Most importantly, Newman’s behaviour improved with remarkable expedition, and his pasty pallor retreated, the glow of healthy youth quickly returning to his countenance. Mr. Chowser noted, as well, that the boy’s drooping eyes, which often arrested the attention of those who met him and which instantly unsettled the observer, had achieved a lustre that all but redeemed the entire face. Nor did Newman prank and remonstrate half as often as had been his previous wont, nor make of bedtime a thing of dreaded contention for those charged with directing his nightly repose. It was as if my nephew had become, if not a much smarter boy, at least a more tractable one, with every indication given for the continuance of improvement. And every letter received in each of those seven weeks of Newman’s residency at the school gave his father and mother, and even his bachelor uncle — who presently takes up the pen to tell this story — cause for encouragement and no small measure of joy.
Alas, such optimistic feelings did not reside long within our breasts, for it came to our attention at the end of that seventh week of Newman’s enrolment — and such a grave report it was that the school’s headmaster betook himself to deliver the news not by ticket porter or heliographic transmission, but in person — that Newman, my beloved nephew and the beloved son of my older brother, had stolen himself away in the dark of night, leaving behind no trace save a brief, scribbled note, which described his intentions; a note undeniably of his own authorship, given its impaired spellings — this from a boy for whom ancient hieroglyphics held much greater appeal than an accurate actuation of the more practical language of his forebears:
Dear Mr. Chowzer,
I am runnning away from yer shcool and see the world and make myself a man of it and the deuce take you! But tell my mother and pa that I will return and them bring rishes of gold and perl that will make they eyes pop.
With cordial,
Newman
I was present for the interview that afternoon which brought the particulars of my nephew’s flight from Dingley Dell to my brother’s doorstep. Within the comfortably-appointed sitting room that was my sister-in-law Charlotte’s proud domain, we learnt of Newman’s desire to seek his fortune in that world which lay beyond our safely-compassed valley — such an excursion of foolhardiness as is seldom essayed except by men of more than twice my nephew’s years and even then only amongst those in want of foresight and sanity.
There would be no going after him. It was seldom done. Once one left the Dell of Dingley, he was lost. This was the rule, though there was also the infrequent exception. But we had learnt never to fasten hope too firmly upon that exception, given the disappointment that would most likely derive from it.
“Perhaps he’ll come to his senses after he’s landed himself in the Outland,” said Charlotte, “and will retrace his steps and make his return. He is a rather prosy child, but even one slower of wit than Newman can see what a dangerous thing it is to leave the Dell, especially after all the years of frightful conjecture that has been made about what lurks abroad.” Charlotte trembled as she spoke these halting words and was readily consoled by her husband with thoughtful pats upon the hand.
Daughter Alice, in contradiction to the prevailing mood, sat with folded arms and a languid, indifferent face, bereft of even a hint of concern for her brother’s safety. “Egad! What a waste of a perfectly good Saturday night!” The assessment came in a grumbling underbreath that nonetheless carried volume sufficient for all present within the worry-room to hear.
“Upon my life, girl — hold!”
“I wasn’t referring to anyone in particular, Mama, but only to the general climate of the room.”
“Howbeit, what a perfectly disrespectful thing to say with your brother gone and perhaps lost forever.”
“Newman’s known since he was a toddler,” retorted Alice, “that one doesn’t venture from the valley without risk and consequence. Therefore I wager that he hasn’t left the Dell at all. Ten to one he’s up in some tree near the school right now, hanging from a limb like the mischief-making monkey that he is.”
Mr. Chowser shook his head. He brushed his hand worriedly across the short, stiff bristles of his close crop, a mindless activity that often served to relax him, though today it was having no effect. “We’ve scoured the grounds, young lady. We’ve searched the branches of every tree that might afford his ascent, and have concluded that your brother cannot be found. I wouldn’t have come hither had I any doubt that he indeed sought to do that very thing that his missive purported. I’m at fault here. I put us all under the harrow, I did.” A heavy sadness subdued the headmaster’s address. He had, in fact, been derelict in not keeping a tighter rein on my brother’s son and now he wore that guilty negligence upon his wan face and upon shoulders that slumped and did not rise.
“Moreover,” the headmaster pursued, “two of Newman’s playfellows related to me the young man’s strongly-expressed desire to be gone from Dingley Dell and to discover every good thing that lies outside our confines. It is now frighteningly clear, Mr. Trimmers, that your son didn’t believe anything that he heard pertaining to the dangers of the Terra Incognita. He was having none of it and was — say these boys — nearly giddy with glee in anticipation of all those wondrous things he hoped to achieve once he’d shaken the dust and flue of Dingley Dell from his dress.”
It was at this moment that my sister-in-law Charlotte, able no longer to contain her despair, released a torrent of tears, which came with howls and honks and coughings, and there was little that any of us could do to mitigate her grief. It was grief of a species that each of us felt in commiserating union, excepting, apparently, young Alice, who sat complacently nibbling buttered bread and feigning boredom.
One could, therefore, easily acquit Charlotte in that next moment for mowing at her daughter with furious eyes.
“I sh-should strike you!” she sputtered, having finally reclaimed her voice. “Such a demonstration of callousness and contempt for your very own brother — it is beyond belief!”
“Yet I own no contempt for my little brother whatsoever.” Alice’s rebuttal was delivered calmly, and it wanted conviction.
“No contempt? Even as you sit here seemingly rejoicing in our loss!”
“Rejoicing? What rubbish!” returned Alice with a mouth filled with mashed loaf. “My composure merely gives evidence to the fact that, if Newman has left the valley, which I continue to doubt, he will, with all certainty, return.”
“And how can you be so certain of this?” I put to my niece.
“Because no one would dare harm a boy as incorrigible as he. I hazard to say that most of the Outlanders whom Newman will meet in this shortlived adventure of his will make wild dashes for their homes and latch all their shutters with trembling hands.”
“And yet,” began Mr. Chowser, engaging the voluble flaxen-haired thirteen-year-old as if she were his intellectual equal, “young Newman was not nearly so surly and menacing yesterday as he was on that day which first placed him into my custody, for I am quite certain that I was succeeding in my efforts to mould him into the very opposite of how you persist in characterising him. He was, in fact, improving with every day he lived beneath my roof, mark.”