Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

I could not help smiling at my friend’s sudden agitation over something that lived only in her own fancy.

“Smokes the cigars or the candles?” I chuckled.

“You’re making sport of me, aren’t you?”

“Estella, I really wish that you and Antonia would make a better effort to get along. I’m fond of the both of you in equal measure, and it troubles me that you’re so frequently at odds.”

“Need I remind you, Frederick, who it was who started the two of us down this adversarial path? Who it was who opened a dress emporium when a small and humble shop in the very same neighbourhood was serving quite sufficiently the needs of its female residents? She advances herself by breaking every rule of deference and common courtesy in the marketplace, and frankly, I cannot see at all how your society with her serves to your benefit.”

“Nor do some people understand why I allow you to continue to be my landlady when you’re forever caviling and carping and rattling pots and pans early of a morning when I’m trying to sleep.” I tried my best to say this without the smile that contradicted the hard sentiment, but could not.

“If you wish to go and live under some other roof, be gone and good riddance, you troublesome ingrate!” Here my landlady could not withhold her own smile. “But mind: no one will feed you better or keep you in fresher linens or listen to your philosophies at two o’clock in the morning. You would be lost without me, Frederick, and I dare you to try it.”

I enveloped my friend and landlady in an affectionate embrace, for her knitted brow seemed to require some manner of genial appeasement. She hugged me in return and patted me and then chided me for sleeping so late.

“Last night’s late hours were spent in the company of my brother and Sheriff Muntle,” I remonstrated.

“I thought you were at the play.”

“I gave my ticket away. I didn’t feel up to watching the protracted death of little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop . A comedy would have served me better.”

“At all events, I thought that you’d taken one of the young women who write articles for the Delver with you. You once told me how fond you are of each of them.”

I nodded. “I enjoy their company, Estella — most certainly I do — but it is not my season for finding a young woman to whom I should make love. My heart simply isn’t in it these days.”

“I understand,” said Mrs. Lumbey in a soft, almost reverential tone. It was Estella Lumbey’s daughter Fanny to whom I had been most devoted, and we had even spoken of marrying once I could better support the two of us with my writing, but fate had dealt us both a terrible hand (and her most cruelly) by ending her young life through an infection of the bronchia that could not be surmounted. Although Fanny’s death had occurred a good eighteen months earlier, painful memory of her remained. It was a fact that strangely bound me to my landlady, since she would in all likelihood have been my mother-in-law had her daughter survived.

Here — and I was quite skilled at reading the buried purpose beneath my landlady and cherished friend’s questions and opinions — she was saying that perhaps it was time for me to find a young woman who, although she should never take the place of her beloved Fanny, would at least fill part of that void that Fanny’s death had so deeply carved into my being. I understood that. Yet still I was not ready.

I could not help comparing every girl I met to Fanny and each fell short of that lofty standard. When one dies who is greatly loved, the loss tends to inflate the feelings of the one who is left behind; it adds a glistening to memories already amply aglow, and lionises the character of the beloved to the point of blind irrationality. Such was the position into which Fanny’s demise had put me. And such was the hurdle placed between me and every other girl who wished to win my heart.

There was a little cough in the doorway, which communicated with Mrs. Lumbey’s sewing room and her living quarters behind it, and we both looked up to see the gawky, dough-cheeked Amy Casby wearing a dress of her own proud design: a white muslin frock trimmed in beaver, with tartan stockings and a bottle green bonnet from which hung fringe intermingled with tiny cloth butterflies.

It was quite a hideous display outside of a comical costume shop but Mrs. Lumbey applauded the look (as did I) and had Miss Casby to turn round so that we might view the paisley bow that graced the back of the clown’s garment.

“A very good start, my dear!” Mrs. Lumbey complimented her apprentice. “I would not have put all of those elements together, but it is a most intriguing mix, is it not, Frederick?”

“Most intriguing,” I said to be kind.

“Now go back, my sweet, and remove the busy bow and all the beaver, and give yourself some less — how should I put this? — Scottish stockings.”

“And what about the butterflies?”

“Oh you must certainly keep the butterflies, my pet. They make the entire outfit sing.”

After Amy Casby left the room (happy but a little confused by the logic behind Mrs. Lumbey’s suggestions), I asked my landlady the question that I had sought to put to her when first I had come downstairs: “Have you plans this week to go riding in Regents Park?”

“I should like to, but what if there rises a sudden, overwhelming demand for more of my reversibles? I’ll have no time for anything but stitching, morning, noon, and night. No rest or recreation for the weary. No. As much as Mister Jip might pony-pine for my company, which always brings to him a welcome abundance of apples and sugar cubes for his equine delectation, it is best that I postpone our inter-species tryst for yet another week.”

“No riding this week? You’re certain?”

Mrs. Lumbey nodded. “Yes, Frederick, I am most certain. Nor should I be going nearly as often as I do now. It is an extravagance that I can scarcely afford. So, I’m afraid that you are out of luck.”

“What do you mean, ‘out of luck’?”

Mrs. Lumbey simpered in a deliberately mischievous manner, and absently brushed a bit of lint from the gown that hung upon a rack beside her. Then she said rather matter-of-factly, “Because I shan’t be able to go to give you the necessary pretext by which you should have your chat with that boy-groom Jemmy.”

“And how—?” I dropt my voice, lest I should be heard out in the street, the front door to the shop having been left open to be more welcoming to potential customers (though it was mostly flies and gnats that accepted the invitation to enter the establishment at this early hour). “How did you know that I wished to speak to Jemmy?”

Mrs. Lumbey laughed. “I am a shopkeeper, Frederick. Women come hither to do business with me — women who know things and are more than willing to tell me what they know. For example, I know that the boygroom — the striking young lad with the name Jemmy — was doing a bit more for the late Mrs. Pyegrave than simply walking that beautiful mare out of her stall and saddling her up and giving her every consideration which — ahem — a creature such as that requires. There are questions that you wish to ask him, perhaps to the benefit of something you are writing. The true purpose eludes me, but in time, I suppose, you will either tell me or you will not, and at all events I will eventually hear every detail of it from one of my gossiping customers.”

“I am not at liberty at present to give you an explanation, Estella.”

“I understand. But if I were given to supposition, I should say that Mrs. Pyegrave’s death was in some way related to a husband’s rage over discovering that his wife was frequenting the park with something more in mind than simply bestowing apples and sugar cubes upon a favourite horse. There was something sweet that she was giving one of the twolegged creatures who resided in those stables as well: a young man who was just himself learning how to ride.”