The Bird’s Nest (19 page)

There was no time now for the suitcase, and she dropped it and scrambled the key out of her pocketbook and ran for the door. Just as she touched the key to the keyhole Betsy found her and with a furious shout snatched at her hand and bit it until she dropped the key and Betsy grabbed for it as it fell. If Betsy once got a hand on the key there was no hope of escape; wildly, she got a hand in Betsy's hair and pulled, and dragged her back away from the key, and it lay there on the floor while both of them, panting, stood back and waited for one another like two cats circling. Then, with unbelievable speed, Betsy went for the key again, the tips of her fingers just touching it, and she put her foot down hard on Betsy's hand and held it there.

Nothing could pain Betsy, she knew; no kind of hurt could register on that black mind, and so she could only try to overpower Betsy physically, and force her down; with quiet slow strength she put her hand almost gently around Betsy's throat and tightened her fingers as slowly and surely as she could; she made no sound, because she needed all her breath, but Betsy screamed, and gasped, and then ripped at her hand with sharp, cutting nails, and kicked out, and screamed again, sinking; the heel of Betsy's shoe caught in the light cord and brought the lamp smashing down; the noise will bring someone, she thought. She felt Betsy's nails rake the side of her face, and then Betsy called out “Mother!” and was vanquished.

She took her hand from Betsy's throat and, sobbing for breath, rolled over on the floor and got the key in her hands. Then, moving slowly and with pain, she stood up, got the key into the door, and turned it.

 • • •

“Well,” said the nurse with great enthusiasm, “you
have
had quite a sleep. Feeling all chipper now?”

Many rooms have white walls and many beds have white covers, but only hospitals have white walls and white covers and a bed table with a glass of water and a glass bent straw and nurses who speak with quite that quality of enthusiasm; “Where?” she said, and it hurt her achingly to talk.

“Mustn't chatter,” said the nurse, holding up a playful finger. “We've got a pretty sore throat there, haven't we? But we're not going to think about it at all; we're going to have a nice wash-up and then Doctor will be here and give it a look-see. And we're not going to talk and we're not going to get excited and mostly we're not going to think about what happened, because after all it was pretty horrid, wasn't it? Let's just turn our head a little, so I can go over those scratches on your cheek without hurting. Now.” The nurse stood back and beamed with wholehearted simplicity, “Soon be just as pretty as ever,” she said gaily.

“Where?”

“Where what? You do say the
silliest
things.” The nurse laughed, and held up her finger again. “We're going to be in trouble,” she said, “if Doctor comes in and finds us talking. And won't he be pleased to see how nice we look today, after the way we looked yesterday! And I must
say
that we were a pretty smart girl to be carrying around that little paper, we were indeed.” She turned, and almost curtsied, her jolly air replaced immediately by one of extreme gravity. “Good morning, Doctor,” she said.

“Good morning. Good morning, Miss Richmond. How's the throat this morning?”

“Hurts.”

“I imagine it does,” said the doctor. He hesitated, and then went on, “I don't want you to talk any more than you have to, but I'd like you to try and give me some idea of how it happened. Do you know who tried to choke you?”

“No one.”

“Miss Richmond,” said the doctor, “someone has had a hand around your throat, making those violent bruises. Do you mean that you don't know who did it?”

“She scratched me.”

“Who?”

“Doctor,” said the nurse, coming forward in an ardent little rush, “Miss Richmond's doctor is here, just outside.”

“Bring him in, by all means. Miss Richmond, thanks to the memo we found in your pocketbook, we have been able to locate your aunt and your doctor and get them here quickly.” He rose, and went to the door, where she could hear him speaking quietly. “Since last night,” she heard him say, and another voice speaking, questioning. “—an eye on her in the hotel,” the doctor said.

The nurse came over and looked down on her with vast kindliness. “You've been a lucky girl,” said the nurse enigmatically.

“—self-inflicted, but it's impossible that—”

“Aunt Morgen?” she asked the nurse.

“Downstairs,” said the nurse. “Came to take her girl home.”

