Feral Park (29 page)

“I cannot believe this to be so, Mamma, for then England should not be a country in which I should care to live. Mr. D’Israeli, whom I had the pleasure of meeting the day he came to hear me play, and who said very nice things about my playing, does not believe that his family should be for ever consigned to a lower status simply because they are Jews. He hopes, for example, that his son Dizzy will grow up to one day be a politician. Perhaps even Prime Minister!”

Mrs. Dray seemed ready to say something very much like, “You live in a fairy garden, my dear girl,” when there was a loud howl and crash from another room, and because Anna could not get up to see what the matter was, she sent May. Whilst May was off investigating the genesis of the noise and whether there be any damage attached to it, Mrs. Dray apologised to her daughter Anna by saying, “I must sound obdurate, but it is only for the girl’s own good. I would say the very same to
you
, Anna, should you wish to embark upon such an ill-conceived attachment.”

May entered the room with her report: “Anna, your butler, Mr. Maxwell, stumbled over Miss Pittypaws whom he did not see curled upon the floor, and dropt a tray of silver he was taking to the pantry to polish. No one was hurt, not even the cat, but it will all require some tidying up.”

“Dear me,” said Anna.“Mr. Maxwell, you see, is losing his sight. I am afraid that my father will be obliged by the circumstances to ask for his resignation very soon, but I know not what he will then do with himself.”

Said Gemma, “The answer is simple: he shall have to live in the Super House.” In saying this, Gemma was referring to the small cottage kept in Feral Park where servants were sent who could no longer be employed by Mr. Peppercorn. “Super House” was a contraction of “House for Superannuated Employees Once in the Service of Feral Park.” It was not necessarily a bad place to be, and, in fact, its existence was unique in the parish, most servants simply being sent away with only a few severance shillings. But it was a sleepy and quiet address, and a bit dull.

“Well, enough of Mr. Shyman for now,” said Anna, continuing to maintain the hope of moving on to other topics of greater interest to herself, the chief amongst them
being
herself. She had finished her green drink and made a note to commend Mrs. Dorchester for bringing it to her, for it calmed her most successfully. She was actually
quite
calm now and quite relaxed in that way in which wine makes one relaxed (except upon those occasions in which it gives one the fidgets), yet somehow Anna was also able to concentrate on things in a way that is
not
possible when one imbibes the juice of the grape. Whatever was in the green drink, she applauded its salutary effect upon her…and wished for more at some later time. Anna addressed her mother: “As you may, no doubt, imagine, Mamma, there is another thing or two which I should like to know about our connexion. Would you be agreeable to answering a question or two or three to satisfy my burning curiosity?”

“I would be most agreeable, my darling daughter, but only if we may have tea to assist in the quenching of that fire of your inquisition. We have been here ten minutes already and you have not even offered us a sip. I am certain that your father has brought you up to think better of your guests than this.”

Now Gemma took her turn to speak. She had not contributed much to the conference so far but now seemed ready to have a say. “My sister Anna will sometimes wait, as is her wont, to offer tea. It is not that she is thoughtless. It is simply that she has much on her mind. I suppose that she is in a similar state at this very moment.”

“To be sure I am, Gemma,” said Anna, most agreeably.

Now addressing Anna: “You have, for one thing, to plan a ball, and I know that I have not been much help since I have spent several days attending to my Somerset cousins. But they are gone now and I will be of better service to you. By-the-bye, I must tell you, Anna, that I have seen Lieutenant Alford again. Just this very morning, in fact.”

“As I have seen an Alford myself: the lieutenant’s younger brother Perry— not two hours ago. It was he who first attended me when I turned my foot upon a stump.”

“And what coincidence!” May remarked with astonishment. “I have just this morning said hullo to the
youngest
, who was practising his dance figures in the downs.”

“My goodness!” marveled Mrs. Dray. “All three brothers out and about. They seem each to have laid an instant claim upon their new neighbourhood!”

“And may I ask, Anna,” Gemma began, “if Mr. Alford was chivalrous in his treatment of you?”

“Chivalrous in his way,” replied Anna,“and really
quite
attentive. He would not quit me until James had arrived to carry me inside. I think that he is most interested in me.”

“And yet in my interview with his older brother this morning, the lieutenant seemed to think that Mr. Perry Alford would be most desirous of meeting
me
. He said that our common pursuits should readily connect us.”

“Of what common pursuits do you refer, Gemma? He writes and he reads. You do neither.”

“I
read
! I read voraciously. I am never without a book in my own hand at Thistlethorn. Ask Mamma.”

“She carries books about to be sure,” said the mother. “Although I do not recall that she ever opens them and reads them. Generally they are employed to be stepped upon with the wooden leg to raise it to the height of the natural one so as to give her balance when standing.”

“I read them as well!” remonstrated Gemma. “Moreover, this reminds me that you had promised me months ago that you would get me a better leg. My present one has been nothing but trouble!” Turning to Anna: “But that is off the present subject. As I have yet to meet Mr. Alford, I can only guess at how he will receive me, but the odds are good that he will call me a bluestocking—with a wink, of course (for his brother has told me that he likes to wink at girls who draw his fancy)—and we should spend an afternoon very soon discussing our favourite books in the open air. Naturally, I shall have to meet him first, but after that, it should all be pleasure and attachment.”

“Fudge!” responded Anna.

“Not in the least!” countered Gemma. “Did
you
discuss books with Mr. Alford? I think not.”

“But he
did
say that he would write a poem for me.”

“Merely a poem? I wager that when he meets
me
he will be inclined to write an epic.”

“Yes, it should be a retelling of the
Odyssey
and you shall be the one-eyed Cyclops.”

“Anna, you are odious!”

