The Bird’s Nest (5 page)

“But honestly, Harold,” Aunt Morgen said, “she
did
frighten me. There was poor old Vergil, just opening his mouth, and Elizabeth shouts out this
obscenity—I
mean, honestly—” Aunt Morgen's lips moved, and she made a visible effort to keep from smiling. “I mean,” she said helplessly, “I've thought of it
myself
, when Vergil—” She put her hands over her face and began to rock back and forth. “If you could have seen . . .” she said. “Mandalay . . .”

Doctor Ryan covered his eyes with his hand. “Mandalay,” he said in confirmation. “I've heard Vergil do Mandalay,” he added.

“I didn't,” Elizabeth said. “I mean, I didn't say anything.”

Aunt Morgen and Doctor Ryan both turned their heads to look at her, both soberly interested.

“That's it,” Aunt Morgen said. “I really don't think she
remembers.
”

Doctor Ryan nodded. “Physically, of course,” he said, shrugging, “all you can do is check the things you
know
about. I can tell you she's overtired, or nervous, or some such nonsense, but then you can come right back at me with something you and I both know is impossible, and we're right back where we started. Tell you what
I
think we ought to do,” Doctor Ryan said, suddenly determined, and reaching across his desk for a prescription pad, “there's an old friend of mine, fellow named Wright, Victor Wright.
You
know, Morgen, and
I
know, that I'd be the last person in the world to send Elizabeth to one of these psychoanalysts, knowing her the way I do; no telling
what
they might say. But I
do
want you to run over and see Wright, Elizabeth, and have him take a look at you. He's an odd duck,” Doctor Ryan said to Aunt Morgen, “always been kind of interested in this kind of problem. No . . .” Doctor Ryan gestured, reassuringly. “No
couch
or anything, Morgen, you understand.”

“You're a dirty old man, Harold,” Aunt Morgen said agreeably.

Doctor Ryan looked up and grinned. “Aren't I?” he asked, pleased.

“Do you think if there's anything wrong this fellow will find it?” Aunt Morgen asked.

“There's nothing
wrong
with Elizabeth,” Doctor Ryan said. “I think she's worried about something. Boys, maybe. You ever ask her about boy friends?”

Aunt Morgen shook her head. “I can't get her to talk to me at all.”

“Well,” Doctor Ryan said, rising, “if anyone can get it out of her, it's Wright.”

Aunt Morgen got up and turned to Elizabeth, and then yelped. “Harold Ryan,” she said, “I've been telling you to cut that out for twenty-five years.”

“Still the best pinching surface in town,” Doctor Ryan said, and winked at Elizabeth.

I believe I am an honest man. Not one of your namby-pamby modern doctors, with all kinds of names for nothing, and all kinds of cures for ailments that don't exist, and none of them able to look a patient in the eye for shame—no, I believe I am an honest man, and there are not many of us left. The young flashy fellows just starting out, who do everything except put their names in neon lights and run bingo games in the waiting room, are my particular detestation, and that is largely why I am putting my notes on the case of Miss R. into some coherent form; perhaps some one of your young fellows may read them and be instructed, perhaps not. I can remember joking with my late wife about a patient a doctor could get his teeth into—although that, too, I suppose, will be liable to misconstruction by your head doctors with their dreams and their Freuds; boys I brought into the world, too, some of them. It is gratifying to know that the extraordinary case of Miss R. was taken and solved and lies transcribed here for all the world to read, by an honest man; gratifying, at any rate, to myself. I make no excuses or apologies for my medical views, although perhaps my literary style will leave something to be desired, and I preface this account by saying, as I have said for forty years or more, that an honest doctor is an honest man, and considers his patient's welfare before the bills are sent in. My own practice has dwindled because most of my patients are dead—(that is another of my little jokes, and we'll have to get used to them, reader, before you and I can go on together; I am a whimsical man and must have my smile)—naturally, because they grew old along with me, and I survived 'em, being a medical man.

Thackeray says somewhere (and I had my finger on it not two days ago, somewhere in
Esmond,
anyway) that a man's vanity is stronger than any other passion in him; I've read that twenty times and more in as many years, and I daresay a good writer is much the same as a good doctor; honest, decent, self-respecting men, with no use for fads or foibles, going on trying to make our sensible best of the material we get, and all of it no better and no worse than human nature, and who can quarrel with that for durable cloth? And yet, along with Thackeray, I have my prides and my little passions, and perhaps fancying myself Author is not the least of them.

