Authors: Mark Dunn
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #British & Irish, #Historical, #Dramas & Plays, #Genre Fiction, #Drama & Plays, #Historical Fiction, #Irish, #Scottish
“So that you may engage in intelligent, non-apocalyptic discourse, Papa, and with one whom I am certain holds no dark secrets so as to further diminish your opinion of mankind. Now to the particulars: perhaps you may devise some legal pretext for bringing him hither.”
“But a legal pretext would beckon his employer, Mr. Scourby, in his stead.”
Anna smiled and shook her head. “I happen to know that Mr. Scourby will be in London on legal business on Friday se’nnight. In his absence an invitation extended to Mr. Waitwaithe alone should possess sufficient credibility.”
“Surely, daughter, we cannot invite Mr. Waitwaithe and Mr. Waitwaithe alone. We must set the table for others as well, so that your purpose is not brought to instant transparency.”
“You are correct, Papa. So whom else shall we ask?”
“As luck would have it, the date of your dinner coincides perfectly with the visit by your Aunt Samantha and her companion Miss Pints, who will be stopping hither for a fortnight on their way to a bathing holiday in Eastbourne.”
“I find nothing lucky about such a visit whatsoever.”
“She is your mother’s only surviving relation, and although the visit incommodes me as much if not more than it does you, it is the right thing to do. I will not have my wife’s sister and your only extant aunt spending her parish nights at the Three Horse Inn. Imagine, as well, how tongues will waggle from the scandal of our having put up the two in Mr. Whitaker’s drab and dusty caravansary for no other reason than that she grates upon us.”
“May we at least write to her first, Papa, and entreat her to have the companion, Miss Pints, deloused prior to their arrival?”
“We certainly may not! The incident you have brought to mind was an exceptional occurrence and your aunt was duly apologetic over it. I trust that it will not happen again.”
“It had
better
not.”
“Check yourself, my dear daughter. The sullen look you present does not become you.”
Anna obliged her father by softening her countenance.
“Now who else to add to our guest list?” asked the father.
“Left as is, it would be a strange party, would it not?” noted Anna in response.
“Indeed. Let us then set an additional place for the bachelor Mr. Nevers.”
Anna sighed. “Papa, the vicar is such a popinjay and so very dull. Must we have him?”
“I rather like the fact that Mr. Nevers speaks his heart and mind without self-correction. Do you find his sermons dull?”
“No. They are quite lively. It is when he steps from the pulpit that his speech becomes insipid. And I do not join him in any of his opinions. Moreover, he hardly seems interested in the opinions of women. Only men. Depend on it, he will spend the entire evening being inordinately interested in every little thing that Mr. Waitwaithe says, and I shall not have more than a word with the guest of honour, myself.”
“Then we should ask to our table someone who may do to Mr. Nevers exactly what you predict that he will do to Mr. Waitwaithe. I suggest that we invite the milliner and tailor, Mr. Groves. You notice, daughter, how he tarries after the service each Sunday so as to engage Mr. Nevers in animated private discourse.”
Anna smiled. “
That
, Papa, is an excellent idea. And perhaps he will bring along some hats in the latest styles for us to try on. It should be a most droll finish to the evening.”
“Now, of course, we are out of balance.”
“What do you mean?”
“Four men and three women. We must invite one member more of the fairer sex. I suggest that it should be your friend Miss Dray.”
“I am of two minds about Gemma, Papa.”
“How do you mean?”
“Only this: should I fail to request her attendance, I fear that she will take offence at being overlooked. And yet she promotes her cousin John Dray against my solid interest in Mr. Waitwaithe. I wager that she will scrutinize my every glance in Mr. Waitwaithe’s direction, and put herself to the task of dissecting every sentence I speak to him. I should be thoroughly discomposed for the chief of the evening, and not myself at all.”
“And yet she is your dearest friend. Not only will she take umbrage not to be asked, she should be quite hurt as well.”
With a sigh: “You are right. She is a dear friend. Oh, bother. I suppose ask he we must.”
“May I enquire, daughter, as to the depth of your feelings for Mr. Waitwaithe?”
“I do not swoon in his presence, Papa, but I am quite fond of him.”
“Of his looks only, or is there any other attribute that solicits your favour?”
“I understand from those who know him and from those who have had business with him, that he is kind and courteous, though a bit shy, but to me retirement is no demerit. I find diffidence in a man to be even somewhat endearing so long as the gentleman does not permit the trait to demean him before others.”
