“Husband,” Elizabeth sighed, “have not I a right to my opinion?”
“Yes,” he responded, to her surprise. But he added, “You have a right to your opinions if you think right.”
Elizabeth offered no physical resistance as she was lifted into the wagon, the men swinging themselves in beside her. Inside, she was screaming. With a crack of the reins, the horses began to move, bearing her swiftly away to the station. She barely had time to look back to drink in one last sight of her beloved home: to catch a fading glimpse of green shutters, floral beds in her well-tended garden, a painted porch she’d made beautiful herself.
Elizabeth’s beloved home in Manteno
The passenger depot was located at the northwest corner of Division and Oak: a low-roofed, cream-clapboard building that was rooted right next to the railroad tracks. As they approached, Elizabeth’s eyes rounded with astonishment. The place was absolutely packed, spilling over with citizens: the army Isaac had rallied to her defense.
Theophilus glanced nervously at the gathered crowd. “Wife,” he said hesitantly, “you will get out of the wagon yourself, won’t you? You won’t compel us to lift you out before such a large crowd?”
Elizabeth smiled sweetly. “No, Mr. Packard,” she replied at once. “I shall not help myself into an Asylum. It is you who are putting me there. I do not go willingly… I shall let you show yourself to this crowd, just as you are.”
So in front of the mass of witnesses, Elizabeth was awkwardly lifted down and carried to the ladies’ waiting room. There, she rushed to the window, eyes combing the crowd with relief. The countenances of all were etched with “deep emotion.”2 Elizabeth felt that same deep well within her, her gratitude to Isaac rising like a wall of water. It washed her stricken soul clean. She had not been forsaken. All would be well.
She felt much more confident as Theophilus joined her in the waiting room. Outside, Deacon Dole was addressing the harried crowd; she could not hear his words. Calmly, she took a seat, skirts settling around her in a symphony of sighs.
Theophilus sat down next to her, bending his head to whisper in her ear. In tones “most bland and gentle”3—as though she were a horse that might bolt with the least provocation—he urged her again to walk with him when the train arrived.
“Mr. Packard, I shall not,” Elizabeth said firmly. “It is your own chosen work you are doing. I shall not help you do it.”4
Her steadfastness was unshakable. As she and her husband had battled these past few months, she’d become “more and more determined he should have no reason, in truth, for finding fault with me.”5 Indeed, she’d recently begun to conceive of her stand for selfhood as “business that God has sent me to do.”6 Her conscience told her she must fight for her rights, “to be…an example [to] women to raise them from being in bondage to man.”7 She did so at this point more emboldened than ever, “holding on to God’s cause with both hands.”8
She would not submit to him. As she put it, “A peace based on injustice…is a treacherous sleep whose waking is death. Your honor lies in waking out of it.”9
Elizabeth was wide awake now.
All too soon, the unmistakable sound of the train was heard. The iron horse rode into Manteno in a belch of steam and sparks. Elizabeth sat patiently on her seat, her passive resistance the only power she had.
Deacon Dole came to collect her. Having dealt efficiently with her traveling basket, he gazed helplessly at her body, not knowing how to seize her and maintain their modesties.
Eventually, with an impatient sigh, Elizabeth instructed him and another man to make a “saddle-seat”10 with their joined hands that she could sit upon. By now, she had been introduced to the “stranger gentleman”11 in her husband’s gang—Sheriff Burgess from nearby Kankakee—and she asked him to tend to her skirts once she was settled. She knew instinctively that she could not appear in public with the least thread out of place; she was right to be concerned. The nineteenth-century medical notes of supposed madwomen place particular emphasis on their appearance. An unbuttoned blouse, an undone bun, or even simple carelessness of dress was considered damning evidence a woman’s mind roamed free from its moorings.
The train’s whistle sounded outside. Deacon Dole and his partner quickened their pace. Elizabeth was carried out of the waiting room and onto the teeming platform. From her elevated position, she had a clear view of all the citizens who’d come to save her. Without saying a word, she “imploringly and silently”12 looked to them for the protection they had promised. Any moment now, she told herself, they would step forward en masse and demand her husband stop his scandalous behavior.