Cynthia, bless her heart, came down for an early breakfast with her brother.
“If Petra’s not over her headache, what will you do? Make her stay home?” she asked.
“I think she’ll be over it. Miss Frazier’s away on vacation, and I need Petra more than ordinary these days.”
“You seem a trifle brutal, darling. Don’t you believe the girl had a headache? I do. She looked terrible. I know Clare didn’t believe it, but then she hadn’t seen her. I heard Clare telling Lowell it was temper. I thought that was rather horrid of Clare, I must say. And now you are almost as heartless.”
“Cynthia Pryne Allen! Do I hear criticism of Clare? I’d better take your temperature. You look all right but I am afraid you must be delirious!”
Cynthia leaned back in her chair. She had finished her grapefruit and black coffee. That was all she allowed herself for breakfast, having no ambition to compete with her Harry in avoirdupois.
“No, I’m not criticizing Clare. Not exactly. But lately—well, lately I’ve sort of come to understand Petra a little better. I feel as if I have, anyway. I don’t think things are so frightfully easy for her at Green Doors. Not that Clare means to be unkind. Oh, hardly! But their temperaments don’t jibe, that’s all. Clare can’t take it in, that any one can be so simple as Petra is. That’s the trouble, I think. She thinks Petra’s simplicity is always covering some design. But Petra hasn’t any design. She’s just a healthy, nice, rather sweet girl. She seems sweet to me, anyway. Just these last few weeks I’ve grown fond of her. You don’t have to wonder where you are with her, ever. Why, I told Clare just last night that if I had a daughter I’d adore her to be a second Petra. She’d be socomfortableto live with.”
“Yes? And what did Clare reply, if anything?”
“That made me rather cross, Lewis. She said that I didn’t know Petra. She said she was ‘deep.’”
“Did she mean it as insult or compliment?”
“Dear Lewis! When one woman calls another deep!—It has looked to me lately—nights at the Country Club, when they were all there together, the Farwells and Dick and Neil (that simply grand McCloud person, you know)—that Clare was almost jealous of Petra. Harry’s got an idea that that’s why Neil doesn’t come to Green Doors any more. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s seeing Petra secretly, somewhere else. I think Clare suspects it too. She’s almost insufferable, anyway, the way she questions Petra as to where she has been and what shehas been doing. And she doesn’t mind who’s there, listening. It makes one very uncomfortable. It’s hateful for Petra.”
“Yes. One feels that,” Lewis agreed. “But it isn’t worth Petra’s bothering about, or yours, really. Clare is—incorrigible. All the same, she must have some nice qualities, I suppose, or she couldn’t plan gardens so astutely, and care about the books she does care about, and music and all. She does honestly care for those things. That’s not sham. One can’t sham that. Do you know what I think, Cynthia? I think that people like Clare are so awful simply because they are so close to being really fine. If Clare were just any silly woman, ‘out for the men,’ you’d laugh at her and find her, possibly, rather touchingly human. You might even like her. But it’s precisely because she isn’t a silly, superficial creature that the cruelty and ugliness in her seems such wretched cruelty, such wretched ugliness. She is an exquisite person—has exquisite perceptions, anyway. There’s only that one unpleasant spot, her vanity in the admiration she excites in every one around her. If she were only sensual or selfish (openly, healthily selfish, I mean)—if she had any mean qualities at all, like the rest of us—she’d be forgivable. But it is the under-bogging of all this highly emphasized spirituality with endless quicksands of vanity that gives a fellow the jitters—unless he’s sucked under, like Dick, and suffocated in it. It is obvious that Clare deliberately took Petra on as handicap to add to the zest of a game thatwas becoming almost too easy to be exciting any longer. But now that the handicap begins really to weigh—as it did last night—she’s lost her poise—and her pose. Last night Clare was openly vicious. One could sympathize—just possibly—with her wanting to vie with Petra for Dick’s attention. But when it is in enchanting and holding Petra’s own father she uses the girl as her foil, I must say I find it revolting. That’s vanity gone rotten. It’s better, though, she should show her hand. It won’t do Farwell any harm to see it. He had it coming to him. I didn’t mind seeing him squirm last night. It’s for Petra I mind.”
