Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“We beg pardon for the intrusion, Dr. Towlinson,” said I, “but it’s doubtful that Howler would have allowed us to see you without some application of assertiveness on our part.”

“Do you really mean Howler ?” posed the doctor with a grin, “or me ? For I left strict orders with my registrar that I would be entertaining no visitors this afternoon.”

“Unless there rose a matter of some importance,” Mrs. Pilkins corrected our host, “which this visit most certainly concerns.”

It was at this moment that Towlinson made a discovery that raised his brows and set his mouth aslant. He noticed the calculating device that had been left upon his desk. It was obvious from the unsettled expression upon his face that it had not been his intent to leave the thing in full view of anybody who might approach his office. Perhaps it lived always and without exception within that very drawer into which he now deposited it and quickly locked it away. Having put the thing out of sight, he scanned each of our faces for some indication that its presence had registered with us. Each visitor made his or her face as blank as could be possible, Mercy even feigning to wipe something from her sister’s eyelid, as if to use this bit of business to demonstrate a lack of awareness of anything of an extraordinary nature within the room, including a most miraculous calculating machine that could not have been believed had we not all clearly seen it in its full and glorious function.

Each of us had made a decision upon that very instant not to enquire about the device, for what would it profit our present cause and how easily could it prove to over-complicate our efforts here? Yet I, for one, would not soon forget it, for its existence begged a number of questions I should like to have answered. Here, however, was neither the time nor place to ask them.

Dr. Towlinson seemed to relax, having apparently decided for himself that we had not trespassed upon his desk and in all likelihood had not seen the computator (let alone used it to divide 66,666,666 by 12,345,678 to gain a quotient that placed a “three” seven full spaces behind the decimal, producing the requisite result in less time than it took me to blink even once in utter disbelief!).

“If you refer, Mrs. Pilkins, to the hospital’s decision to keep your brother Walter Skewton in a continued state of isolation, there is nothing to be said. The quarantine remains in place and you will not be given leave to violate it.”

“Yet it is my belief, Dr. Towlinson, that he has been incorrectly diagnosed, for as I told Mr. Howler downstairs, nobody who sat with Walter on the evening of his return has been taken ill. Not a single one of us!”

“The disease may be in a state of hibernation or incubation, my dear lady, and if it were up to me, I would place each of you into quarantine yourselves given your close proximity to Walter on that night. But it just isn’t possible for us to go about putting large groups of people into observation cells at the expense of the general ratepayer. And so we will count our blessings that, so far, nobody within your household seems to have contracted this terrible disease. And let us leave it at that.”

“Before we ‘leave it at that,’” I interposed, “may I ask if you will permit Mrs. Pilkins to, at the very least, view her brother at a safe distance?” I prided myself on this attempt to bridge the chasm between the two positions. “Perhaps Mr. Skewton may be brought to a window and engaged from some vantage point on the grounds below.”

Towlinson dismissed the idea with a resolute shake of the head. “That would be out of the question. The young man is asleep.”

“Then wake him.”

“I cannot. Mr. Skewton is presently under the influence of one of our strongest soporifics and cannot be roused for love or money.”

“Why?” I asked, sliding forward in my chair with impatience.

“Why what?”

“Why has he been so heavily sedated?”

“Because — forgive my bluntness, sir — he is mad. Because he spends most of his waking hours attempting to remove himself from this place with such violence and such calculated expenditure of energy that he can scarcely be subdued. I eschew that dreadful three-letter term, ‘mad,’ madam—” now having returned his sombre gaze to Mrs. Pilkins, “but in the case of your brother I shall make exception: Walter Skewton is a veritable madman. He will not improve. Nay, he worsens with each week. His is a most grievous case, a fact that I did not wish to convey to you for fear that the disclosure would have a devastating effect upon your sensibilities and upon the sensibilities of your fragile daughters. But since you must have it, the truth is this: that the man whom we hold in strait-waistcoat is no longer the same man you knew as your brother. That man, I regret to inform you, is as good as dead.”

Mrs. Pilkins did not reply. All of the wind had fled her sails and she sat slumped and withered upon the couch, silent tears streaming down her cheeks, each bookend daughter doing everything with attentive strokes and pats to assuage her misery, their eyes bedewed as well.

It was Sir Dabber who chose next to speak: “Dr. Towlinson, has the hospital board been apprised of the young man’s condition?”

“They’ll be informed at our next scheduled meeting on Monday evening.”

“And what is the present status of the other Returnees?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“How similar are their respective conditions to that of Mr. Skewton’s?”

“Quite a few are nearly as bad. We’ve tried large doses of every remedy that can be compounded: bromide of potassium, belladonna, chloride of aluminum, ferrous sulfate, quinine, tartar of arsenic, stramonium tobacco. It is all for naught, my good man. The tragedy of it haunts my dreams and disturbs my waking hours. When I at life’s end prepare to depart this world, my inability to heal these men and women will constitute my greatest professional regret and disappointment.”

“But you say that Mr. Skewton’s condition is the worst? There is no one amongst the other Returnees whom you could say displays more acute symptoms than does Mrs. Pilkins’ unfortunate brother?”

“There was Mr. Gamfield, but, alas — do not speak of this outside these walls, for his family has yet to be told — he died this morning. In the midst of a fit. He was being conveyed to the bathing room and threw himself against a wall and cracked open—” The doctor lowered his voice now in deference to the tender ears of the females in the room. “Cracked open his skull. There was significant loss of brain matter. The skull must have been weakened in its constituency from the gentleman’s having struck his head repeatedly against the wall of his own cell as the most grievous idiots do.”

Mrs. Pilkins, having heard every word, gasped and then was seised by a paroxysm of tears that did not abate even as she was being led by her daughters out of the office and down the corridor and away. I reached for her hand to give comfort as she passed but could not secure it. Nor did she see my look of commiseration, nor the look of sadness upon the face of my companion Sir Dabber.

“And there it is,” said Dr. Towlinson, as the sound of the footsteps of Mrs. Pilkins and her attending daughters died quickly away. Towlinson clasped his hands together as if in relief over their departure.

“And the inquest — has it been scheduled?” asked Dabber.

“It will be done as soon as possible. We must put all of this behind us. Now if there is nothing else to be discussed, I am very busy and must be on my rounds. It is my primary goal to see each visitation Wednesday proceed as smoothly as possible for my visitors as well as for my patients and those who tend to them. It is all a very carefully-orchestrated business and I am the conductor who holds the wand.”