The door opened wide, and the doctor came back, with another, smaller man, who walked with small steps and seemed pale and worried. “A paper with my name and address,” he was saying as he walked, seemingly in confirmation of what had just been said, and the doctor nodded; they both came and stood looking down at her from the two sides of the bed, and the nurse stepped hastily back. “I wish she could talk more,” the doctor said. “She can't seem to tell us who did it.”

“I know who did it,” the little man said absently; he was looking down at her gravely, and then he reached out and touched the scratches on her face briefly and withdrew his hand. “Poor child,” he said. “We were worried about you,” he told her.

She looked up at him, perplexed. “Who in sin are you?” she said.

Since I do not anticipate making the history of Elizabeth R. into my life's work—although I can conceive of lives spent on less—I do not think it necessary to enter into as much professional detail in what I now see as the second, and concluding, stage of her treatment at my hands. On the one side, I feel strongly that although the layman cannot be too well instructed in the uses and values of the several therapeutic methods employed, too detailed an examination of such a case as Miss R.'s may in some respects lessen the efficacy of similar treatment in further cases, the patient being already too well familiarized with the slow progressive steps and prepared for them, as it were; on the other side, my own feelings about the case are mixed, and I am most unwilling to complicate my account with unnecessary detail. Moreover, I strongly suspect that readers today (what, still with me, my friend? Our numbers have grown no larger since we last saw eye to eye; literature is—and I insist upon it to you, sir—a diminishing art) will not sit docilely under a description of a piece of work carefully and painstakingly done; with little patience to lavish upon their own performances, they have none for the work of others.

In any case, I shall curtail my presentation of Miss R.'s case, and go as quickly as I can to my conclusion. I believe I may have given my reader the notion that I am not an even-tempered man by nature; few are, in truth, I believe. I was hugely annoyed by Miss R.'s abduction at the hands of Betsy, and hardly less aggravated at being called upon, some three days later, to travel to New York—a spot which I particularly loathe—and by airplane, which is, to my thinking, a mode of travel only slightly less nauseating than riding camelback. I traveled with Miss Jones, the venerable aunt of Miss R., and Miss Jones' company did not materially improve my voyage. She was alternately enormously amused at my discomforts in the airplane, and reproachful over what she deemed my “letting the child escape”—which, since it was I alone who kept Betsy under so long as she did stay, seemed to me both ungrateful and uningratiating; I have, altogether, rarely undertaken a less rewarding journey.

We found our young lady substantially the worse for her holiday. No one knows, even now, the entire story of what had happened to her, and my most astute questioning, since, has not uncovered all the facts, by any means; we knew, of course, from the phone call which told us she was in hospital, that she had been taken unconscious from the floor of a hotel corridor, that she had been beaten, scratched, and half-strangled, and that she seemed to be suffering from what the New York doctors called, with unshakable assurance, partial amnesia. I myself came into her hospital room with some misgivings, having reason to doubt the cordiality of my reception by Betsy, and found upon the bed a girl whom I would unhesitatingly have denounced as an imposter, had I not, in the past, seen the facial changes produced when Elizabeth R. became Beth, and then Betsy. This girl—she impressed me as considerably younger than either Elizabeth or Beth, Betsy of course being physically ageless—seemed slighter, somehow, and almost frail; even allowing for the probable harrowing effect of her miserable days in New York, she did not impress me as a young woman of robust health. She resembled Elizabeth strongly, but her face was sharper and of a more cunning turn; I thought she had a sly look.

At any rate, she and I were strangers. She addressed me civilly enough, but was surprised that I should have come so far to see her, and concluded of her own accord that it was done in duty to her aunt, in whose name she thanked me courteously. Her medical attendant, she further informed me, was Doctor Ryan, and she supposed that if I called at his office upon my return to Owenstown he would be willing to oblige me with any future bulletins with regard to her health, should my interest in her continue so long. She spoke very lamely because of the painful condition of her throat, but we none of us, the attendant physician, the nurse, or myself, had any difficulty whatsoever in determining that Doctor Wright's services were superfluous to the present Miss R.

