The Wounded Land Read Online Free PDF Page B

diffident—but accessible, reasonable, compassionate. Every year he foots the bill for several of our indigent patients.”
    The older man sighed. “You know, it’s strange. The same people who try to convert me seem to think
he
needs saving, too. He’s a leper who doesn’t go to church, and he’s got money. Some of our evangelicals consider that an insult to the Almighty.”
    The professional part of Linden absorbed the facts Dr. Berenford gave, and discounted his subjective reactions. But her musing raised Covenant’s visage before her in the darkness. Gradually that needy face became more real to her. She saw the lines of loneliness and gall on his mien. She responded to the strictness of his countenance as if she had recognized a comrade. After all, she was familiar with bitterness, loss, isolation.
    But the doctor’s speech also filled her with questions. She wanted to know where Covenant had learned his stability. What had changed him? Where had he found an answer potent enough to preserve him against the poverty of his life? And what had happened recently to take it away from him?
    “Since then,” the Chief of Staff continued, “he’s published seven novels, and that’s where you can really see the difference. Oh, he’s mentioned something about three or four other manuscripts, but I don’t know anything about them. The point is, if you didn’t know better, you wouldn’t be able to believe his bestseller and the other seven were written by the same man. He’s right about the first one. It’s fluff—self-indulgent melodrama. But the others—
    “If you had a chance to read
Or I Will Sell My Soul for Guilt
, you’d find him arguing that innocence is a wonderful thing except for the fact that it’s impotent. Guilt is power. All effective people are guilty because the use of power is guilt, and only guilty people can be effective. Effective for
good
, mind you. Only the damned can be saved.”
    Linden was squirming. She understood at least one kind of relationship between guilt and effectiveness. She had committed murder, and had become a doctor because she had committed murder. She knew that people like herself were driven to power by the need to assoil their guilt. But she had found nothing—no anodyne or restitution—to verify the claim that the damned could be saved. Perhaps Covenant had fooledDr. Berenford: perhaps he
was
crazy, a madman wearing a clever mask of stability. Or perhaps he knew something she did not.
    Something she needed.
    That thought gave her a pang of fear. She was suddenly conscious of the night, the rungs of the rocker pressing against her back, the crickets. She ached to retreat from the necessity of confronting Covenant again. Possibilities of harm crowded the darkness. But she needed to understand her peril. When Dr. Berenford stopped, she bore the silence as long as she could, then, faintly, repeated her initial question.
    “Who is she?”
    The doctor sighed. His chair left a few splinters of agitation in the air. But he became completely still before he said, “His ex-wife. Joan.”
    Linden flinched. That piece of information gave a world of explanation to Covenant’s haggard, febrile appearance. But it was not enough. “Why did she come back? What’s wrong with her?”
    The older man began rocking again. “Now we’re back to where we were this afternoon. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you why she came back because he told me in confidence. “
If
he’s right—” His voice trailed away, then resumed. “I can’t tell you what’s wrong with her because I don’t know.”
    She stared at his unseen face. “That’s why you got me into this.”
    “Yes.” His reply sounded like a recognition of mortality.
    “There are other doctors around. Or you could call in a specialist.” Her throat closed suddenly; she had to swallow heavily in order to say, “Why me?”
    “Well, I suppose—” Now his tone conveyed a wry smile. “I could say it’s because