GREEN DOORS

_Chapter One_

“Hello! What’s up with you?”

Doctor Lewis Pryne was obviously surprised at the intrusion of a mere

friend on office hours. “How did you persuade Miss Frazier to bring you

in? You aren’t—or are you—looking for a doctor?”

Dick Wilder’s smile was tinged with awed diffidence.

“No, I’m not wanting treatment myself,” he said. “All the same, I did

get a regulation appointment from your secretary via the telephone, and

I’ve been out there in your reception office meekly waiting my turn for

hours. But first I have a message for you, from Cynthia. They want you

for the week-end in Meadowbrook. Harry’s counting on golf with you, and

the children—”

Lewis broke in dryly. “Sorry, Dick, but I’m most frightfully busy just

now. If you insist on staying to chat, I’ll send you a bill—regulation

fee for a first appointment. But if you vanish at once, I’ll let you

off. Give my fondest love to Cynthia, tell her I’ll call her up; thanks,

good-by.”

But though the doctor rose, his visitor sat. “You’re hard, Lewis, hard,”

he murmured. “But it’s all right with me. I expect a bill. I’m here to

offer you a lovely new patient on a silver platter. It is

rather—ah—private, though.”

His embarrassment was due plainly to the presence of the secretary, Miss

Frazier. She had escorted him into the presence of the famous

psychiatrist and she was now hovering near the door on tiptoes, it

seemed, to escort him out again.

Lewis sighed, but with good nature. “Miss Frazier needn’t bother you,”

he explained. “She is my confidential secretary and it saves time having

her here to make a record as we go along. How many people are out there,

Miss Frazier?”

“Only two, Doctor. Mrs. Dickerman and—”

“A sullen but gorgeous fellow who doesn’t want to be spoken to,” Dick

finished for her. “Or is he one of the really unhinged ones and not

responsible for his manners?”

Lewis smiled—fleetly—at his secretary. He said to Dick, “That will be

Mr. Neil McCloud. He is perfectly sane. He’s lost the power of speech,

that’s all.”

“Really? Somehow it didn’t look all to me. He has a flash in his

eye,—well—a flash—. But I thought the dumb were deaf, Lewis. That fellow

heard every word I said—listened as if he heard—and then coolly turned

his shoulder. He might have wriggled his eyebrows or something, to show

he couldn’t speak. I only asked him were you likely to keep us waiting

much longer—assuming, do you see, that he was a regular patient and knew

the ropes. What was there in that to antagonize any one?”

Lewis’ smile a moment ago had been very fleeting. Now his face had taken

on its accustomed gravity. It was an unusual sort of gravity, however,

lacking any element of heaviness. “That encounter will have been harder

on McCloud than on you, Dick,” he said. “He isn’t deaf. Merely can’t

articulate. Hasn’t been able to for some months. It’s a rather

perplexing case of shock. Temporary, I’m certain, but awkward for him

while it lasts. It’s after four, I think, Miss Frazier. Did McCloud or

Mrs. Dickerman have appointments?”

“No, Doctor. Neither of them. Mrs. Dickerman telephoned yesterday and

there was no time I could give her within a week. She came on the chance

you might be able to work her in somewhere. Mr. McCloud dropped in in

the same way. I had no idea how long Mr. Wilder’s appointment would

take, so I rather encouraged them both to wait. Shall I tell them

there’s no use now? It’s quarter to five.”

“No. Don’t do that. I’ll see them. Only let McCloud in ahead of Mrs.

Dickerman.”

“Shall I? Mrs. Dickerman telephoned yesterday, as I told you! She came

in several minutes ahead of Mr. McCloud too.”

“Did she? I suppose then you’d better convey to McCloud, somehow, that I

won’t be long with Mrs. Dickerman. Tell Mrs. Dickerman that I will be

free in another few minutes. Do that now, please, and then come back to

take this record. Pardon all this, Dick. Have a cigarette?”

From the brief exchange between doctor and secretary, Dick had been able

to form a pretty complete mental picture of what was back of it. Mrs.

Dickerman must be some slightly neurotic lady of wealth who was falling

over herself to pay fabulous fees to Lewis for a little mental coddling,

while the rather gorgeous but definitely shabby dark-browed young giant

was, of course, a charity case, and in real trouble. But supposing their

needs had been equal, Dick suspected his friend still would favor the

penniless down-and-outer, for Lewis was slightly snobbish in his

mistrust of wealth and position. It was a little perverse in him. Even

his own sister, Cynthia, thought so.

Dick frowned to himself. This matter of Lewis’ prejudice against paying

patients was rather pertinent to himself at the moment on account of the

errand which had brought him here. What could Petra Farwell seem to

Lewis beyond what Dick himself thought her—a beautiful but dull ingénue

whose psychic maladjustments (if that was the term) were the result of

too much leisure and spoiling?

Dick took out his cigarette case, waving Lewis’ aside, for Lewis, he

knew, was as economical when it came to cigarette brands as he was about

clothes and office furniture. What a bare room this sanctum was! The

reception office had been on the luxurious side, but that was Cynthia’s

taste and doing. She had insisted on decorating it, and Dick could not

doubt she had drawn on her own purse for most of the accessories. But

even as he passed it up, Dick noticed that Lewis’ cigarette case holding

the Luckies or whatever they were, was rather wonderful. Finest jade.

You could see at a glance. Marvelous color. Some grateful woman patient,

of course, had forced the gem on Lewis, and probably he did not dream

what its value was; if he did, he would sell it, to give to the

deserving poor....

Miss Frazier was back and ready with her shorthand pad. Since they were

smoking, Dick offered her a cigarette, one of his own Club variety. But

she refused it, coldly, her eyes on her pad. Dick did not so much get

the idea of having been put in his place as of the secretary having

insisted on keeping hers, which was that of an invisible, impersonal

automaton—a dicta-phone with judgment. Suddenly Dick did not mind

talking before her.

“It’s a stepmother stepdaughter situation,” he explained to Lewis. “The

stepmother is my friend. She is a wonderful person. She knows that you

and I are related in a way. (The relationship between them consisted in

the fact that Lewis’ sister, Cynthia, was married to Dick’s first

cousin, Harry Allen.) And she got the idea that because of the

relationship I might have some sort of a pull with you, do you see? But

perhaps that’s stupid. Perhaps nobody has a pull with you in that sense.

I warned her. Is it stupid?”

Lewis smiled, that peculiar fleeting smile of his. But it was for

himself this time. He had assumed the position he kept through all these

office interviews. His chair was swung half around on its pivot so that

he did not directly face the patient, and his eyes, for the most part,

were on the knob of the door leading into Miss Frazier’s little private

office. “Of course you have pull, Dick, all the pull in the world. But I

don’t see what that has to do with it. When it comes to taking on

patients, one does it on the merits of the cases themselves, naturally.

Let me hear.”

“Well, it’s the stepdaughter who is—funny. Clare, who is my friend the

stepmother, do you see, is utterly devoted to the girl. In fact, to my

mind, she is almost obsessed with the idea that it’s up to her to make

the girl happy. That’s far-fetched, of course. You can’t do _that_ for

any one. But Clare tries desperately. And all she gets for her pains is

very nice polite manners and nothing under ’em. It is absurd. You would

think so—you _will_ think so—when you see Clare. But even if Clare

weren’t so wonderful as she is, the girl’s indifference would still be

absurd, for just on the material side she owes Clare everything she’s

got in the world. She and her father were as poor as poverty until Clare

came into their lives, married the father. Now that she is there, their

lives are all luxury.—Charm.—Beauty too. But what good does it do? Clare

is only getting her heart broken.

“But I ought to tell you,” Dick went on quickly, after a second’s pause

in which he had suddenly remembered some last admonishments of Clare’s,

“Clare doesn’t mind personal heartbreaks and things like that. That is

not why she wants you to psychoanalyze the girl. It is for the girl’s

own sake and her father’s sake. She doesn’t want those two to become

estranged. And it is bound to happen if things go on the way they are

going. The girl must be more responsive to Clare, return _some_ of her

devotion, or the father is going to begin to feel the antagonism in the

air and blame his daughter for it. For, in a choice of loyalties, the

man is Clare’s. It isn’t Clare’s fault it’s that way, though. From the

very beginning she has _worked_ to preserve—even to create—a fine

relationship between her husband and his daughter. She is big enough,

detached enough, to keep herself and her personal disappointments out of

the situation and think only of those two. And that’s why she sent me

here, at dollars a minute, I suppose, to ask you to see the girl and

straighten her out. She has an idea that there is some deeply hidden

resentment—some mix-up, anyway—in the girl’s subconscious mind and that

it only needs you to excavate it. She thinks—”

But there Dick faltered. Lewis was smiling and no longer fleetingly.

Miss Frazier, noticing Dick look around for it, pushed an ashtray along

the desk toward him. He crushed out his cigarette stub in it, looking

miserable and a little angry. “I can see what you’re thinking, Lewis,”

he exclaimed. “You think that it is a simple case of stepdaughterish

jealousy and that Clare and I are just too ingenuous for words to have

come bothering a top-notch psychiatrist with it. But you happen to be

wrong. You don’t know the people. Petra’s not jealous. Not for a minute.

She hasn’t enough warmth in her for such a passion, if it comes to that.

Really, she’s no jollier with her own father than with her stepmother.

But Clare doesn’t see that. She thinks it’s only herself Petra pushes

off. And what is there so absurd in her getting the idea that you might

help?”

But if Dick had only noticed, his belated mention of the girl’s name had

effectually changed his friend’s expression.

“Is it Petra Farwell you’re talking about?” he asked quickly. “Daughter

of Lowell Farwell, the novelist?”

Dick hesitated an instant, glancing a little painfully at Miss Frazier’s

efficient hand with its pen poised but so far idle—above her pad. But

after all, Miss Frazier’s presence at this conference was Lewis’

responsibility, and one had to trust Lewis.

So he said, “Yes. It’s the Farwells. I thought you would guess. You know

I built their house, Green Doors. We started it the minute they were

back from the honeymoon. Clare made Featherstone’s give me a free hand

with it. It was my first real chance at self expression. But Clare had

as many ideas as I had and the nice part was that our ideas didn’t

clash—merely supplemented. Until that summer I had only known Clare

socially and even so not very well. She is in an older crowd. It’s an

interesting crowd. The Lovings, you know,—the Stracheys, Jim Strange,

Isabell Peters Clough. Rather exciting, being accepted by them! Clare

sees to it that I am. And Lowell Farwell is the lion of the lot, I

suppose. Clare herself ought to be. Wait till you meet her!”

“I have met Mrs. Farwell, once, for a few minutes,” Lewis said. “She was

Mrs. Tom Otis then. It was just before the former Mrs. Farwell

abdicated. But it’s Petra, the girl, I’m interested to hear about. Is

she prepared to come to a psychiatrist for treatment for—what do you say

the trouble is? General lack of appropriate feeling toward the latest

Mrs. Novelist’s Wife? Or hasn’t she been consulted?”

“You keep on laughing at us,” Dick complained. “If I were a stranger,

would you? Yes, I knew about that meeting with Clare, of course. But I

meant, wait till you _really_ know her. Clare hasn’t said a word about

you to Petra, not yet. Petra would be sure to resent it, don’t you

think? What Clare wants is to have it come about—gradually. If you’re

week-ending at Cynthia’s, right there in Meadowbrook, you can drop

around at Green Doors, meet the family, have tea informally in the

garden, chat with Petra,—and let that call seem to put the idea of

having Petra psychoanalyzed into Clare’s head. That way, Petra might get

the idea that being psychoanalyzed by Doctor Lewis Pryne would be a

pretty interesting experience, do you see? That’s Clare’s scheme and I

think it’s a good one.”

