“Papa confessed to me that he was, in fact, not my papa. At least not by blood. And that my brothers are not my brothers-in-full, but only halfbrothers.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “And had he always known that he wasn’t your true birth father?”
Scadger nodded. “But it was in those last moments before his death that he told me—five years ago in August. He revealed to me the name of my true father and the identity of my benefactor, and as one might guess, the two were one in the same.” Harry Scadger expired a deep breath and then inspired a long, contemplative drink of porter.
“And how was it that your brothers’ father could be so certain that you weren’t his blood son?”
“Because I was conceived during his separation from my mother. There was a period of time several months before my birth during which my presumed father lived apart from my mother in the workhouse. Those were the days before he and my mother put down their stakes beneath the apricot trees. They had first lived under the Westminster Bridge with all the other vagrants of Milltown. People-Under-the-Bridge — that is what West Enders call them. Solomon Scadger was taken for tramp and beggar, though in truth he was neither — only a man who had fallen upon hard times. And he was removed to the workhouse, at the same time that my mother and my older brother — then but a baby of two — were shewn kindness and taken in by your own father and mother.”
“My father—?”
“Yes. Your father and my father, for they are both the same.”
“I cannot believe it.”
“You must believe it, for my mother wasn’t one to prevaricate.” Harry raised his hand to seek a fresh pot from the publican. “It is for this reason that Matilda cautioned me against telling it to you. That all the good that may come from our being bound together as brothers might be undermined by the hard truth of how I came to be, by the fact that my mother was taken in carnality by your father whilst both were wed to others. I apologise for speaking so candidly here, but there is no other way for me to present the facts to you.”
I slid back into my chair, numbed by this news, stilled by what the disclosure said about my father. “How is this possible?”
“Your father was kind to my mother and my older brother Sol, each hungry and penniless and clad in rags. But there was a price to be paid for that kindness. And I am the dividend.”
I wished at that hard moment no further company with Harry Scadger, even if his name should, in truth, be Trimmers, and so I stood to go. I had often borne the wrath of my father, as had Augustus. Papa was an angry, bitter, and cynical man who left this Earth (a victim of pipe smoker’s labial cancer) still at odds with everything that life had bestowed upon him — a candidate, if there ever was one, for leaving Dingley Dell in some manner other than a burial box, had he ever found the courage to make his escape. By the same token, Papa was, by turns, a loving man, a compassionate man, who bore the pain of others even as he railed against the general causes of that suffering which was the lot of most of the denizens of Dingley Dell. He was a tangled, convoluted, enigmatic man, whom Gus and I could never fully unravel. And in the end, I could see Papa taking pity on Harry Scadger’s mother in her terrible plight, and then taking her to his bed for the pleasure of her voluptuous body, regardless of how even the thought of such a thing would have shattered my mother.
I loved my father and hated my father but ultimately would not, could not with good conscience hold black feelings in my heart against his “dividend,” for Harry no more embodied the misdeeds of that man than did Gus or I. My heart softened.
“Sit,” said Harry, clasping my wrist with his hand. “Don’t go. Find it in your heart to accept me as your brother. Up to now you have helped my family and me out of a general sense of compassion for the most diminished amongst us. Now I ask that we vow to assist one another as brothers of the same blood.”
I sat down. For a long while I said nothing. And then suddenly there was very much to say: I told Harry Scadger about our nephew Newman, about how he had left the Dell, and how I now believed that he had returned. I told Harry Scadger about his half-brother Augustus who had gone off looking for Newman and whose whereabouts were now unknown. I didn’t forbear telling him everything that had been told to Sir Dabber and me by Dabber’s son Bevan. I spoke in more detail of the calculating device found in Dr. Towlinson’s office, which matched the description of that which had been found in the dead woman’s valise (this fact later confirmed when I was permitted to view the instrument in Harry’s custody). I took Harry Scadger into my confidence with few qualms, bolstered by the strong intuitive sense that ours would be an alliance upon which I could strongly depend. For Harry Scadger had no alliances or attachments of his own, save an allegiance to his brothers — an allegiance built more upon a sense of family obligation than upon an intellectual or philosophic commonality. I had Muntle and now Sir Dabber with whom to exchange theories and confidences. Harry had no one.
And so Harry Scadger and his wife Matilda and his son David and each of David’s siblings had sat and viewed the contents of the woman’s valise and had wondered within the circle of that family what it all had meant, and had wondered what words lived upon those damp papers from the Outland that Dr. Chivery had so hastily squirreled away. They had done this without context and without a clew as to how important these pieces could be to the great mosaic.
After a quiet and contemplative interval, I turned the subject to our detached childhoods, Harry obliging me by describing in broad strokes and a little pin-point the conjoined lives of his half-brothers and himself. He spoke of his deceased stepfather and mother, and I, in turn, told of the father that Harry had never known except through the man’s paternal patronage, and of Harry’s half-brother Gus, whom Harry had met only in passing. I fought back tears to recall the hard life that Gus had led (a life I could not help fearing in dark, quiet moments had now come to tragic end).
By the close of that long brotherly colloquy, the tavern was become a much duskier and far sleepier place than it had been upon our arrival, even the labouring men who had been in the beginning a bit loud and boisterous now slumping groggily in their chairs. In the hush of that deadened room, we soon heard the click of the street door handle being turned, and then saw the sharp angle of summer evening sunlight slicing across the hunched backs and shoulders of some of the tavern’s inmates. We beheld a young man standing proudly erect within that fog of dust motes suddenly illumined, and I could tell from the shape of his youthful silhouette that it was Dr. Mulberry Timberry. Cupping his eyes to better see into the room’s darkness, the doctor made us out, and strode briskly toward us, letting the door behind him close with a muted catch.