Feral Park (52 page)

“Do you mean that I am
not
a beauty?” she protested with a smile.

“On the contrary. Only that you are a
wakeful
beauty,” said he, as his fingers played absently upon her full breasts. “You see, one kisses the sleeping beauty and she awakens. However, you and I kiss one another, each wide awake, and we are conversely put to blissful sleep!”

“To sleep?” asked Anna, her eyes closing, her voice honeyed and drowsy.

“Fast asleep,” said he, through a great yawn.

“I see.”

And then it happened. The two fell fast asleep, cradled in each other’s arms.

The next morning, as the early light of dawn percolated delicately through the limbs that embowered Anna Peppercorn and Aubrey Waitwaithe’s nocturnal sleeping spot, there was a most indelicate scrabble and scramble by the two to don all of the clothes they had previously removed from one another, whilst pretending that what had taken place the night before had
not
actually occurred. The couple had hardly got themselves fully dresst—and indeed the buttons on Mr. Waitwaithe’s shirt were off by one in alignment—when a band of several men and one woman appeared before them, comprehending a search party. It was Lieutenant Alford and his brother Colin and Mr. Peppercorn and Tripp and Gemma who formed the morning squad of rescuers. The lieutenant wore an eye patch placed over a thick bandage. The eye, as had been feared, was lost. As he was to later explain it, he should perhaps have been in bed that morning recuperating, but could not allow it—not whilst Eliza Henshawe remained lost in the wood, and with him partly to blame, and besides: he was a soldier, and soldiers do not lie abed when there is nothing about their injuries to incommode them but the pain. The lieutenant had once, for example, seen a grenadier lobbing his grenades upon the field of battle after having lost both of his eyes in an enemy blast. He need only be turned in the right direction to do good, although there was one inconvenient toss in the
wrong
direction from which an unfortunate comrade lost his head in full detachment from his neck.

“Thank God, we have found you,” said Mr. Peppercorn whilst embracing his daughter.

“But have you not located Miss Henshawe as well?” enquired Anna.

Mr. Peppercorn shook his head gravely. “Gemma and I will take the two of you from this wood and leave the other three to search for the poor lost girl.”

“I will not go myself until she is found,” said Mr. Waitwaithe.

“Here then, my boy, have a egg and a pear,” said Mr. Peppercorn before turning and leading Anna—accompanied by her sister Gemma—out of the wood and back to the road.

It was not until they had reached Feral Park and Mr. Peppercorn had excused himself to assist in putting up the horses that Anna was able to discourse privately with Gemma and to tell her what had taken place the previous night with Mr. Waitwaithe.

“My word! And are you going to marry him?”

Anna shook her hand.

“Why are you not?”

“He does not wish to marry me.”

“But he wished to
enter
you!” exclaimed Gemma.

“Please do not speak so loudly, Gemma. We will be overheard. I did not tell you this so that you would pass judgement upon me.”

“Then why
did
you tell me?”

“To let you know that I have finally begun to live, for everyone is saying that I do not live for myself. Well, I lived for myself last night and felt what it was like to have a man take me and have me.”

“You could not have waited for marriage to experience carnality with a man?”

“Perhaps I could have. But I did not, for it could not be helped. I challenge you to put yourself in a dark woods with an agreeable-looking man– ”

“Agreeable even in the dark? ”

“I was a fool to even think you would understand.”

“And what of Perry Alford?”

“What
of
Perry Alford? Do you intend to tell him?”

“Oh, Anna, how could you even ask such a question? I will keep your secret as I have kept our mother’s secrets, and if there was any doubt on my part that you are our mother’s child, it has vanished altogether now, since it is clear that the two of you are equals in fornication.”

Anna felt that she should slap Gemma hard upon the cheek for saying that she and her mother were both fornicatrices, but she did not. It was good that she did not, for Gemma now looked sorry and apologetic.

“Forget every thing that I have just said, Anna. I am happy that you are safe, and that is the important thing. I was so very racked with worry. I have been worried sick over Eliza, too.”

“But at least one good thing will come of all of this: the constable will arrest Quarrels for striking Lieutenant Alford and blinding him in one eye.”

Gemma shook her head. “There will be no charges drawn up. Quarrels did not take Sophia on to London. He drove with alacrity back to Berryknell to meet with the constable, and it was decided between the two that the assault had been an unavoidable response to outright provocation on the part of the lieutenant, and so our odious cousin had every right to defend himself.”

“I cannot believe it!”

“Believe every syllable, sister, for Constable Whitaker would acquit Pontius Pilate for his abdicating treatment of Christ himself if he and the Roman procurator happened to be building a monkey parlour together!”

Miss Pints now entered the room without knocking, and then, without prefacing what she was about to do, executed a complicated dance figure such as Anna had never seen before.

“What was
that
?”

“It is what we will dance at the ball,” said Miss Pints with a smile and through her cleft.

Then she left. Anna and Gemma did not know what to think.

