Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“Because there is another reason for his secret incarceration. Let us think of what that could be.”

“What else can it be but this, Dabber? That each who is held here should not be given leave to speak of what they know — what they have gleaned from time spent outside the Dell. There are things that they’ve seen, things that they know, which cannot, nay, must not be revealed.”

“It is all quite crocodilian — the whole business — isn’t it?”

I nodded. “And perhaps Newman isn’t the only one who has been slipped in here in the dead of night in such a crocodilian fashion. If this be true, Dabber, there should be no reason that Muntle could not enter this hospital on the morrow, writ in hand, and search every room for every Returnee who is being held captive here.”

“But who would sign such a writ? Judge Fitz-Marshall? I think not, Trimmers. Based upon what — a suspicion? A collection of Egyptian hieroglyphs? Fitz-Marshall wouldn’t do it. Nor should any of the other magistrates, possessed of not a single independent streak amongst the lot of them. No, we cannot do it by prescribed and lawful means, Trimmers. Just as I cannot go to Judge Fitz-Marshall and demand the release of my son on a different form of habeas corpus.”

“My nephew is entreating me with chalked fingers to help him, however I can. In want of an ideogram for the imperative, he is imploring me to look for him! It is all here. I see it now in his missive to me.”

“Let us not be precipitant. Let us take some time to think of a proper course of action both for my son Bevan and for your nephew. And for whomever else is kept against his wishes within this increasingly perilous place and must be freed. There is something terribly malignant in all of this, Trimmers, I am sure of it. We must therefore tread with great caution from this point forward. Lest — if nothing else — the kindnesses shewn by this Beyonder nurse Miss Wolf be discovered and perhaps punished, and Bevan lose his advocate-angel and his healing medicaments.”

I nodded, recalling my recent encounter with Miss Wolf and wondering how it could possibly be that an advocate-angel (who shewed a devilishly angelic side to me as well) should first start along her ministering path with the hard steps of a destroying monster. Then I knelt down and with my sleeve scrubbed away the Egyptian markings that my nephew had made, so that no one else should find them.

Sir Dabber nodded his agreement with this protective action, wheezed, and gave the slightest shudder. Then Dabber said this: “There is another kindness that Miss Wolf has done for us. I’m certain now that it must have been she.”

“Yes? What is it?”

“Miss Wolf has set your mind at ease that your nephew has been safely returned to the Dell.”

“How has she done this , Dabber?”

“By sending me this note.” Sir Dabber drew a crumpled piece of paper from his vest pocket. “It was slipped beneath my front door yesterday. You will see that it was penned anonymously, but who else could have written it but someone who wanted to make certain that you accompanied me to-day?”

I took the note and read it. This is what it said:

Sir Dabber:

You must not go alone to see your son to-morrow. As one who knows best Bevan’s current state, I entreat you to take a companion with you to lend you a supportive and consolatory hand. Think upon the words of the writer Frederick Trimmers who wrote so eloquently upon the plight of the beleaguered Scadger clan: “Anguish and woe to him that walks alone by choice or by cruel natural design. But comfort and joy to him that would accept the succoring hand from without. Can it be any other way? The woeful one must find courage to invite that hand of aid and comfort, which had previously been eschewed. It is the best course for keeping loneliness and isolation at bay and for improving the spirit.”

“ I wrote that?”

“If you did not, Trimmers, it was attributed to you for a purpose — a purpose for which I was its most receptive recipient. For did I not ask you to accompany me? And was not your candidacy suggested by that missive in its cunning manner?”

I nodded, the mystery of Ruth Wolf growing, even as more about her had been revealed. “The angel seems, in a sense, to be ministering to us all,” I said musingly.

Dabber and I summoned Oscar so that we should be escorted from this dreary place — a place that had ironically fed the two of us with the morsels of renewed hope. Sir Dabber and I were now determined to visit this building again when we had a better sense as to what could be done for those we loved who were interned here. In the meantime I would speak with Ruth Wolf and find out all that I could from this woman whose conscientious heart grew with every new mention or thought of her.

ust what was Ruth Wolf ’s original commission? I wondered and pondered. Could it really be true that an Outlander had been working here in Dingley Dell without detection, performing acts of evil in her nurse’s habit and then repenting and atoning in an equally important way? My head was spinning as I accompanied Sir Dabber back to his manse.

The housemaid Arabella was gone. She was off buying a summer frock and bonnet and visiting with friends in Pedlar Place (a working class neighbourhood in Milltown) — things she would otherwise have been doing the previous Saturday afternoon had she not been drafted by Fips, the butler, to help him polish all the silverware and plate, which was growing tarnished from neglect. With the death of Lady Dabber, Dabber Hall had begun to lose its polish and lustre, and although it would never be mistaken for Miss Havisham’s decomposing Satis House (of Great Expectations reference), the mansion had its own repletion of dust and cobwebs, the equally present mould and mildew, no doubt, aggravating Dabber’s ongoing respiratory difficulties.

Upon our arrival late that afternoon Fips could not be found. Later he was discovered ensconced in his room upstairs on this, his alternate afternoon off, reading something borrowed, no doubt, from the Academic and Lending Library. More than likely he was perusing the transcribed Ensyke article devoted to France, because Fips believed himself to be of French stock.

“We may speak freely and in confidence in my sitting room,” said Dabber. “Fips will not descend those stairs unless there be a fire, and even then I should possibly have to haul him bodily from his interminable appointment with the Gauls.”

We drew chairs before the fireplace, though there was no fire therein, this being early July. A silence passed between us, as each of us communed with his own thoughts about all that we had witnessed on this most eventful Wednesday afternoon.

“My head is most muddled,” said Dabber, finally, taking out his snuffbox. “I have not the faintest sense as to whether this is all some sort of wild dream. Are we upon the brink of something of awesome consequence, my friend, or have I instead partaken of a large dose of opium unawares?”

“I’m no longer certain of anything myself at this moment,” was the only thing I could think to say in response.

“Is it really possible,” continued Dabber, “that the cavalcade of time has marched itself forward and left us all behind, just as my son has said? What then should be the reason that we have been kept here as antiquities? Is that what we are, Trimmers? Or are we more like curiosities in some scientific zoological park?”

I wanted to reply that perhaps our being kept here for so long in this secluded valley served to our benefit. Perhaps there was some grave and deadly pestilence on the outside, the avoidance of which had allowed us to survive, nay, even to thrive after a fashion. Perhaps Bevan could feign his rigoritis for a time, but such a thing as purportedly infested the brains of each of our Returnees — such a thing could not possibly be counterfeited. Or could it? I wanted to say that surely there were terrible, life-threatening illnesses beyond our border and that we had not yet the means to protect ourselves from them. Yet I said none of these things to Sir Dabber, for in the darkest recesses of my heart, I had come to feel that I could no longer trust any of those former theories for why we were here. To-day was the day that I began to view everything through a different prism, one refracting cynicism and grim doubt.