“Mrs. Pilkins, the order, which placed your brother into quarantine, has yet to be rescinded. Contact with him would be inadvisable even should there be no such order, his having contracted one of the worst cases of Terror Tremens that Dr. Towlinson has ever had the unhappy office to diagnose. Yet you continue to come hither with maddening regularity, possessed of some wild hope that circumstances will miraculously change, despite the fact that there is absolutely no precedent for improvement in your brother. He remains more ill to-day than he was upon the first day of his confinement. The visit is nearly always a waste of your time and mine, and frankly, madam, I don’t understand why you continue to put us all through it.”
Jemima Pilkins lowered her head and said with quiet determination, “It is my profound hope, Mr. Howler, that Walter will one day improve.”
“It is naturally our hope that each victim of this unfortunate disease will prove the exception to the general prognosis. But such a thing has yet to occur. Pray go along, so that those standing behind you in the queue may receive their visitor tickets before the day is done.”
Yet Mrs. Pilkins was not in an obliging mood. “I spent an hour with him on that first night — the night of his return. My husband, our daughters, several neighbours — all of them as well. I kissed his cheek and he held me in his arms and stroked my head and could not stop speaking of every wonderful thing that he saw in his voyage abroad. He appeared to me clear-headed and quite hale upon that night.”
“Then your eyes and ears have deceived you, madam. For whatever wonderful things were spoken of that evening, they could not possibly have been anything but the ravings of a lunatic mind. It’s the pattern, Mrs. Pilkins — a pattern with which we’ve become quite familiar.” The registrar’s voice gave no animation. The tones produced were dull and laboured and unsympathetic. Mr. Howler, it was quite apparent to even the most casual observer, did not enjoy his offices; when he was not turning away men and women such as Mrs. Pilkins with a dismissive bureaucratic hand, he was putting visitors’ tickets into the hands of other men and women who more closely resembled Sir Dabber — those who came to visit their loved ones under the onerous weight of filial or maternal or paternal obligation. There were sick people in Dingley Dell, to be sure, plagued by afflictions of the brain, or given brains at birth that did not function as they should, brains reduced in capacity that would never improve, or which had been knocked insentient from a fall from a horse, for example; or strangulation in the womb; or, in the case of one philandering Dinglian spouse, by the swing of his wife’s retaliatory rolling pin. It was all rather trying for every family member to see his kin in such a diminished state, but still there was a duty to be borne.
However, blessed be those who approached the hospital with more than good intention and dutiful step. Blessed be they who imbibed the brew of optimism and hope — a bitter brew sweetened only in its final swallow, when that which was wished for finally came to pass. Mrs. Pilkins longed to be just such a woman in full, and there were others: loved ones of other sufferers of the dreaded Terror Tremens. Such a cruelty it was to family and friend to see a cherished brother, or son, husband or wife, colleague or chum return to the Dell, only to be snatched away nearly upon that instant and imprisoned, as if the disease were some perpetration of felony to be severely punished. It was tenacious hope that brought Jemima Pilkins one Sunday and one Wednesday of each month to this dark and cheerless building along with her teen-year daughters Charity and Mercy, in the belief that this day would be different from all the others, that upon this day something of the attributes which she drew for her daughters’ very names might imbue and soften the hardened heart of the registrar of visitors, but it was frustration and distemper that staid her departure.
“I mention the hour I spent with my brother four months ago, Mr. Howler,” Mrs. Pilkins rejoined, fixing Howler with an icy glare, “to say that we — all of us — spent time in close company with him, and to-day I stand before you bearing no sign at all of having contracted the disease which removes him from us. Nor do my daughters shew evidence of having caught it, nor anyone else who showered my brother Walter with hugs and kisses on that joyful night turned so tragic by his forced removal from us. I am inclined to conclude that the disease isn’t communicable at all in his case, and for that reason there should be no reason whatsoever for your persistence in keeping us away from him.”
“Then, Mrs. Pilkins, I would advise you to take up the matter with Dr. Towlinson. It is not for me to contravene the rule that Returnees shall have no visitors under any circumstances.”
I could not at that moment keep myself from intruding, and I did so by leaning forward and putting my head between the two sloping shoulders of Charity and Mercy. “Begging your pardon, Mr. Howler,” I began in a deceptively casual lilt, “I’m curious to know (and it amazes me that I have never put this enquiry to you before) if there ever was a Returnee who was permitted a visitation either by family member or friend. Or have they all — without exception — been wholly and permanently quarantined?”
The registrar cleared his throat and then replied, “Certainly there have been exceptions.”
“May I know, then, which of the inmates, who once communed with the Outlanders, have been allowed visits with their loved ones?”
“I haven’t the names at present. But mind, sir, that it must be established that the illness has receded to such point that it won’t spread to others. That is cardinal.”
“And how long does it generally take Dr. Towlinson to establish this fact of recession?”
“I don’t know.” Turning to Sir Dabber: “Would you know? You once served on the board of this hospital. What are the criteria?”
“I wasn’t aware that there were such criteria, Howler. But now that you put it to me, I’d imagine that all devolves to Dr. Towlinson to make that determination, and that it remains a discretionary matter for that gentleman alone.”
The matter now having been placed back into the lap of Mr. Howler, official gatekeeper of Bethlehem Hospital upon Highbury Fields, I said, “Then we should like to see Dr. Towlinson. May we have an interview with him directly?”
Crusty irritation now reconfigured the countenance of my companion. “Trimmers, we didn’t come hither to intercede on behalf of Mrs. Pilkins’ lost cause.” With a bow of apology to that good woman: “Not to cast a single aspersion on the worthiness of your cause.” Then back to me: “We came, in point of fact, to see Bevan, and that is all.”
“Yet it is an issue that confounds me, Sir Dabber,” said I in stubborn pursuit of my newly established mission. “It’s also an issue in which I am now partially invested given the recent departures of my nephew Newman and my only brother Augustus.”
“I had heard about your nephew but was not aware that your brother was gone as well.”
I nodded solemnly and resumed. “Should we all be so fortunate as to witness their return to Dingley Dell, I should like to know if I — and my sister-in-law Charlotte — will ever be permitted to see them subsequent to their sequestration, or must we, as in even the best of cases, wait an interminable number of years for that privilege?”
“The matter is all quite hypothetical at the moment, wouldn’t you say, Trimmers?” returned Dabber with an impatient tap of his umbrella’s ferule upon the hard floor.