Lewis, lighting himself another cigarette, murmured, “Good is an

adjective that I myself seldom apply to the word ‘scheme.’ But it

happens that I’ll like meeting Lowell Farwell. His psychological novels

interest me—at least, to the point of wanting to find out how he gets

that way. Even more I shall be glad of an excuse to see Petra again. I

met her at the same time I met your Mrs. Clare. By the way, Mrs. Clare

is Petra’s second or third stepmother, isn’t she! Mightn’t it be that

the child’s stand-offish attitude toward the species is cumulative and

not, strictly speaking, personal? Had that occurred to either of you?...

But it doesn’t matter. I’m charmed by the invitation to tea at Green

Doors. It’s only fair, though, that you should warn Mrs. Farwell that it

cannot, not possibly, be a professional call. And just remind yourself,

will you, Dick, if only now and then, that I’m not a psychoanalyst. It

always annoys me a little, being called one.”

“Sorry. Yes, I do know, of course. But the differences are too slight

for the laity to master. Then you will come for tea? That’s fine. All we

wanted, as a start-off, really. Clare knows you won’t be lionized and I

can promise you it will be informal. Shall we say Saturday afternoon?

It’ll be just the Farwells themselves and me. I’m there such a lot, I’m

almost family,” he added, flushing a little.

Dick was ready to get out now and give place to Mrs. Dickerman and Mr.

McCloud. But he had a diffident feeling that since this was actually a

professional seance he had been having with Lewis, it was up to Lewis to

bring it to an end. And Lewis had not stirred in his chair. He was

saying, “I’ll like seeing your work with that house, too. I’ve meant to

get Cynthia to take me over, ever since you finished it. Why do they

call it Green Doors?”

Lewis’ gaze, as he spoke, was still attached to the knob on Miss

Frazier’s door. Dick, now that he had secured part of what Clare wanted

and was no longer anxious, was looking at his friend with an increasing

discernment in his vision.

“He’s got the look of a medieval monk,” he told himself,—seeing it,

strangely, for the first time. Well, perhaps asceticism was the price

Lewis had had to pay for his astonishing success. He had accomplished in

ten years or so what usually takes a man in his profession the better

part of his life, if he ever achieves it at all. “Naturally Lewis hasn’t

had much time for the flesh-pots along the way,” mused Dick.

Doctor Lewis Pryne was only thirty-three, and yet in the years since

graduating from Harvard Medical he had made himself a specialist in

psychiatry, written three instantly famous books on dynamic psychology,

and accumulated a clientele which might be the envy of any other

psychiatrist not congenitally superior to envy, in the country. And he

was self-made. At least, ever since his father had died when Lewis was a

Senior in Latin High, he had earned his own way, and looked out for

Cynthia as well, until she married Dick’s cousin, Harry Allen. Yet here

he was, in spite of that stupendous early handicap, loaded with fame and

honor—and if not with money, that was simply because money did not seem

to be one of his goals.

Meeting Lewis in the ordinary way—that is, outside of an office

visit—you got no hint of past struggles and their necessary austerities.

His gray eyes were more sleepy than austere, with a languid droop at the

outer corners of the heavy upper lids. His mouth curled, slightly, as if

fleeting little smiles were habitual, and most of the time an almost

palpable light played over the lower part of the face, particularly the

full but chiseled lips. Without that light and the odd, fleeting smile,

Lewis’ mouth would have been definitely sensuous. As it was, you never

thought of that—only of its sensitive but exquisitely impersonal

sympathy.

The gray sleepy eyes released the door knob, came to rest on Dick

Wilder’s face. “How did Green Doors come by its name?”

Dick started, realizing that this was a repeated question. What had he

been woolgathering about? Lewis, himself. He had been busy seeing Lewis

in a new, fresh way, after a fifteen years’ friendship. That was

strange. Then he understood it. He had been seeing Lewis as Clare would

soon be seeing him,—looking at him through Clare’s eyes.

“Oh? The name? It was Clare’s idea. It’s in a poem. Published in _The

Glebe_, 1914.” (He got up as he answered. Lewis’ time _was_ precious,

and staying to chatter now would be inexcusable, after Lewis had been so

altogether patient and friendly.) “I don’t remember it all. But there’s

a line—

“‘I know an orchard old and rare,

I will not tell you where,

With green doors opening to the sun....’

“Something like that anyway. Clare said we wouldn’t plan a house at all,

but just green doors, opening to the sun. We’ve done it too! You’ll see,

Saturday. I’ll pick you up at the Allens’ around four. Crazy to show the

place to you!”

During the brief interval between Dick Wilder’s departure from the

office and Mrs. Dickerman’s entrance, Lewis stood in the big window at

the back of his desk, looking down onto the glistening river of

automobile tops which was Marlboro Street, and recalled his first and

only meeting with Petra—the girl who was, so it seemed, the one

discordant note in the idyllic existence at that country estate, already

famous to literature,—Green Doors, in Meadowbrook.

_Chapter Two_

Lowell Farwell’s voice making the appointment over the telephone—it was

three or four years ago now—still vibrated through Lewis’ memory,

melodious, _interesting_. Lewis had never happened to catch sight of the

novelist at that time, nor had he since, but he knew from numberless

newspaper cuts what he looked like. And the voice perfectly fitted those

leonine, distinguished heads.

“My wife has been ill for months and now a friend has persuaded her to

see you. Her doctor agrees that it may be a wise move to get your

opinion, Doctor Pryne. You are acquainted with him. Doctor MacKay, here

in Cambridge. He has come to the end of his resources and is ready to

give psychiatry a try.”

It was a wind-clear, blue-red-gold October afternoon, when Lewis made

that call in Cambridge. The Farwells were living on the upper floor of

an unpretentious double house on Fayerweather Street. Instead of the

expected maid in cap and apron opening the door, there was a girl in a

brown smock.—Strange to be remembering color, and shades of color, after

so many months!—Her eyes were brown-gold, and as photographically as

Lewis remembered those gay and sincere eyes, he remembered the curves of

the smiling mouth.

The room into which she brought Lewis was a blank in memory. Perhaps,

even at the time, it had been a blank to his consciousness. Except for

the blue gentians. There was a clump of them growing out of dark earth

near where he laid down his hat. He supposed the flowers must have been

planted in some sort of dish, but his memory of the Farwells’ Cambridge

living room was fringed blue gentians growing out of dark earth.

The girl’s voice was as smiling as her mouth. “Mrs. Farwell will see you

in a minute, Doctor.”

“Are you Miss Farwell?” he asked, for he knew, from Cynthia, probably,

who read the columns of literary gossip in the Sunday papers, that

Lowell Farwell had a daughter.

The smile became laughter. Laughter which sounded like pure happiness,

translating itself into sound. The rarest sort of laughter in the world.

Not amusement. Not embarrassment. Mere self-unknown joy.

“No. I am Teresa Kerr. _This_ is Petra.”

The novelist’s daughter was sitting on the sill of an open window, her

background wall-less—a sea of blue October air and light. She was a

schoolgirl then, in a navy blue jersey schoolgirl dress. Her attentive,

innocent eyes, set wide in a grave young brow, were the precise color of

the gentians. That repetition of color and the eyes’ innocent

attentiveness stabbed Lewis like some too pure, too perfect note in

music. It was the most beautiful child’s face—or any face—of his memory.

No wonder he remembered _that_ so vividly! The short, straight nose, the

upper lip—short to the exquisite point of breath-taking beauty—the

Botticelli mouth, the strong, white, round chin!—The child was hardly

human, she was so lovely!—Her head against the window’s blue background

was a sculptor’s dream. Fine, very alive brown curls molded rather than

obscured its classic contours. The gawky schoolgirl body, in its

clinging jersey, was sculpture, too, with its wide shoulders and long

thighs....

Lewis had supposed, since, that the mood which took possession of him

when Teresa Kerr had opened the door to the Farwells’ Cambridge

apartment, and which had increased like daylight upon dawn during the

brief minutes he spent with those girls waiting for Mrs. Farwell to be

ready to see him, was merely a state of _rapport_ with their youth and

happiness. Their relationship with life and with each other had by some

miracle extended itself to him and created what at the time, and in

memory ever since, had seemed a golden age circumferenced by a passing

moment.

When the circumference contracted upon its enclosed eternity (these were

Lewis’ similes, far-fetched, of course, but for himself alone), it was

by way of a trivial voice calling out from the next room. Then he left

timelessness, passed through a door into a ceilinged, four-walled space,

and took a chair facing an emotional, pretty woman who lay relaxed among

cushions on a chaise-longue; and at once, quite as if he had never

passed through the sound of Teresa’s laugh and the sight of Petra’s

attentive, innocent gaze to reach this meeting, he gave his complete

attention to Mrs. Farwell and her woes.

She had these violent headaches. Weeks on end she could not sleep and

then for other weeks she slept too much, could do nothing else but

sleep. Her nerves needed either a stimulant or a sedative, constantly.

But Doctor MacKay did not approve of drugs, not in the quantities her

case demanded. Doctor MacKay said, “Exercise!” But she had this nervous

heart. He admitted the nervous heart and yet insisted on the exercise.

Imagine! Besides, how could she exercise? Riding was out of the

question. Couldn’t afford it. And golf bored her. Terribly! And what

other exercise is there, besides golf and riding? They hadn’t even a

car. If they had, she might at least get some fresh air each day. But

perhaps Doctor Pryne knew for himself—she was looking at his ready-made

tweed suit—that fame did not pay in dollars and cents. Her husband’s

novels were only for the discriminating few. The better the review, she

noticed, the smaller the royalties always.... And noises—cooped up in a

cheap little apartment like this—noises were a sort of crucifixion!

A laugh, muffled by the closed door, but audible enough for

demonstration, coincidentally bore her out. Or so she imagined. She

winced, becomingly, but genuinely enough.

“If only Petra could go away to school! She is my husband’s daughter,

you know. But we can’t even afford a camp for her. And big girls like

that are so noisy, so all over you! If she were a boy, she wouldn’t be

always at home. It would be easier then. If Doctor MacKay ever thinks I

am strong enough to have a baby I do hope it will be a boy!”

Lewis listened to all of this and much more with attention. And not

until Mrs. Farwell had worn herself out with the emotion which

accompanied her eager, fluent explanations of her nervous condition, did

he venture a few tentative suggestions. But it appeared that Doctor

MacKay had made the very same suggestions dozens of times already,—and

none of them were any good.

“Well then—?” But it was only a mental question, a mental shrug. Lewis

was grave and interested up till the very last. Doctor MacKay, however,

had not had the slightest excuse for calling in a psychiatrist. It was

an old story, but as disheartening and ridiculous as if it were the

first occasion on which Lewis had wasted his time like this.

As it happened, the laugh which had penetrated Mrs. Farwell’s closed

door, with its crucifying effect on one of its hearers, was Lewis’ last

touch with Teresa and Petra. When he came out of Mrs. Farwell’s bedroom

into the living room, they were gone. In their stead, a new

individual—younger than Mrs. Farwell, older than the girls—was lying in

wait for him. She had usurped Petra’s place in the open blue window, but

she quickly left it and came forward.

“I am Mrs. Tom Otis, Doctor Pryne. A friend of the Farwells. Mr. Farwell

has commissioned me to see you in his place. He is at a critical point

in the new novel, and if he leaves it, he’s lost. You know how that is,

since you write yourself. He is working in my house,—has his study

there. He wants you to tell me your ‘findings’ here—if that’s the

word—and then, when he comes to earth again, I’m to report to him. Do

you see?”

Mrs. Otis had spoken in a lowered voice in spite of Mrs. Farwell’s

closed door, and now she found a chair for herself with the obviously

gracious intention of permitting Lewis to do the same. She appeared so

altogether ingenuous a person that Lewis was fain to divert his

irritation over the stupidity of the situation to the absent Lowell

Farwell. Meanwhile he tried to get away from this Mrs. Otis as promptly

and tactfully as possible.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m glad Mr. Farwell didn’t interrupt his

work. There’s no reason why he should. Doctor MacKay will get in touch

with me to-morrow and he’ll give Mr. Farwell my ‘findings’ such as they

are, I suppose.”

