Her musings were suddenly interrupted. While she’d been chatting to Isaac, her son George had woken and slipped quietly out of bed, dancing off into the dewy grass of their garden. He now returned and announced with a flourish, “I have picked some strawberries for your breakfast, Mother.”37
Elizabeth had barely begun to thank him when a deep voice cut into their conversation.
“Come, George,” said Theophilus Packard, standing at the nursery door. “Won’t you go with Father to the store and get some sugarplums?”38
With cool eyes, Elizabeth assessed her husband. She’d known his face since she was ten years old—this face of the man intent on her destruction. She could have sketched his features from memory: the “winter of perpetual frown”39 that furrowed his high forehead, his thin pink lips, and his reddish, mustache-less beard, which hugged the contours of his rounded chin.
Elizabeth knew his face so well—and her husband knew their son. If there was one thing in the world Georgie loved, it was sugarplums.
With a cry of excitement, he dashed off with his dad; Isaac went too, for the sugarplums could be found at Comstock’s. Now every child was absent. Still smiling at her son’s exhilaration, as soon as they’d gone, Elizabeth threw back the bedcovers, typically eager to start her day. She stripped off her nightgown, planning—as was her daily routine—to give herself a cold sponge bath.
As she moved about the room, her reflection was captured in its gilt-framed mirror. Petite at only five foot one, Elizabeth was a handsome woman. She had a nose as strong and straight as her principles, slim lips, and almond-shaped brown eyes—her intelligence was said to “gleam”40 in them. At that time of the morning, her long brown hair lay loose upon her shoulders. It was secretly starting to be silvered gray, but Elizabeth pasted it with sugar and water, a primitive gel that made her hair look black.
She was only halfway through her ablutions when a two-horse lumber wagon pulled up outside. Intrigued, she wandered to her boarded window and peered out through the cracks. To her surprise, she could see Theophilus; he must have entrusted George to Isaac. With him were four other men. Three she recognized as members of his church—Deacon Dole, who was Sybil’s husband, plus Drs. Newkirk and Merrick—but the fourth was a “stranger gentleman”41 whom Elizabeth did not know.
As the men moved briskly toward the house, Elizabeth instinctively sensed danger. Moving swiftly, she crossed to her nursery door and locked it—of her own volition this time. Then she began to dress, as quickly as she could. The thought of her essays, hidden in her wardrobe, flickered through her mind, and she worked with yet more speed.
But the many layers of a nineteenth-century woman’s wardrobe hampered her intent. She’d barely begun to pull on her drawers and her cotton chemise before the men were at the door. She heard their footsteps coming closer before the handle rattled. To her relief, the turned key kept them out. She turned back to her garments, rushing now, not wanting them to burst into the room with her underdressed and disarrayed.
When she heard the noise at the window, she was startled.
When she saw the gleam of the ax, she was scared.
She ran back to bed and threw the counterpane across herself. She needed it for modesty, body bare beneath her underclothes. She lay there trembling, tense and terrified, while the men outside rained blows upon the boards.
The wood splintered easily. With each blow, she felt it striking at herself, cutting cleanly through her confidence.
The ax made short work. All too soon, the men clambered through the window. They swarmed into the room, male bodies incongruously big and bold within her nursery.
The wolves were on the inside now.
CHAPTER 3
The two doctors came straight to her side. They seized her arm from beneath the bedclothes and professionally took her pulse. It raced, rampant; she was shocked and scared. Despite its rapid pace, Newkirk nodded at her husband. Whatever he was looking for, it seemed it had been found.
Theophilus stepped forward and said, “The ‘forms of law’ [are] now all complied with.”1 He told Elizabeth to dress at once for a journey to the Jacksonville Insane Asylum. The train would be leaving at ten.
Elizabeth protested; she would not be committed without a proper trial. Thanks to Comstock, she knew the law. She knew her rights.
But Theophilus informed her, “I am doing as the laws of Illinois allow.”2
Although Elizabeth could not credit it, he was absolutely right.
Comstock, too, was a member of his church. Unbeknownst to Elizabeth, he’d also signed the parishioners’ petition that Elizabeth was “so far deranged”3 she should be swiftly dispatched to an asylum. Yet he’d still not exactly lied to her. A six-man jury trial was required before commitment. But whether by design or not, Comstock had failed to mention one critical caveat.