Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“Fond of me. How do you mean?”

My question elicited the smallest suggestion of a grin upon her full lips. “You have always been kind to her, ever since she was a young girl. I recall the way that both of those girls — Hannah and my dear departed Fanny — nipped at your heels like playful puppies. Unlike the other older boys, you always stopt to offer a kind word about the dress of their dollies or to pay compliments to their curly locks. (I appreciated the compliments as well, Frederick, having spent long sessions applying the curl papers to Fanny’s naturally straight tresses.) Your kind attendance was all quite affecting to see. Even though your friendship with Fanny bloomed into love, your amity with Hannah did not recede. She wonders, in fact, why you come so seldom these days to her father’s sundry shop to visit.”

“In a word, Mrs. Lumbey: Pupker.”

Mrs. Lumbey nodded. “Hellhound of the first order. I cannot even bring myself to look upon him.”

“Nor I to feign any manner of civility with her , alas.”

Mrs. Lumbey did not suspend her agreeable nod. “He connives to gull every customer who sets foot in his shop into paying far more than his merchandise is worth. He is a merchant of the lowest order, Frederick, and a discredit to all of us who make our living in this otherwise respectable profession. It astounds me that the brokers continue to deal with him at all, let alone bestow upon him the choicest of imports.”

Mrs. Lumbey was right to ventilate her hostile feelings toward Montague Pupker, and I was fain to second her opinion. There was a history of animus between Pupker and half the citizens of the Dell, which couldn’t be ignored.

“So it should come as no surprise to me , Frederick, that the man is a disreputable father as well. Indeed, both of Hannah’s parents give love to their two daughters most sparingly, but Hannah is by far the more maltreated and maligned of the two.”

“What is it that they seek to do to her?”

“It is unspeakable.”

“Pray speak it nonetheless.”

“Petition Judge Fitz-Marshall for an order of lunacy to put Hannah into Bedlam.”

“Into the asylum?”

“Alongside all the lunatic and deranged of Dingley Dell. It beggars belief. There’s nothing wrong with Hannah, save the sort of reticence and self-abashment that one finds within the temperament of many of our more sheltered young women.”

It was difficult for me to hear what my ears were recording. “For what reason would they seek to do such a thing, Mrs. Lumbey?”

“I cannot give you the full reason, Frederick, for I know not yet where it was that Hannah went that set her father so terribly against her. But I can tell you this : that Mr. and Mrs. Pupker intend over the next several days to concoct situations in which Hannah cannot help but appear to even the most casual observer to be compromised in mental facility and discomposed in the worst possible ways. And they have already begun the process.”

“How do you mean?”

“They make frightful noises at night when she is abed — the sort of noises that a ghost would make, and they touch her with feathers — at least it feels this way to her — as she sleeps so that she awakes to feel the touch of a ghostly hand upon her skin. And she cries out in fear, as would be the inclination of anyone who found herself waking to the skeletal touch of a bony wraith. The parents are there when she wakes to say that she has been screaming thusly for a long season. She surmises that Cecilia, her sister, is in on the business as well, for upon wakeful occasions she will deny the spectral noises that Hannah hears even as they pervade the darkened bedchamber with penetrating clarity.”

“And you’re certain, Mrs. Lumbey — don’t misread me here — that there is not the slightest chance that Hannah could indeed be teetering upon the brink of insanity and that the overheard conference between her mother and father could not have at least some foundation of legitimacy?”

Mrs. Lumbey shook her head whilst giving the kind of stern look that comes when I fail to tidy up my apartments after several days of bachelor negligence. “I’ve never been surer of anything in my life,” was my friend and landlady’s ardent rejoinder. “If I were not, I shouldn’t have asked the poor dear girl to stop with me last night.”

“You mean to say that Hannah is presently within this house?”

Mrs. Lumbey nodded.

“And do Mr. and Mrs. Pupker know this?”

Again, Mrs. Lumbey nodded. “You were at your brother’s house last night when Hannah came, with her mother and father and sister in close and angry pursuance. Your niece Alice was tagging along as well. Is she stopping with the Pupkers whilst Augustus and Charlotte take the country air in Hungerford?”

I nodded. “But don’t ask me to explain her affiliation with that family.”

“Then I shan’t. At all events, I sat with Hannah in my bed chamber and held her hand and listened to her side of things as Mr. and Mrs. Pupker and their daughter Cecilia sat and paced by turns in my front parlour, the odious father bellowing that the girl must be turned over to him without further delay. I emerged to say that I didn’t agree, and with some resolve I instructed Montague Pupker that he and his wife and their younger daughter and, of course, Alice (since she wasn’t come to see her uncle) should leave my premises immediately, for I had decided that Hannah would remain with me for the time being and that the matter, as far as I was concerned, had been fully settled.”

“A most commendable act, Mrs. Lumbey,” I said, shaking my landlady’s hand. “And what was Pupker’s reaction to this brave stand on your part?”

“At first he would have none of it, and there was stomping and bluster and protest in repletion, but he must then have come to realise that although Hannah lived beneath his own roof, one could make the case that she had reached her majority and could therefore make up her own mind about where she should spend the night.”

“Even if the mother and father believed her mental capacity to be impaired by lunacy?”

“That case has yet to be made. Remember that the conversation which Hannah overheard last night was about that which was being plotted and schemed, but had yet to come to full fruition.”

“Meaning that perhaps you rescued Hannah before her parents could engineer evidence sufficient to prove non compos mentis .”

With a self-assured nod of the head, Mrs. Lumbey returned, “I hope and pray, though, that there was little truth to their vow to return to-day with the sheriff and fetch her home by whatever means could be secured.”

I took a breath and then a moment to compose myself. “I should like to see her when she rises.”

Mrs. Lumbey nodded. After an interval of silence, during which each of us allowed the facts of this troublesome matter to cure within our thoughts, she turned to me and said, “Trimmers, pray tell me if I did the right thing.”

“To be sure, you did. But it’s now up to the two of us together to discover what was done or seen by poor Hannah that has placed her within such desperate straits. I’ll speak with her, if she’s calm and will permit the interview.”

I was relieved to see that Muntle came alone. There was not a single Pupker hiding behind tree or lamppost to spring upon Mrs. Lumbey’s shop and adjoining lodgings to reclaim their fugitive daughter. This happy fact would afford me the chance to argue for Hannah being given leave to remain with Mrs. Lumbey without cross-questioning by the Pupkers. Besides, as I may have mentioned before, I didn’t like Pupker and chose to avoid intercourse with him at every opportunity.