He was looking for his hat, but wondering about Petra and Teresa. Why

had they had to go away? He had meant to ask them where they had found

the gentians.

“Here it is,” Mrs. Otis moved aside, so that he saw the dish of

gentians, and then his hat beside them. “But please don’t go right away.

Mr. Farwell will think I have failed him if you go without telling me

what you think about Marian. It was stupid of me, perhaps, not to have

explained myself more fully before I asked you to tell me. You couldn’t

understand, of course. You couldn’t know how very close I am to these

people. Why, it was I who persuaded them to get you. I couldn’t bear the

way things were going. Something had to be done. Doctor MacKay is so

tiresomely conservative. Any wise, up-to-date doctor would have seen

long ago that Marian Farwell ought to go right away—to a

sanitarium—abroad—anywhere—but _away_. It isn’t fair to let neurotics

inflict their nerves on people who are perfectly sane and healthy. And

it’s all the worse when an extremely sensitive artist like Lowell

Farwell is the victim! You think so too, don’t you?”

But Mrs. Otis had not waited for Lewis’ answer. She took his agreement

for granted and hurried on. “Doctor Pryne, see here. I am so eager—and

more important, perhaps—_able_ to help. Did you think I was merely

curious and officious? That would be too hateful of me, if it were true.

But it isn’t. This affair is almost as much mine as it is

Lowell’s—theirs, the Farwells’, I mean. I got Mr. Farwell to call you

in, I am paying your fees, and I will send Marian abroad, anywhere,

_to-morrow_, if you will only say the word. We—Society—owe to first-rate

artists their chance for good working conditions. Well, you and I

between us can manage things for this particular artist right now. He

won’t let me give Marian the money for Europe as things are, just for my

urging it. But if _you_ say she _must_ go— Don’t you see?”

Mrs. Otis had seemed to Lewis at the time a rather delightful person. A

magnetic smile and an air of almost naïve simplicity had robbed what she

said, and implied, of too much stupidity. And she went on to speak of

her wealth with simplicity. “What use is all this money,” she asked,

eyes shining and wide, “if I can’t do some ordinary human good with it

outside of organized charity, and without fuss? What I can’t spend

myself—spend beautifully, I mean—certainly belongs to the next person

who needs it. And Marian, poor darling, is really and truly my next

person. It’s as simple as that.”

But Mrs. Farwell, to Lewis’ mind, was neither mentally nor physically

ill. She was a “happiness hound,” nothing else in the world, and he

could not honestly prescribe Europe or a sanitarium as a cure for a

deeply rooted perversion in human character. Yet getting away without

committing himself to coöperation in Mrs. Otis’ naïve philanthropic

schemes was difficult, the more so since he could not, of course, tell

her his “findings.” But Lewis managed it at last and Dick’s errand here

just now seemed to indicate that she had not stayed permanently

resentful, however she had felt at the time.

And then, before anything of his call at the Cambridge apartment had had

time to fade from Lewis’ memory, the papers were full of the divorce of

Lowell and Marian Farwell. A little while more and two marriages were

front-page news, Lowell Farwell to Mrs. Clare Otis _née_ Fay, and Mrs.

Marian Farwell, _née_ Dodge to—somebody or other. The name hardly

mattered since it was merely her recent connection with the celebrated

novelist which gave the happiness hound’s new marriage its ephemeral

public interest. And now, less than three years after that so simple

solution of their problems—and a wonder Mrs. Clare had not hit on it

sooner and had ever bothered to try plotting with a psychiatrist!—she

had Lewis again marked down as a fellow conspirator.

What did she want to buy from him this time, Lewis asked himself. Her

stepdaughter’s affection, according to Dick. But that would be only part

of it. With three years for perspective, Lewis was more than a little

doubtful of “Clare’s” simplicity. But he could not guess what she might

be wanting. It would be interesting to see, possibly. And in any case,

there would be Petra. And Teresa Kerr. Who was Teresa Kerr, anyway, and

where was she now, Lewis wondered. Well, Petra could tell him that. He

would ask her on Saturday, the first thing.

To-day was only Wednesday. Three days, then, to go until he should see

Petra. It seemed an unconscionably long time to wait. But why, then, had

he let three years go past without inquiring from Cynthia, or the dozen

other people who could certainly have told him, what had become of Petra

since Farwell’s last marriage, and who was Teresa Kerr?

He turned sharply around, as if startled away from the window by

astonishment at himself for this strangely belated impatience.

_Chapter Three_

Green Doors lay a few miles beyond Meadowbrook, well away from the main

highway on a meandering country road of its own. The new house had been

built on the site of the old farmhouse which it had replaced, with its

front door only a few paces from the road. In a general way the new

house followed the contours of the old. The long, low lines of the sheds

and the high, gabled lines of the barn—all house now—gave the place, as

one came on it, a casual air of simplicity. It melted into the landscape

as if it were painted on it. The white walls, shadowed by old, gnarled

apple trees, were friendly with the dusty white country road, while the

entire landscape of meadows and fields, with stretches of brook-cooled

woodland, cradled the new dwelling as no changeling but its own child,

in a peaceful lap. So Lewis at any rate felt as he arrived with Dick, in

Dick’s car, at tea time on that Saturday afternoon which had come, at

last.

“That’s Clare’s guest house,” Dick explained of a small one-story

doll-house-like place directly across the way from the big house. “It

used to be the cow sheds. We found it amusing, having the estate cut in

two by the public road, and we have used the road in our landscaping—up

to the hilt. Autos almost never come this way, and the hay carts and

occasional cows that do only add to the flavor. Isn’t it jolly!”

“Very!” Lewis agreed. “And infinitely peaceful. Does Farwell write here

at Green Doors?” He was contrasting the novelist’s Cambridge home with

this latest one and thinking that Clare appeared, at least on the

surface, to have been successful in giving this particular artist an

ideal environment for his creative ventures.

“Oh, yes. But in a little studio off in the woods. He made us build it

according to his own ideas and Farwell’s genius doesn’t work along the

lines of architecture. But such as it is, it’s his own, and that’s charm

enough, I suppose. We’ve laughed over it quite a lot, Clare and I, but

it’s well out of sight and it doesn’t matter what it looks like so very

much, just so long as it serves its purpose. And it does that. The man

practically lives there.”

Lewis could not help thinking of his own books written in snatched

minutes at his office, on trains, in hotel bedrooms in the dead of night

with the call to sleep like a fire-engine siren shrieking a warning in

his brain. But Farwell’s was creative writing and that was a different

sort altogether, necessitating leisure and solitude, at any

price—possibly! But there Lewis pulled himself up. “Lord! This matter of

price is none of my business! They may be quite decent people at heart,

really, and even happy!”

The front door had its step—a big, flat slate stone—a little below the

level of the road. The hall into which one entered after so

unpretentious an approach was almost startling in its palatial

proportions. It was the height of the old barn, and the floor and the

walls—with a balcony running around the second story on three sides—were

made of composition which gave the effect of stone. In its own right,

this great hall was a work of art; but on such a day as this, with the

whole farther end opened to the New England countryside, it became

merely a neutral frame for the garden, which, a mass of passionate

color, cut a flaming swathe through a wooded valley to orchard-draped

hills beyond.

The maid who had opened the door for them said, “Mrs. Farwell would like

you to go through into the garden. She is under the elm.”

The terrace, as they came to it, was merely an unroofed continuation of

the floor of the great hall. It ended with wide slabs of flower-rimmed

stone shelving down into grassy sweeps of hot June color. Off at one

side, in a distant corner of the lawn, some Chinese garden chairs were

grouped around a rustic table in the shade of a perfect wineglass elm. A

little beyond, in the same shade, a woman in a white dress lay stretched

in a long chair, her back to the house. A big garden hat, brilliant

orange, was tossed on the grass beside her.

But Mrs. Farwell was not asleep, for she heard their voices, and jumping

up, came several steps out beyond the shade in her eagerness to welcome

them.

“Petra and I were to play tennis. She was to have joined me here—oh—ages

ago—and she hasn’t, and I’ve just stayed on waiting all afternoon, and

never dreamed it was tea time. Look at me!”—Mrs. Farwell meant apology

for her crumpled, sleeveless frock, for her ankle socks on suntanned

bare legs, for rather shabby sneakers. “I meant to change, of course.

But the afternoon is a dream and I have been dreaming with it, since

Petra never came. The child must not forget her tea date, though, and I

don’t think she will. She remembered you perfectly, Doctor Pryne, and

seemed actually _pleased_ that you were coming.—Yes, Richard! Petra

_showed pleasure_. Doesn’t that sound propitious?”

She stood for another minute out in the glare where she had met her

guests, looking hopefully toward the house, as if half expecting Petra’s

arrival to coincide with theirs. “Lowell too!” she murmured. “My husband

was terribly pleased you were coming, Doctor Pryne. But time doesn’t

exist for him when he is working. He will be sure to turn up, though. He

has no intention of missing you—this time.”

Then she shaded her brow with her palm and, turning suddenly to Dick,

smiled deliberately and sweetly into his eyes. Lewis wished he had been

looking somewhere else when this happened. She led them back to the

chairs and herself took the one nearest the tea table.

His hostess was not nearly so pretty as Lewis remembered her. But she

was much more than pretty! Yes—sitting upright against the fantastic

high back of the Chinese chair, in her sleeveless white frock, her hair

black as the lacquer of the wickerwork, her very long, curving lashes

black, tipped in gold, and dimples subtly hinted in her thin cheeks—she

was vital and engaging.

But specious!—Lewis quickly added. Before, when he had thought her

rather beautiful and certainly naïvely ingenuous, he had been looking at

her through the beginning of twilight in a city apartment. But this

second time her background was an elm and the light was of broad day.

That changed things somewhat. Lewis did not particularly enjoy his

present skepticism. But he could not help himself. And his next

unhallowed thought was “Poor Dick!” For the latest Mrs. Farwell’s

particular variety of predatoriness was of the sort that relishes a

spiritual flavor to its meat; so Lewis, at any rate, hazarded. The

bodies, even the hearts of men, would not be enough: Clare Farwell would

demand the soul before all.

“Pretty selfish of Petra to waste your afternoon for you like this!”

Dick exclaimed. He turned to Lewis. “You can see for yourself how it is.

You’ve run right onto it, first thing, without our showing you. It’s

always like this. This is the way Petra treats Clare.”

“Oh, Richard! Please! How horrid that sounds. It’s a little unjust as

well. This time I am almost certain she really and genuinely forgot I

was waiting for her. Her offering to play with me at all was generous.

Petra is a hum-dinger at tennis, Doctor Pryne, and I am only fairish. So

it’s not much fun for her, playing with me. This is probably the truth

of it: Petra wanted to be nice, then her subconscious mind got busy

making her forget and so saved her from having to be nice. Doctor Pryne

will tell you, Richard, that the hardest things not to forget are the

duties which bore us.” She was laughing but in spite of that she meant

them to believe her serious.

Clare _would_ call Dick “Richard.” Given her type, it was almost

inevitable. Lewis wondered why it had taken him so unaware and why it

need so irritate him. And it was also inevitable—but for this he had

been totally unprepared—that she would overtly exonerate the slandered

Petra and in the very act make it look worse for the child. For she was

a person who could have her cake and eat it too, every time. It was a

trick act, peculiar to the type.... But Lewis liked his own critical

self less and less in exact ratio as he found himself liking Petra’s

stepmother less and less. He wished he had never had to see her by

daylight.

“Subconscious mind nothing!” Dick scoffed. “Clare, you’re always making

excuses for everybody, but most of all for Petra. Couldn’t she _see_ you

waiting out here all afternoon from every window in the house? Wouldn’t

that circumvent her subconscious forgettery mechanisms?”

“Oh yes, if she were in the house, my dear Richard. But she may have

gone for a walk. Now, though, she’ll be back, dressing for this party of

ours. _I_ should have!”

