“Clearing out his lodgings at the Inn-of-Justice so that I can move myself in. He’s being very slow about it, by the bye. Slower than even those apricot eaters Mr. Pupker just had me throw out of his mews.”
“Is this true, Pupker?” I asked. “You have evicted Harry Scadger and his family?”
Pupker nodded. “I try to please my brother-in-law when I can.”
“Now, Mr. Trimmers,” pursued Billy, “if you do not suffer me to do my duty here, I will have no choice but to make your arrest the second official act of my brand new tenure as sheriff of this Dell.”
I glanced at Hannah, who seemed at the moment to know not what to do, for she didn’t want to go with Boldwig — this much was clear — but did not know how one might successfully contest such a thing.
It was Mrs. Lumbey who spoke next: “I’ll ask it again, Pupker: under what charge is your poor daughter being arrested?”
“She isn’t being arrested, Mrs. Lumbey,” replied Dr. Towlinson snappishly. “The sheriff is merely assisting me in transporting her to Bethlehem Hospital.”
“By whose order?” asked Antonia, stepping forward, and delivering her question in an equally clipped fashion.
“By my request,” retorted Montague Pupker.
“And under the signed order of Judge Fitz-Marshall,” Dr. Towlinson added. “I have the order here if anyone wishes to examine it. The commitment is perfectly legal. A commission of lunacy was convened last night and the judge ruled that the girl should be consigned with all due expedition to the hospital for treatment.”
“Who in attendance at that hearing spoke on behalf of Hannah’s own wishes?” I asked.
Dr. Fibbetson, who was given to speaking in a flubbery way as if he were a squirrel carrying winter nuts about in his mouth, replied on behalf of his medical colleague, “The girl has no say in the matter. Do we forestall treating a man with boils until we should fully interview the carbuncles themselves? I think not.”
Mrs. Lumbey could not restrain herself: “Dr. Fibbetson, you are a blithering, lip-flapping fool!”
“Bless my heart and eyebrows, I have never in my life been so openly disparaged!”
“There’s more of that to come, you chuckle-headed marvel of medical malfeasance!”
“Hold!” enjoined Dr. Timberry. “Dr. Fibbetson, you and our colleague Dr. Towlinson know that there are two sides to a sanity dispute and you have done Miss Pupker here a grievous injustice by not hearing her side or having that side advocated by another party. I recall from my training, and I believe that it was you who taught it to me, Fibbetson, that lunacy is a difficult affliction to diagnose, and for this reason every caution is customarily taken to make certain that the rights of the patient to liberty are not errantly abridged.”
“I cannot remember saying any such thing!” protested Fibbetson.
“You can’t recall what you had for breakfast this morning, you doddering old fool!” Mrs. Lumbey would not check herself, and continued to vilify the appalled and affronted surgeon standing before her. There was a look of serene admiration upon the face of Antonia, who was rather enjoying the plucky spirit of her inveterate adversary. “It is you who should be put away, you lunatic medical incompetent, rather than this poor girl who has done nothing worse than find herself at odds with a dictatorial father. I extend that assessment to you as well, Dr. Towlinson, for Bedlam is become the equivalent of punishing prison for the human mind.”
“My dear Mrs. Lumbey, are you quite through?” asked Pupker, his nostrils flaring.
“For the nonce.” Mrs. Lumbey folded her arms and jutted her chin in a show of holding her ground.
Through pursed, indignant lips, Pupker continued, “Because I will not permit another black word from you that impugns my character or the character of my friends and associates.”
“And what do you intend to do about it? Have me thrown into Bedlam as well for mental deficiency?” Mrs. Lumbey’s cheeks were puffed out and reddened by the temperature of her anger. “I see nothing here but a father’s attempt to punish his daughter for no longer wishing to live beneath his roof.” Mrs. Lumbey now addressed herself to all the rest of us: “We all know what a patriarchal despot this man is. If I were his daughter I should have fled the family manse at the age of four.” Mrs. Lumbey was scrupulous in avoiding the larger reason for Hannah’s present travails — that she had seen things she was not supposed to see and now must be put away to prevent her speaking of them too widely and in a way that would produce difficult consequences for her father and others in his league.
“I’ll no longer remain here to be so maliciously slandered,” said Pupker to Sheriff Boldwig. “Put my daughter in the van and let us be on our way.”
Boldwig nodded and tugged upon the arm of Hannah Pupker. Hannah wrenched her arm away and fell back into the clasping embrace of Mrs. Lumbey. “I implore you, Papa,” said Hannah, regarding her father from over the shoulder of her temporary protector, “not to put me into Bedlam. You know in your heart that there is nothing wrong with me. Don’t do this cruel thing to me, I pray!”
“It is for your own good, my daughter,” said Mr. Pupker in so indifferent a tone that one would think he was reading words from a book. “Your mother and I want to see you made well and this is the only way that your health and future happiness can be secured. Now go with Boldwig and let us end this ridiculous spectacle.”
“Step aside, Trimmers,” said Dr. Towlinson in concurrence. “And you, too, Dr. Timberry, if you do not wish for me to petition for the revocation of your brand new medical license for conduct unbecoming a physician. Let us end this unnecessary intervention on behalf of this poor young woman. Suffer the sheriff to pass with the girl, or I shall ask him to arrest you.”
I didn’t budge. Moreover, I took a step to put myself even more obdurately between Boldwig and Hannah Pupker. Timberry did the same, coming to stand to my right, just as Antonia positioned herself upon my left, so that the three of us became a triumvirate of bricks in a single wall of opposition. All the while, Mrs. Lumbey wrapt her arms round Hannah to do her own part in opposing this unjustified removal of her adopted ward.
The silent deadlock lasted for nearly a minute, for neither I nor my friend Dr. Timberry nor my friend Antonia Bocker was willing to step aside — even if our refusal to do so should result in our arrest — so that a conniving, unloving father and his accommodating accomplices, including a newly-sworn sheriff who wasn’t more than a mediocrity in every aspect of his former deputyship — all members of that secret fraternity of inside agents who would save themselves at the expense of the rest of us — should not take an innocent young woman and subject her to a most undeserved fate. It was an offence and an outrage that Muntle should be removed from his office (on what I would later learn was the wholly manufactured charge of shrieval misconduct based upon his unauthorised trip to the Chowser School), but what was being done to Hannah Pupker — innocent of innocents — was tragedy in exponential terms.
Hannah finally broke the silence herself with these words addressed to her father: “Papa. You know exactly why you wish to have me put away, and I will not say it here, but you know that it has nothing to do with the question of my sanity. It is a ploy — a ploy that has been born of a scheme concocted by you and Mama to protect yourselves from public disclosure of certain acts you have perpetrated and the prevention of whatever consequences may rise from them. I know now that you, Sheriff Boldwig, benefit from this silence as well, or else you would not be so complaisant and obliging with my father. I know that you, Dr. Towlinson, are also in some way in collusion with my father or you should not be so ready to do his bidding through your medical offices. Likewise, Judge Fitz-Marshall can only be of that same covert fraternity. I know not what it is nor what it does but I do know that I am now to be sacrificed to it, simply for having gotten too close to whatever secrets it keeps. Sheriff Boldwig: I will not submit to being put into a deep and cooperative sleep, nor will I agree to whatever else should befall me in that house of horrors that Dr. Towlinson superintends. Subsequently, I say to you the following: that you will have to strike me down with a heavy truncheon before I will suffer myself to be trundled off with you.”