I confess I felt a momentary pang of sympathy for whoever had gotten a hand around her throat, but bowed in silence and retired with what grace I could muster, amused privately at the chagrin of the hospital doctor, who had summoned me in haste because a slip of paper containing my name and address was found in Miss R.'s pocketbook. I assured Miss Jones that her niece was in most capable hands; then, very willingly, I abandoned Miss R. to her aunt to bring home, and a pleasant trip I wished them both. I myself returned by train, a longer but less unsettling mode of travel, and reached my own office and my good fire with an aching head and a deep desire never to hear more of either Miss R. or her aunt. I felt, not to put too fine a point on it, that Miss Jones would probably be completely satisfied with the girl we had found in New York, that my own Miss R. was gone, probably for good, and that I had undertaken a wild goose chase for nothing more than to be mocked in a hospital room by an impudent girl, and to risk my life in an airplane with her fright of an aunt; I found in myself nothing but a kind of sublime impatience with Miss R. and all her family.

Two things I knew which I do not believe anyone else suspected: that Beth had written the note with my name and address and tucked it into Miss R.'s pocketbook, and that the bruises on Miss R.'s throat were made by the fingers of Betsy; I believe they would have thought me mad in New York had I proposed either as a clue to Miss R.'s condition. I contented myself, therefore, with my anger, and did well with it.

I was not, nevertheless, altogether dumfounded when, two days after her return, Miss R. came to my office; Miss Hartley, of course, announced her only as Miss R., and it was a genuine pleasure to me to find myself greeting Elizabeth who, timid and hesitant as always, sat down as though she thought she had an appointment, and indeed, upon questioning, it developed that she really thought she had. The poor girl knew of nothing that had passed, and assumed, in all innocence, that she was merely continuing her regular series of visits! I was touched, and perhaps a little guilty over my anger with the poor creature, and so it was with great cordiality that I affected to act as though nothing untoward had occurred since our last meeting.

“Have you completely recovered your recent illness, my dear Elizabeth?” I asked her. “You look extremely well.” There were still dark bruises on her throat, which she had tried to cover with a silk scarf under her collar, and the scratches on her face had not entirely faded, but there is no doubt but what she looked better than she had the last time I had seen her—or the time before that, for that matter.

“I feel better,” she said. “I have been sick a long time, I think.”

“You caused your aunt much concern.” With a genuine sense of well-being I opened the desk drawer and took out the notebook which I used for recording my conversations with Miss R., and smiled at her rueful face when she saw it. “We have a good deal of time to make up,” I told her. “How long has it been since we last talked together?”

“About a week?” She was doubtful.

“It seems to have done you good, at any rate. Now, let us begin with our usual catechism. Headaches?”

“None, except for a slight one a day or so ago, when I woke up from a bad dream.”

“I assume,” I said, “that since you woke up, you had been asleep, and from that I deduce that your insomnia has not been so troublesome as before?”

“I have been sleeping soundly. Except . . .” She faltered. “Except . . . I have had very bad dreams.”

“Indeed? Can you recall anything of them?”

“I was standing,” she said reluctantly, “and I was looking at myself. There was a big mirror—it went as high as I could see. And even though I don't want to speak unkindly of anyone I think it is cruel of Aunt Morgen to lock my door at night. I am no longer a child, you know.”

My eyes were on my notebook, but I heard the curious change in her voice, and asked, without looking up, “Did you write my name and address on a slip of paper?”

“You did see it, then?” Her voice was delighted. “I was so frightened, and I tried to telephone you, because I knew that
you
would
always
come to help me, but the man wouldn't call you to the phone, and I was so frightened.”

I looked up at her; it was surely Beth, come to me voluntarily without hypnosis, pale and tired and brutally disfigured by her scratched face, but my own lovely girl nevertheless. “If you hadn't written that note,” I told her, “we could not have rescued you.”

“Rescued me?” she asked wonderingly.