“And you know for a fact that he does not demean himself through his retirement?”
“For a fact, no, Papa. I am, however, hopeful that his pride—in whatever measure he possesses it—affords him the self-confidence and poise necessary to credit him to his sex. Now, before I bid you goodnight, spirited into my dreams by thoughts of sitting at table in less than a fortnight with the man who may some day ask for my hand in marriage…”
Here Mr. Peppercorn wagged a finger at his daughter in gentle admonishment for wishing too much for that which only fortuity will deliver.
“…I must ask if these consuming thoughts of yours about the underlying collective immorality of those who live within Payton Parish—which, I might add, I have yet to witness even in shadow or embryonic indication—will dissipate following your visit with Dr. Bosworthy, and his setting you strait about the currency of such things. If not, I will dearly mourn the loss of my father’s former lofty estimation of those whose society he has kept. Whilst I have consistently found the finding of fault with others to be a disagreeable alloy of my own faulted character, it was always your countervailing uplifting of the objects of my prejudice and disfavour that kept me away from the door of total despondence. Whenever I noted a defect—large or small—in those whom I met, you were always eager to counter my view with plausible explanation or benevolent justification, or failing these, entreat me to array my uncharitable opinion with the warm cloak of simple Christian forgiveness. And in tempering my suspicions and softening my ill-assessments, you improved my character. Now if indeed you sit poised to best me at my own game, to whom shall I turn for my correction?”
Mr. Peppercorn took his daughter’s hand in his own and held it for a moment in contemplative silence. Then he said, “There are things which have come to my attention—things about our neighbours within this parish that are unsettling at best. I have not confirmed the veracity of any single account, yet I am comfortable with the trustworthiness of my source.”
“That answer, my dear father, was off the point and additionally troubling in appendance.”
“Perhaps, daughter, it would, at this juncture, do you well to solicit a favourable opinion of the denizens of Payton Parish from someone else. Perhaps my negative influence in this regard should be offset by a visit to your uncle’s first wife Mrs. Taptoe. She is at times sanguine to the point of being Panglossian, in spite of her own trials and privations. You will find her in Turnington Lodge. She has just taken a cottage there.”
“Mrs. Taptoe has been put out of the home of her daughter and son-inlaw?”
Mr. Peppercorn responded with a pensive nod.
“And do you know why?”
“A disagreement between mother and daughter. It does not serve to divulge further.”
With sudden indignation Anna was compelled to respond, “Meaning that you know more? How is it, Papa, that you
know things
? You have never advertised yourself as a consumer of gossip!”
“Nor am I, as well, a gossip
monger
.”
“And yet there is one person who seems to benefit from proximity to your ear.”
“Perhaps for the very reason that I intend to keep this individual’s confidences to myself. Perhaps the person who informs me frees himself or herself of all manner of onerous secrets because I listen with understanding nods and with lips for ever sealed.”
“And all the while I thought that you sat alone in your library and listened only to the deathless voices of your perukeless poets and historiographers and diarists.”
“And novelists as well, for these amuse me most of all.”
“Yet you do more than read in your idle hours! You tiptoe off to hear all about the scandals of our iniquitous parish! And then you refuse to breathe more than a syllable to your daughter, even as you muse philosophic upon the state of our world. And on top of it all, you recommend that I seek solace of some sort from she who may be the most blind of us all to what goes on within the parish. Well, Papa, I will not listen another moment to your generalities in this regard—unless, of course, you change your mind about relating the specifics.”
“A tidy bargain, to be sure. I shall sleep on it. Now may I read to you, daughter?”
“Aye, if I may know, in this one final appeal to your just nature, if there exists the possibility that Dr. Bosworthy may put your mind to ease about the goings-on in this parish by confirming the general occurrence of such unseemly behaviour in
every
parish the world over.”
“I would be receptive to hearing such a theory at least.”
“And if the supposition be true, you may again find reason to uplift our neighbours in your esteem?”
Henry Peppercorn shook his head in sadness.“No, dear Anna; I predict the opposite outcome in such a case: by learning that such a tendency to depravity and moral reprehensibility exists within us all, I shall find myself ever the more dejected.”
“Then I shall wish that Payton Parish constitute the exception, rather than the rule in this regard.”