With all of this, there wasn't much joking in me the first time I met Miss R., poor girl. Ryan had made the appointment for her, and, to tell the truth, I wasn't much inclined to her at first, thought her a sullen type, perhaps. Young women who fancy “character-reading” or “fortune-telling” might have thought her shy. Colorless was a word came to my mind when I looked at her. She had brown hair, taken smoothly to the back of her head, and fastened there with strong combs or a bit of ribbon, maybe; brown eyes, hands long and graceful and quiet when she sat down, not fussing with her gloves or her pocketbook like these nervous women; altogether, if I may be permitted a term which has got sadly out of use, I thought Miss R. a gentlewoman. Her gown was suitable for her age and position; dark, neatly made and not at all stylish, perhaps even—although I liked it, I recall—a bit prim. Her voice was low and level, and I thought her cultured. I cannot recall that she ever laughed genuinely, although when she came to know me she frequently smiled.

Miss R.'s symptoms—dizzy spells, occasional
aboulia,
*
periods of forgetfulness, panic, fears and weaknesses which were causing her to function poorly at her employment, listlessness, insomnia—all indications of a highly nervous condition, perhaps of an hysteric, had been faithfully reported to me by that amiable blackguard Ryan, to whom her family had taken her when her state became too apparent to be ignored; like most families, the members of this one—in this particular case, I believe, only a middle-aged aunt—chose to overlook the obvious symptoms of nervousness in the patient, and excuse them variously and charitably until the case was too far advanced to be dismissed; I know of one family where it was not until a lad had made off with some thousands of dollars from his father's safe that his doting family confessed that he had been a sleepwalker since childhood! At any rate, Ryan, finding himself at a loss with regard to Miss R. when she did not respond to his usual treatments (nerve tonic, sedatives, rest in the afternoon), and knowing of my own interest in the deep problems of the mind (although, as I cannot say often enough, I am not one of your psychoanalysts, but merely an honest general practitioner who believes that the illnesses of the mind are as reasonable as the illnesses of the body, and that your analytical nastiness has no place in the thoughts of a decent and modest girl like Miss R.) he arranged with me to give her an appointment.

Miss Hartley, my nurse, had taken down the name of the patient, her address, age, and such vital information, and the card bearing these facts was set upon my desk when Miss R. entered.
*

She smiled at me almost timidly as she sat down; my office is so constructed as to display the maximum reassurance to timid patients—something your chromium and enamel physicians seem to regard as superfluous—and its dark rows of books (from my school days, madam; I admit it before you charge me) against the walls, its heavily curtained windows (enriched, my dear miss, with cigar smoke and ashes and a terror to moths therefrom) and its deep chairs and pillowed sofa (to which, sir, I would gladly at any convenient time admit your ample bottom, for an hour or so of comfortable sitting, and a glass of good wine and one of the cigars which Miss dislikes so much)—all this seemed to bring a measure of quiet to Miss R., who looked about her almost stupidly, but showed, at least, no immediate signs of hysterical terror, a reaction, I might point out, not unheard of in patients forwarded to me by good old Ryan. Miss R. set her long hands upon her lap, as one who has been well brought up and taught that a lady seats herself quietly, and looked steadily to one side of me, and wet her lips nervously, and smiled without meaning at the corner of my desk, and opened her mouth, and closed it again. “Well,” I said heartily, to show that I knew she was there and that our interview had, so to speak, commenced itself, and my valuable time for which her aunt was paying had been placed at her entire disposal, “well, Miss R.,” I said, “what seems to be the trouble?”

I half-expected her to tell me. Sometimes—it is astonishing—a quiet girl who regards the corner of your desk will, without more than the faintest encouragement, bring herself readily to recount the most amazing fantasies, but she only dropped her eyes to examine the foot of the ashstand and said “Nothing.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “Probably nothing at all. But Doctor Ryan seemed to feel that you and I should have a little talk, and perhaps—”

“It's just wasting your time,” she said.

“I suppose so.” I dislike being interrupted, but Miss R. seemed so sure that she was well that I was curious; I confess I almost thought at that moment never to see her again. “Doctor Ryan says,” I told her, consulting Ryan's note, “that you have difficulty sleeping.”

“I don't,” she said. “I sleep all right. My aunt told him I didn't sleep but I do.”

“I see.” I made a meaningless note, and said cautiously, “And the headaches?”

“Well,” she said, moving her hands together slightly. I waited, thinking that she was going to continue, and then looked up expectantly. She was gazing raptly at my desk calendar, as though she had never seen such a thing before.

“And the headaches?” I repeated, a little sharp.

She looked at me squarely for the first time, dull, uninterested, stupid, turning her hands one within the other. “And the headaches?” I said. As though I had reminded her, she put one hand to the back of her neck, and closed her eyes; “And the headaches?” I said, and she looked at me, her eyes wide and aware of me, and said loudly, “I'm frightened.”

“Frightened, Miss R.?”

“I haven't any headache,” she said. “I feel fine.”

“But frightened,” I said. I noticed that I had begun to fidget with my letter opener, and put it down firmly on the desk and set my hands evenly one beside the other.

Miss R. folded her own hands neatly in her lap and smiled dully at the corner of the curtain.

