“But I look familiar to you.”
Newman nodded. “I know not why.”
“I’ll tell you why. May I sit here? May I speak with you?”
Newman shrugged.
“I’ll tell you where you’ve seen me and then you should feel better. I am Miss Wolf. I work at Bethlehem Hospital upon Highbury Fields in Dingley Dell.”
“Bedlam. You’re a nurse at Bedlam.”
“Yes.”
“I remember now. You came to speak to my fellow classmates and me at Miss Clickett’s school.”
“That’s right. I came to talk about the work that I do on behalf of the unfortunate inmates of Bedlam.”
Newman took a sip of his lemonade and swallowed. He set down the glass and looked at Miss Wolf, studying her young face, the face of a Dinglian, who, now drest in Outland clothing, could be thought just as easily to be an Outlander. “What are you doing here?” he now asked. “Have you escaped from Dingley Dell as well?”
Miss Wolf was just about to answer when the serving girl suddenly made her appearance to ask what Miss Wolf would have. “Just a cup of coffee,” answered the nurse.
After the girl had walked away, Miss Wolf resumed, “No, Newman. I haven’t escaped.”
“You remember my name.”
“Of course I should remember the name of a boy as bright as you. Newman, there is much that you don’t know and there isn’t time right now to tell it all. But I’ll say this: I come and go from the Dell as I please. I am, in fact, the only Dinglian who enjoys that privilege. There are things that I do at the hospital — important things having to do with the care of the inmates there. And then there are things that I do out here.”
“Were you born in Dingley Dell?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“I don’t understand. You came from the Outland?”
“Yes. I’ll be happy to tell you my story someday and how things came to be, but—” Miss Wolf glanced nervously over her shoulder. “But as I say, we haven’t time right now. There are people here — and I don’t wish to alarm you, Newman, but you must know the truth — there are people whose job it is to find boys like you, to seek out anyone who has escaped from the Dell, for that matter, and to remove them so that they won’t speak of your homeland. So that these other people whom you see all around you should never know the truth about it. Now these bad people have been informed of your escape and they are out here looking for you. As luck would have it, I happened to find you first.”
“Why is that a lucky thing?”
“Because it is my job, or rather the job that I have chosen for myself among all the others that have been assigned to me — to keep those bad people from finding you. Because if you fall into the hands of those people, well, I won’t sugarcoat it, Newman: they’ll kill you. That’s their job: to silence you in the best way they know.”
A jolt of panic suddenly struck at Newman’s breast. He started to rise from his chair as if he would bolt. Miss Wolf caught him by the arm. “Please. Listen to me, Newman. If you run, if you try to hide, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll find you. But if you’ll only trust me, I can keep them from you. I can take you home. Will you trust me, Newman?”
Newman didn’t answer. He knew not how to answer this strange redheaded woman who gave him a soft, warm smile, whilst telling him with great urgency the danger that he was in. What he had been told made him feel light in the head. He wanted to believe her. He wanted to trust her. Yet had he not decided that he should trust no one, believe no one? Had not Mr. Ryersbach brought in a policeman and a woman with grasping hands to take him away? Was it their intention to kill him? Even the jeweller had tried to cheat him. And Chad Ryersbach had assaulted him. No, Newman thought. He would take his chances with his own fleet feet and with his own strong fists, which had won him two pugilist medals. He was, after all — should he succeed in finding his bearings — only a three-day journey by foot from his home. That is how far he estimated that he had come over the last eight days. He could make it home under his own industry. He had money now and he would buy food along the way when he felt it was safe to do so.
Perhaps, thought Newman, there wasn’t anyone at all looking for him — especially someone who might wish to kill him. Perhaps this was a fabrication put forth by Miss Wolf to take him into her own custody so that she could rob him or take him to a work farm to pull up radishes all day, this being another Outland hazard speculated by Newman’s schoolmates.
And had it not also been said of Miss Wolf that she was the nurse who puts the inmates into their strait-waistcoats, who plies them with so much laudanum as to make them insensible or babbling? Had not the children in Miss Clickett’s school whispered amongst themselves after Miss Wolf had gone that she was a punishing witch without a broomstick but with a great syringe which she straddled and flew all about and used to stab all the little children of the Dell who refused to eat their boiled beef and pease pudding? It all came back to him now. In spite of the warm smile and the soft and sympathetic grey-emerald eyes, there were things about this woman — this fast-talking woman with one foot in the Outland and one in the Dell — that unsettled my nephew, that left him fearfully uneasy and uncertain.
“Begging your pardon: I wish to pay for my food now,” Newman called to the serving girl even before she had brought Miss Wolf her cup of coffee.
“I’ll get your cheque. What’s your hurry?” the girl cheekily replied from across the empty restaurant.
“You’re being smart,” said Miss Wolf to Newman, nodding quickly. Then to the girclass="underline" “Forget the coffee. We have to go. I’ll pay for his lunch, though. How much was it?”
“I have money to pay, myself,” protested Newman.
“But I insist,” said Miss Wolf.
“Very well then, and thank you,” said Newman as he rose suddenly from his chair and bowed to the redheaded nurse.
As Ruth Wolf dipped her eyes to look into her leather pocketbook, Newman made his escape. With no less speed and purpose than he had employed to free himself from the Ryersbach house, he made a mad dash to the glazed front door of the diner, threw it open, and disappeared.
By the time the nurse had reached the sidewalk, her temporary ward was too far ahead for her to pursue him, running as fast as his swift legs could take him up the high street of Jersey Shore. She shook her head in frustrated despondence. The jeweller, Phillips, having seen the boy fly past, stepped out onto the sidewalk himself. He and Miss Wolf caught sight of one another and now exchanged looks of hard disappointment that had mixed within them some appreciable measure of fear.
— NOTES—
MONETARY SYSTEM. Serious and early attention was given by the Dingley Dell Petit-Parliament to the development of a serviceable monetary system. An attempt was made in the first three decades of the twentieth century to replicate the Victorian system of farthings and pence and shillings and sovereigns. But it was a needlessly complicated and confusing business, and forever in want of modification and improvement. Consequently, a decimal system of coinage was devised and was put into effect in the year 1929, based upon a proposal posited by the Encyclopædia Britannica (Vol. 7, SEE: “Decimal Coinage: a substitute for the “Quarto-Duodecimo-Vicesimal System”). This new system has worked with great efficiency and to this day is so simple in its arrangement that even young children have had little difficulty learning it. Dinglian tots are nonetheless encouraged to recite the following rhyme to remember the denominations: