“Papa, I love you. And if you love me half as much as I do you, you will keep what I have told you to yourself. I shouldn’t be speaking to you. I should be keeping up the pretense of my illness. Yet your tears have compelled me to give balm to your suffering, to tell you in confidentiality that I am well. I am trapped within this place for a short time longer and must continue the counterfeit for the sake of Ruth Wolf, so that no harm will come to her for what she has done to help me and some of the others, but I had to tell you, to lift the heavy burden I have placed upon your heart and which you have carried about for lo, these last ten years.”
“I was so very cruelhearted in my thoughts of you until only a few moments ago,” said the father, his choked voice aching with remorse.
“Yet you must acquit yourself, Papa. I was become no longer a son to you. I was a cross to be borne — a ragged, splintered, broken thing. Think no more of it, Papa. Now you must promise me — the both of you — that you won’t communicate a word of what I’ve told you to anybody.”
Sir Dabber threw his arms about his son and did not release him. The last of the interchange was spoken in voices muffled by the close embrace of the two men — father and son, not only reunited (for many years had passed since Bevan had been a happy, healthy boy) but also newly born in each other’s arms.
“Your revelation raises a very large number of questions,” I said, keeping my voice to a whisper.
“Very few of which I’m able to answer,” said the young man.
“Cannot or will not?”
“Cannot. I have told you almost all that I know. There is only one thing more, and it will frighten you, so you must be stout.”
Bevan withdrew his head from his father’s shoulder. Sir Dabber eponymously dabbed at his wet eyes with his expansive handkerchief.
“Papa, and you who are his friend—”
“The name is Trimmers.”
“Yes, I will in time learn all the names of those who presently live in this valley, which I have for so long occupied in imbecility and ignorance and darkness. Here is the thing that must be said; I have no reason not to believe Miss Wolf, and so you must believe her, too: the world moves forward. The world outside of Dingley Dell moves ever onward. It has always moved thusly. It is we who have remained trapped in a time gone by. It is an oppressively complicated business. There are dangers in this new world that must be addressed. Dangers to us. In time, Miss Wolf will tell us how we are to confront them. But all must be done with great care and caution. We are fragile, she says. We are the china and porcelain that sit protected upon a shelf but once withdrawn may break in a thousand different ways. She says that we are beautiful to behold but it is inevitable that some day we shall be pulled down from that shelf, for we have gathered too much dust there, have draped ourselves too much in the cobwebs of our suspended lives.”
“But here is a silver lining to it all,” said Sir Dabber through a wheeze, for the mould and must within the room were taxing his respiration. “My son has been returned to me! After ten years you and I are again truly united in mind and spirit, father and son. And I cannot help celebrating, even if it be in private fashion, my wonderful good fortune.”
Sir Dabber imprinted a kiss upon Bevan’s dingy forehead and struggled to rise. The tremendous gravity of what had been told, the shock of seeing his son without the splayed and stiff limbs, nor rocking back and forth, nor cawing like a rook — every aspect of the few preceding moments had weighed so heavily down upon him that he could hardly return himself to his feet. I rose quickly to take his arm when it appeared likely that he might topple over or faint away.
“Rest assured: we won’t betray your trust,” said I to Bevan, who remained upon the cot. Yet I dissembled. I had to tell Sheriff Muntle, and now all of the members of the delving Poetry League. They had every right and reason to know. These were important pieces for the mosaic they were putting together. But the young man must not be troubled on this account.
So I dissembled.
“You fear for the well-being of this young woman?” asked Sir Dabber of his son.
Bevan nodded. “Frightfully so.”
“Is it because you love her?”
Bevan smiled. “She has resurrected me.”
Now Bevan paused. “And she is beautiful.”
And finally, Bevan blushed.
I had now received the answer to at least one nagging question from that pivotal week: to whom had Ruth Wolf given her heart? And there he sat — a boy, several years younger than herself, fully dependent upon her, literally resurrected by her. Had she healed him because she loved him first, or did she come to love the man he became under her cure? These speculations made me feel guilty, intrusive. I backed away from them. I vowed to release Ruth Wolf from my heart to pursue this path she had wisely or unwisely chosen for herself. Indeed there was love here that no one had a right to judge or define — least of all Frederick Trimmers, for whom love in the abstract remained elusive and capricious.
“When may I come to see you again?” asked Sir Dabber of his son. “On the next visiting Sunday?”
“We must not raise suspicions by too frequent visits, Papa.”
“But this deplorable room — you must be removed from it at the earliest possible moment.”
“That time will soon come, Papa, for Ruth tells me that there have been other complaints about the conditions down here, and so the renovation is now moving along more quickly upstairs. But it serves me to remain in this dungeon. Down here I am seldomly observed. Here Ruth may come to see me without worry of interlopers or keyhole peepers. With each visit, my darling Ruth feels more and more at ease to tell me things. And there is so much more to tell — a world of things.”
Sir Dabber nodded. A moment later we stood before the heavy iron door, listening to the clink and click of its latch. As the door creaked open, pushed by the youthful hand of Oscar the attendant (“Turnkey” would be a more appropriate appellation), Bevan Dabber resumed his previous state. His stare became glossy and he began to rock. The hands went up to the ears. He cawed.
“He’s telling you goodbye,” chuckled Oscar. “That’s his crow-like way of saying ‘ta’! Somebody should put these boys upon a stage. It would be a true hilarity to see it — at least for those who don’t got to clean they’s stinking dovecote each and every bloody day.”
The statement drew no response from either Sir Dabber or myself. It was safest to leave Oscar’s odious opinion unchallenged.
Chapter the Thirty-first. Wednesday, July 2, 2003
his day of revelations was not done. As Oscar conducted Sir Dabber and me to the beshadowed staircase that would deliver us from this dark dungeon of human abjection and mental affliction, I stopt before the door to one of the cells, which had been left so widely open as to give a full view of its interior. Although the cell was empty, yet it captured the eye nonetheless for what had been put upon its black walls. All four had been chalked with such a riotous display of arithmetical equations that one might take it for the oddest sort of black and white wallpaper. It was as if one of the room’s former occupants had sought to use the cell’s flat black surfaces as instructional chalkboards (and even so, could not successfully fit upon them all that he wished to convey). I could not take my eyes from the patterns of mathematical chalkings and stood looking into the room through the dim and dusty light that filtered through an ivy-shaded window near the ceiling.