That evening Anna lay awake feeling stabs of guilt over what she had done with Mr. Waitwaithe. She had not saved herself for marriage, as she should have, but had given her body to a man whom she would
not
marry. Nor was there even an attachment between the two beyond a desire for an intersection of the flesh in the dark wood when there was little else to do but be afraid of owls and sleep. She felt wretched that she did not feel
more
mortified and wretched than she did, whilst the one who
had
fixed her heart lay tossing about with fevered dreams in a recuperative cottage in Smithcoat—the sort of dreams that one has when opium has been removed from the system— dreams of darkened caves and craggy cliffs, of cold freezing rain and drowned temples, and towering buildings tilted like the one in Pisa, but ominously so. Anna Peppercorn understood from Perry’s telling that she was present in every dream, adumbrated by murk and mist, standing in a lonely spot and calling his name. Sometimes the picture would change and he would be the one who stood alone, calling for
her
. Never were the two allowed to be together. There was great longing in the dreams and there was great longing in the wakeful life of the dreamer, and it was his most profound hope that the dreams represented only a deep wish on his part that the bodies of both Anna and himself be reunited as their hearts had already been conjoined, and there was hope, as well, that the dreams did not prophesy a future of permanent separation. Was it forecast, Anna worried, that Perry would find out what had happened between Mr. Waitwaithe and herself, and deem it a betrayal? But it could not possibly be! Most earnestly did
she
hope and pray that he would never come to know of it!

The bottle of absinthe was in the drawer where she had left it, but there was only a sip or two remaining. “How am I to quell this agitation I am feeling if there is no more of my medicine to be had?” thought she, before swallowing the last that was in the bottle, even though the brew be bitter to the taste. “I do not know even where one goes to procure another bottle for oneself, for it is a European spirit and cannot be found in England. This is a true bother!”

But then a thought came to her that removed some of her irritation. Was not the cook’s son come hither to visit his mother for a day or two? Mrs. Dorchester had said that he would bring another bottle with him, and give it to her, and so it was simply a matter of finding the gift bottle in her room and claiming it for herself. It would not be theft, for did she not raise Mrs. Dorchester’s salary in an amount which surely exceeded the value of the absinthe? And if the cook was to say that it was compensation for doing Anna a good turn, where was propriety in
that
? Servants serve at the pleasure of their masters and mistresses, do they not? They have few rights in their employment other than that they should have their Sundays off and that they should not be fed badly, and Lord knows, thought Anna, cook eats well. Not three weeks before, Anna had walked into the kitchen to find Mrs. Dorchester devouring a turkey fricassee all by herself, shoving each piece with her bare fingers into a full and salivating mouth. And it was not even a réchauffé which she guttled down, but a dish that she had prepared
for her very own personal consumption
!

Having fully justified herself in her quest, Anna crept down stairs and into Mrs. Dorchester’s room, listening first to hear her cook’s slumberous breathing and then stepping in when she was sure that it was safe to do so. The room was dark but there was a lighted candle upon the bed stand, which helped to bring a little illumination to her search. The candle was a memory light for her husband, who had been the Feral Park gardener. His sudden death from putrid fever had left Mrs. Dorchester nearly inconsolable and the Peppercorns without fresh vegetables for a full season. Quietly, Anna went about the business of opening divers drawers and looking beneath and behind all the furniture in the room. Unfortunately, a bottle of absinthe was not to be found. In frustration she allowed herself to sigh—rather loudly—
too
loudly, in fact, for the sound of it woke Mrs. Dorchester, who sat up with a start and pulled a broom from its lean against the wall and with it poked Anna in the small of her back.

Anna cried out more in surprize than in pain, though the straw was sharp and pricked.

“You naughty filching mort! Did your father not teach you that it was wrong to go scuttling about the room of a sleeping servant and prying round in the dark for a bottle of absinthe that is not to be had?”

“Not to be had? Is it then still within your son’s possession? If so, I will go and request it from
him.
”

“It would be a waste of time, Miss Anna, because he brought no bottle with him on this visit. He
had
a bottle but it was drunk in one sitting by a thirsty companion, who then went mad and jumped off a bridge.”

“I am not sure that I believe you.”

“You may believe whatever you wish, but I will not allow you to disturb my fagged and travel-weary son, nor should you be disturbing the sleep of Mr. Maxwell, who, I must tell you, spent the early part of this evening wide awake and weeping a near-cataract upon Carter’s shoulder and my own, for he thinks that he is to be let go for his blindness.”

“But in time he
must
be let go,” said Anna. “It would be injurious to himself and to those who live here in Feral Park for him to continue to serve as butler when he cannot see.”

“I have heard of blind grenadiers who continue to serve, and the potential for injury is far greater in battle than serving at table, do you not think?”

“Stop changing the subject, Mrs. Dorchester, and tell me the truth: is there or is there not a bottle of absinthe within this house?”

“There is not.”

“But I must have it.”

“Yet you cannot.”

“But I must.”

“Yet you
will
not. And here is the lesson for the evening, Miss Peppercorn: you cannot lay your hands upon every thing that appeals to your fancy simply because you wish it.”

“I know that. It is just that—” Anna held out her right hand. It trembled. “Look at me. I am a bundle of nerves and my body is telling me that it must be calmed. But you are right:
this
thing I cannot have, and perhaps it is good that I must forgo it for ever more, because I do not wish to jump off a bridge…” The rest was said within her head: “…or end up chained to a bed at Pickler House.”

“There is a girl. Now pluck a rose or two from the arrangement in the hall and take the blossoms to bed with you to smell as you drift off. They will relax you, depend on it.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Dorchester. I am sorry that I disturbed your slumber.”

“I was not as incommoded as you think. I was having a most horrible dream in which all the conies in Feral Park turned into wolves. There were wolves howling outside the kitchen door and clawing to get in, just as you woke me. It was a most frightening scene, and I was happy to be removed from it.”

“But you see now, Mrs. Dorchester, that it was only a dream. We have no more wolves in Payton Parish. Has it not been many years since a wolf last prowled this part of Hampshire County?”

Mrs. Dorchester shook her head, her countenance suddenly twisted by fear. “Here in Feral Park, perhaps. But I know that there are still a few which roam in Tatter Wood, and I would believe them to be hungrier now than ever before.”