Читать книгу Moon Garden - V. J. Banis - Страница 6

CHAPTER TWO

“You’re looking lovely this morning, Miss Miles.” Dr. Hanson gave her the benefit of an approving look, vaguely suffused with male interest.

She thought, I wonder if they teach that little trick of flirtation in medical schools. It’s awfully therapeutic.

Aloud she said simply, “Thank you,” and took a seat facing him across his desk. She had never been given to saying all that she thought. It was a habit that had become strongly reinforced in the last year here at Lawndale.

She lived, as it were, in two different worlds. In the world of others, the world of watching doctors and observant nurses, she had grown cold and serene, more assured, even cautiously happy.

They did not know of the other world. It was a world of fear and guilt and anguish, a world of no confidence in one’s self, a world of doubt and uncertainties. If Dr. Hansen knew of the time she still spent in that world, she would be here at Lawndale forever.

The doctor seemed to sense something in her wary manner, as she looked back at him. “You know, this isn’t a session,” he said, smiling. “I only wanted to see you before you left, so that I could....” he paused and shrugged, “...say goodbye.”

“Yes. Nurse Foster told me that.” She folded her hands in her lap and waited.

And still you look as though I’m going to open you up to see what makes you tick, he thought, watching her across the no-man’s land of the desk. He made no attempt to conceal the fact that he was studying her. Anyway, he had learned that she was too perceptive for that. And too much in charge of her faculties.

Guilt and the retreat from reality that had followed it had in no way impaired her intelligence or the keenness of her eye. It had only left her viewing things from beyond a dark, high wall. And the view was largely one way, because he could not truly see over it into the secret place where she actually lived. It was like a hidden garden, of which he was aware, but he could only guess at what grew there.

For a moment, a passing fraction of a second only, he wondered if he might have made a mistake in releasing her so soon. He knew there was still a sense of guilt for her father’s death, guilt that, for all of their reasonable conversation, he had not been able to wipe away. Perhaps he ought to have....

He dismissed the thought. She was quite well, as well as she would ever be at the hands of doctors. Despite the haunting guilt and her insecurity, she was strong and self-reliant. “Good”, in a delightfully old-fashioned sense of the word. It was probable that no man other than himself would ever know—or believe, considering how beautiful she was—just how “good” she was.

It amused him to see in her eyes (although her mouth retained the same hesitant smile) that she had followed each of these thoughts across his mind, as if they had been slides projected upon the screen of his face.

She ought to have been the doctor instead of me, he thought. She’d have been a good one.

“You’re going to Savannah?” he asked aloud, although he had discussed this very subject at considerable length with her mother. It was necessary to discuss everything at considerable length with her mother.

“Yes. My Aunt Minna has....” It was her turn to pause ever so briefly. “Invited me to come for a visit.” She suppressed a smile. Has been badgered into letting me come stay for a while would be more like it, she thought.

“It’s a beautiful city. I was there once, back in my college days,” he said. “Don’t ask how long ago that was, either.”

He chuckled, but her humorless response killed his own mirth. She plainly had no intention of asking how long ago it had been since he had been of a college age. And that could only mean she took it to be a very long time.

“I expect it’s changed quite a bit since then,” he finished flatly. “The coming of the automobile, that sort of thing.”

“No doubt it has,” she said, not as if she meant it to be unflattering. And in fact, she did not. She was simply not very good at repartee, at the exchange of little flashes of humor. It required, for one thing, a confidence in one’s cleverness, and that she did not possess.

She did not really think he was that old. She just did not know what to say in reply. She so often said the wrong thing, something that offended or sounded foolish, that she had found it simpler not to attempt that sort of conversation

He did not see it that way, though. So much for flirtation, he told himself, picking up the papers on his desk, papers from her file. As it was, although he had not known what she had been thinking along that line earlier, she had been wrong. His attempts at flirtation with her had not been in the slightest degree professional. They had been genuine, if unsuccessful. She seemed completely unaware of the fact a man might find her desirable.

He wished her well again, and she thanked him again, and they said goodbye in a mutually embarrassed manner. Her hand clasp was firm, more determined than confident, and quite businesslike. He watched her go, admiring her pretty legs and the dark hair that she wore pulled back rather severely. She looked more like a girl of sixteen than a young woman of twenty-two.

He glanced at the papers again, seeing not only those specific reports, but seeing as well all of the facts and impressions gleaned from months of studying her, and learning about her life.

He did not like the picture he had formed in his mind of her father, that selfish dictatorial old tyrant. He could understand why she had been torn between love and hate of him. But he could, in a sense, understand too why the old man had made a virtual prisoner of the girl. The image of a garden came back to the doctor again. She was like a rare bloom whose beauty and fragrance delighted you, but that you dared not pick or wear for fear that it would wither. Her father had sought to hoard that loveliness for himself. She had tried to break free.

Her father’s death had been an accident, nothing more. If there was any blame, it was on his own shoulders. But guilt did strange things to a person’s reasoning. She had already been suffering guilt because of her resentment of him, the resentment that at times became almost hatred. Then had come the quarrel, because she had determined once and for all to break free. Then the fire—a drunken, angry man’s fire, that had cost him his life.

She still blamed herself for that. But at least she had learned to live with the burden of guilt, and had no longer to flee from it into the unseeing, unspeaking, unhearing state that had brought her to his attention.

Perhaps in time she would have accomplished that by herself anyway. It was difficult to say. She had spunk, plain old fashioned backbone, and that accounted for a lot. But there was something about her so fragile, so...he searched for the word he wanted...so vulnerable. She had that wall about herself, but it was not brick or wood. It was of the thinnest glass. How easily it might be shattered, the delicate blossoms within trampled underfoot.

He sighed and marked her file closed and put it in the out basket for his secretary.