Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“Away from the window, you two!” I called to my brother and sister-inlaw from the other side of the bedchamber in which I had just a moment before disturbed their morning solitude with the presentation of a fully provisioned teaboard. None of us being aware that there were four most critical eyes staring up at us from the street below, I appended rhetorically and a bit mootly, “Do you wish to be detected by a passerby?”

“Not at all. We weren’t thinking,” said Gus, drawing the curtains and throwing the room into temporary darkness. “But it is become a true bother to keep ourselves from the bright light of morning, brother.”

“It beseeches one, morning does — teazes and beseeches,” offered Charlotte, looking blissfully upon her husband, the marital ties between the two strongly restored.

“I sometimes feel, brother,” continued Gus, “as if I am already interred behind the dark walls of the gaol or within the Bedlam mad hospital.”

“Better darkness here than darkness there,” said I, settling myself down into a chair to take my own morning cup from the tray.

I had decided that this was to be the morning in which I would inform Newman’s parents of their son’s present whereabouts, that so much had I said upon the subject of remaining calm and collected and unprecipitant and in the more practical sense of keeping Gus’s own whereabouts scrupulously hidden, that he and Charlotte would surely now take the news about Newman and cherish it in their hearts and give leave to Muntle and Timberry and me to do what needed to be done. What was to be done was this: that we should rescue the boy from Bedlam, just as we strove to rescue three other personages of great worth from that institution: Hannah Pupker, George Muntle, and Professor Jeremiah Chivery, there being great practical value in emancipating the last inmate on that list, for Chivery would finally tell us what all of his calculations had been about and whether they should reveal something in the arithmetic of his obsession that would be useful to our efforts to save Dingley Dell from extinction.

It was time, I thought, to tell everything to Gus and Charlotte, to bring them fully into the circle of those most informed about what was happening here. It was time to reveal those facts that had been kept deliberately from the ken of nearly every other citizen of the Dell who was not a member of the Fortnightly Poetry League (or an adjunct of that esteemed body) nor a constituent member of the Eighty-three Elect.

But once again I could not do it. Here was my brother crossing negligently before an open window, totally unmindful of his safety. Who is to say that he would not be equally neglectful in forcing upon us his own reckless participation in our still-formulating rescue mission?

I laugh. I cannot help myself. Mission . Muntle and Timberry and I: rescuing swashbucklers! The humour lies in this: that there was never opportunity to give the venture more than minor preparatory thought. Because of what was to happen next — something that would constitute quite a troubling turn of events and propel this story into its final tumultuous chapters!

With astonishing speed and devastating consequence, not only for Gus, but for all of us who resided in Mrs. Lumbey’s townhouse, and then for several others who associated with us, Alice and Cecilia’s sighting succeeded in dislodging a rather large boulder from its precipice upon that high hill of early metaphorical mention, thus setting the avalanche into full, tumbling motion. Within two short hours a number of us were put into the Dinglian gaol, whilst Gus was conveyed to Bedlam to be placed under lock and key, his name to be indited into the records of that institution as the most recently quarantined victim of T.T., Terror Tremens.

Here is how it all came to pass with blistering velocity:

Alice Trimmers stood beneath the window through which she had espied her mother and father. My niece expressed shock at having found her father returned and hiding and possibly diseased and spreading same to her mother and in only a matter of time to everyone in the contagionprone valley. “We must tell someone! Oh, Cecilia — we must tell someone this very instant!” pressed Alice, still staring up at the window even after the curtains had been pulled together, the occupants having failed to register their daughter’s appalling discovery of them.

What supervened thereafter was a hasty, hurtling return to the Pupker Emporium for the two girls, where they had opportunity to describe what they had seen not only to Montague Pupker, but to Dr. Fibbetson as well (that venerable surgeon having just come to seek permission to carry along with him into the Outland an extra valise containing his precious morphia suppositories). Also there was Sheriff Billy Boldwig who had wished to confer with Pupker over arrangements that would employ his constabulary in the offices of protection for the privileged pilgrims in their procession to the Northern Ridge.

In hardly less than an hour there was a pounding upon the Lumbey door that went unheeded, and then a storming of the dress-making redoubt by the increasingly intrepid Boy Sheriff Billy Boldwig and two of his accompanying deputies, the aforementioned Dr. Fibbetson (who contributed not much to the proceedings beyond rear-guard panegyrics to the success of the venture), and Montague Pupker, who was most eager to find cause in the way of conspiracy to harbour a diseased Returnee that would implicate every one of those who defied him upon the day of his elder daughter’s involuntary hospital confinement.

What a perfect turn of events for Pupker and Towlinson and Lord Mayor Feenix! Now there was a legal pretext for putting all of those who darkened the path to that impending day of release directly into the gaol, there to be held without bond (for the seriousness of the charge settled the issue of remanding on the side of the Moles) until such date and time as their incarceration became moot.

In a matter of two hours several individuals of great import to this story were rounded up and put under lock and key within the compound known as the Inn-of-Justice, the place in which courts sat in session, and where prisoners sat (upon hard iron cots), and where the newly promoted Billy Boldwig sat in his newly-gained lodgings, and pridefully polished his very own gun (when he was not abroad upon his shrieval rounds).

I was taken along with my sister-in-law Charlotte, my landlady Mrs. Lumbey, and her assistant Miss Casby, from the premises of Mrs. Lumbey’s Ladies’ Fine Dress Shop and from those rooms situated behind and above it. The arrest employed use of the threatening end of Sheriff Boldwig’s shiny new firearm and a growing measure of self-assurance on the part of the newly-minted lawman. The arrest included as well an ancillary report for all ears, just relayed from the remote coal-town of Blackheath, concerning the deaths of Sir Dabber, Nurse Ruth Wolf, and young Bevan Dabber.

Hearing the report, I was at first too staggered to speak. Likewise, Mrs. Lumbey could not bring herself to say a word. Charlotte and Amy Casby wept. It was my brother Gus, very soon to be relegated to a dismal cell at Bedlam, who found voice to ask of no one in particular, “Who could have done such a thing?”

“Drunken colliers, no doubt,” volunteered Fibbetson. “I’ve seen far worse from that low and murderous bunch of black-skinned reprobates.”

In a low voice, Montague Pupker broke into sudden soliloquy, perhaps not realising that he was employing his tongue to the audit of all the ears round him: “And fine riddance to you, Miss Wolf. And to your every misplaced attempt to heal those who did not deserve your secret ministrations and for your every act of treachery.” Then recalling himself, he addressed us all in full: “I’ll mourn Dabber — a good man in his quixotic way. I’ll not mourn the death of the self-styled Miss Nightingale. As for the young man, I haven’t an opinion one way or another. Those Rokesmith Ruins are a rather inconsequential bunch, wouldn’t you say? Now, now, Deputy, you’re being far too rough in attaching the handcuffs to Miss Casby’s wrists. Please remove them, sir, and allow me to shew you how it is more gently done.” This Pupker proceeded to do with equal parts care and equal parts palpable, pawing lechery.