“I will explain it in good time. Let me only say that you were most wise to make that note. There are a great many things I am anxious to discuss with you, but I fear that you are not entirely well even yet, and I think you should rest.” I had not until now met Beth face to face, and—just as when I first saw Betsy with her eyes open I recognized suddenly that she was an independent personality, a being whole and apart from any other, rather than a mere angry manifestation engendered solely in my office—I saw that Beth now, looking about her and drawing herself together, was endeavoring to
form
herself, as it were; let my reader who is puzzled by my awkward explanations close his eyes for no more than two minutes, and see if he does not find himself suddenly not a compact human being at all, but only a consciousness on a sea of sound and touch; it is only with the eyes open that a corporeal form returns, and assembles itself firmly around the hard core of sight. This was, at any rate, my impression of Beth's growing consciousness; she had been at first no more than a voice and a look, but as she hardened into an individual the separation between her and the other personalities grew visibly greater; it was impossible, for instance, to look now at Beth, as I was doing, and believe her the same person as Elizabeth, who had been sitting in that chair not ten minutes earlier; except that they wore the same clothes, and their faces, although subtly different, wore the same ugly scratches, they were two entirely different girls. Thus, my growing clumsiness with Beth; I can only say again, helplessly, that there is a world of difference between a wraithlike shadow and a real girl. So, I stumbled and got through my stiff sentences, and made a note which read—I swear it; I have it in my notebook still—“Elizabeth Beth brillig; o borogrove” and then Beth said primly, “Do you know that I have never seen you before, doctor?” and I thought that perhaps my own expression had been fairly fatuous, being accustomed to dealing with Beth sightless. I asked her if she felt well enough after all, to talk with me for a while, and she was eager to stay, adding that Aunt Morgen was “so cross all the time now.”

I was not very much surprised at that, to be sure, and asked her what her aunt thought of her continuing to visit my office.

“She said I could come,” Beth said. “When I go out she wants to know where I am going and when I am coming back, as though I were a baby still.”

I wondered at this; from what I had seen of Aunt I would have expected her to keep her runaway niece chained to the bedpost, but I suppose that actually, short of a legitimate confinement in an institution, she could hardly endeavor to keep her niece under constant supervision; she knew only the hospital's diagnosis of “amnesia” and so imagined, I suppose, that her niece had forgotten that she ran away, and why, and might be assumed to be fairly safe from another attempt. I sighed, and Beth said quickly, “It is
you
who are tired, and I have stayed too long.”

“No, no indeed,” I said. “I am only perplexed.”

“I know,” she said. “You are worried about me, and wondering over my health, and hoping I will be well.” She thought. “Are you going to put me to sleep?” she asked.

I most certainly did not want to attempt hypnosis; indeed, I wanted only to send her home until I might prepare myself more adequately for returning to her case. But she had come to me faithfully, and I was still her physician. “I shall,” I said steadily. “If you wish it, we shall resume our regular treatments now.”

Perhaps because she was excited she was most difficult to subdue into a deep hypnotic slumber this afternoon; with her eyes closed and lying back in her chair she more nearly resembled the Beth I remembered, the girl who had once been only R
2
! I had never before put Beth under further hypnosis without arriving at Betsy, and perhaps that thought, too, delayed our achievement of her hypnotic trance; time after time she would open her eyes and smile at me and I, smiling back, would begin again, patiently. At last her eyes closed and she began to breathe evenly and I, hardly daring to speak above a whisper, said, “What is your name?”

Her eyes snapped open, and she scowled at me. “Monster,” she said, the scratches showing red on her face, “wicked man.”

“Good afternoon, Betsy. I trust you are rested from the fatigues of your journey?”

She turned her face away sullenly, and I repressed a great jubilation at seeing her so chastened; here was no wild laughter and tormenting teasing, but only a vicious creature trapped and held fast. “Betsy,” I said, abandoning my ironic tone, “I am truly sorry for you. You treated me unfairly, but I am sorry, nevertheless, to see you so miserable, and I still offer to help you in any way I can.”

“Let me go, then,” she said, to the wall.

“Where can you go?”

“I won't tell,” she said sullenly. “You haven't any right to know.”

“Then, Betsy, will you tell me where you went, when you ran away? We found you in New York, you know—did you go there directly?”

She shook her head mutely.

“Why did you run away, Betsy?” I asked her, most gently.

“Because you wouldn't let me be free and happy. And when I was in New York I was happy all the time, and I had lunch in a restaurant and I went on a bus and everyone I met was nice, not like you or her or Aunt Morgen.”