“Girls!” Mrs. Dray stretched out her arms between the two to halt the hard speech. “I cannot believe that two sisters, seeing one another as if for the first time, would behave so abominably. Is this how the two of you pass the hours of your own society? By sniping and popping at one another thusly? I am ashamed of the both of you!”

Both Anna and Gemma coloured. Their features quickly softened with contrition. Anna was first to say, “I am sorry,” but Gemma affixed herself to the stronger sentiment “I am
more
sorry.”

Gemma then cleared her throat and with courtesy and politeness put the conversation back upon an agreeable footing: “Whether Mr. Alford will ultimately prefer
you
or
me
, Anna, it is now a fact that his older brother, the former lieutenant, seems taken with neither of us, for he is putting himself instead and most astonishingly upon the road to winning the heart of Miss Henshawe. He said so this very morning and without equivocation; he owns feelings for Miss Henshawe and Miss Henshawe alone.”

“I still cannot believe it,” said Anna.

“Nor I. But one can never truly understand the heart of the male animal, nor what it is that gets it to beat faster. If one could explain such a thing, then we would know why there are monkey parlours in London or why my cousin John wishes to wed the liverish Miss Godby, who arrives to-morrow night.”

“You were most kind in helping to arrange things for the girl,” said Mrs. Dray to Anna. “Now that we have decided no longer to oppose the match and John has introduced us to his scheme, I am proud to learn that he and she will be married here. I cannot see how that squirrel of a vicar, who serves us all, would put himself in jeopardy by agreeing to tie their knot, but it is a good thing that it is being done, if only to produce that look of terror upon the face of Lord Godby when he realises that his daughter has married a
Dray
! Oh, dear me, I shall be entertained to a jolly burst by such a sight.”

Mrs. Dray began to laugh and continued to do so as the tea things were brought in.

May explained to her half-sister the reason for her mother’s mirth: “Lord Godby is an odious, odious man. When the company into which my father had put so much of our family’s money was dissolved, an earnest appeal was made to Parliament to cancel the large government order that had been contracted, but Lord Godby petitioned the House of Lords against it. Had your father decided not to assist my father by reimbursing the government its first payment in full and negotiating a settlement that would address the expenses incurred in placing the order that now would never be filled, Papa would have had to declare bankruptcy and we would have been ruined. Is this not true, Gemma?”

“Most assuredly. Of course, now Anna knows how it came to be that we did
not
lose Thistlethorn and were not forced by drastically diminished circumstances to have to go and live with the gipsies.”

“Your father,” said Mrs. Dray to Anna, “was the angel who flapped his Heavenly wings and saved this family, and for his heroic kindness we will be for ever indebted. In fact, one might say that it was his generous heart which brought
you
into this world.”

“And why would one say that, Mamma?”

Mrs. Dray smiled warmly to hear her daughter call her “Mamma.” She touched Anna’s cheek, tears forming in her eyes. “Because his rescue of the Drays filled me with such a surfeit of joy and gratitude that I was compelled to kiss and caress him with such abandon that we were erelong cavorting beneath the sheets and melding ourselves most intimately. And this is how you came to be conceived, my dear. There was only one coupling and that was it, but perhaps our chances for conception were improved by the fact that he had gone for so long without having congress, for you are aware, are you not, that he could not bed his own wife for she was delicate and somewhat like a child and would have been most mortified should he have attempted to mount her. So he was most certainly ready to pop—all of those life-creating juices sloshing inside him and nowhere to deposit them!”

And now, of course, Mrs. Dray had said too much and caused Anna to blush to a very rubicund hue indeed. Even her sisters coloured to hear what their mother had just disclosed. And when Betsey entered the room to bring cake, she was given to ask if the tea was too hot because everyone appeared terribly flushed.

“No, all is fine,” said Anna, who once again deemed that her life was replete with the society of those who could not keep such unbridled talk to themselves.

“I apologise, my dear, if I have been too forthright. I am much too filled with the bliss of this moment to censor myself. So allow me to
censure
myself instead for my frankness. Oh, let me look at you. I may look at you freely now, without cutty-eyes. It should be a perpetual joy. For nearly two-and-twenty years have I kept this secret. It has governed all of my society with you. I could never tell a soul. Not even your two sisters.”

Anna turned to Gemma to reply,“But you knew nonetheless, did you not?”

Gemma shook her head. “I did not know until two hours ago when your Aunt Drone whispered it to me. She wanted to surprize Mamma, but felt that there was no harm to my knowing a little beforehand.”

“No wonder you were bouncing up and down in the carriage,” said Mrs. Dray, “and well-nigh fell out!”

“But how could you
not
know before then?” asked Anna of her sister Gemma.

“Anna, I did not have the time to see
every thing
that was in your father’s cabinet.”

“But you said that you knew the thing which could be used in retaliation against my father should he wish to employ damaging intelligence against my Aunt Quarrels.”

“I did, and I do.”

“And this is not it?”

Gemma shook her head. Her mother shook hers as well. May sat in a brown study, thinking, Anna had no doubt, about Jews.

“Then there is something
else
?”

Gemma nodded. Her mother also nodded. May continued to sit with a vacant aspect.

“I cannot believe it!” Anna cried.

“It is of no present consequence,” said Anna’s mother. “Some day your father will tell you and you will know. But for now let us rejoice that we have finally been brought together—mother with daughter, and sister with sister— and most felicitously so. And rejoice as well, dear Anna, that I am free now to claim you as my own before everyone in the parish! Let us have more cake.”

Anna called for more cake.

With additional hugs and kisses and joyful tears, Mrs. Dray soon departed, accompanied by her daughter May. Gemma remained behind, for there were things of great importance that she wished to discuss with Anna and things which Anna wished to discuss with Gemma that would be best for no one to hear but themselves, each of the two pledging to take up all matters with perfect sisterly civility.