Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“I will hold the both of you personally responsible should anything happen to Miss Pupker,” I assailed Pupker and Towlinson as Hannah was being led by Boldwig to the van.

Hannah took another couple of steps and then stopt. “I will go to Bedlam but only on the condition that I do not have to ride in that thing which looks to me like the tumbrel which conveyed Sydney Carton to the guillotine in A Tale of Two Cities . If you do not agree to my request, then you will have to shoot me.”

There followed a hasty conference amongst the three older men and the freckled boy (the Bedlam turnkey Oscar being excluded), during which I exchanged a brave smile with Hannah, who seemed far less fearful now than she had been moments before. Somehow she had a found a measure of courage that I hoped would sustain her through the dark days that lay ahead.

“You have only ten days to endure it, Hannah,” I whispered, “and then they will all be gone and we will have you back.”

“Stop exchanging confidences with the prisoner!” enjoined the sheriff in his squeaking pubescent voice.

“Is Hannah Pupker now a criminal?” exclaimed Mrs. Lumbey, with blistering stridence.

“Criminal? Of course not!” Boldwig sputtered. “I misspoke. She is a lunatic. Not a prisoner but a detained lunatic. That is all.”

“And that is quite enough as it is!” declared the “lunatic’s” father. “Such shame has this ungrateful minx brought down upon her family. Very well, Hannah, you may walk to the hospital. Dr. Towlinson and I have agreed that it should do you no harm, though this promenade before our neighbours will be a most mortifying blot upon our fine Pupker name!”

“Yet,” returned Hannah in an angry underbreath, “as I have come to regard myself as no longer a member of your family and carrier of the Pupker name, I shall not care a straw. In fact, Mr. Pupker, I own only the most contemptuous feelings toward you for what you seek to do to me. Yes, Mr. Pupker, to whom I no longer maintain even the most reedy of family allegiance.”

With a nod of the head by Dr. Towlinson, Oscar was bade to take the reins of the chestnut mare that pulled the van and to be on his way. Doctors Towlinson and Fibbetson joined the Bedlam minion upon the box, and without speaking another word the three rolled away, leaving Pupker and Boldwig to walk along either side of the criminal who was purported to be a lunatic but was, in fact, only a frightened young woman who had found a stalwart side to herself for which she was to be most highly commended by the allies she left behind.

y brother Gus could not help himself.

He had watched the siege and then the capture of Hannah Pupker— had observed it all from a peeping spot behind the curtain of one of the windows of my up-stairs rooms, and then had crept down the stairs and stood behind a Cheval glass in the dress shop showroom and was there situated so that when Charlotte entered the room after all had grown quiet and Hannah had gone, he could step out and take her by the hands and kiss her upon the lips and dry those tears that would flow so freely to see him returned.

But it did not happen exactly that way. Gus stepped out and Charlotte promptly fainted away. However, it took hardly any time at all to revive her, and her cheeks were quickly thereafter flooded with those anticipated tears, and husband and wife — kept several days asunder by the most trying and frightful circumstances — could not now be wrenched apart for worlds, as their loving embrace was far too strong.

Charlotte urged her husband to come with her to their house, but was quickly dissuaded. It was too dangerous to risk his being seen, and so this was to be his address for the time being and no one must know that he was here (besides those who knew it already and swore not to reveal the fact to another soul.)

“Then I’ll come to stop here as well, to be at my husband’s side,” said Charlotte. “Frederick, you will have to find another place to sleep, for your older brother and I are now laying claim to your bed.”

“And I am happy to give it up to you,” said I.

We repaired to Mrs. Lumbey’s breakfast parlour, where we gathered about the table: Gus and Charlotte, and Antonia and Timberry, Mrs. Lumbey and her assistant Amy and I. We drank tea and ate sweet seed cake, and cheese and celery, and Gus hungrily fell to a dish of kidneys and the remnant carcass of the roast fowl that had been Mrs. Lumbey’s supper the night before, and some anchovy toast drowned in egg sauce, whilst I breakfasted on a basin of mutton broth, and Antonia and Timberry shared a slab of potted ham and then three or four raspberry tarts. Amy nibbled upon a morsel of cheese, as would a finicky mouse, whilst Mrs. Lumbey finished the morning’s porridge, and then we all had a peppermint drop and pronounced the meal an unqualified success.

Gus was coaxed by Mrs. Lumbey into telling some of what he had seen and experienced in the Outland. He spoke for a few moments on the topic before I interrupted him. “I’m sorry, Gus, but I cannot hear the end to this story. My mind is too much on Harry Scadger and his family now turned out from their new home. I must go and find them.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Timberry, “to see how young Flora is doing.”

“What is this most sudden interest in a Scadger?” asked Gus, without sharpness but nevertheless with a free-and-easy manner that reminded me that I’d yet to tell Gus of his connexion by blood to Harry and his children.

“It is this, Augustus: Harry Scadger, the second oldest of the Scadger brothers, is your half-brother. Our father was also his father. I haven’t time to tell you the details of how this came to be. You must, for now, simply accept it. We have a half-brother. And we have a half-sister-in-law and several half-nephews and nieces, and all, I fear, are put in some jeopardy now by their expulsion, and I must know if they’ll be safe.”

“A Scadger — our brother? I find it almost too incredible to believe!” said Gus.

A darkness fell upon Charlotte’s face at that moment. I knew with certainty the reason for it: Newman. Gus noted the change in his wife’s expression as well, and as Gus would often do, he turned a sad reflection into something that must have a culpable author. As often would be the case with my brother, I became that author.

“But no more incredible,” he continued, “than to think that you have now substituted these half nephews and nieces for the one nephew-in-full now apparently banished altogether from your thoughts.”

“You cannot believe that, Gus!” I earnestly rejoined.

Antonia rose from the table and beckoned me with a crooked finger to join her in the passage. When we had both assured ourselves that a confidence or two could pass between us without being overheard, she whispered sagely: “Frederick, your brother and sister-in-law are in great need of hope about their lost son. Perhaps you should tell them where you believe Newman to be, to give their minds some small measure of ease. It’s the right thing to do, you know that it is.”

“And my impulsive brother will take this information and promptly put himself in the way of God-only-knows-what sort of danger through a reckless attempt to effect Newman’s rescue. He will — as a result of this fool’s errand — find himself likewise enchained within that place, and who knows what will happen to Newman in consequence? Perhaps to prove that Newman hasn’t been there all along, he will be made to disappear altogether and for good. It is a risk I dare not take, so I must keep Gus and Charlotte in the dark about it for a while longer, for everyone’s good.”