Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

The doctor, who, apparently, thought himself a symphony conductor, rose from his chair and offered his hand. The three of us shook in silence, and in like silence were we escorted from the chambers and out into the passage. Noting our reticence, Towlinson, with one hand gripping the door handle, released a long sigh through his nostrils. “I take it that my brief discourse on the unfortunate state of things wasn’t what you came to hear.”

“Indeed not,” said Sir Dabber, dispiritedly. I merely shook my head in wordless concurrence. Dabber had one thing more to say, which he delivered in a subdued voice: “Things were not so difficult when I served on the board. The Returnees were more tractable then, and their situations less severe.”

“The disease has progressed. To a man. One might chart the course of one and apply it to all the others. Here is the thing that most disturbs me and I will tell it you in all honesty: Mr. Gamfield was not the exception. He was actually, in my studied opinion, the vanguard.”

Dabber returned: “Meaning that every man and woman who was once in the Outland and has returned to Dingley Dell faces the eventuality of violent death within this place?”

Towlinson nodded with gravity. “And let us be thankful that we are able to contend with them within these walls rather than without so that others will not be harmed or leastways collaterally inconvenienced. It is my educated conjecture that the trajectory of each man and woman so afflicted leads to the very same end. Some will take longer to succumb than others, but the course is the same. Now, gentlemen, I really must be about my rounds.” Towlinson turned and closed the door behind him. He drew a key from his waistcoat pocket and locked the door, then gave the handle a pull to test the fastness of the lock. Without giving so much as a parting glance in our direction, he strode quckly down the corridor and was gone. Dabber and I were left standing in stunned silence.

“I don’t believe him,” I finally took breath to say.

‘Nor I,” said Sir Dabber. “Something is direly amiss. I cannot put my finger on it. Yet I am deeply disturbed by it.”

I nodded.

“But alas, there is nothing to be done about it to-day. On Monday I shall go to this month’s board meeting. I have leave to attend as emeritus member of that body. You will come with me.”

I shook my head, less in disagreement than quandary. “That is a closed meeting, Sir Dabber. Surely, I would not be given leave to attend.”

“I will plead for your presence under a petition of special circumstances. I want everything that is said in that room put down on paper, and your shorthand will serve us invaluably. Formerly the board has not kept minutes of its proceedings, but from now on we must have an indisputable record of its business. Come. Let us see my boy before the day has fled.”

“May I ask you one question before we proceed?”

“Of course.”

“During your full tenure upon the hospital board, what was the reason given for why victims of the Terror Tremens, all of them Returnees from the Outland, were denied visitation by their family and friends?”

“The contagious nature of the affliction, of course.”

“There was never another reason put forward — even one that you may have accidentally overheard?”

Dabber shook his head. After a thoughtful pause, he said, “Although I have always found the policy to be rather Draconian in some of its aspects. Consider, for example, the fact that it wasn’t only face-to-face contact between patient and non-patient that was disallowed. There was a proscription placed upon all written correspondence as well.”

“And do you not recall thinking this queer, even unfair at the time?”

“Somewhat. But I was never one to second-guess decisions made by the board. Generally speaking, I simply deferred to the better judgement of Towlinson and Fibbetson on such matters. Yet now that I stop to consider it fully, I do find it most disturbingly queer, and, yes, patently unfair, and I intend to ask for a more detailed justification at Monday’s meeting.”

As we headed down the long gallery that led to the cellar stairs, the imbeciles having been temporarily relegated to the cellar chambers whilst their rooms above were being refurbished, I thought of the magical calculating machine and how it added and subtracted and divided and multiplied numbers, and told one exactly what one wished to know of an arithmetical nature. It did not, most obviously could not, answer those questions that most often pressed upon the minds of Dinglians: Why, in truth, did this place called Dingley Dell come to be? For what purpose? And to what end? And where were we all to be when every question had finally received its answer? More immediately, what other wonders and horrors remained hidden within the valley, privy only to the Towlinsons and the Pupkers amongst us?

Yet this strange day was far from done. As miraculous as was the calculating device, and as tragic as was the intelligence pertaining to Walter Skewton and the unfortunate Mr. Gamfield (who hadn’t even ventured from the valley with adventurous intent, but in coincidental pursuit of his runaway Newfoundland pup), even far greater peculiarities of this day lay only a few steps and a few moments away, and in meeting them, two more pieces of this rather large puzzle, which was being offered to us both intentionally and inadvertently, would be put directly into our hands and heavy would they weigh, though there be some modicum of hope affiliated with them both.

here was no reason to creep into the dark cell that held Sir Dabber’s son Bevan and three other victims of Rokesmith’s rigoritis, but creep we did nonetheless in respectful silence. The attendant who unlocked the door, a roughly-hewn young man from the village of Tavistock whom I knew only as Oscar, informed us prior to shutting us in, “You rap upon this here door, when you got to go. I’ll come set you free.”

“Must we visit with him here ?” asked Dabber of the attendant. “Can he not be taken up to the garden? There are benches there beneath the trees.”

“And light and air,” I added.

Oscar shook his head and rubbed an itch upon his pocked nose. “The ‘rigors’ don’t get the grounds. They stay put where we puts ‘em.”

The door closed with a loud clang and in that jolting instant we joined the company of Bevan and three other men, each of whom was rocking back and forth upon his own cot, seemingly oblivious to our presence.

“My heart breaks for each one of them,” said Sir Dabber, touching the corner of his eye with his oversized pocket-handkerchief. “And to think that there is no cure. It’s most difficult to abide.”

I touched Dabber upon the arm and pointed to his son. “Go and sit with him. Take his hand. Deep within him he must know that it’s you come to visit.”

The large man sighed and nodded and moved to sit next to the young man who bore his surname and a bit of his look. “You should sit on his other side,” Dabber entreated me. “He may like it that there are two who are come to be with him.”

I did not wish to sit next to Bevan. He stank. It had been a while since he had been bathed. There were crumbs clinging to his chin stubble and encrusted morsels lodging within the corners of his mouth. Bevan’s long, matted brown hair remained in an upward sweep as if he had been standing in the wind. I imagined the pitiful young man running his hands upward through his locks over and over again as some of the “rigors” were wont to do.