Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“More precipitant than this ?” I asked, and then gently pressed my lips to her cheek.

“Perhaps not,” said Miss Wolf, closing her eyes in something that I would like to interpret as private rapture, although it could merely have been a simple, circumstantial frisson of momentary pleasure.

“You are a bachelor, with no wife,” said Miss Wolf.

I nodded, probing the green depths of her eyes with my own somewhat dull brown ones.

“And you have no lover, no paramour, no woman to whom you have already pledged your heart?”

“Madam Inquisitor, I have none. I had a love — my last — her name was Fanny Lumbey.”

Miss Wolf nodded soberly. “Yes, yes. A sad case. I read of it in my training.”

“She was the last woman whom I—”

She nodded. I suspended.

“And whom could I myself have loved from that invalid’s bed? Those who came and went — the men, that is, who ministered to me — were there to heal, not to win my heart.”

A moment of silence passed and I kissed Nurse Ruth Wolf again, this time upon the lips. When our lips parted, she sighed. Then she cleared her throat, and then she took the heels of her hands and pushed me gently away from her. “Yet I cannot.”

“Why?”

“Because I have lied to you. There is someone else, and I would never, could never forget him in a raw moment of passion with a man whom I hardly — It is all quite foolish.”

My spirit was broken. I felt at that moment thoroughly trod upon. “This is foolish?”

“No, no, not foolish. No, no, not at all. Only untenable. You understand? You do, don’t you? Think if Fanny had lived. You would be married by now and the three of us would be sitting here together, respecting all decorum with napkins spread upon the knees and properly clinking our teacups and saucers with our spoons. Is this not true?”

I nodded. I certainly would not have kissed Miss Ruth Wolf with Fanny sitting here — nay, with Fanny anywhere else but beneath the hard earth.

“So let us suspend this encounter before it begets regrets.”

I nodded once more. “Although I will forever repine what was nearly ours.”

“Is that true? Why, Mr. Trimmers, you are a veritable romantic.” Miss Wolf rose from the ottoman and took my hand and gave it a proper shake.

At that moment, something came suddenly to mind. I crossed to my brother’s easy chair where I had left the sketchpad. I picked it up and began to leaf quickly through it. “I have a — yes, here it is.”

I shewed a particular sketch to Miss Wolf. It was of my brother Gus at Newman’s age. “I find the resemblance here to be rather remarkable.”

“Yes, I see what you mean.”

“But you haven’t met Newman.”

Miss Wolf cleared her throat. “I mean the resemblance of your brother as a boy to the way he now looks as a man.”

I studied the sketch, unaware of how deftly Miss Wolf had just concealed her misstep. “Yes, there is still quite a bit of the boy-Gus remaining in his adult features.”

“Thank you for the tea, Mr. Trimmers. And I thank you as well for saving me from the jaws of the Widow Chillip’s canine sentry. This has been a most interesting—”

“May I—” I interrupted. “Begging your pardon, Miss Wolf, but may I play the role of inquisitor just once more for the purpose of asking a parting question?”

“If it isn’t of too prying a nature.”

“The one to whom you have pledged your heart — is his name known only to you, Miss Wolf, or may I have knowledge of it as well?”

My auditor responded with a slightly reproving wag of the finger. “You should know his name so that — what? — you should challenge him to a duel or a joust or some other such medieval thing? No, Mr. Trimmers, I’ll not indulge you by divulging it. At least not now. There are circumstances which militate against our union — his and mine — so any public declaration of our affection would not be wise.”

“I see. I understand. Good night, Miss Wolf. Don’t forget your medical bag.” I picked up the bag and handed it to the nurse, who had in those brief moments of our time together seised my heart and held it close to hers and then returned it to me, slightly rumpled.

She thanked me and departed.

A slightly rumpled heart was better than that which had preceded it — a broken and mourning heart. I felt revived and in the end did not repent the encounter at all. It was all I could do to keep myself from stepping next door and shaking Pepper’s paw in gratitude for having made it all possible.

rose early in the morning to work on the Medical Review Board’s yearly report. I had been at the task for scarcely above a quarter hour when I heard two gentle taps upon my door — taps that were quite familiar to my ear. More than likely my landlady Mrs. Lumbey had heard me stepping about her creaking floors and had thoughtfully risen to bring me tea.

But there was no tea tray left outside my door. Instead, there was the good woman herself, her generally bright and pleasant countenance transfigured by perturbation and worry.

“What is it?” I asked, ushering her into my sitting room. “What’s the matter?”

I bade the good woman sit down and she did so without hesitation. I took a chair and drew it next to hers.

“It concerns Miss Pupker. She came to me last night in a most wretched state.”

“You refer to the older of the two Pupker sisters: Hannah?”

Mrs. Lumbey nodded. “The older and more agreeable one. That state being, of course, the rule, I do fear that her wonted affability has been exceptionally tested by events of late. She was in such a frightful way last night, Trimmers. She could not be still, even as I took her hand and patted it most assiduously to calm her.”

Mrs. Lumbey required a moment to compose herself, fanning her hand a little before her face. I waited patiently for her to resume. I did not wish to hurry her with the sort of impatient entreaties that generally characterised my parleys with my older brother Augustus — even before the loss of his son — or my good friend Muntle.

“The cause was this, Frederick: Hannah, the poor girl — she came to me last night, enlisting me as her confidante. We have become quite close, as you know, since the death of her friend Fanny. Hannah, you see, had overheard something quite terrible which she needed to unbosom.”

“And does the matter keep itself only between the two of you or are you at liberty to relate to me its particulars?”

Mrs. Lumbey nodded solemnly. “I see no reason that you shouldn’t know of it. ’Twas an exchange between her mother and father she secretly audited. They had no idea that she was standing just outside the parlour room door imbibing every syllable interchanged between them. You see, Trimmers, the two had put their daughter to bed with a warm cordial to make her sleep. After they had quitted the room, she spat the soporific liquid into a vase, not a drop of it having been swallowed, and so she was quite wakeful to overhear what was said.”

“And why was it so important for her to hear what her parents were saying in her absence?”

“Only the week before she had been discovered by her father in a place that she should not have been. He was quite upset, I should say — most terribly agitated against her, more so than she would have thought him to be, given the obvious innocence in the trespass.”

“Where was she found, Mrs. Lumbey, that Pupker should be so violently put out with her?”

“She hasn’t said, and I cannot get it out of her. Perchance she’ll tell you , Trimmers. She’s always been quite fond of you.”