“Well, I only wish I had known you were just waiting around here for

nothing!” Dick was thoroughly upset. “I’ve been spoiling for exercise

all afternoon. Cynthia insisted it was too hot to play, Harry stuck at

his bank, and Lewis couldn’t be torn from Marlboro Street one minute

ahead of time. But I’m sleeping at the Allens’ to-night, after Petra’s

dance. How about a game tomorrow morning?”

“But my dear boy, to-morrow is Sunday,” Clare reminded him. Then, to

Lewis, she explained, almost with a blush, “Don’t be shocked, Doctor

Pryne. I never impose my religious idiosyncrasies on others, not even on

my family. One doesn’t! And I don’t even carry my peculiarity to the

point of going to church—do I, Richard? Oh, yes, I do really, only

not”—she laughed—“the Meadowbrook Congregational Church! Green Doors is

my church.

“I know an orchard, old and rare,

I will not tell you where,

With green doors opening to the sun,

And the sky children gather there—

“I can slip away, with a volume of essays or poetry, stretch out

anywhere in the grass and sun on one of those slopes up there, and feel

God nearer than He would ever come to me in the four walls of any church

on earth, even the most beautiful cathedral. My husband says that that’s

pagan. Perhaps it is. I am pagan, I think. But words for one’s religion

don’t matter, do they! _I know what I know, and I feel what I feel, and

it is—beautiful._”

Then, laughing again, she asked, “What church do you go to, on Sundays,

Doctor Pryne? Not one built by men, any more than I, I’m sure. You too

are beyond that kindergarten point in evolution. You see, I know you

much better than you can even begin to know me, for I have read your

books!”

Good Lord! What had Lewis’ books to say of his religion? They were

austerely psychological, made up of the findings and the theories of a

practising psychiatrist. The philosophical humility in all his writing

was Lewis’ pride. But he was saved the trouble of defending his pride

just then, even if he had thought it worth the trouble, for Clare’s

stepdaughter, Petra, had come down the terrace steps and was hurrying

across the lawn.

“Imagine Clare calling herself the mother of that!” Dick laughed—and

Lewis, somehow, knew that the remark and its accompanying mirth was

probably as familiar at this tea table as was Clare’s explanation of her

individualistic out-of-doors worship.

Clare murmured hurriedly, softly—her fingers just touching Lewis’ coat

sleeve as she leaned toward him—“Richard is only teasing me. He knows

perfectly well that I’m not flattered. I am thirty years old and have no

ambition to compete with Petra’s _lovely youth_. What I long to be is a

mother to her, a real one. How I long for it! But I need your help,

Doctor Pryne. You will see how I need it....”

Petra, when she reached the shade of the elm, was constrained and even a

little awkward. But that was hardly surprising. All three of them had

watched her approach from the instant that she had come down the terrace

steps, and she might very well have felt that Clare’s murmurings in

Lewis’ ear, and even more, Dick’s laugh, concerned herself.

“Darling!” Clare exclaimed, smiling up at her through her really

fascinating lashes. “What a perfectly enchanting frock! It’s new! And

you never showed it to me! And look at me! I haven’t even changed!—This

is my daughter, grown up, since you saw her, Doctor Pryne. Sit down

quickly, darling. It’s too hot to keep the men standing. And here’s the

tea. Draw your chairs to the table.—You needn’t stay to pass things,

Elise.” She threw a warm, grateful smile to the maid who had brought out

the tray. The look she won in return was humbly idolizing.

Lewis held a chair out for Petra, and when she took it, drew his own

along beside it.

The gawky schoolgirl body had rounded into selfconscious maturity.

Otherwise Petra was exactly the girl of Lewis’, in this case strangely

explicit, memory ... until she turned from him and the intense gentian

blue of her eyes no longer blurred his power for deeper perception. Then

he saw that the attentive fairy-tale gaze was quite gone; or if there

was attentiveness there now, it was not bent on a happy, mystery-brimmed

world before the girl’s face, but on a realm within. Childlike

receptiveness was transformed to a look of reserve made vivid. The utter

beauty of the remembered child face was there—intact—but it no longer

took one’s breath; it was protected by this vivid reserve as by a sword,

on guard.

But Lewis was not sorry for the sword. He saw that it would, at any

rate, keep her safe from Clare. He knew that Youth often has need of its

seeming hardness until years give it some chance to acquire a little

subtlety in its denials, if it is to protect with any success the inner,

personal development of its own integrity.

Lewis took the teacup and saucer Clare handed him. He helped himself to

toast and strawberry jam. He laughed, amusedly, at some remark or other

of “Richard’s,” and could even have repeated the witticism word for word

if it had been required of him. But in spite of all this overt

conformity to the social requirements of those first minutes since

Petra’s arrival under the elm and his holding her chair for her, he was

conscious of one thing only, the young girl’s living, breathing, _still_

self, there at his side.

_Chapter Four_

It was Dick who brought up the broken tennis date, not Clare. Petra came

out of her stillness to show a mild surprise. “But I thought it wasn’t

definite,” she turned to Clare. “I thought we were to play if we felt

like it when the time came. And then it was so hot!”

The breath of silence which Clare allowed to follow this and the

expression which crossed her face spoke an acute surprise on her part;

but it was quickly followed by a seeming desire to shield Petra from

anybody’s criticism, even her own. Tactfully she changed the subject to

ask, “What did you do all afternoon, darling? It has been deliciously

hot.” And then to Lewis, “I’m like Shelley. I adore hot summer days and

am more alive then than ever.”—But she repeated her question to Petra:

“What did you do with yourself all afternoon, darling?”

Petra answered, after a momentary hesitation, as if she needed the pause

in which to choose between several possible replies, “After lunch I took

a book and went off in the woods, where it was cool—and read.”

“That was nice. What book, darling?”

“‘Marius, the Epicurean.’”

“Really! It’s years since I’ve even looked into it. I should love to

read some of ‘Marius’ with you, sometime, Petra. Why don’t we? I’ll take

it to bed with me to-night, skim through as far as you have gone to

refresh my memory, and then, to-morrow, we will go on with it together.

Petra, yes! You come to my church with me to-morrow morning, early, and

we’ll read ‘Marius.’ Where did you leave the book?”

Wild color flaming in Petra’s cheeks took Lewis by surprise. Again that

hesitation before answering her stepmother’s simple question. “I’m

afraid I left it in the woods—somewhere. I’ll find it before people

begin coming to-night. I might go and look now?”

“Oh, no. Not now. Of course not. At least, it depends on what copy you

took. Was it your father’s specially bound copy?”

“No.—I don’t think so.”

“My darling! You must know what your book looked like! If it was my

Modern Library edition, of course it doesn’t matter a bit,—though it has

my notes in it! Where did you find the one you used? In the library or

my sitting room?”

Petra’s eyes met Lewis’. She found his look completely, absorbedly hers.

She took a grip on that absorption, steadied herself by it, and answered

Clare. “I don’t remember where I found it, but it hasn’t your notes.

It’s not your copy. And it’s not Father’s. It’s my own.”

“But it must be your father’s or mine. There are only those two copies

of Pater in the house. I don’t see—”

But suddenly Clare did appear to see and broke off. Indeed, an

expression of seeing all too well had passed wavelike over her

quicksilver face. She turned to Lewis as if to distract attention from

what she had suddenly seen, and perhaps, too, from Petra’s hot cheeks,

and asked him whether he had read her husband’s latest novel. He had and

began talking about it. But he wanted to take Petra’s hand, where it lay

on her chair arm, and close his down on it with strength. He did not

care about what he surmised was a mere silly schoolgirl fib. If she

wanted to impress Clare and Dick—even himself—with the seriousness of

her reading, what of it! At least, she did not lie subtly, through the

medium of fleeting quicksilver changes of facial expression. Hardly. The

cheek he barely allowed himself to see was one flame—as if an angel had

lied.

Tea and a protracted discussion of Lowell Farwell’s novels came to an

end in time, and Lewis at last could turn to Petra with: “I want to hear

something about Teresa. Or must I say Miss Kerr?—But I’m not going to

‘Miss’ you, Petra, if you don’t mind. Until to-day I have never thought

of one of you girls without the other. Shall I meet her too, again? I

hope so.”

But something was wrong, terribly wrong. This, surely, was not a

question Petra would need to make up an answer for! But she was not even

trying to make up an answer. She was looking, almost wildly, toward

Clare.

Clare laughed. “Why, Petra! You never told me you and Doctor Pryne had

mutual friends! Teresa—?”

“Yes. Teresa Kerr.” Lewis spoke shortly, dryly, because of his complete

astonishment at Petra’s ill-concealed panic.

“Oh!” Clare remembered. Suddenly, it seemed. “That must have been the

maid. Petra, I wonder what has become of Teresa? You were David and

Jonathan once, you two. You were a funny child, my dear, when I first

knew you in Cambridge—and so beautifully democratic! But I’m afraid we

can’t tell you anything about the girl, Doctor Pryne. The whereabouts of

vanished domestics is as much a problem as that of all safety pins.

Richard! Do you remember Felix Fairfax, our inimitable butler! I wonder

what has become of him! My husband made me get rid of him, Doctor Pryne,

because he helped himself to one of my photographs and had it in his

room. I wrote him a recommendation that was a marvel, though. Anybody

who couldn’t read between the lines deserved what they got....”

Petra, who until this moment had tasted nothing, now took up her cold

cup of tea and drank thirstily, while Dick and Clare became mildly

hilarious over a growing volume of anecdotes concerning the inimitable

Felix Fairfax, the flirtatious, vanished and banished butler, whom

Lewis’ question about Teresa had brought to mind.

Lewis was silent. He was not looking at Petra, but he knew instinctively

when she lost her strange, inexplicable fear, and relaxed. A baby, with

a pretty young nurse in its wake, was running down the lawn, toward the

tea table. Petra had been the first to notice the invasion and welcomed

the diversion it brought. Then Clare, following Petra’s eyes, saw the

baby.

“Little Sophia!” she cried, quickly on her feet, while anecdotes of

Felix Fairfax hung broken off in mid-air. She ran forward a few steps

and knelt on the grass, her arms spread wide to receive her little

daughter. In that gracious moment Clare was like nothing in the world

but a dancing Greek figure on some lovely old vase—all quicksilver,

grace and charm. Dick’s face glowed appreciatively. Even Lewis, for that

minute, was aware of Clare’s loveliness.

The baby, however, made a swooping detour to avoid the wide-flung,

slender arms of the kneeling mother and plunged straight for Petra, her

big half-sister. Petra held her off, at arm’s length. “You’ve been in

the brook. You’re dirty. You’re muddy. Don’t touch my dress. No!”

The rebuffed cherub commenced to wail but Petra did not relent and draw

her into her arms. “No! No!” She repeated it. “Mustn’t spoil Petra’s

beautiful, clean dress. No. _I’m not going to pick you up._”

Then Clare swept down upon them and snatched the baby up. Two muddy

palms immediately made their mark on the shoulders of her white frock.

But she lifted the delicious little hands and kissed them, one after the

other, gravely—delicately. Her eyes, over the baby’s golden head, looked

at Petra now with healthy, open accusation, and she held the delicious

little body more and more tightly to her, while small wet shoes muddied

her skirt.

Clare, looking away from Petra at last, met Doctor Pryne’s puzzled eyes.

“I’m going to take little Sophia up to the nursery, if you’ll excuse me

for only a few minutes,” she said. “Anyway, I wanted you to see our

guest house—the view at its back. You get the river there. Petra will

show you. And this is a good time—before Lowell comes along.—Richard,

you may come up with us and see what a nice supper a nice cook has sent

up to a nice nursery for an adorable baby! Only first we’ll help a nice

nurse to wash these precious, dirty paws.... No, Richard, I want to

carry her myself. Truly. You don’t mind, Doctor? I always run up to the

nursery at little Sophia’s supper time, even in the middle of quite

formal parties. But it only takes a few minutes.”

