As Scadger reached the door of communication between the rear rooms and the front parlour (if parlour it be; the room in which I stood was wanting of furniture save a wooden bench, a camp stool and a ricketty table and chair, where, one imagined, the family took turns eating each meal), he turned to beckon me to join him.
“Perhaps I should stop here,” said I.
“Nay, nay. You must see her. Florence has heard much about you and about your brother and your father. She wishes to be a writer like you. Have I not told you this?”
I shook my head. I could tell from the casual tone of Scadger’s voice and from the collected expression upon his face that he had heard of neither my nephew’s nor my brother’s departure from the Dell. How such a thing could be was not difficult to surmise: the Scadger orchard was an exclave, isolated like no other place in the Dell, save the coal-town of Blackheath. That which was known within an hour or two by nearly every other Dinglian, via the flash of the heliograph and the fleet-footedness of the ticket porter, sometimes took many additional hours or sometimes several days to reach the ears and ken of our valley outcasts. I would tell Scadger all of the news in time. For now, I did as my friend bade, and followed him— in silence — into the next room.
The oldest of the Scadger’s children lay propped upon a couple of pillows on one of a trio of small beds. The room was dark and smelt, as did every other room within the lodgings, of old mouldy hay and iron tools, and gave even a lingering hint of horseflesh. There was also the faint scent of apricot. Having lived amongst the fruit trees and having harvested their issue year after year before moving to the Mews, the Harry Scadgers — each member of this family, including the sick girl who lay before me — exuded the fruity scent as if it came directly from their pores, and its residue of sweetness did not offend.
With the sudden appearance of her father in the company of two men, one of whom she knew from my past visit to her former alfresco lodgings, Florence’s face brightened. Not only had the girl met me before, but had not Scadger spoken of me in my absence in complimentary terms? I took her hand. She smiled and put her other hand to her mouth to shield me from her latest croupy cough.
“Good afternoon, Florence,” said I.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Trimmers,” replied Florence after the cough had subsided, and with a blush that put some colour into her pale cheeks.
“And this is Dr. Timberry, dear,” said Mrs. Scadger to her daughter. “He is come to treat you.”
“Thanks in part to this syrup which your father has procured to ease your cough,” Timberry added, as he touched the thirteen-year-old girl gently and diagnostically upon the forehead.
How kind and modest Timberry presents himself to his patients, I thought to myself, humbleness being a credit to a physician. One cannot learn such a manner; it proceeds from one’s heart, and how that heart considers, as is its wont, the worth and feelings of others. I knew that there was something that I had always liked about this young man. Even as a boy, Mulberry had shewn a level of compassion and mercy that was striking for a child, sheltering all manner of injured animals, both feral and domestic, in his miniature veterinarial infirmary, and nursing a good many of them back to sound health. It was by Mulberry’s hand, as well, that the Judy puppet, which squawked when struck by Punch in each of his parents’ public puppet presentations, donned forever a fresh sanitary bandage upon the head so as to give one the sense that the battered Judy was forever on the mend.
Florence’s upturned eyes beheld her physician with obvious regard. He was a fine-looking man, whose darkly handsome features might appeal to a girl in the early blow of womanhood. After a brief interval, the patient returned her gaze to me. “Oh, Mr. Trimmers, I’ve read many of the things you’ve written, and I believe that you should write stories. I’m sure that they would be good ones.”
“Stories.” I smiled.
Florence nodded and grinned as well. “I should like to write stories myself one day.”
“And perhaps you will. Perhaps we both will, although I must say that there is too much of interest all round us that is real and true for me to feel so greatly inclined to fabricate things for the purpose of reader delectation.” Curiously, this statement, which should have passed with little attendance, drew the most amazing interchange of knowing glances amongst daughter, mother and father, each pregnant with some meaning I could not fathom.
I pursued: “And have you, Florence, any stories that you’ve heard, which you may wish to put down?”
Florence nodded. “And a good many more that I should like to change to my own liking.”
“My daughter doesn’t like my stories the way they are,” laughed Scadger. “Nor do her siblings. Perhaps it is a parent’s duty to lace his tales with sugar and treacle, but I rarely do it.”
Scadger turned to wave away all of the aforementioned siblings who had gathered about the door to see what was to be done with their ailing sister. “Away! Away!” he enjoined them in a stern, paternal voice. To me he said without severity: “Perhaps we should each of us withdraw, and leave the doctor to his patient.”
“An excellent idea,” said Timberry, rolling up his sleeves. “I should like to give the child a full medical examination, so that we may know exactly where things stand. Mrs. Scadger, if you will serve as my attending nurse, I would be most grateful.”
Matilda Scadger nodded and executed a slight bow that gave evidence of her good breeding in spite of the mean circumstances of her workhouse youth.
Scadger and I stepped from the room. There was no door to be shut to give privacy but only a curtain, which was pulled across the portal.
“Come,” said my host, signaling with a nod that we should repair outside. “There are a couple of things that I should like to discuss with you.”
I nodded and followed Scadger out the front door and into the quiet, rubbish-filled by-lane. “Ours, as you can see, is the only building in the lane presently occupied. But I suspect that my brothers will come to take occupancy here before too long. Why, just this very forenoon, Zephaniah came to tell me that he now sees merit to my reasonings and is giving serious consideration to following the path that I have blazed. It’s a good thing, for there isn’t much case to be made for remaining behind. But my brothers are stubborn men and will make it most difficult for themselves before things get better.”
“And is there no way that I may be of assistance in this matter?” I asked.
Scadger shook his head. “If I may beg leave to speak candidly with you, Trimmers, my brothers haven’t much respect for you.”
“You must call me Frederick, if we are to continue to be friends.”
Scadger nodded.
“And why do they feel this way about one who has never done a thing to harm them?”
“To be sure, you have done nothing that deserves even an ounce of their enmity. Indeed, not only have you never hurt them, but also I must say, Frederick, that your efforts on behalf of my clan have far exceeded even my own expectations. My brothers are purblind in this and everything else that would redound to their benefit. They do not have the capacity to put their faith in anyone whose surname isn’t Scadger.”
“But perhaps their feelings about me, at least, will change over time.”
“Yes, yes. We shall bring them round, even if we must do it one brother at a time. I wish that there were somewhere we could sit. There is much that I have to tell you — much that you should know. The time is come to discuss with you things that I have long postponed disclosing. I hadn’t intended on doing it to-day, but you see, fate has turned an inopportune day into a most opportune one.”