Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“It frightens me still, Mrs. Lumbey. He. That man there, lying behind the dress rack. See his legs jutting out like those of a corpse?”

The three of us, who had yet to notice the legs, now positioned ourselves to do that very thing. But the legs were no longer simply fixed in their spot; now they moved. Behind a row of frocks and gowns a man now seemed to be pulling himself up from a prone orientation into a seated one, his identity masked by the wall of vendible wardrobe in front of him. Once drawn up, the legs disappeared altogether.

“I heard a noise,” whispered Amy, her voice quavering. “I thought that it was Mrs. Gallanbile’s cat come in through the cellar window. But that is no cat!”

“Whoever is hiding there,” I sternly commanded the unseen interloper, “kindly make yourself known this instant.”

There ensued the sound of someone struggling to raise himself to his feet. It took a moment for the man of mystery to complete the task and a moment longer for him to step aside of the clothing rack and reveal himself to the four of us.

For a second I felt as if my eyes were playing tricks on me — that it was a ghost standing before me — one come back briefly to commune with the living after a season with the dead. For a brief second I could not believe that my own brother Augustus, holding himself weakly and unsteadily against the pole, which supported one end of the clothing rack, his legs all but buckling beneath him, had materialised into flesh and blood before my very eyes.

“As I live and breathe!” exclaimed Mrs. Lumbey.

“It is my brother Augustus,” I said to Miss Casby to calm her fluttered spirits. “He will not harm you.” I went to Gus, took him by the arm, and led him to a chair.

“Dear, dear man!” said Mrs. Lumbey. “You look as if you’ve been trampled by a coach-and-eight, and have lived to tell the story.”

“Yes, and I feel exactly the same,” replied Gus.

“What is required, you poor dear? Food? Drink? You’ve taken a little rest through the night upon my showroom floor, but that will not do. When you’re able to make the climb, Frederick will take you up to his bed.”

Gus nodded. In a broken, crusty voice, he said, “I should very much fancy a longer, more cushioned sleep, for Beyonders know nothing of Eiderdown.”

As Gus and I shared a look of fraternal affection which for the moment required no appendance of words, Mrs. Lumbey began to issue instructions; Amy was to put a kettle on for tea and her boarder Hannah was to go to the larder and get bread and butter and cold beef and anything else that would provide her famished-looking visitor needed sustenance.

“You’ve come back,” I said to my brother, not knowing what else at that odd moment to say.

“By the very hardest.”

“Where have you been all of these days?”

“First held captive by a mentally-infirm woman in the Outland, then kept enchained by near-mortal illness upon a bed.”

“But you must have gotten better or you wouldn’t be here,” I observed.

Gus nodded. “In the end the woman and her mother did what no other Outlander would have done: they nursed me back to near health and facilitated my return to Dingley Dell. But I am still weak, and weaker still after my return trip.”

“And was your son Newman anywhere to be found?” asked Mrs. Lumbey after a slight hesitation.

“Alas. I never got to him. I had hardly any time at all to seek him before the woman took me for her prisoner.” Gus turned his gaze to me now, wearing an expression upon his pale, gaunt face of the most tangible species of hopelessness: “Then Newman hasn’t — isn’t—“

I shook my head. I could not tell the truth to my brother at that moment. The fact of the boy’s return had to be carefully, thoughtfully conveyed, or there was no telling what Gus would do in the way of trying to rescue him. I didn’t want to see my brother put into Bedlam as well. I would give him no reason to reveal himself and be taken into custody.

Gus released a most heavily freighted sigh and dropt his shoulders. “Yes. I knew it. In my heart I did know it.”

“And did you see nothing of the Outland, Gus?” asked Mrs. Lumbey, attempting in a purposefully blithe voice to rally my brother by way of conversational distraction.

“Nothing in actuality but the inside of the house where I stopt. I did, however, see a great deal of the Outland, pictorially speaking, through the window of a television.”

“What is that?” asked Mrs. Lumbey. “A televizy?”

“I’m too tired to explain. Ask me after I’ve rested.”

“How did you get into my shop?”

“Through a half-open area window to the cellar. So I should not be detected.”

“And wise it was that you didn’t go to your house,” I said. “Or did you?”

Gus shook his head. “Credit your older brother with some sense, Freddie.”

“You can remain here for as long as you like,” said Mrs. Lumbey with a smile of conspiratorial accommodation. “It is become a safe house of sorts already, hasn’t it, Frederick?”

I nodded.

And then Mrs. Lumbey explained — as quickly as would still serve the topic — the saga of Hannah Pupker, her discourse ending by the time of the appearance of that same young woman, who bore a platter of every food that she could procure from the Lumbey stores.

Scarcely a half-hour later, I helped Gus up-stairs to my rooms and put him into my bed where he quickly drifted off into needful slumber — but not before he took brief leave to ask me sleepily if I would go to his house and tell Charlotte that he was back in Dingley Dell and that he was safe but that he durst not return to his house. So she must come to see him here.

I sat in a chair and watched my brother sleeping soundly for a minute or two as thoughts raced through my head. When should I tell Gus what I knew about Newman? What should I tell him — for that matter — about all that had taken place during his ten-day sojourn in the Terra Incognita? For events were transpiring more quickly now, and with each new revelation our small world seemed more and more at risk of disappearing forever.

But at least Gus had come home. And that was cause for gratitude and quiet celebration.

When I reached my brother’s house, I found my friends Antonia Bocker and Dr. Timberry sitting in the front parlour and speaking in almost cheerful tones.

“Has Charlotte taken a turn for the better?” I asked.

“She has indeed,” said Antonia. “And we have Dr. Timberry and that Beyonder marvel of a nurse, Ruth Wolf, to thank for it.”

Timberry, blushing, picked up the thread of Antonia’s explanation. “Mrs. Trimmers was having a most terrible and fearful night and I did not wish to simply administer laudanum and see her put out for the next twenty or so hours, so I poked about in the traveling dispensary that Miss Wolf left with me, and found something that the accompanying apothecary’s book said was good for distress and unease. She demonstrates none of the negative ancillary effects that generally characterise the Opiates prescribed for the same complaint. It is called Xanax, by the bye, and it is most amazing in its efficacy.”

“I’ve brought my maid-of-all-work Harriet to give your sister-in-law a much-needed bath, Trimmers,” offered Antonia. “And the ablution seems to be a further lift to her spirits.”

“And I have something that will lift Charlotte’s spirits even more,” I said eagerly. “Gus has returned. He is resting himself in my bedchamber above Mrs. Lumbey’s shop.”

“My dear Trimmers, I am thrilled beyond words!” Antonia shook her head in joyous disbelief. “In this time of so much to mourn and fear, he has done the impossible: your brother has come back to us all in one piece!” With sudden concern: “I take it Gus is still all in one piece?”