Her eyes, on Lewis’, were replete with meaning. “Now is your time,” they

said. “Do make a beginning at helping me understand this strange girl.

You can’t deny she is lacking in normal responses. Help me!”

“Good-by, sister,” Petra murmured, and went near enough to lay her cheek

for just a breath against her little sister’s hair. “I couldn’t let you

spoil my pretty dress, honey. But I do love you!”

At this belated gesture, Clare’s beseeching look at Lewis transformed

itself to one of ironic amusement.

“If you are really interested in the view, Doctor Pryne, it’s across the

road. We can go through the kitchen garden. That is shorter than going

back through the house.”

The kitchen garden, through which Petra led him, was a jungle of

drooping, white-starred blackberry canes. They came out of it through a

little wicket gate and crossed the intimate, idle road to the guest

house opposite.

“Clare won’t let them cut the grass here,” Petra explained. “Any

objection to wading?” Lewis had none and followed the girl around the

side of the little house and came to an uncovered piazza at the back.

Ignoring the several chairs arranged with an eye to the view there, they

sat down side by side on the edge of the piazza boards. From under their

feet wide sweeps of June fields surged away in many-colored rippling

waves. White and yellow daisies, red and white clovers, golden

buttercups, orange devil’s-paintbrush, and sparkling sun-soaked grass

dazzled Lewis’ eyes against the view of river and blue hills beyond.

“Paradise will be a June field like this,” he thought, “with the saints

reunioning while the angels dance.” He was thinking of Fra Angelico’s

“Last Judgment,” the detail of the left corner.—“Petra and I seem to

have arrived somewhat ahead of time, though,—and, God knows, without our

crowns! This girl! She is a breaker of promises, a vain poser, a liar, a

traitor to friendship, and a repulser of innocent babyhood. Clare made

her do her paces. Just didn’t she, though!”

But his next thought was more like shock than thought. “Why need her

hands be as lovely as her face? Or _is_ this Paradise!” They were

clasped about her knees, strong, sun-tanned hands, with long,

squarish-tipped fingers. Angelic hands!

Lewis remarked, “It’s nice here.”

Petra agreed, “Yes, isn’t it!”

Lewis lighted a cigarette and Petra pulled a grass blade to make a

bracelet, bending forward from lithe hips.

“You thought I was horrid to my baby sister, didn’t you, Doctor Pryne?”

she asked bluntly. “I wasn’t, not really. But I couldn’t let her spoil

my dress, could I? This is the first time I’ve worn it. It would have to

be dry-cleaned if I had picked her up. And things are never so nice

again after they are dry-cleaned. Besides, I can’t afford it.”

The dress she had so ruthlessly protected against a bewitching baby was

smooth silk, the color of heavy cream. Its only decoration was a flight

of embroidered gold and brown bees. They flew up one full sleeve from

wristband to shoulder, across the back of the neck and down the other

body-side of the frock to the lower edge of the hem. It was—taken by

itself—a lovely frock, and if it had not been so utterly Petra’s own,

belonged so completely to her shapely young body and coloring, even

Lewis—no connoisseur in women’s clothes—would have noticed its lovely

detail before this.

Petra dropped her grass bracelet—half made—into the grass and picked up

the hem of her skirt, folding it back. “Look,” she said, “how

beautifully finished it is.”

The flight of bees had been carried on, in all its careful perfection,

to the upper edge of the hem on its inner side, where it would never

show. It was as if the embroiderer had loved her work too well to

realize when she had done enough.

“Clare’s dress was nothing at all,” Petra was saying. “It didn’t matter

what little Sophia did to it. Besides, if Clare ruined a dozen dresses,

it wouldn’t matter. She could buy dozens more.... So it wasn’t fair, was

it?”

“No. It was hardly fair,” Lewis agreed absently.

Petra jumped up. The bee-embroidered hem of her skirt brushed through

the flowers in the deep grass. She came closer to Lewis, stood there

before him in the long grass.

“Could you spare me a cigarette?” she asked.

She had not smoked at the tea table and Lewis had taken it for granted

she was that rare thing, a modern girl who did not smoke.

Apologetically, he offered her his opened cigarette case and struck a

match for her on the piazza boards. (The grateful patient should have

given Lewis a lighter along with the case!) But he might as well have

kissed her as have held the light for her,—with his face like that. Even

before the girl saw Lewis’ face, she felt what was there for her to see.

Her eyelids swept up, to verify her suddenly alert instinct, and for

just that instant blue reticence, under Lewis’ own startled eyes, leapt

into blue flame.... Petra drew a little away, trying to smile and

utterly failing. Lewis lighted a fresh cigarette for himself.

Petra puffed at hers for a minute only and then it went the way the

bracelet had gone, only she bent to press out the spark—firmly,

securely—into damp grass roots. Returning to her place, she clasped her

hands around her knees again and explained.

“Really I don’t know how to smoke, not gracefully. You shouldn’t have

watched me! You made me feel hypocritical, watching me like that. But I

do smoke, sometimes. Almost every night. One or two cigarettes after

dinner with Father. So I wasn’t pretending, you see....”

She went on, after a minute, “You asked me about Teresa, remember? I’ll

tell you now. I couldn’t say a word with Clare listening. But Clare lied

about her. She knows perfectly well that Teresa wasn’t our maid—not in

the sense that that Fairfax person was Clare’s butler, I mean. Teresa

was nothing in the world but our guardian angel,—father’s, Marian’s, and

mine. And she is my best friend.”

Lewis said coolly, “Yes, of course! I knew that. I saw that it was so,

that afternoon in Cambridge. And when Mrs. Farwell said that Teresa was

gone out of your life like a lost safety pin I knew it couldn’t be true.

But _why_ did she say it? And why did you let her say it?”

“Oh, Clare wasn’t lying when she said that. She thought, I mean, that it

was true enough. It was in saying Teresa was our maid, putting her with

Felix Fairfax,—that was the lie. But so far as Clare knows, Teresa is

gone—just as absolutely as any disappearing safety pin. I wish I were as

elusive,—that Clare had mislaid me too. But she has a use for me. She

thinks she has, anyway, and she actually pays me a wage of two thousand

dollars a year to live here at Green Doors and be a model

stepdaughter.”—Petra flashed a defiant look at Lewis and added, “I’m

different from Clare’s other servants, you see. I don’t adore her!”

The girl’s hands, Lewis noticed, were no longer clasping her knees. They

were gripping them. But he gave no sign that he was conscious of her

anger and her rebellion.

“Will you just listen to that bird,” he said. “Bobolinks are usually

cheerful, of course. But this fellow is carrying it beyond reason, it

seems to me! He might have a peephole into heaven,—the way he sounds.”

For a bobolink, apparently beside himself with rapture, was circling and

swooping, swooping and circling, singing his jetty little throat to

bursting. His nest must be hidden somewhere in the grass not a dozen

yards from where they sat on the piazza’s edge.

Petra tilted her head to see the speck of song against the sunlight. She

stayed silent until the rapture ended and the heaven-glimpser sank home.

She even waited a minute or two beyond that sudden silence before she

said, but calmly now, her twined fingers relaxing their grip, “My

friend, Teresa, is like that bobolink’s song. At least, she’s as happy

as that. Jolly as that. I’ll tell you about her, Doctor Pryne. I am glad

that you think of us together. I adore her, of course. She was born in

Edinburgh, Scotland, and she lived there till she was fifteen. Her

father and mother kept a day school for boys. But Teresa had four

sisters and they all went to the boys’ school. There were three

brothers. Eight children in Teresa’s family, you see....”

_Chapter Five_

Lewis listened, without looking at Petra. As she told him about Teresa,

they were both watching for another flight of the bobolink, their eyes

focused on the delicately waving tide of grass above the hidden nest.

Hearing Petra’s voice, this way, without looking at her, Lewis learned

as much about her as she was telling him about Teresa; for her voice had

none of the reticence of her gentian eyes nor the stubborn power of her

rounded chin. It was a gentle voice, clipped and ingenuous. Above all

ingenuous. What her face had lost with childhood her voice had strangely

taken on. It had a listening, attentive quality. Lewis, in the practice

of his profession, had gradually acquired a habit of separating voices

from their possessors. He had discovered that while the face and the

very pose and carriage of a person may deceive, the human voice simply

cannot. It is the materialization of personality into sound waves.

“... Eight children. Teresa’s mother had taught the fifth grade in a

public school in Cambridge. Teresa’s father was Scotch. They met when

Mr. Kerr was over here working for a doctor’s degree at Harvard. He came

from Edinburgh. They fell so much in love that they couldn’t wait for

the degree but got married and went to Edinburgh and started the day

school. But it didn’t pay except just in the beginning. By the time all

eight children were there in the Kerr family, they began to be really

poor. The Kerr children themselves were half the school, you see. Teresa

was the oldest. When Teresa was fifteen, they gave up the school in

Edinburgh and returned to Cambridge. Teresa’s father got all the

tutoring he could do. He was a magnificent teacher. They lived in a

five-room apartment on Lawrence Street, all crowded in, but soon they

moved to Boston and had a bigger place, in the top floor of a tenement

on Bates Street.

“Teresa’s mother and father taught the children as they had done in

Scotland. Only her mother did most of it, of course, because her father

was away tutoring all day. But the Kerrs had their own ideas about

education and didn’t want the children to go to public school. They

wanted them to learn Greek and Latin, you see, almost in their cradles.

But Teresa did go to High School. She was fifteen when they came to

America and her father let her go into the Senior Class in the High

School just so she could get a diploma that June. After school she

helped with the housework and helped with the children’s lessons too.

“That January two of Teresa’s sisters died, the two who came next her in

age. They had T B anyway, the doctor said, but they actually died of

pneumonia. Very suddenly. They had been Teresa’s playmates. The rest of

the children were more like her babies, she took so much care of them.

But Teresa stayed out of school only one week when they died. She needed

her diploma, you see, because she was going to go on through college and

become a teacher.

“... Well, but when spring came ... something terrible happened.... It

is too terrible to tell. But if Teresa bore it, I guess you can bear

hearing it, Doctor Pryne. Shall I tell you?”

“Yes,” Lewis urged. “I want to hear,” but added with quick compunction,

“if it doesn’t hurt you too much, Petra,”—and was utterly astonished by

the devastating look Petra gave him. But her scorn was for herself.

“Hurt me too much!” she exclaimed. “I only wish it could hurt me! Really

hurt me! It is too terrible that one person had to bear it all alone.

And Teresa, of all people! When she is so happy, so jolly—and loves God

more than all the rest of the people I know put together love Him! It

was to her it happened. _All I’m doing is tell it!_

“The twenty-third of April, the Principal of the High School sent for

Teresa to come to his office before she went home. He told her that she

was to graduate with very highest honors and that he had got a Radcliffe

scholarship for her. It was Teresa’s birthday. She was sixteen. Teresa

could hardly wait to get home to tell her mother all the Principal had

said. It would be Teresa giving a birthday present to her mother, you

see. Mothers should have presents even more than the children they have

borne should have them, Teresa thinks. For the mothers remember the

birthdays and the children can’t.... She ran as fast as she could, the

minute she got out of the subway. She didn’t care if people stared at a

grown-up girl racing through the streets. She wanted so to get there

with the wonderful news. There was a crowd of people at the end of her

street held back by ropes. The air was full of smoke....”

Again the bobolink soared, cascading rapture. Petra stopped telling

about Teresa’s sixteenth birthday and listened and watched with Lewis.

But this time she did not wait for the music to sink and fall away home;

after a breath or two she went on, her voice of necessity raised a

little, indenting itself through the bobolink’s Gloria.

“The whole building where the Kerr family lived was burned down to the

pavement. Somebody told Teresa that everybody had escaped except a woman

who lived in the top-story corner tenement and her six children. They

had all been burned alive. They came to the windows too late for the

fire ladders to reach them. They must have been asleep when the fire

started and waked too late. The alarm was sounded a little after eight.