“And I shall wish the same.”
“And some day, you will be released by your informer to tell me all that you have learnt?”
Mr. Peppercorn nodded. “If you do not find it out for yourself through your own ingenuity and observation. For, daughter, this much now seems clear: the curtain which veils the shame of this parish is day by day, thread by thread, being unraveled by those who tug and teaze and abrade against it. I dare say there are sections even now so frayed as to afford those who seek it a most enlightening, albeit stark, glimpse through the sheer.”
“Oh, dear,” said Anna.
A gloomy nod from Anna’s father in response.
And a shiver of chill from them both.
For, in addition, unattended, the fire had gone out.
It was a very long walk to Turnington Lodge. Mr. Peppercorn would not hear of his daughter striking out “on shank’s mare” without accompaniment. But Anna was accustomed to solitary rambles. She enjoyed her frequent uncompanioned turns upon her father’s many-acred estate, and would often take herself by the road into the village of Berryknell, upon the stated pretext of purchasing a spool of thread or upon the unstated pretext of catching a glimpse of a certain clerk in a certain solicitor’s office. Anna relished the opportunity, as well, to sort out her crowded thoughts as she went along. As she climbed the downs, she sometimes fancied herself scaling the Alps with a staff and a mountain she-goat—the staff for negotiating the rocks and crags, the goat for the provision of milk to sustain her in her journey. Such a trip if undertaken in reality, Anna believed, would clear her head with great success; she would return to Feral Park restored and renewed.
As for the walk to Turnington Lodge, a compromise was reached between father and daughter: Anna would make the trip on foot over the downs, whilst her father’s man James followed a respectful number of paces behind. He would proceed quietly and without so much as a nod of acknowledgement to Anna’s presence. Should she happen to turn and glance behind her, he had been instructed by his employer to feign interest in something off to the side, or kneel at that instant to re-lace his boot. It should be plausible to anyone witnessing the trip that Anna’s father’s coachman and man-servant was only
by coincidence
peregrinating in the same direction as was Anna.
Whilst she was unhappy to have her independence compromised in this manner, Anna, in fact, found herself at one point along the way not unhappy at all, and even a bit comforted by James’ close proximity. It was in passing Canary Stream at the outskirts of Tatter Wood that she felt the sense of relief that came from knowing that James was near by. Within the wood lived a community of gipsies whose number proliferated by the week. “It is a veritable gipsy metropolis within that wood!” Gemma had remarked in amazement only the previous day. “And no doubt it is a metropolis with all manner of services: gipsy bank, gipsy post office, gipsy apothecary!” Anna at first had found more than a draught of wit in Gemma’s fanciful imaginings, but after the passage of several interminable minutes of the same, including the addition of “gipsy hot cross bun shop” and “gipsy dental appliances purveyor” to her lengthy list, Anna became quite bored with the whole topic, and gaped conspicuously, inadvertently sprinkling Gemma’s exposed right arm with droplets of yawn mizzle. Now thinking again of gipsy merchants and their sundry services brought a smile of amusement to Anna’s restive countenance and eased her in the transit. “Gipsy Inns of Court! Tee hee hee. Gemma is a clever one!”
Several Romany children watched with dirty faces and ragged smiles as first Anna and then her protector passed, some of the young ones emulating Anna’s gait, others mocking the distance deliberately placed between the two by putting equal space between themselves. Anna could not keep herself from looking at them, dresst as they were in the colourful, yet frayed and threadbare rags that passed amongst gipsies for clothing. Her heart was full for the children even as they insulted her with their disrespectful raillery. Anna thought to herself, “Do I walk thusly? Do I swing my arms in such a wide fashion? If so, I should look quite silly indeed! And James—does he march forward as would a wooden soldier? I should think not! I shall steal a glance to confirm my opinion. Now he kneels to lace his shoe! What a ridiculous pretense. I wish that he would not do it. Oh, goodness! The ragamuffins are pretending to lace their own shoes. And yet they have no shoes! They are wriggling their fingers above their dirty bare feet with no purpose but to ridicule my servant and myself. Oh, look at their dirty little feet! I will quicken my pace and be done with this most insalubrious portion of my journey.”
And then one final thought about the gipsy children: “I should like to take them all home and give them each a good scrubbing!”
Otherwise, the day was beautiful, the sky a shade of vivid blue that brought to mind cornflowers and bonnet ribbons for young girls possessed of bright, sparkling eyes of the very same cerulean hue.