Cynthia almost agreed with Lewis. But she looked very sorry. After all, Clare Farwell had for several years made life richer and more significant for Cynthia. Cynthia was hungry for the good and the beautiful, as are we all when given leisure to discover ourselves. It was hard giving Clare up as an ideal. Cynthia took a brave hold on honesty and justice when she said, after a painful silence, “Probably you are right, Lewis, in all you say. But I owe Clare a lot. And I’m going to try to stay friends with her and to like her. I mayn’t go on idealizing her as I have. I can’t any more. I’ve seen too much, and last night, as you say, finished the revelation. Any one could see that she was vicious toward Petra. But I think her friendship for me is genuine. And I shall try to make mine for her genuine and understanding. I am sorry for her.—And now promise me, Lewis” (he was up, ready to be off. It was quarter to eight), “promiseme at least to suggest that Petra stays home to-day. Couldn’t I take her place? I have nothing to do. I’d love it.”
“You’re a dear,” Lewis said. “I’ll let you know if I need you. As I said, I’m sure Petra’s all right by now. She’s a healthy creature. I wish I had your charity, Cynthia. I need it terribly.”
Green Doors had a hushed air. Lewis felt, from the manner of Elise who opened the door to him, that the curtain had not yet been rung up, as it were, and that it was a little unreasonable of him to expect to be let in on the stage while the hands were still busy shifting scenery from night to morning. But when he asked for Petra, Elise’s face cleared. Petra, since her job, had become a worker, one of the hands. Part of real life. If it was only Petra he wanted, well, Petra could be produced easily enough.
“She hasn’t come down to breakfast yet. She ought to have been down half an hour ago. The cook was just asking me, was she coming.”
“She had a headache last night. Perhaps she is not able to get up. Will you please go and see? Tell her that Doctor Pryne is calling and that it’s all right, he’ll go along without her, unless she’s better.”
Lewis walked back and forth over a space of twelve of the floor tiles in the great hall while he waited for Elise’s return. He counted them each time. They were beautiful tiles. Gray-green and glistening with a silkensheen. The maid seemed a long time away. But she came at last, presenting to his expectant and quickly questioning look a face of blank perplexity.
“Miss Farwell didn’t sleep in her room last night,” she said. “Her bed is opened, just as I left it, and her night things laid out. I can’t think—”
“Take me to her room. Let me see it.” Lewis had the woman by the elbow and was pushing her toward the staircase. It was as if he had taken in Harry’s words about Petra’s not going to bed but out the front door for the first time. Without a wrap! And Clare had said, “She’ll be in bed by now then. It’s really October.”—Something like that, anyway.
As Elise led the way up the stars, Lewis knew, absolutely, that he had lived through these very moments before. He knew also that the dénouement was to be a tragic one. He knew beyond this that he and nobody else in the whole world was responsible and to blame. There was nothing dreamlike in all this. It was as if he were more, not less, sensibly conscious than ordinarily.
Lewis had no hesitation whatever about entering the room which the maid whispered to him was Petra’s. It was a corner room: two windows on each side. He looked about on perfect order. Glazed chintz draperies thickly pleated, like cardboard, were drawn across the window-panes, pulled there by the maid who had opened Petra’s bed for the night, as a screen for her undressing. Petrawould have pushed them wide and opened the windows if she had slept here, of course. The curtains being drawn, and the windows shut, was evidence that she had not. Lewis turned to the bed. A pleated spread to match the curtains had been carefully removed and laid across two chairs, stiff and unwrinkled. The sheets were turned down. Across the foot of the bed a white nightgown was laid out, and down on the floor a pair of high-heeled mules, gay with pompoms. The dressing table, in one corner, with its rows of silver and glass-topped jars and bottles, was in exquisite order. Everything in the room was orderly—untouched. Even in his condition of fearful presentiment of evil, Lewis looked for the picture he had given Petra yesterday for her birthday. Had she hung it here in her bedroom, as he had hoped she would? No, there was a painting by Georgia O’Keefe on one wall,—a picture Petra couldn’t possibly understand. Nothing else.
