Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“Yes, yes, relatively speaking of course, as one must speak of all things within the Dell. You see, I am on my annual shopping excursion.” Miss Finching touched the brim of her bonnet by way of illustration.

“Aye. Fetching,” said Muntle with a nod. “I recall that it was during your last year’s sojourn that we enjoyed that pleasant little interlude at the Municipal Cemetery. You with all your parcels and bandboxes piled about you—”

“And you with — well, yourself.”

“Right you are, old girl, and we had that most delightful little chat about — now what was it we discussed, Miss Finching?”

“Cheese, Mr. Muntle, and how much we both adored it.”

Muntle smiled and nodded. “I recall it as if it were only yesterday. And have you time for another interlude, Miss Finching? Could you make time to sit with a dear old friend and sip something warm or perhaps cool— whichever suits your fancy on this day that wants neither to be too hot nor too cold?”

“I am charmed by the very possibility of it,” said Miss Finching, having obviously been asked that very thing that had been her heart’s objective all along.

The two repaired to the Chuffey Bakery, which had chairs and tables inside where those who could not wait to devour their loaves and pastries at home were given leave to wash them down right there upon the premises with milk or tea or chicory.

“I make better buns within my own kitchen,” confided Miss Finching proudly, “and will make some for you on your next visit to the school.”

“But let us not tell Chuffey, for he is a worrisome man who would lose three nights’ sleep over it were he ever to find out. How is the headmaster Chowser? I’ve not had sheriff ’s business up that way in quite some time.”

“He still mourns the loss of the Trimmers boy.”

“As do I. I am a second bachelor uncle, in a way, to the lad.”

“Have you never married, Mr. Muntle?” asked Miss Finching, as she poured tea from the pot that had been put before them.

“I regret to say that I have not, Miss Finching. And yourself?”

Maggy Finching shook her head. “But I am compensated by serving as mother, of a sort, to quite a brood of boys at the school.”

“They are quite the handful, I should think.”

Maggy Finching flinched. Then she apologised much more than was necessary, for there had just been an accident; Maggy, not being able to take her eyes from Muntle’s warm and friendly visage, had consequently over-poured the cup and soaked the table and there now ensued a scramble to sop it all up before Mr. Chuffey should find out, and one hand inadvertently overspread another and was not removed, and Maggy Finching was most happy to see the first part of her plan to win Muntle’s heart go quite swimmingly. Quite puddled and swimmingly indeed.

usan Fagin had dried her tears and then burst into a new round of sobbing and then blotted her eyes once more and blew her nose clean and was now prepared to speak…

…With, that is, another ounce or two more of paternal prodding: “Is it something to do with the girls with whom you live at the Nurses’ Dormitory?” asked the father. “Have they taken to teazing you again about the size of your feet? It cannot be helped that we have large feet in this family. And there is no shame or scandal in it. In fact, it makes the cobbler quite happy to charge an extra florin for the additional leather required for the insoles.”

“It isn’t about my feet, Papa,” replied Susan Fagin, still attired in her nurse’s uniform with its obligatory little mob cap — a medical costume which often invited people to ask Miss Fagin far from her places of employment to give close inspection to a whitlow infection upon the finger, or to put her hand upon a forehead to divine a fever.

“Has something dreadful befallen you, my child?” asked Mrs. Fagin, who now betrayed her wonted placid demeanour with moderate maternal hysteria. “Tell me that there is no disease of the womb. We are prone to diseases of the womb on my side of the family — even those who have not borne children.”

“It cannot be her womb,” expostulated Mr. Fagin. “It must certainly be her bear-sized feet.”

“Enough!” erupted Susan. “You’re both being most alarmingly ridiculous. It is neither my womb nor my feet. It is not anything that has happened to me for that matter, except that I have been made the undeserving recipient of a rather disturbing bit of intelligence, which I know not how to interpret.”

“Well, perhaps you should start, dear,” said the mother in a much calmer tone, “by fully unbosoming yourself to your father and me. That is what mothers and fathers are for. It is our most worthwhile purpose in life: to offer love and succour and parental advice to our only child.”

“And only then to sell broaches and pendants, and collect rents on our several rental properties, if you wish to know the proper order of things, my darling girl,” said the father who had begun to knead his daughter’s shoulders in the way that most relaxed her.

“Do you remember my telling you both of the unfortunate Mrs. Pyegrave who was brought into the Respectable Hospital? How abominably she had been treated by that most disreputable charlatan physician Dr. Fibbetson who then left her there upon her bed to expire the very next day?”

“Of course we do, my love, and we can scarcely abide the thought of what was done to her any better than can you.” This from Mrs. Rose Fagin who had begun to thread her daughter’s fingers through her own so that Susan should be ever the more relaxed and quieted and further reminded of her parents’ love and their interminable interest in her well being.

“Well, there is a little more to the story; it pertains to that critical moment in the poor woman’s final terrestrial hours that was witnessed by me and me alone.”

“Whatever do you mean, daughter?” asked the father, his massaging hands suddenly stilled by surprise.

“Everyone who visited Mrs. Pyegrave — everyone who came to her room as life slowly ebbed away from her — even the housemaid who wept such tears upon her mistress’s pillowcase that I was compelled to change it lest the patient catch cold from the dampness — saw an insensible woman, dead to all who came and went. Everyone, that is, save me .”

Mrs. Rose Fagin’s eyes goggled and her mouth formed a rosebud with her lips.

“Whatever do you mean, my daughter?” asked the father, putting his palm upon the shiny glass display case and smudging it — a thing that was never done in this shop but which mattered not the least in the midst of this most riveting revelation.

“I mean that there were a few minutes — not many — in which the patient returned to her senses and was awake, though a bit groggy, but awake enough to speak to me, and to be coherent in our impromptu exchange. And to tell me something she felt should be told to someone prior to her demise.”

“She confided something to you ?” asked Mrs. Rose Fagin. “How queer! A nurse whom she hardly knew!”

Susan nodded. “For there was no one else around, and she knew not how long it should be before unconsciousness should steal her away again.”

“And have you the desire to tell us, darling? To tell us what she said?”

“I must tell someone , Mama, for it frightens me so dreadfully. I have little slept or eaten in all the days and nights that have passed since I was conscripted as that woman’s solitary auditor.”