Mrs. Guinevere Taptoe had been married to Roderick Peppercorn, younger brother of Henry Peppercorn, for all of seven months prior to his succumbing to putrid fever. Subsequently, Mrs. Taptoe married Mr. Byron Taptoe to whom she bore three children of which two lived to adulthood: a daughter, Guinevere, later to take the name Mallard in marriage; and a son, Maurice. A year after Mr. Taptoe’s death, also from putrid fever, Maurice departed and was not seen or heard from thereafter. Widow Taptoe sold her home for debts and delinquent taxes and in her diminished capacity was forced first to set up house in a tiny cottage in Berryknell, which once had belonged to a cooper (and seemed as it shook and shuddered in the wind to be constructed chiefly of barrel staves), and then to take up lodgings with her son-in-law Luther Mallard, daughter Guinevere, and their two surviving daughters (the firstborn, also named Guinevere, dying in toddlerhood of putrid fever). Anna for a time called her uncle’s widow
Aunt
Guinevere, until it was pointed out to her by Mrs. Mallard that her mother, having succeeded to a second marriage after the death of Anna’s uncle, was no longer Anna’s aunt, and that she should stop calling her thus. By the same token, Mrs. Taptoe’s daughter Mrs. Mallard was not Anna’s cousin, nor even a friend, but merely the wife of the owner of a draper’s and ironmonger’s shop in Berryknell Square, as well as the purveyor herself of ladies’ furnishings within, and if Anna did not wish to purchase something made of linen or iron she should stop loitering there and go elsewhere.
Until disabused of the error by her father, Anna had thought that Mrs. Taptoe lived still above the shop in the company of her daughter, son-in-law, and two granddaughters. It was here in the tiny Mallard parlour that Anna had upon occasion visited the older gentlewoman whom she once considered her aunt. Tea was often served during these visits, although duck pâté sandwiches were also offered from time to time, the idea of eating duck in the Mallard drawing-room never ceasing to amuse the readily-amused Mrs. Taptoe or her lady’s maid, who was later to accompany her mistress to the newly-let tenant cottage in Turnington Lodge. The servant’s name was Umbrous Elizabeth, the “umbrous” given for the intriguingly dusky tone of her complexion. Elizabeth had been with Mrs. Taptoe all of her life, her mother, a full Negro, having been in service since shortly after her escape from a slave ship and her passage to England under the auspices of kindly Quakers, with the daughter taking over as a maid-of-all-work when the mother passed away from putrid fever.
Anna, for all her love of a good, long walk, was, upon this morning, coming to regret how far she was required to go to visit someone who once resided so near to her own home in Feral Park as to be gained in a short stroll of less than a quarter hour. But the regret was tempered by an eagerness to see Mrs. Taptoe and to learn a few things about the woman’s situation that were not forthcoming from her tight-lipped father.
The cottage in which Mrs. Taptoe had several weeks earlier settled herself, though remarkably small, was warm and inviting, and Mrs. Taptoe, being informed of Anna’s approach by Umbrous Elizabeth, stood to greet her guest upon the front step with a welcoming smile and beseeching arms. Once enfolded, Anna was hugged for a very long time, pushed snuggly against the pillow of Mrs. Taptoe’s plump and expansive bosom. “It has been ages! Oh, let me look at you! Is that your man James over there? Send him to the stable round back. My man Tripp has snuff and a pack of cards for piquet.”
Mrs. Taptoe led Anna through the passage and into the small front parlour of her very tiny cottage, dipping her head to avoid striking it upon a lowbutting beam in the very low ceiling.“I live in a leprechaun’s house, as you see!” the old woman remarked. “Is it not wee? With tiny pictures on its tiny walls, it is wee and twee, all of a piece, is it not?”
“Yet quite lovely,” said Anna, wedging herself into a small chair (for all the furniture in the room was reduced in size—no doubt, thought Anna, to accommodate the tight circumstances).
“Tea, Elizabeth, if you please. In the small teacups. We have not room upon this miniature tea table for the larger ones.”
With a curtsey: “Yes, ma’am.”
“I must tell you the truth of the house, Anna. It was formerly let to dwarves.”
“Dwarves? My goodness!” exclaimed Anna, not believing her friend in the least, and then with an open smile: “It pleases me so much to see you so happy and so well, Mrs. Taptoe.”
