She tried not to paint pictures now. This moment was far too important.
Unexpectedly, McFarland stood up. And then, “without uttering one syllable”30—exactly the nonverbal exchange she had desired—he approached her.
He offered his right hand.
Elizabeth stood up too, mirroring his movements. She reached out her own hand and their fingers slid together, side by side, like train carriages on adjacent tracks, until the two touched palms.
The doctor bowed, a “low, respectful bow,”31 and once again, his body spoke words he did not say. Because as he bent at the waist, the movement was accompanied “with a slight pressure of his hand”32 in hers. She felt it speak as if a sentence. She felt “the highest expectations of my future were all consummated in this the Doctor’s final decision.”33
The train carriages separated, a blast of steam sending them off, and her hand felt cooler after the warmth of his close touch. Yet a connection had been made, whether written in steam or skin or silence.
“I considered this,” she later said, “as an acceptance of my terms.”34
Devil or no devil, the deal had been done.
CHAPTER 32
January passed into February. Elizabeth continued to prepare for publication. But McFarland made no efforts that she could see to uphold his end of their bargain. After empty weeks had passed, she decided to write to him again. On this occasion, she asked her attendant to pass on the note.
This was no love letter.
This was a threat.
Elizabeth reminded him of the long-ago choice she’d given: repentance or exposure. She now wrote fiercely, “If you fail to keep your promise to publish my book…I shall feel bound to fulfill my promise to expose you.”1 She shared with him, for the first time, that she had been secretly working on a second book, which she called The Exposure.
McFarland took only an hour to respond. She could “almost hear my own heart palpitate with emotion”2 as she heard his footsteps coming closer to her door.
“Good morning, Doctor!”3 she said with customary cheerfulness.
But her greeting was not returned. McFarland ignored her outstretched hand, too, and its memories of promises past.
“Step out of your room,” he insisted.
No sooner had she stepped over the threshold than he slammed the door and locked it.
Her book was in there.
Both her books.
“Mrs. Packard,” McFarland said with all the disapproving censure of the superior he saw himself to be, “I consider that note you sent me as unladylike—as containing a threat.”
Because no woman could be both assertive and feminine.
“Dr. McFarland,” replied Elizabeth with just as much authority as he’d professed to have, “that note contained the truth, and nothing but the truth. I promised you when I had been here only four months, that I should expose you when I got out, unless you repented—I don’t take it back!”
At her words, he seized her—albeit gently—and escorted her swiftly down the corridor. When Elizabeth realized where they were going, she may have trembled.
Solitary. He was locking her in a screen room.
It was McFarland’s own hand that drew the bolt across the door.
Yet as she inspected her new surroundings, Elizabeth may have smiled wryly. Because the iron screen was in place across the window and the monastic plainness of the room was undeniable, but sitting squarely in the middle of this intimidating space was an anomalous object: a single chair.
It didn’t belong there. It had been placed there purposely.
As though he himself was self-censoring his actions, as the attendants often did before her unyielding gaze, McFarland had prepared the room in advance of her arrival. There was even a pillow placed neatly on the bed.
With nothing else to do, Elizabeth took the chair and placed it in the corner of the room. She picked up the pillow, plonked herself on the seat, and then tipped the chair back against the wall at a comfortable angle, the pillow behind her head, intending to sleep or try to. “Good sleep”4 was, after all, “as good an antidote to trouble”5 as she could think of. There was nothing she could do to prevent this incarceration or influence the doctor’s actions beyond the bolted door. So why try? “Duties are ours, events God’s.”6 She closed her eyes and rested.
Two hours later, she heard the door opening again. McFarland stood in the doorway, staring in some surprise at her composed position.
“Can I come out now?”7 she asked calmly.
“Yes.”
“Can I go to my room?”