Strange to be looking hungrily here for signs of Petra’s personality when Petra herself was lost! Strange to care that there was nothing here in Petra’s own place, her room, to speak her real! Stranger yet that there was nothing, not a book, not a flower,—not a scrap of living interest anywhere! It might have been a stage bedroom. All the properties necessary for the idea that somebody did use it to sleep in—yes. But you must wait for the actress to come on, to know what she was like.A stage bedroom!And yet this was Petra’s retreat, hervery own room, her place. Lewis almost shuddered at it. The Maid of the Alder—the hollow woman. It might have been her cave! It was so soulless.
The brilliant October sunlight turned the shut curtains into a glaring purplish pink. The image of a peacock spreading a mammoth spectroscopic tail was embossed on the oyster-colored rug. There were smaller peacocks on the backs of the chairs. Suddenly Lewis stopped looking for signs of Petra. When she came in here, herself, her personality, was shut away, outside the four walls of her bedroom. He felt that it must beat around the walls all night to get in. She slept in a place shut away from herself. This was madness! She wasn’t here. Hadn’t been here ever. Not really. Wherewasshe?
Elise had followed him in. He turned to her and all she saw was an efficient, cool person who would make everything all right. She was beginning to get over her scare. Doctor Pryne was not scared.
“Has Miss Farwell any other room than this? A sitting room?”
“No, sir. There is the bath. I looked in there when I came up. She didn’t use her towels last night. I don’t think she came into the room at all after I fixed it, sir.”
“Miss Farwell wore a white dress last night. Whitish, anyway. See if that is in her closet, please.”
Elise hurried to the closet. In spite of the way Doctor Pryne’s demands came—like firecrackers crackling—Elise still trusted to his coolness. It kept her cool.
“No, sir. That dress isn’t here. It was a new one.”
“Does Miss Farwell ever sleep anywhere else than here, when she’s at home? At the guest house, for instance? Or in another bedroom?”
“No, sir. We don’t keep the beds made up, except when there are guests.”
“Have you any ideas at all where Miss Farwellmighthave gone last night? To sleep?”
“No, sir. I thought she came to bed early, sir. I stayed up last night to close up the house. Mrs. Farwell told me then that Miss Farwell had gone to bed early and that we were to be quiet. I mean, sir, we stood just outside Miss Farwell’s door, talking in whispers, not to wake Miss Farwell, when Mrs. Farwell said good night to me. Mrs. Farwell thought just as I did that Miss Farwell was here in bed, asleep.”
“Would you be able to tell if any of Miss Farwell’s clothes were gone? A coat, for instance. It was cold last night. She was dressed in a low-necked, sleeveless dance frock. She couldn’t go away anywhere like that.”
“Oh, no, sir, she couldn’t. I’ll see, sir.”
Lewis went to the windows, one after another, and yanking the cords that worked the curtains, let in the light. From each cord dangled a heavy silk peacock for tassel. Ugh!
The maid turned from the open sliding doors of the wardrobe which took up one whole side of the room.
“Everything is here, sir. She hasn’t so many clothes!Lovely dresses, but not many. I’d know if anything was gone, I am sure.”
“What time did you lock the house up last night? If Miss Farwell had gone out for a walk, say, and came back after you locked it, could she have got in?”
“It was after you had all gone, I locked it. After the party. Around midnight. Miss Farwell hasn’t a key. There aren’t any. One of the servants bolts the doors and windows the last thing at night and that is the only time they are locked. If Miss Farwell had come to the door and found it locked, though, she had only to ring the bell. Somebody would have heard. Or she could have knocked on her father’s window. He has a bedroom right on the terrace.”
Although Doctor Pryne’s coolness was still consoling her somewhat, Elise’s face, during these rapid questions and answers, had gone gradually dead white and her knees were shaking. She presumed at this point to ask a question on her own part: “Oh, sir, do you think anything has happened? There’s the river beyond the meadows....”
If looks could kill, the look Elise got from Doctor Lewis Pryne in return for her own one question would have struck her down on the spot.—So she said later, when she told the whole story of what she called the “inquest” to Clare,—told it with tears and to the accompaniment of many careful promptings. She knew from that look that her idea of Miss Farwell as a possible suicide angered the doctor even more than it frightenedherself. So she said hastily, shaking more than ever, but the color a little returning to her blanched cheeks, “Or it might be she’s kidnaped. Mrs. Farwell is one of the richest women in the State of Massachusetts. It said so in theTranscript. They might know she would give anything to get Miss Farwell back. Do you think it’s a kidnaping, sir? Oh, poor Mrs. Farwell! This will break her heart!”
