, my dear niece—come up to your maid’s room and lie in her bed whilst she plays patience with the cards?”

“I do not,” said Anna without levity. She pulled herself out fully from beneath the covers and moved to the foot of the bed. “Here, Aunt. Sit next to me. There are things which I wish to know and here is just as good a place as any for me to hear them.”

“’Tis even better than most, miss,” offered Miss Leeds. “For the walls seem thicker upon this floor, and we have no keyholes for one to peep through for there are no locks upon these doors.”

“Still, it is odd that you are here, Anna,” said Aunt Drone.

“I came to ask a question…” (cutting her eyes to her maid,) “…which has yet to be answered. Instead I have received the answer to a far more important query—one I would never have even thought to ask.”

“And what is that query, dear?”

“First, was my mother an imbecile?”

“Do you mean, did my sister possess the mind of a four-year-old child?”

“
Four
?”

“Or five. No, four is more likely. Yes, dear. I have always faulted your father for not telling you the full truth about your mother.”

“I can scarcely believe it.”

“But there you have it—this sad truth about my beloved sister. And an irony there is to it, as well. For I was the one between the two of us who had intelligence and wit and charm, and it was she—the imbecile—who secured a husband.”

“But here is the second thing that I must know, Aunt Samantha: was your sister my mother by both law and blood or only by law?”

Aunt Samantha glanced at Miss Leeds. There was a glimmer of a scowl upon the older woman’s brow. “So this is what your garrulous maid has told you?”

Anna nodded.

Anna’s aunt drummed her fingers upon her chin. Her reply came quickly as if there was need to have done quickly with the admission: “Only by law, my child, for your legal mother could not bear children. Her womb was purposefully incapacitated at a very young age to prevent her whelping litters of morons. Please do not think my description uncharitable. It is as necessary to say it as it was to do it, and she suffered little from the procedure. In fact, there were very few who knew that she could
not
have children. And that was the way we all preferred it—your father and I and the doctor, and especially your true blood mother, the one who actually bore you.”

“I feel I must lie down again.”

“Lie down if you must, dear. But there is much that you should know. And your being here has brought me to tell it merely one day early, for I was set to take you on a walk to-morrow and convey every thing. This was my primary purpose in seeing you on this trip, for I had decided when it became clear to me on my last visit that your father had no intention of ever revealing to you the important facts about your birth mother, that I should be the one to do it. And so I shall.”

“So who is she?” asked Anna with an arm fully covering her eyes, as if the darkness would calm her. The question came with great difficulty, the air within her lungs having been evacuated and not being replaced by a full and fresh supply.

“Breathe, my dear. Miss Leeds, pull your mistress’ arm down from her brow and make her breathe.”

“Breathe, miss. In. Out. It is a simple thing and keeps us alive.”

“I am breathing.
Huh-huh
. Oh, Aunt Samantha, I am so frightened.
Huh
. I am somewhat happy
huh
to learn in the midst of all my anxiousness that my mother did not pass along to me the tendency toward imbecility
huh
so that I should not worry to have children of my own. But the mystery of her identity is driving me to near apoplexy.
Huh.
Please tell me now. I must know.”

“Even though you should be a love-child bastard.”

“It does not matter. Nothing matters to me now other than the identity of my mother. And, of course, the identity of my true father, but I assume it is my present father—that it is Mr. Peppercorn, am I correct?”

“You are correct, my dear.”

“I could not see how it would
not
be him. I have his eyes and the turn of his nose and the loft of his forehead.”

“This is true. Your mother, dear girl, is Mrs. Dray. Mrs.
Oliver
Dray— mother of Misses Gemma and May. They are your half-sisters.”

“I am half-sister to Gemma and May Dray?”

A quiet nod from her aunt.

“Then I should also be—oh, Good God—I am therefore cousin to the odious Charles Quarrels, for Charles’ father was my true mother’s brother.”

“Yes, that calculation is an accurate one.”

“And that makes his dreadful mother my aunt.”

“It does, my love.”

“And does Gemma know that we are half-sisters?”

“I do not know, dear girl.”

“But she must. She must surely have learnt it when she had her head poked within my father’s secret library cabinet.”

“Perhaps, then, she knows.”

“And perhaps this is the thing that my father and Mrs. Dray—oh, Good Lord, I am to call her
Mamma
now!—this must be that piece of intelligence which Gemma would not tell me, which the wretched wife of my uncle Charles Quarrels must know and must be happily willing to use to protect herself. And she would indeed. I can see it clearly.”

“Then you know the importance, my dear, of keeping what you have learnt here from the knowledge of others.”

“But I should like to say ‘Hello, Mamma,’ at the earliest possible moment to my true birth mother.”

“You may say it on the morrow, my darling girl. Simply do not mention it to anyone who does not already know, for your illegitimacy would constitute a terrible mark against both the Peppercorns and the Drays, and the Drays, as it is my understanding, are blemished enough already.”

“May I ask, Aunt Samantha, how the secret has been so successfully contained by only a very few within our family?”

“You certainly may. It happened this way, dear girl: your mother—your
true
mother discovered that she was carrying your father’s child—”

“And how did she know that it was
my
father and not her own husband who sired it?”

“It was quite easy to make that determination. For Mr. Dray was away in London for several weeks for the purpose of dissolving his troubled business venture. I assume that you have been told about the company which one day was and then the next day was not.”

“I know only that my father gave Mr. Dray—my
stepfather
, I suppose I should now call him—a substantial amount of money to redeem its obligations when the company could not succeed.”

“So you know nothing more about that business?”

“I assumed only that my stepfather was not a very good businessman, for no one wanted what he had to sell.”

“Oh, my dear, dear girl, there is far more to it than
that
. But we have too much else to discuss about your life to go off on an excursion about friction matches. Now here is what happened whilst Mr. Dray was away: your father and your
true
mother—Mrs. Julia Dray—fell desperately and passionately in love with one another for about three weeks, and during that period you were conceived.”

“And yet my mother—I mean the one everyone believes to be my mother—”

“Have patience, my dear. Like the game of cards, steadily and orderly will I reveal each card and place them in the proper configuration upon the table. Now, once it had become clear that Mrs. Dray was enceinte, it became paramount for Mrs. Peppercorn to appear to be enceinte as well, for the reason which if you have not yet guessed it already, I will soon tell you. And so she was—or rather, so she was made to
appear
to be.”

“And my legal mother, your sister—she readily approved the scheme?” “Oh, my dear, we made a game of it with her, did we not, Miss Leeds?”

“Yes, ma’am, and Mrs. Peppercorn played it right well. I sewed the pillows, each one larger than the one before, to tuck over time beneath them clothes. By and by she came to believe it herself, didn’t she, ma’am?”

“Indeed she did, Miss Leeds. For what did my sister know of pregnancy? It had never been explained to her. We made certain that she spent as much time with your true mother as she could. The two became inseparable—two equally expectant mothers strolling upon the lane arm in arm, each large with child, this most gay and colourful pair defiantly refusing confinement, and yes it was scandalous, but it suited our very specific purpose of establishing that each was with child at the very same time.”

Asked Anna with gravity, “But were there not those who asked where a moronic woman received the right to give birth to a potentially moronic child?”

“There were whisperings of that sort, to be sure, dear girl. But once the child was ‘born’ and it was
you
who turned up within the nursery at Feral Park—for your swaddled self was quickly passed from ‘true’ mother to ‘pretend’ mother under the dark shroud of night—there were things that told the observer that you would grow up to be a bright girl and an intelligent and beautiful young woman, even though your mother could not dress herself without putting the pelisse on backward and once applied her soup with a fork.”