Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“Take up your pen, Trimmers,” said Sir Dabber, “ and make note of the following items for discussion at this month’s Star Chamber.”

“Oh how he jests!” cawed Dr. Fibbetson.

“Just who is the current chairman of the board of this hospital, Dabber?” queried a suddenly no longer sunny Lord Mayor Feenix.

The question was left unanswered as Sir Dabber with restored equanimity and sober resolve launched himself into a rather remarkable list of everything that was the matter with present-day Bedlam, in the sense of both gross incompetence and deliberate malefaction. “Visiting days and hours are purposefully truncated to curtail time spent by inmates with their loved ones. Inmates are subjected to brutal, almost animal-like conditions — yes, both below and above stairs, for I have at last opened my ears to all the reports of those who do manage to see their friends and family members, only to discover for themselves the lengths to which this hospital will go to rob these men and women and children of their dignity.”

“Baseless calumny!” interjected Dr. Fibbetson, his mouth, thereafter, fixed into a permanent expression of outrage.

“I am not finished, Fibbetson. I have yet to mention the trickery and connivance that has latterly taken place between you , Judge Fitz-Marshall and the administrator of this hospital under the instigating direction of Montague Pupker — a travesty of justice that sets a dangerous precedent for future misapplication of the law within the Dell. I speak of the young woman, Pupker’s oldest daughter Hannah, who is no more mad than any man or woman in this room, with the possible exception of Fibbetson here, who has been known to parade about in the early hours of the morn drest only in his bedroom smalls.”

“I am a sleepwalker, you dolt!” exclaimed the offended Dr. Fibbetson.

“And have you been somnambulating through your many bungled surgeries, Fibbetson? You, sir, are the worst doctor with whom I have been professionally acquainted since the reign of the infamous Dr. Popsnap, whom I understand was your revered mentor. And you have the audacity to add your worthless opinion to the chorus of those who will put Miss Pupker into this dismal place for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with the fitness of her mind. Gentlemen, Miss Pupker has no business being an inmate of this hospital, and I demand that she be released at the close of this meeting.” Sir Dabber paused just long enough to give extra freight to the sentence that followed: “Along with my son, whom I wish returned to my own care.”

Lord Mayor Feenix exchanged an indecipherable look with Dr. Towlinson. In a sedate and measured tone he said, “Are you finished? Because if your rant has reached its terminus I should like to say that both Miss Pupker and your son Bevan were placed into our custody through a process of proper legal consignment, indicative of nothing but concern for the welfare of the patient.”

“That is rot!” snapped Sir Dabber. “And besides, hospital commitments, no matter how they have been effected, are not irreversible. They can be undone by this very board, in fact.”

“If you want your son home with you, Dabber, I’ll not stop you,” said Lord Mayor Feenix. “Anything to reduce the temperature of your growing aversion to this institution. As to your other charges, I will authorise an investigation. You are right that things have not run as smoothly as of late as they once did.”

Dr. Towlinson’s face now gave a look of some confusion that was brought to rein by a pat of the arm by the current board chairman, the rising and falling of his beefy paws bearing strong resemblance to a bear rapping upon a captured bee hive.

“In defence to our esteemed colleagues, Doctors Towlinson and Fibbetson,” said Feenix, “the charges you have made, while possessing some merit, do not address the difficulties presented by this sudden degenerative turn in the conditions of our T.T. patients.”

Sir Dabber knew now just as surely as did I the deceit of the spurious Terror Tremens and even some of its underlying purpose, but demonstrated a savvy prudence in not raising the issue under these circumstances, and thereby betraying to the men in the room the degree to which we had informed ourselves about the inner-workings of the Tiadaghton Project.

“And what of Hannah Pupker?” I struck in. “Is she to continue to be made prisoner in this place based solely upon a father’s singular fallacious charge of madness?”

“Stay your tongue!” ordered Lord Mayor Feenix. “You have no voice in this meeting, and, moreover, the matter of young Miss Pupker has already been addressed by the court.”

“Through self-serving machination,” added Dabber, saying that very thing that I should have liked to say, had I a “voice in this meeting.”

“I’ll hear no more about Hannah Pupker, who blithers and drools in her chambers even as we speak, for I saw her just moments ago in my monthly round of inspection.” The Lord Mayor indicated that the topic of Hannah Pupker had come to its end through the sudden application of his paws and eyes to the various papers collected before him.

During this brief interval, I succumbed to the desire to bend my eyes to Ruth Wolf, who responded with a slight and almost imperceptible shake of the head. It was not she, the nurse was thus telling me, who had made Hannah Pupker “blithering and drooling.”

A sickness rose up in my stomach, accompanied by a feeling of profound helplessness in the cause of Hannah Pupker.

The Lord Mayor took a deep breath and rearranged his Bulldog bulk in his chair. “So Dabber. Take your son at the close of this meeting. By all means. He shall be one less mouth to feed and one less reeking slop pail to empty. Shall we make this official, gentlemen? Shall we have a vote? Let me see the hands of those who agree that the “Rokesmith Ruin,” Dabber’s son Bevan, should be released this very evening to the custody of his father.”

All the hands of those who had standing in the meeting rose, save one — Towlinson’s with some hesitation, and Fibbetson’s after seeing the way that the majority would go. The single exception was the lugubrious Judge Fitz-Marshall, who professed a policy of never reversing a lunacy commitment to which he had been judiciary signatory.

“Fitz-Marshall, you are outvoted,” said the Lord Mayor. “The boy will be released. Moving on now to that grave matter which brings Miss Wolf before us: Miss Wolf, your attendance at this meeting has been requested for the following reason: that you should tender your resignation as nurse in service to Bethlehem Hospital upon Highbury Fields, such resignation effective upon receipt.”

Lord Mayor Feenix pushed a piece of paper and quill to Nurse Ruth Wolf. She stared down at the paper, neither speaking nor moving her hand to affix her signature to it. “Your services to the Lung Hospital will also be terminated. You will surrender your medical bag this evening.”

“I don’t have it with me,” said Ruth Wolf in a small voice.

“Where is it?” asked Towlinson.

“At home.”

“No, it is not.”

“You’ve been to my house?”

“It has been searched. The bag was nowhere to be found.”

“What difference does it make?” asked Ruth Wolf, putting forth the pretense that the contents of the bag should have no value at all.

“It makes a very great difference,” said Towlinson with a pregnant, knowing look. “And I should like its return — to my office — to-morrow morning at the latest.”

“I don’t understand why I am being dismissed,” said Ruth Wolf in a mechanical voice that said she knew quite well a number of underlying, unspoken reasons for her termination. But she was nonetheless curious (as was I) about what should be the purported grounds for her departure from the institution, which had employed her for the entire length of her sojourn as counterfeit Dinglian.