“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 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’slovely 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. Childlikereceptiveness 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,stillself, there at his side.
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 youngnurse 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 moreand 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 kitchengarden. 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? Oristhis 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 itback. “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 alittle 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. Butwhydid 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 sayingTeresa 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’ssong. 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....”
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 overhere 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, thedoctor 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 Teresagiving 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 thewhole 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, ‘Mymother,mybrothers and sisters,mybaby 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 allsixKerr 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.’ Butthe 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 mostcheerful.
“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. Thatwas 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 howIfelt about it. I didn’t feel anything, I think. I was so surprised to hear Teresacryingthat 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 onewho 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 goaway 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 issomethingI 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 getsome 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 findingthem 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. LowellFarwell 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.
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 theTranscript, 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. Butwhy now? Oh! Green Doors, of course! And I’ve been trying to get you to go over there with me for ayear 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 isreallybeautiful.”
“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? Yetyou 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! Howdelicious! 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, thedepththat 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?”