“Anna, you may return to calling me
Auntie
if you wish, for I have all but disowned that lot which lives above the shop in the loud village. They are an unloving and ungrateful bunch, if I may speak freely. Every last one of them down to the younger of those two girls has treated me not as the grandmamma at all, but as a stranger—a veritable stranger in their midst! I was never so happy as when I learnt that this cottage was available to let, and that the dwarves, who previously occupied it, had moved on in search of a much smaller house that did not so terribly expend them in the upkeep.”
“So there really
were
dwarves living in this house before you?”
“Oh, dear me, yes. About this tall. No. More about here.” Mrs. Taptoe placed her hand out to her side to shew the measure. “Oh, Anna, my dear, you are looking more beautiful than ever. Are you in love? Now you hold your answer. I will return and retrieve it later! For the present, tell me every thing there is for me to know about Feral Park and your good father, who was once my dear brother-in-law, and all that I may have missed in my removal to this out-of-the-way little place upon the grounds of Turnington Lodge, and I promise to listen attentively as would any good hostess who entertains only once every ten or twelve weeks and is ravenous for the society of someone who does not serve tea or shoe horses.”
“But Mrs. Taptoe—have Sir Thomas and Lady Jane never invited you to dine at the manor house upon the hill?”
“An invitation has not yet come. I think, therefore, that their charity extends only to the letting of this thimble house. Yet, it bothers me not in the least, child, for what should I say to them, even over tea? ‘Though the cottage is small, your generosity is large,’ to be followed thereafter by half an hour of the most awkward silence? ’Tis better for all of us this way. So tell, tell, my dear, all that you may wish me to hear.”
“First I should say how very sorry I am to learn of the difficulties that have risen between you and your daughter and son-in-law that have necessitated this removal. It both shocks and saddens me”
Mrs. Taptoe nodded and dabbed a handkerchief at the corners of each eye. “And me as well. It was heartbreaking for me to realise that they cared not a tittle for their own flesh and blood. There is talk in the village that I was turned out. Well, I was
not
turned out! I withdrew by my own choice and am all too glad to be gone. I wish, in fact, to take up my first husband’s name to be done with even the reminder of them. I think I should like to be Peppercorn again, and how would you like
that
?”
“It is a good name, in my biased opinion,” said Anna with a wink.
“You are a good girl. La! You are all of a
woman
now. I recollect that upon your last visit to see me your breasts were pert and still wanting of some increase. But now they are in full blow. Now if you are lucky the growth will stop there. My back ails me monstrous from carrying these oat bags so much about!”
The topic coloured Anna’s face to a noticeable extent.
“Oh, dear, I have mortified you with the frankness of my talk. Shall we not speak so liberally? If you prefer, I will hold my tongue and present a more dignified and refined picture of the dwarf-cottage hostess.”
Regaining her composure, Anna replied, “No, no, no! I should like you to speak freely of whatever comes to mind. To be sure, that is one reason for my visit: to discover why you have parted company with your daughter and sonin-law, and to learn all there is that you may wish to tell me. I have no desire to see our morning together stultified by excessive propriety! Let us, therefore, banish propriety altogether if you wish it!” Anna said this with a flourish of the hand to demonstrate her conviction that such unbridled talk as Mrs. Taptoe was wont to exchange neither frightened her nor assaulted her sensibilities. In letting fly the hand, a small candelabrum was knocked from its console and sent to the floor. “Dear me. I am so very sorry.”
“Think nothing of it, my dear. I have struck that very candelabrum and in the very same manner. One has not room in this tiny house to even turn round. Yet I do so love it, for it is mine (so long as I am able to pay the rent) and I am no longer in the debt of my daughter and son-in-law. Now, my dear girl, are you altogether certain that our conversation may proceed without harness? There is, I must note, a trickle of perspiration put out by your left temple, which would by custom indicate a nervous aversion to free-flowing engagement. I am most familiar with the condition, for my very own daughter Guinevere has found herself too often similarly afflicted in my presence. I recall that once when the two of us were shopping at the greengrocers I remarked that a brace of radishes reminded me of one of the more bulbously piquant aspects of the male anatomy, although I must confess that my observation was expressed a bit less delicately than the way I express it now. I believe the word that I chose was ‘twiddle-diddles.’ Are you familiar with the term, my dear?”