Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

And so Harry’s half-brothers and their families began to ready themselves to leave their orchard home forever. And there was a great flow of tears and angry murmurs and shakings of fists in the direction of the eastern wood. And Melchisedech Scadger looked upon his ruined bow and his quiver and his stilled arrows, which he had fashioned and carved with his own hands, and he repined his inability to do battle on behalf of his clan as Harry placed a consoling hand upon his shoulder and left it there for a brief tearful interval.

ear the end of the Scadgers’ journey to Mrs. Lumbey’s lodgings in Milltown, the light of day began to wane, to be replaced by crepuscular half-light and shadow. The band of brothers and their wives and their

large litters of barefoot children tread slower than was their wont, their heads bowed in disconsolation, for though little had they ever had, now even less did they possess — not much more, in fact, than the clothes upon their backs and a few rescued tools and personal baubles. Susan Fagin walked along with the women, holding a young infant in her caring nurse’s arms, and Harry walked ahead with his older brother Solomon, his four younger brothers marching only a few steps behind.

It was the two brothers in the lead who first saw what sort of reception Milltown would give them, for no sooner had they crossed into the West End by the northern road did they begin to receive suspicious glares from many of those out and about this early evening. There were also whispers interchanged between frowning and contemptuous mouths— clear signs that the clan was to move along and stop nowhere along the way.

One man went even farther in his own show of distaste for the Scadger clan. The man was the apothecary William Skettles, brother-in-law of Montague Pupker. He stood upon the front step of his shop, having just locked up his establishment for the night. “The Westminster Bridge to the East End is that way,” he called to Solomon Scadger and his brother Harry, who remembered the ignominious occasion of his ejection from that same apothecary’s shop only a few days before. “You are all going in the wrong direction.”

“We are not headed for the East End, Mr. Skettles,” replied Harry. “And furthermore, it is no business of yours just what direction we are going.”

“What insolence!” declared Skettles. “To come into this neighbourhood in your dirty, diseased rags and display such extraordinary contempt for your betters. Turn your steps in the direction of the East End, Apricoteater, or I will summon a deputy sheriff to turn them for you.”

“Yes, and do be so good as to tell me where we shall go in that neighborhood, since you and your brother-in-law Pupker turned my family out of the mews.”

“That was you ? My, but don’t all of you fruit-gipsies look alike!”

“Ignore the man,” said Harry to his older brother, sensing that Sol wanted to say something as well, on behalf of his family. Sol, heeding his brother’s bidding, checked himself as the two men continued to lead their blood troop in the direction of their own choosing.

It so happened, that to Skettles’ delight, there was a deputy sheriff in the vicinity of his chemist’s shop coming just that moment down the lane. Skettles signalled him with a wave of the hand, though he need not have done it. The deputy, a man nearly as young as his new employer Boldwig, had already made up his mind to learn the reason for the Scadgers’ packlike presence in the West End, since it was common knowledge that gatherings of the destitute in any number generally represented a blot upon the face of any upstanding neighbourhood.

“Deputy Gradgrind,” said Skettles, “perhaps you may wish to inform this filthy tribe of the location of that bridge which takes one out of the West End. As you can clearly see, they haven’t a clew as to how to gain it.”

Before the deputy could oblige the apothecary, Harry stopt. All those behind him stopt as well. Harry spoke up: “We have no intention of going to the East End. There are lodgings for us here in the West End and so here in the West End we shall stay.”

Skettles shook his head in sheer and utter astonishment over what he had just heard. At the same time his eye fell upon Susan Fagin, standing amongst the Scadger wives. “Miss Fagin, do you become a charity worker when not about your healing rounds within our local hospitals?”

“I am whatever you may wish to think of me,” said Susan, “for I care little for your opinion.”

“Upon my word, girl, does your mother know what has become of you?”

Susan hadn’t time to answer (even should she have wished to) for at just that moment Deputy Gradgrind drew out his billy club, which had been fixed upon his belt, and held it aloft in a threatening stance. To Harry he said, “Leave this vicinity, sir — you and all your clan. March yourselves to the bridge, or I will have every one of you put under arrest.”

Harry Scadger squared his shoulders and bridled his chin. “We are free men. We have done nothing wrong. Our orchard home has been burnt to the ground. We are going to our new lodgings.”

“There is no place in the West End that would take you, or do you intend to commandeer a bivouac for yourself? You will go to workhouses in the East End or you will go to the gaol. What be your choice?”

“We have made known our intention, Deputy, and we will not waver from it. Now, you have tried our patience long enough, so we will be on our way.”

“Take another step and I will strike you with this truncheon,” said the young deputy in a bluff, defiant voice.

“And my brothers and I will strike you down with our twelve fists,” struck in Solomon, who as leader of the clan could remain silent no longer.

“That is a bargain that does not favour me,” said the young deputy sheriff, restoring his billy club to its slot on his belt. Then, reaching inside his coat, he continued, “but let us try this arrangement and see if it doesn’t work better to my benefit.” The deputy drew out a pistol — similar to that used by Sheriff Boldwig three days earlier. “Go to the East End without delay, or I will shoot, and I will not stop shooting until every member of your stinking clan be dead.”

“Capital!” cheered Skettles with a couple of applauding claps of the hands.

“What has come over you, Gradgrind?” asked Harry, taking a step toward the deputy, even though there should be a gun aimed directly at his chest. “That you should turn your back on one of your own to do the bidding of the Bashaws? What are they paying you to debase yourself in this manner?”

“ They ? I’m upholding the law, you jolterhead. And I have no idea what you mean by ‘one of my own.’”

“Your own cousin Violetta who married my brother Zephaniah. Is she now dead to you?”

The dark-eyed and olive-skinned Violetta stepped forward from the cluster of Scadger wives so that the deputy could better see her face.

“I did not recognise you,” said he. “You are now so thin, your cheeks so gaunt. As children we once played together and now I would not know you for anything but a tatterdemalion indigent.”

“Yet that is what I am, cousin,” said Violetta, pulling tight the draggled shawl draping her bony shoulders. “But let us pass. Pray let us pass, dear cousin.”

The young deputy shook his head. “I cannot. I uphold the law. And I will not hesitate to shoot you as well, should the lot of you not go as I have ordered.”

“Then shoot me first,” said Sol, his look hardened and his brow set. With that, the oldest member of the Scadger clan augmented his provocation by advancing forthwith upon the deputy. Deputy Gradgrind took a step back and then another as if he had suddenly lost his nerve along with his authority.