“You would fell them all? With your mere twenty-two bullets? By use of the first pistol you have ever held in your hand, let alone fired? Don’t be a bigger fool by giving action to the fool’s statement you just made. Withdraw from this window. Don’t give them further evidence that we reside here. They’re nervous. I see it in their looks. They are liable to shoot at this house with very little provocation as it is. I beg you.”
Mel considered for a moment his brother’s strong words. Then Mel receded. Harry watched from behind the curtain as the parade passed with its cautious, wary gait.
“Where be they going?” asked Harry’s younger brother in a raised whisper.
“To the Summit. This is what Trimmers tells me. The festival was scheduled for Tuesday. But they’ve apparently decided to have it earlier. They’re leaving, brother. That is what this is all about. They’re leaving Dingley Dell.”
“Then let us have our own party for to celebrate it!”
“No, brother. Things will not play the way you think. With these men and women, as much as we hate and despise them, go our best hope for any future at all.”
Chapter the Forty-ninth. Thursday, July 10, 2003
hat are you looking at, you goose?” sought Cecilia of her informally adopted sister Alice.
“Nothing.”
“You were looking up at your uncle’s apartments above the Lumbey shop, weren’t you? Don’t deny it. Who were you looking for? Your uncle is in gaol, and so is your worthless mother. Your father is probably hooting like a loon at Bedlam. There is no one in this house that you know.”
Alice averted her gaze. “Still I have spent many hours in that place. My mother has bought me dresses in that shop.”
“I’m sure that you’ll find much prettier clothes to wear in the Outland. Don’t be an ingrate, Alice. My father has given you the chance to live a life so wonderful you cannot even begin to imagine it. Don’t bumble it.”
“I won’t. No, I won’t,” said Alice evenly. She walked on, hand-in-hand with her new sister, neither speaking now — only listening to the whispered conversations of those who walked close by. It felt to Alice as if she were part of a sombre funeral train. In fact, Cecilia was the only one who was bouncing up and down and frisking a little.
Alice patted her breast and sighed. The pendant was still in place, still hanging from her neck. It was a beautiful little chain pendant with a small emerald for the drop. Her mother and father had given it to her when she turned twelve-years-of-age. It had been an expensive gift, made only marginally less expensive by the discount that Rose Fagin had offered her parents. Alice had treasured it, thinking it the loveliest little silver pendant as ever had been made. On some of the nights that succeeded its bestowal, she would sit up late with her candle and observe the play of light penetrating the translucent green stone. Even though the emerald was small, it shimmered most magnificently before her young, appreciative eyes. She loved her mother and father with all of her heart upon those sparkling nights.
But things had changed. Alice had begun to find fault with her parents, and with her insufferable urchin of a brother. She had become ashamed of her family and no longer wished to be seen with them, and had spent more and more time gadding about with her best friend Cecilia. Leaving her mother and father in the end was the best thing that could happen for her. It was good that she was now a part of the Pupker family. Mr. Pupker had bestowed upon her something of much greater worth than a dull emerald pendant; he had invited her to leave the valley with his family — to be brought embracingly into the arms of the Outlanders. What an ineffable honour!
Alice’s eyes began to brim with tears. She did not wish Cecilia to see, but Cecilia most certainly would see if any attempt were made on Alice’s part to wipe them away. Why was she crying? Because she knew in her heart that she would miss her mama and her papa? Miss them terribly? Because she was now ashamed of the way she had behaved towards them? Ashamed most of all over the fact that she had been the one responsible for their arrest? How this realisation tortured her conscience! For Alice Trimmers did have a conscience. It had lain dormant for quite some time, but now it roused itself from its imposed slumber to remind Alice of how very much she would now miss her mother and father once she left the valley; it gave her to think of her lost brother Newman and to feel great sadness for him; it moved her to imagine what horrible thing awaited her family — her true family — once she and the Pupkers were gone.
Alice Trimmers touched the pendant once again. It had a habit of becoming unclasped and slipping from her neck. Sometimes she would feel it come undone and would re-clasp it. On at least one occasion, she did not know that it was gone from her neck until much later, but she had by good fortune never left her bedchamber and was able to find it upon the rug there.
Cecilia studied Alice as if the girl were become someone she hardly knew. “Take off the dratted pendant if you think it will come undone. Carry it in your dratted hand, goose!” she uttered sharply. “Egad, I’ve never known one to go on so about such a silly little bauble.”
“It is not so silly really,” returned Alice in a soft voice, “when you think that it is all that I possess, which was given me by my parents.”
“Who are now dead, dead, and nearly buried, goose. If you want to know what I should do — I should take the pendant and toss it right away and be done with any memory of those parental failures.”
“But I would never wish to do that.”
“Because you are a dolt.” Cecilia, who had been looking all about her as she spoke, taking in all the sights of Milltown for the very last time, now turned to behold the visage of her best friend and somewhat sister. “You’re crying! Egad! I can’t believe it. You’re crying.”
“I am not the only one, Cecilia. There are others around me with tears in their eyes as well.”
“But you are the only one crying over things that need not be worth a tear. As for the silly trinket that still binds you to your family, if you are so needful of keeping it from being lost, then unclasp it and hold it in your hand until we can secure a jeweller in the Outland to replace the damaged clasp.”
This was the first thing said by Cecilia with which Alice actually agreed. She undid the pendant and put it into her hand. She closed her fist tightly round it, the tiny coiling chain feeling so small in her palm — as small and slight as the invisible chain that linked her to her blood family.
Soon Milltown was behind them and there were a few sighs of relief that the cavalcade had moved through the town without the smallest incident. The valley opened up now into a broad plain of field and small coppice, with a long, clear prospect comprehending the space that surrounded the muddy Riparian Road — the road that led by spur to the foot of the Northern Ridge. In one direction: the Wang-Wang rice farm — a boggy place with a little pagoda teahouse in the style of the Orientals. In another direction: the black, ruined apricot orchard, burnt to the ground, no doubt, by those vandalising gipsy Scadgers: such an ugly thing for the Eighty-three Elect to see amongst their final departing views of Dingley Dell. A cornfield there, next to an old, weathered barn. And over there another corn field, this one planted in New World corn, or maize, as it was sometimes called. And there straight ahead, the Northern Ridge, standing tall and majestic and carpeted in dark green as the early summer rains had brought its cover of shrub and dwarf trees to even deeper verdancy.