“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?”
I nodded with a grin.
Antonia resumed: “That he should have returned by his own wits and industry is more than a joy, is it not, Dr. Timberry?”
“Indeed.”
“Mulberry,” said I, “I would like you to examine Gus at your earliest convenience. To make certain that whilst he is quite exhausted and somewhat malnourished, there is nothing else the matter with him.”
“I will have a look at Hannah Pupker, as well, for she has undergone quite a trial at the hands of her father.”
But Hannah Pupker’s trial was hardly over.
Within two hours the young woman had lost her battle to keep herself from immurement within the malignant walls of Bedlam. The good protective offices of Mrs. Lumbey and the good legal offices of Sheriff Muntle had not been enough to prevent it, and by that point-in-time, Muntle’s offices were no longer his to employ anyway.
This we discovered upon my return to Mrs. Lumbey’s in the company of Mulberry and Antonia and my sister-in-law Charlotte, who had yet to be told that we were taking her to be reunited with her lost husband Gus so as to prevent onlookers from deducing from her rapturous expression the fact of her beloved’s return.
What awaited us when we gained my landlady’s shop was nothing to be wished for and everything that had been dreaded: the new chief law enforcement officer of Dingley Dell — the absurdly freckled, red-topped Mr. Boldwig — was at the very moment of our arrival in the midst of transporting a combative, yet wholly frightened Hannah Pupker out the front door of Mrs. Lumbey’s shop, as several other men stood close by with folded arms and penetrating, satisfied visages. The men were Hannah’s own tyrannical father, Montague Pupker; the dictatorial director of Bedlam, Dr. Arthur Towlinson; the malpractising, malodourous Dr. Fibbetson; and Bedlam’s empty-headed orderly Oscar, who stood hard by the open door of the van, which had been requisitioned to convey the young woman to her new address.
Trailing Boldwig and his captive out the door was a most distressed Mrs. Lumbey and her equally discomposed assistant Amy Casby.
“What is this?” I enquired, interposing myself between the sheriff and the van.
“No business of yours,” replied Boldwig with a cracking voice that had yet to settle upon a consistent adult pitch.
“Where’s Muntle?”
“Cashiered and put on quarter pension on account of his incompetency,” offered Pupker. “Now you are blocking the way of our new sheriff, so kindly step aside.”
I directed my next question to the new Boy Sheriff: “Where is Muntle at this moment?”