“Well, now, Miss R.,” I said, wondering at myself for an intense desire to turn and look at the curtain with her, “suppose we . . .”

“Thank you very much, Doctor Wright,” she said, rising. “I am sure you have done me a great deal of good. Am I to come again?”

“Please do,” I said, scrambling out from behind the desk as she started for the door. “Perhaps Miss Hartley can give you an appointment for the day after tomorrow.”

“Goodbye,” she said. I sat down again as the door closed behind her, and had my look at the curtain, and reflected that if Miss R. could be brought to tell me anything at all of her ailments, it would not be willingly or even—I perceived even then—consciously.

That, then, was my first introduction to Miss R. (and before my reader gasps, and stops, and turns jeering to point at a grammatical error in the good doctor's notes, let me interject with dignity that I use the tautology “first introduction” deliberately, almost in the nature of a joke; I had, as my reader, abashed, will soon see, more than one introduction to this remarkable girl). My own opinion then, I will say honestly, was of a personality disturbed and beset with problems it was incapable of solving alone; I am not a maker of quick judgments and could not, even then, damn Miss R. with a pat name for her illness.

My own special hobbyhorse has long been hypnosis; the great and enduring good brought about by hypnotic treatments, its value in a case such as Miss R.'s, its soothing and consoling effect on the patient, have persuaded me after much practice and definite estimate of results that the skillful and sympathetic use of hypnosis is of inestimable value to the medical man whose patients justly fear placing themselves in the hands of your modern name-callers; I had determined already that hypnosis was the best—indeed, as I saw it, the only—method to induce Miss R. to reveal enough of her difficulties to aid us toward alleviating them, and hypnosis I determined to try.

On her second visit to my office, we again scrutinized the curtains, the ashstand, the calendar, and I spared a moment to wonder what poor old Ryan had made of her; I hesitated to return directly to her statement that she was frightened, and so began by covering the same ground as before; again she insisted that she slept perfectly well, that she had no headaches, and, going by her words alone, it would seem that a visit to a doctor was, to her way of thinking, an absurd and unreasonable imposition; when she looked at me directly, however, there was in her eyes the mute appeal of an animal (and I am an animal lover; I do not degrade Miss R. by the comparison; indeed, I have seen many dogs more intelligent and aware than Miss R. seemed then, on our second meeting) hurt beyond its understanding and longing for help.

“Are you afraid of me?” I asked her gently, at last.

She shook her head no.

“Are you afraid of Doctor Ryan?”

Again no.

“Of speaking to me of your illness?”

And she nodded her head yes. She regarded still the edge of the carpet, but I was persuaded that her answers related to my questions, and continued, heartened, “Do you have difficulty speaking?”

Yes again.

“Then will you permit me to hypnotize you?”

Staring at me then, eyes wide, she first shook her head violently no, and afterward, as one less frightened of the cure than its practitioner, nodded her head yes.

That, then, was Miss R.'s second priceless interview with Doctor Wright. I felt, however, that I had made progress; I could hardly boast that I had won my patient's confidence, but I had, at least—and I defy Ryan to say the same—had from her an answer to a question.

When she left I remarked casually that we would, then, attempt an hypnotic trance upon her next visit and so I was—from bitter and long-suffering experience—not more than mildly surprised when she entered my office upon the occasion of her next appointment with a step slower than usual and a look so furtive that she dared not face the curtain squarely, but regarded instead the toe of her shoe. She spoke at once, from the doorway, before I had even time to tell her good afternoon; “Doctor Wright,” she said, “I have to go. I can't stay.”

“And why not, Miss R.?”

“Because,” she said.

“Because, Miss R.?”

“I have an appointment,” she said.

“With me, surely.”

“No, with someone else. I have to go back to work,” she added, inspired.

Our appointments, for alternate days, were always at four-thirty, since Miss R. left her employment at four; it was remotely possible that Miss R. might today be required to return to her office, but I said in a leisurely fashion, “Well, Miss R., and is this all true?”

She was unused to falsehood, and had the grace to blush. “No,” she said. She shifted her pocketbook to her other hand and said, “The truth is that my aunt is opposed to hypnotism.”

“Indeed?” I said. “I am astonished that it was not mentioned. Surely Doctor Ryan—”

“I agree with my aunt,” said Miss R. “I oppose hypnotism.”

I might perhaps have accepted this as a moderately reasonable attitude (considering, heaven help us, the fakeries and lies practiced upon the general public in the name of hypnosis, I am only surprised, sometimes, that the uninformed people of this world continue to respect medical men at all), even considering Miss R.'s extremely limited area of experience, and the unlikelihood of her having formed any very decided opinions about anything whatsoever, had I not observed, glancing at her at that moment, that her eyes were imploring me, almost as though, speaking, she wanted one thing and looking, another.

“Nevertheless,” I said firmly, “I intend to continue with the treatment as we agreed at your last visit.”