The Bird's Nest (Penguin Classics) by Shirley Jackson

Author:Shirley Jackson [Jackson, Shirley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143107033
Amazon: 0143107038
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published: 2014-01-28T05:00:00+00:00

4

DOCTOR WRIGHT

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

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