Yes ... Teresa had left her mother and all the children sleeping deeply.

She and her father had got breakfast together and gone out with infinite

care not to wake them,—she to school, he to his work in Cambridge. The

baby had had croup during the night, you see, and the whole family had

been disturbed by it. Even the younger children. Teresa’s mother had

made a tent with sheets over the crib, and boiled a kettle in it, and

toward dawn it was over and the baby was sleeping. The police had

learned there were six children in the family and that was why they said

six were burned. But Teresa, you see, had gotten up early. She and her

father. They had been at infinite pains—I told you that—not to wake the

others. _Infinite pains._ The baby was sleeping naturally, breathing

softly when they stole out.

“It was a policeman who told Teresa about how the mother and ‘six’

children had come to the window. He had seen them himself.... But a

priest shoved him one side. That was Father Donovan. He was their parish

priest. The Kerrs were Catholic. Teresa is a Catholic. Teresa couldn’t

pray. But Father Donovan’s praying was really hers. He said, ‘_My_

mother, _my_ brothers and sisters, _my_ baby brother. May perpetual

light shine upon them.’ ... They gave Teresa brandy. In the rectory.

They put it in hot tea. The housekeeper rubbed her feet and hands, while

Father Donovan called up all the places her father might be. Father

Donovan had thought the police had made certain when they said that all

_six_ Kerr children had come to the window, and until Teresa got there,

you see, he had no way of tracing her father. But now Teresa gave the

names and addresses. Finally somebody said yes—Mr. Kerr was there.

Father Donovan said, ‘Then keep him and don’t let him know anything

until I come. I must tell him. Nobody else.’ But the people didn’t

wait,—or something happened. I don’t know what. I can’t ask Teresa.

Perhaps she doesn’t know. Whether he died of the shock or whether he

killed himself—thinking all were burned.... All that Teresa said was

‘Father Donovan was in time to give him absolution.’

“Father Donovan boarded Teresa with his housekeeper’s sister. And she

went on and got her diploma and graduated from High School with very

highest honors in June. Nobody came to her graduation for by then Father

Donovan was dying of cancer. He had not told Teresa until he had to.

When he found he couldn’t go to the graduation, you see, he told her.

She took her diploma right to him. She ran to the rectory the minute she

was out. He blessed her and was as delighted and proud as her mother

would have been, Teresa says, and her father, and her brothers and

sisters. He told her that his death would not be even an interruption to

his prayers for her goodness and happiness, and he asked her to pray for

him always, all her life. He died early the next morning....

“The week after Father Donovan died Marian found Teresa through an

employment agency, and she went to Cape Cod for the summer with us. That

was the summer Marian began to be ill. Teresa and I did the work and

took care of her, and swam all the rest of the time. I taught Teresa to

swim and she was simply mad about it. Marian had melancholia and Father

was terribly unhappy that summer. And I was selfish and cross, having to

wash so many dishes.... _But Teresa was happy!_... Yes, it is true. She

was the one who was happy.... But gradually, I grew terribly happy too,

because of her. She didn’t tell us anything about her family or what had

happened to them, only that they were dead. Whenever I asked her about

her brothers and sisters who had died, she put me off. And Marian never

asked her anything, I think. She had merely hired somebody who was to be

one of the family and work for less money because of that privilege. But

above all, Marian had chosen Teresa from all the other applicants for

the job at the agency because she seemed the most _cheerful_.

“In September, when we went back to Cambridge, Teresa wanted to use her

scholarship and enter Radcliffe. But Marian needed her so much and had

come to depend on her for everything so much—but most of all it was her

cheerfulness she needed—that Teresa gave up college for that year and

stayed on with us. But she told Father and me, then, when she decided to

stay on with us, about the fire, and about the two sisters who had died

of pneumonia, and about how her mother and father had wanted her to go

to college. Father said that she must go, of course, but that she was

surely young enough to wait a year. He was appalled about the fire and

said she must never tell Marian. It would be too harrowing. And he was

very sorry I had heard it....

“The summer after that we couldn’t afford the cottage on the Cape and we

stayed on in Cambridge. That was bad for Marian. All the time that she

was in the apartment she spent in her bedroom on her chaise-longue. But

it was frightfully hot and she would get wildly nervous and go out then

to luncheons and tea dances and places—looking very gay and well. But it

was only a false, nervous strength, the doctor said....

“Then that fall you came, Doctor Pryne. Teresa and I were so relieved!

But you didn’t have a chance. Marian went away, and there was the

divorce. But she went away without saying anything to Teresa and me. We

came back from a day in the country in time to get dinner that

afternoon, and she was gone. That evening Father explained it all to

us—in words of one syllable, you know,—what had happened.

“Teresa took it so hard that I don’t remember how _I_ felt about it. I

didn’t feel anything, I think. I was so surprised to hear Teresa

_crying_ that that was all I thought about, really. It was as if the

world was shaking under us—under Father and me—with Teresa, of all

people, crying. But Father was angry with Teresa. She said, you see,

that he must bring Marian back. He said he would not think of doing any

such thing—that she had a right to her freedom, if she wanted it. Teresa

started crying when Father said to us, ‘I can honestly say I am happy in

Marian’s happiness and I think she has done exactly right. It’s sheer

stupidity for people who are not happy together to go on pretending they

are. It is happiness that matters. There’s at least one person the

happier in the world to-night, and any one who really and genuinely

cares for her must be glad for her,—even if it means separation from

her, of a sort, and for a time. And after the divorce goes through, you

know, there’s no reason in the world why we shouldn’t all be as good

friends as ever.’

“But Teresa cried just exactly as if somebody was dead. And this time

Father Donovan was dead too and could not pray her prayers for her,

while she cried. That is what I thought, I remember, though I didn’t

understand why she was crying like that. I was terribly frightened by

her crying like that—and Father’s walking the floor so white and angry

with her.

“Clare came in about then. I think Father called her up and asked her to

come, to help him with Teresa. She made Teresa drink some water. And

then, when Teresa was quiet, she said, ‘You are a self-righteous,

ignorant girl. Mr. Farwell has the patience of a saint but this is more

than he can bear.—He is going to give you a month’s wages and you must

go away. You are only making things that are hard for him already much

harder.’

“I went with Teresa while she packed her suit cases. Clare called up

Morris Place House and told them to get a room ready for Teresa. She is

a trustee there. She ordered the taxi too, and told us when it came. She

took everything in charge, as if she were in Marian’s place already. But

Teresa told the taxi-driver to go somewhere else, not Morris Place

House. She wasn’t crying any more but she looked ghastly. She wouldn’t

let me go away with her but she promised never to forsake me. And she

never has. She is my guardian angel.... But Clare doesn’t know any more

about Teresa now—how she is, where she is—than she told you she did. And

she’s not going to know. That is _something_ I can do for Teresa.... But

you asked about her, Doctor Pryne. You remembered her. And now I have

told you about her.... I really wanted to....”

The bobolink’s Gloria had reached its climax minutes ago and ceased.

Petra’s voice—when she had come to telling how Clare had discharged

Teresa and sent her away, “as if she were in Marian’s place already”—had

taken on the reticence of her eyes. It was not her personality any

more—that voice—not as it had been. But the girl’s eyes, now that both

she and the bobolink were silent, and Lewis looked at her, were thick

with tears.

“But what did Teresa do? Was it too late to get into Radcliffe that

fall? I suppose so. That was late autumn—nearly three years ago. What

did Teresa do? Where did she go?”

Lewis had to know. Teresa had become increasingly real and important to

him with every word that Petra had said of her. Petra must go on, must

tell it all, even if she did cry, doing it.

But there were no tears in her voice. “Yes, it was too late for

Radcliffe. Father had again, you see, persuaded her to wait another

year. But I went to see her the next morning and she had a plan. She had

decided to get some kind of job—any kind—until she could begin earning

her way through Radcliffe in the shortest time possible. In the end she

meant to be a private secretary and I would go and live with her. Then I

would begin going to Business School. We would both be independent and I

needn’t live with Clare and Father. After Teresa had gone away in the

taxi, they told me, you see, that they were going to be married as soon

as the divorces went through,—so it was a very relieving idea, to live

with Teresa and earn my own living. Teresa started in to make it come

true right away. And it was coming true. She was all ready to graduate

when—”

Petra broke off there, jumping up as if a bell had rung for her, and her

first duty in life was to answer it. But it was only Dick Wilder,

whistling to them from the road.

“Teresa was all ready to graduate and what happened? It doesn’t matter

about Dick. Go on.” Lewis was impatient at the interruption.

“But they want us. Clare has sent him for us. She thinks I have kept you

too long,” Petra whispered, and promised, quickly, under her breath, “I

will tell you what happened the minute we are alone again. I want to

tell you. I want your advice, Doctor Pryne. Things have happened.—But

not now. Teresa is a secret here at Green Doors. From Dick Wilder too.

From everybody.”

Dick had come around the side of the house. “Why didn’t you sing out?”

he inquired, astonished at finding them there. “I thought you must have

passed up our famous view and gone somewhere else, you two! Lowell has

turned up at last. But whatever—”

Dick was silenced by a fresh astonishment. This was stranger than their

hiding and not answering,—Petra crying. Of all things! And even Lewis

was not quite himself. Well, Dick knew nothing to do about it other than

to recommence talking faster than ever—which he did—and somehow hurry

them back to the elm and Clare’s management. He began explaining, very

swiftly and at some length, as they went, how little Sophia had refused

to let anybody but her mother feed her her supper, and that that was why

they—he and Clare—had been gone such an unconscionably long while

themselves, and how, taking everything together, he was afraid that

Petra’s father was feeling that they hadn’t any of them much realized

that he had broken off his work half an hour ahead of the usual time to

join them at tea, since nobody was anywhere near the tea table when he

came up from his studio.

Petra may have heard something of Dick’s nervous chatter. Lewis heard

nothing. Left to himself, he would never have been so docile under

Dick’s high-handedness, of course. But Petra had shown such a passionate

will to obedience from the instant of the summoning whistle that there

was nothing else for Lewis but to seem docile too.

And here they were back on the lawn again, going down toward the group

of chairs under the elm. Lowell Farwell had risen and was standing,

waiting for them. He was more imposing even than the published

portraits. His leonine mane of frosty curls, his elegant but wide

shoulders, his height—and as they reached the shade and were near

enough—his luminous black eyes under striking black brows, were the

concrete and visible aspects of a personality to conjure with.

_Chapter Six_

Lewis had dined with his sister and her family and now he and she were

promenading her piazza. Cynthia was like her name, fragrantly feminine,

blond and delightful, a cool petaled flower of New England. They caught

glimpses of Harry, her banker husband, as they passed and repassed the

living-room windows. He was lying back in what might very well be the

world’s most comfortable chair, reading the financial pages of the

_Transcript_, smoking his Corona, and supposedly enjoying the jazz music

which came blaring to him from a Boston hotel through his radio; he had

only to raise a hand—no need even to lift his head—to turn the knob

which would produce a decent quiet.

“I always promise myself when I’m here that I will come oftener,” Lewis

was saying. “Then I get so devilish busy I don’t manage it. But now,

Cynthia, it may be different. You may be seeing too much of me.”

“That’s nice. I should love to see too much of you. But _why now_? Oh!

Green Doors, of course! And I’ve been trying to get you to go over there

with me for a year or more! You see why, now, don’t you! It’s

fascinating, isn’t it! I feel, sometimes, when I’m there, that the very

air is charged with a sort of electricity, if you know what I mean,

which you don’t, since it doesn’t express what I mean. But it’s all high

spots, somehow. We must seem commonplace to them, Harry and I. But Clare

is sweet to us, all the same. Even Lowell Farwell doesn’t seem bored. He

and Harry discuss international affairs, Russia and that sort of thing.

