“Yes.”
She led the way; he followed. He unlocked the door of her private room for her…and revealed a scene of stunning disarray.
The doctor had been busy. Her bed barely deserved the name: tick mattresses, sheets, counterpane, and pillows had all been thoroughly searched. Her clothes lay tossed beside her trunk, which had been ransacked. Combs, mirrors, jewelry…all lay asunder, as though this room in an asylum had truly contained an insane occupant for the past few hours.
Worst of all, to Elizabeth’s eyes: the box in which she kept the finished manuscript of The Great Drama was completely empty.
He’d taken every scrap of writing he could find.
Yet Elizabeth turned calmly from the “sad scene” before her to face McFarland. She laid her hand gently on his arm.
“Doctor, never fear,” she said soothingly, as though to quiet the storm that had raged in her room. “God reigns. This will all work right.”
In her mind, “God’s purpose would stand, and…nothing could hinder it.”8 She just had to let God work His way through these events.
And God had been looking out for her. Though McFarland had taken every page of The Great Drama, he discovered neither her journal—still pinned in place in her garments—nor the manuscript of The Exposure, which she’d carefully hidden before sending her note, “knowing the dog [would soon be] on the scent.”9
With the assurance that these documents were safe, she felt even more tranquil. After all, she and the doctor had a deal. Though her friends in the asylum feared McFarland might burn her book, she had faith he would not: “He will return it to me entire and unharmed.”10
Her friends listened with confoundment. “There seemed a mystery attached [to my confidence],” Elizabeth explained, “to which none but myself held the key.”11 That key was “this secret of the letter”12 of January 19. As Elizabeth put it, “This…was the talismanic power which finally and alone wrought out my deliverance.”13
Because three weeks after he’d stolen all her papers, McFarland returned them to her, “unasked, with an apology for not having done so before.”14
Elizabeth felt triumphant. She had offered her heart for her book, but it had been worth it. Victorious, she resumed the “delightful work”15 of preparing the first volume of The Great Drama for publication.
“I never could ask any man to treat me with more deferential respect than Dr. McFarland uniformly did from this time,”16 Elizabeth wrote exultantly after the drama of her manuscript’s theft and return. Because McFarland had returned her handwritten pages, she felt he had reformed, which imbued her with “entire trust and confidence in his manhood.”17 To Elizabeth, freedom of expression was everything, an unsurprising position given she’d ended up in the asylum because her husband wanted to deny her it. This influenced all her dealings with McFarland too. When writing her reproof had led to her banishment to Eighth Ward or when McFarland had failed to listen to patients’ complaints, she saw the devil in him. But—as she’d said at the trustee meeting—when he allowed her spiritual liberty, the liberty to express herself, she “should trust him, though he slay me.”18
“I had no reason to feel,” she concluded after the safe return of her precious manuscript, “that another man lived on earth who cared for my happiness, but [him].”19
Certainly, her husband cared nothing for it. Around this time, Elizabeth received some unsettling news via her cousin, Angeline Field. Angeline was more an adopted sister than a cousin, having been raised alongside Elizabeth after Angeline’s mother had died; she was Elizabeth’s “dearest friend.”20 Her cousin had never wavered in believing Elizabeth sane, her conviction further strengthened after Theophilus had tried to “browbeat her into silence”21 after she and her husband had written to McFarland to request Elizabeth’s release. The moment they’d heard of Elizabeth’s commitment, they’d suspected “foul play”22 on the pastor’s part.
And more foul play was afoot. Theophilus had been greatly disturbed back in September when he’d thought the trustees might discharge his wife. So he’d started looking for another asylum that would take Elizabeth—this time, one whose superintendent would never recommend her release.
Angeline now shared that he’d found one. The State Lunatic Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts, was an asylum that was “open to all…without regard to the form or duration of the disease.”23 It prided itself on the fact that “none have ever been turned from its doors.”24 Theophilus might possibly have thought to try it as an old schoolfriend of his was one of its trustees: another safety net to ensure his will was done.