And Clare herself is so human. Isn’t she beautiful—in an unusual way!”

“But why wouldn’t Mrs. Farwell be human?” Lewis laughed. “Do you imply

that she is above or below the norm? As to being beautiful—Petra is

_really_ beautiful.”

“Petra—really beautiful? Yes, I suppose she is. But her features are too

classical to be interesting, don’t you think? And she’s so impassive.

She’s too big too. She’ll be positively statuesque some day. That type

always develop into Junos. Clare is frightfully sweet to her.

Frightfully patient. And what a background she’s providing her with! All

it needs is just a little playing up to! If she only knew how!”

“What do you mean, background?” Lewis asked curiously. And he wondered,

what had Petra ever done to Cynthia to bring out such malice. Malice was

no more natural to Cynthia than to himself.

“What do you think I mean?” she exclaimed, a little impatiently. “The

people she is meeting, of course. Yourself to-day, for instance. How

many times have you gone anywhere socially during the last year, Lewis?

Yet you went to the Farwells’. And you say you want to go again, often.

But it’s not only celebrities. Socially, too, Clare is giving Petra

everything. This dinner dance tonight. Dick says there isn’t a man

invited who isn’t the last word in eligibility. Why, Clare is providing

Petra opportunities any ordinary girl would give her eyes for. And it’s

probably wasted. Men want more than mere passive beauty these days.

Temperament, vivacity are what count. Clare doesn’t realize it, of

course, but the very contrast between herself and Petra puts them off

Petra in spite of Clare’s disadvantage in being married and thirty. It

couldn’t help to. Wait till little Sophia grows up, though. Then Clare

will have her innings as a mother. The little thing sparkles already!

Personality is a queer thing, isn’t it?”

“I’ve sometimes almost thought so,” Lewis agreed dryly. Then he asked,

“Can you tell me, Cynthia, why Dick, who is adult, after a

fashion—anyway, he isn’t a mere callow college boy—and seems practically

to live at Green Doors, hasn’t fallen in love with Petra? And she with

him? It’s a miracle.”

Lewis meant his question earnestly. For hours now, in his heart, he had

been religiously grateful for the miracle mentioned.

“Are you serious?” Cynthia asked. “Couldn’t you see for yourself—this

afternoon? Let’s sit down. No—I don’t want a chair. You take it. I’ll

perch here on the rail. Yes, do smoke. What an absolutely precious

cigarette case you’ve got there! My dear, let me take it! How delicious!

Just feeling it in your hand is thrilling! A present?”

Lewis nodded, but absently. Cynthia, as Dick had done, refrained from

commenting on the probable value of the gift. If Lewis realized the

value, he would only be made uncomfortable by it.

“You want to know why Dick doesn’t fall in love with Petra Farwell? It’s

too obvious. How could a person like Dick look twice at that gauche

girl, with Clare all the while in the same picture? Besides, Dick, more

than most moderns, is a romantic. It sticks out all over him. He’s an

incorrigible idealist. But I’m not worried for Dick. He won’t get his

heart broken. Clare is too big to let that happen. It’s really the most

civilizing thing that could happen to him to be in love with a woman

like Clare at precisely this stage in his development. Think of the

color, the sheer beauty, the _depth_ that knowing Clare so well—even

thinking he is breaking his heart over her—is giving to Dick’s life! As

for falling in love with a girl like Petra—why, he isn’t aware of her,

except, perhaps, as one of Clare’s problems. Dick hasn’t said anything

to us—Harry and me—of Petra’s being a problem at Green Doors. Clare

herself is too selfless and big in every way ever to let on, of course.

But anybody can see! Clare’s being so extraordinarily sweet and patient

only makes it stand out all the more, how much a problem Petra is.

Couldn’t you see it yourself, this afternoon, Lewis? Where’s your

psychology?”

“Where is your own, Cynthia, my dear?” Lewis’ voice was oddly

constrained, Cynthia thought, wondering at it. “Why don’t you look at

Petra for yourself? It’s obvious you never have. You’ve supinely

accepted Clare’s version of her, without using your own intelligence.”

“Clare’s version of Petra! But haven’t I just been saying that Clare is

absolutely loyal to Petra? She defends her, every time. She even goes so

far as to call her sullen silences ‘reticence.’ And her vanity—Petra’s

obsessed over clothes, thinks of nothing else—Clare merely treats that

as touchingly young and naïve. Or else she pretends that it’s evidence

of artistic appreciation and taste. But if that’s what it is, why

doesn’t it show itself in other directions, now and then? I’ve never

seen it. Why, the other day I mentioned something in her father’s last

novel, and Petra had to admit she hadn’t even read it! Imagine! No,

whatever Clare pretends to herself and the rest of us about it, Petra is

just plain dull.... One is sorry for Clare, of course....”

Lewis was keeping only a tenuous hold on his good temper. “How can you

be so dull yourself?” he asked. “She—Petra—is as far from dull as any

human being I’ve ever had the honor to know. I suppose you’ve seen her

nowhere but against the general unreality of Green Doors. That’s the

‘background’ your Clare has given the child.... Petra’s truth, against

her background’s untruth, has bewildered you. It hasn’t me....” He

lighted a fresh cigarette.

Cynthia flapped her arms and burst into as good an imitation of a

rooster crowing as is possible to the human species. It was an

accomplishment retained from childhood. In those early days it had been,

usually, the closing note in some argument between brother and sister,

where Cynthia had been proven the winner; and now, if ever, she knew

herself right.

“You lose! I win!” she laughed, dropping her wings. “What good does it

do you to be a psychiatrist? And a famous one? Petra and truth! That

girl would as soon tell an out-and-out lie as wink. Clare never knows

where she is with her when it’s a question of fact.”

“Oh, so Clare _has_ admitted that much—not excused it?”

“Not a bit of it. You haven’t caught _me_, darling, in a fib. Clare

couldn’t excuse it or cover it up. It’s too obvious. Petra is always

avoiding the truth.”

“Yes. I got a hint of that myself this afternoon. Couldn’t help it.”

But now that so suddenly and even surprisingly Lewis had acknowledged

her victorious in the scrimmage, Cynthia felt a little remorseful. Not

on Lewis’ account—he could afford his losses—on Petra’s.

“I needn’t have been so malicious!” she owned. “Come to think of it, I

suppose Petra Farwell’s never had one atom of religious training. What

is there to make her feel an obligation to be truthful—or even grateful,

for the matter of that? She’s never had a chance to see life lived

beautifully—till now.”

“But who of us has had religious training?” Lewis asked, surprised. “You

haven’t. I certainly haven’t. Your own children haven’t. What’s that got

to do with your judgments on Petra, then?”

“Oh, don’t be so logical, darling. I was only making excuses for her, I

suppose. But we are different, you must admit. Lying doesn’t come

natural to us, does it! And we are sincere....”

“Doesn’t it? Are we? Well—possibly. But then we are at peace with our

environment. Not in danger from it. Our best policy is sincerity,

telling the truth. If we were living in a jungle, my dear, an unfriendly

and mysterious jungle, where we couldn’t tell the trees from the

shadows, you know, we’d fall back on protective coloring and other

hypocrisies, lies, wouldn’t we? That’s where Petra’s living. In a

jungle. Where she can’t tell the shadows from the trees, if you want to

know....”

“You’re being fantastic on purpose. Or else you’re overworking and not

responsible!” Cynthia accused and then, suddenly, stopped breathing. How

had they ever got to talking like this, so earnestly, about Petra

Farwell? Lewis, anyway, who never talked personalities! What had

happened to him? Why was he looking so strained and different? Was Lewis

really interested in Petra Farwell for herself—in some particular way?

For years Cynthia had wanted Lewis to marry. Her husband agreed with her

that, unmarried, the world was losing much that her famous brother could

give it. He was terribly sweet with children. Her own four adored him.

And some of his best and most famous work had been done with children.

Besides, he was—although Cynthia herself, being only his sister, could

not quite see why—extraordinarily magnetic to women. They pursued him

shamelessly. Avoiding that pursuit, both in his work and socially, had

developed into something approximating an art in his contacts, Cynthia

imagined. So he had a world to choose from. If only he had met Clare

before Lowell Farwell met her! Cynthia had sighed this sigh to herself

before to-night. Clare would have been perfect. But there were others.

There must be. Lewis needn’t fall back on a Petra—a sullen, stodgy young

beauty, who wasn’t even enough of a personality herself to appreciate

personality in another, in Clare. If Lewis should be hypnotized by mere

beauty and youth, and do anything so stupid,—how simply ironic that

would be!

Catching back her breath, Cynthia descended precipitately from her perch

on the piazza rail. She wanted to be nearer Lewis. Physical nearness

might help their sympathetic nearness, which had been—she knew

now—scattered to the four winds when she flapped rooster wings and

crowed a minute ago. Besides, she had an inspiration. She drew a chair

close to his. The arms of the two chairs touched.

“Lewis!” she said. “Do you remember that strange book, ‘Phantastes,’ by

George MacDonald? We read it together the summer after Father died. No,

it was the summer before. Aunt Cynthia read it to us. Those weeks we

stayed with her. That was the summer _before_ Father died, wasn’t it?

Anyway, we were really too young for that book. But we got something out

of it. I remember parts quite vividly, every now and then....

Particularly that gruesome bit about the Maid of the Alder. Remember

that? How she was so perfectly beautiful to look at? Anodos thought so,

anyway. And he went with her that long walk through the forest and spent

the night with her in her cave? He thought she was the Lady of the

Marble—or was it Alabaster?—whom he had sung to life and who had fled

from him. He had never clearly seen her face but she was his ideal

woman, the woman his soul was seeking. Now he thought he was to possess

her at last.... But when morning came and he woke, his companion of the

night had waked ahead of him and was at the door of the cave, standing

there, looking out. Her back was turned to him.... Remember?... She had

had her desire of Anodos and she simply didn’t care now if he discovered

that she was not his ideal woman? She was perfectly careless that he

should see how she was hollow! Do you remember her standing there, in

the cave door, looking out into the forest—her hollow, rotten back, like

the stump of a decayed tree? Like a coffin stood upon end? Wasn’t it

gruesome just!”

Cynthia was genuinely shuddering by this time. Lewis laughed. “I should

say I do remember. That morning-after scene darkened my boyhood,” he

chuckled. “I’ve read ‘Phantastes’ through several times since that

summer. I keep it by me. I can’t imagine—can you?—why Aunt Cynthia chose

that particular book for youngsters like us? I suppose because of its

fairy element—the enchanted forest, and all. To my mind, it’s one of the

world’s deepest, wisest, but almost too obscurely mystical books. Do

_you_ remember, Cynthia, how one begins to feel the horror threatening

Anodos’ soul’s life, early, in the very beginning of this Maid of the

Alder business, when he starts off with her on the walk to the cave?

Your first twinges of horror and dread for Anodos set in when she takes

such precautions to keep her face always squarely toward him, walking

backwards to accomplish it, when necessary! Then, when they at last

reach the cave, she makes him go in _ahead_ of her. Inside, she always

keeps her back to the wall. How horrible it is when the lamp shines

through her! Anodos should have guessed then that she was hollow!... It

is a nightmare....”

“But Lewis! I meant—I’m afraid I meant—that Petra Farwell, young girl

though she is, has several times made me remember the Maid of the Alder.

I haven’t just made it up now. Truly. I thought of it the last time I

was at Green Doors. We were there for dinner....”

“Petra—the Maid of the Alder! You’re a little mad! But it’s rather a

curious coincidence that I myself have been brooding on ‘Phantastes’

very lately, this afternoon, in fact, at Green Doors and apropos of

Petra too. Fact! Do you remember Anodos’ song to his ideal woman—the

genuine one, not the imitation—through her shrouding marble? It says how

the world’s sculptors in their search for her have succeeded in

embodying in their creations no more than their ideas of what she may

be. They’ve never taken hold of her living self. I even remember some

lines. Bless me if I don’t!

“Round their visions, form enduring,

Marble vestments thou hast thrown;

But thyself, in silence winding,

Thou has kept eternally;

Thee they found not, many finding—

I have found thee: wake for me.”

Lewis murmuring poetry in the dusk! And with the little curly smile that

with him, paradoxically, meant utterest sincerity in what he was saying,

even solemnity! Cynthia’s heart beat slowly and with a kind of awe at

the simplicity of the way in which Lewis’ curly smile and his poetry had

shut her up, permanently, on the subject of Petra. The whole

situation—trivial and really nothing at all to Cynthia until only a

minute ago—had between a breath and a breath been lifted to the dignity

of a position on the knees of the gods, where she must perforce leave it

to its own developments in that realm of pure fatality. And she thought

they had been talking lightly!

But now her brother was asking—casual again, thank goodness—“Have the

kids gone up to bed yet? I’m terribly afraid I promised ’em a yarn after

they were packed away and that model starched nurse you indict on ’em

was well out of the picture. They’ll be looking for me.”

_Chapter Seven_

Lewis was pledged to return to Green Doors at ten o’clock that evening.

Cynthia and Harry, Clare was aware, had made plans which would keep

their cherished guest occupied for all of Sunday, and he could not come

then. This was the only time left. She had made the rendezvous under

cover of walking up to the house with Lewis when he was leaving Green

Doors this afternoon. He was to let himself in by the wicket gate and

she would meet him on the terrace, for Petra was not to know that he had

come back. Dick had explained her scheme to him, had he not?

Yes, Dick had explained, and while at the time of the explanation Lewis

had had no intention of collaborating with Mrs. Farwell in any schemes

whatever, now he agreed to return for a “talk.” Anything that touched

Petra’s existence would have drawn him irresistibly back.

The great hall was wide open onto the terrace tonight, as it had been

this afternoon. It made an excellent ballroom. It was a small party and

every one was inside, dancing. At least, as Lewis came up onto it, the

terrace seemed deserted.

His eyes found Petra first of all. She was dancing with a tall, dark

youth, over a restricted area in the center of the floor. Lewis saw that

the other girls were like flowers in the black-coated arms of their

partners—scarlet flowers, blue, yellow, exotically scented. Or was the

perfume from the flowers on the terrace? In any case, it harmonized with

the exotic music. But the girls themselves seemed too fragile for the

voluptuous implications of the perfume and the music. They were flowers

drifting on the dark current of sensuousness with petals not yet sodden.

Lewis was amused at himself over his fancifulness but it continued to

spin itself along. If the girls there were flowers, the boys were

leaves. And the leaves, no more than the flowers, belonged to the dark

current under the music; they were merely eddying over its surface,

vacant and bemused. It was strangely unreal, unconvincing—both the

would-be savage music and the would-be voluptuous dancing.

But Petra was different. His eyes came back to her. She was not bemused

and she was too alive to drift. So her dancing was out of key and came

near to awkwardness. Given solid earth, she could run fleetly,

beautifully, Lewis was certain,—a Diana, spirit and body one. But she

was too alive and too vital to find herself in this syncopated dalliance

with a shadow world of sensuousness. Passion, for her to recognize it,

must be bright, whole, burning with sun. Lewis was not amused now at his

thought. He knew what he knew about Petra, and his heart offered up a

gratitude that was religious in the knowing.

Clare stole up and stood beside him. She had been watching for his

arrival, sitting with Dick in the shadow of a tall flower-grown urn. She

had sent the young man back to the party peremptorily and with some

excitement the instant the older and more eminent visitor appeared.

“Aren’t they precious!” she exclaimed, her fingers just touching Lewis’

arm. “All of them! But my Petra in particular? In that frosty gown!—Come

to the library. We can’t talk against this racket. Lowell’s in town

speaking to a meeting of the Boston Authors’ Club, otherwise he would be

hiding in the library himself. He detests jazz. Except when your

brother-in-law plays it. Harry’s jazz is superb. He makes it art!”

The library was a surprisingly small room but its walls rose through two

stories with books all the way up to the high ceiling. A mild, yellow

and diffused light, radiating from unseen sources, would make reading

here—even at the top of the book ladder—as easy for the eyes as if it

were broad day.

Clare settled herself in a corner of the very low, built-in modern divan

which extended down one entire length of the room, and Lewis, obedient

to her gesture, sat down, experimentally, beside her. He had had little

practice with modernistic furniture such as this, which, he was learning

now, demanded a new technique in posture, unless one were built on

angular lines and accustomed to lolling. It would quite suit Farwell,

for instance, whose divan it was. But Lewis, who was stocky rather than

angular, found himself having to bend in all the wrong places to adapt

himself to it. Mrs. Farwell, however, was perfectly at home. She had

drawn her feet up under her, Japanese fashion, and sat now perched on

her heels, wand-straight, small and exquisite. But then, she was as

supple-bodied as a child and as poised as a dancer in every attitude

that she assumed.

“I am really delighted,” she was saying, “that you have come, like this.

If I had gone into town some day, instead, and seen you in your office,

everything would have been so different. I should have had to _tell_ you

about things. We may have saved weeks, don’t you think so, Doctor Pryne,

in getting you here where you can see it all for yourself and needn’t

draw it out bit by bit with questions?”

Clare’s evening gown was flame-colored taffeta, her jewels pearls, her

feet—out of sight but remembered—were sandal-shod with gold heels,

curved like dagger blades. It was an elegance in striking contrast to

the simplicity and seeming carelessness of her afternoon’s appearance.

But Lewis felt no contrast. It was all of the same piece: all part of

the game. And when he looked away from her, which he did rather quickly

in very shame for the ungenerosity of every thought he seemed able to

think concerning Petra’s stepmother, it was only to find her voice

increasing his prejudice. No matter what ideas her words in themselves

conveyed, certain inflections in the tones seemed to be asking over and

over, “What do you think of me, what do you think of me, _what do you

think of me_?” It was the eager and unappeasable cry of an insatiate

vanity. Lewis hated himself for hearing it so plainly; but his nerves

were taut. When had Doctor Pryne allowed himself the excuse of nerves

before! Yet to be so near Petra and shut away in here with Mrs. Farwell!

He wound his arms around his knees. That was it. That was what you had

to do to come to terms with this fantastic divan. Stick your knees up,

almost to your chin, and then not to be altogether too orang-utan-like,

wind your arms. The only alternative would be to sit on your feet, as

his hostess was doing.

“There wouldn’t have been any need for you to come to my office,” he

said. “Not to talk about Petra. She is the last person in the world, to

my mind, to need psychiatric treatment.” He might as well get this part

over quickly, Lewis felt.

Clare was surprised by the dry conviction with which Lewis spoke, but

she was not warned. She swayed toward him, from her heels, and put her

hand on his arm. The gesture was as unselfconscious, and

un-sex-conscious, as if she were a child of ten. Lewis was aware of her

unconsciousness all the time that her fingers stayed there, pressing

into his coat sleeve, and her soft warm breath was almost on his cheek.

He wondered whether she pawed Dick like this, with casual

unselfconsciousness,—and whether Dick found it engagingly innocent. Dick

was just the sort of romantic youth—Lewis hadn’t needed Cynthia to

explain Dick to him—to confuse sexual paucity with purity.

“Oh, but you don’t understand what we meant then, Richard and I,” she

protested. “Psychiatry—anyway as you practise it, Doctor Pryne—is not

for diseased minds merely. Petra is terribly sane. Saner than I am, I’m

certain of that. It is something less tangible I am asking your help

with. I want you to make it possible for my stepdaughter to be true to

herself and to be happy.—That wasn’t Petra’s true self you saw this

afternoon. I know, Doctor, that it is your faith, as much as it is mine,

that most people want to find themselves and be true to themselves, to

their best selves, I mean, if only they can be shown how. If you

_hadn’t_ that faith in human nature, then you couldn’t do for people

what you do. You see I know something about your work. Mrs. Dickerman is

one of my intimate friends. Cornelia James too. I’ve known Cornie ever

since we were at Miss Foster’s School together. So I know, for I have

seen, how you took at least one woman and made her into a charming,

agreeable person when she was over thirty. Why, Cornie was the most

morbid, oversensitive and unhappy soul until you began treating her!—And

even if I hadn’t seen these miracles, I’d still know from reading your

books what you can do for people in the way of orientating them with

their own highest potentialities. And all I am asking, Doctor Pryne, is

that you should do that for my Petra. You do believe, don’t you, that it

isn’t natural to her—can’t be natural to any one—to be so secretive and

indifferent as she seems? Not at nineteen, anyway! And with Lowell

Farwell for a father—and I so devoted to her!”—Clare’s fingers had

relaxed their steady pressure but she was slow to remove them from

Lewis’s coat sleeve.

Lewis might have laughed. He frowned to save himself from doing so; for

it would not have been a pleasant laugh and the frown was, at least,

silent. Clare was not the first blasphemous wealthy woman who had tried,

casually and even patronizingly, to buy his services as a cure of souls

for themselves or members of their family. But in this instance it was

Petra’s reserve—that clean, sword-edged reserve—he was being asked to

violate. Yes, this woman was looking forward to his pulling Petra all

apart, like the works of a clock, and laying the pieces on the table,

for them to mull over together.

He could hear Mrs. Lowell Farwell expatiating on it to her next dinner

partner. Yet, no. She would hardly do that. It would be worth saving

until the conversation was general. “Oh, yes. Doctor Pryne is

psychoanalyzing my stepdaughter. He is frightfully interested in her

case. It is too wonderful what he has done for her already. She’s a

different person. Oh, but you must know who he is! Doctor Lewis Pryne!

He wrote ‘Learning to be Adult.’”

Oh, yes! Mrs. Farwell would exploit it for all it was worth at dinners,

luncheons, teas and in the arms of dancing partners for weeks to come,

while all the time the inflections in her voice demanded, “What do you

think of me, what do you think of me, what do you think of _me now_?”

Only, of course she would not—because she could not. Fortunately she had

come to the wrong counter. Lewis had nothing to sell her—but, on second

thoughts, something, possibly, that he would give her for nothing; for

it had suddenly occurred to him that if he failed her entirely to-night,

she might try elsewhere. There _were_ psychoanalysts quite the sort she

imagined him to be, of course. Would Petra, with Mrs. Farwell setting

her heart on it, have the hardihood to stand out against going through

the fashionable paces of being psychoanalyzed? He must do what he could

to avoid such a possible calamity.

“This question of finding one’s self,” he murmured,—“it’s living one’s

life, isn’t it, that accomplishes that, in the end? Petra is too young

to have found herself in that sense, of course. But she is old enough,

on the other hand, to want to. That may be the conflict, the cause of

all her ‘indifference’ to you and her life here. She said something to

me this afternoon about wanting to go to business school and be

independent. Wouldn’t her father send her? That would be cheaper,

anyway, and infinitely more sensible than having her psychoanalyzed. She

could get quite away from Green Doors. Live in the Girls’ Studio Club—or

perhaps even set up an apartment with some girl friend....” He was, of

course, thinking of Teresa.

It had the effect, anyway, of removing Mrs. Farwell’s hand from his arm.

She was back in her corner, looking at him with surprise and even doubt.

“Petra didn’t tell you that she wanted to get away from Green Doors and

all I am doing for her here? Did she? Petra didn’t actually say—this

afternoon, the minute you were alone with her—that she was unhappy? Did

she? I simply don’t understand, Doctor Pryne!”

“But why are you surprised?” Lewis evaded. “I gathered from young Wilder

when he came to my office on Thursday that that was how things were with

Petra. You felt she was abnormally indifferent to you, he said, and to

all the nice things you were trying to do for her and to give her. But,

do you know, now I’ve seen Petra, that indifference seems perfectly

healthy to me? She is, after all, not a child. She’s a woman. _Let_ her

learn a profession and be independent! Why not?”