She was weeping openly by then. But she hoped it would be she and no other who told Mrs. Farwell the news. And certainly nobody could get ahead of her in telling it to the other stage-hands at Green Doors. It would be strange if anybody got ahead of her, since she was the very first to learn of the disappearance and the inquest had begun with her, so to speak.
“You say Mr. Farwell sleeps downstairs? Take me to his room. Hurry!”
Again the doctor had her by an elbow, pushing her ahead of him. Again they were on the stairs, only this time he was propelling her downward. But in spite of the steady pressure of the doctor’s fingers on her elbow, and his air of a perfect right to command, she found the courage to suggest, “Hadn’t we better tell Mrs. Farwell, sir? Mr. Farwell won’t like being disturbed at this hour. Mrs. Farwell won’t mind. She’s a lovely woman.”
All the doctor said to that was, “Mr. Farwell’s room. Which way?” They were at the foot of the stairs.
But Elise never told Lewis which way, for he had dropped her arm. No, more than that, he actually pushedher away. Petra was coming toward them through the great hall from the street door. She had left it wide open behind her. The door was a wide, high plaque of golden light; and Petra against it, in her glassy frock, was more like a ghost than a girl—just that first minute.
“What is it? What is the matter, Elise? Why, good morning, Doctor Pryne.”
Yes, it was Petra, not ghostly now. Lewis’ eyes had adjusted themselves to the morning sunlight flooding the door. It was Petra all right. Reticent. Nice-mannered. Pleasant.
Lewis whirled on the staring maid. “Thanks for all you did,” he said. “Go away now.” Elise went, but no farther than the dining room; from there she heard most of what passed between the doctor and Miss Farwell and reported it concisely, in spite of excited weeping, to Mrs. Farwell herself a few minutes later.
“You didn’t sleep in your room last night, Petra. I was frightened. I am afraid I frightened the maid. Are you all right?”
“Yes. I could see something was the matter with Elise. I am sorry either of you was worried. I meant to get in before anybody noticed. I’m all right, thanks.”
There she stood, quite close to him,—real. In her party frock and her fragile high-heeled slippers, immaculate and self-possessed. Even her hair was as shining and groomed as last night, but with a new touch added: a narrow violet band was tied around her head, back of her ears, holding the curls in place. It was that ribbonwith its flat little bow at the side of her head, which infuriated Lewis.
“Where did you sleep last night?”
Elise, listening from the dining-room, where after all it was her place to be ready to serve Miss Farwell her breakfast when she came in for it, was amazed at the harshness of the tone putting the question. Doctor Pryne had been sharp and quick with herself—but not harsh like this. This was downright rude—and to Miss Farwell! But Miss Farwell was equal to him. She was equal to any one. She was every bit as real a lady as was Mrs. Farwell herself, in spite of being so different. Elise knew. She had lived in the house with Miss Farwell for three years now.
Petra said, “Somehow I don’t think that you have a right to ask, Doctor Pryne. Not like that exactly.”
“I have. I have been in hell. Scared out of my wits. I thought you—I didn’t know what had happened to you. You’ve got to tell me where you were, Petra,—where you slept.”
Then Lewis saw that although Petra was very erect in the flooding sunlight, with brushed hair, and coolly half-smiling lips, her face was haggard beyond belief. Austerely haggard.
“Petra—!” he urged again—almost gently now—then stopped. “My dear, have you had breakfast?” But she had brushed her hair, tied a ribbon about it in an infinitely enchanting way,—so why not breakfast too? Why did he worry about so trivial a matter in any case!
“Yes. We—I had breakfast. Hours ago.” But she looked down, away from Lewis’ look, very quickly as she changed the “we” to “I.” Now that she was looking down, Lewis could see how, over night, her face had thinned. He could almost see the bones of her cheek through the transparent flesh.
She looked up as if to ward off his discernment. “Doctor Pryne! Could you get along at the office without me to-day? I am—I think I am—well, perhaps too tired.”
“No, Petra! I can’t go off and leave you. You must come with me. Now. You needn’t work. But I’m not going to leave you to Clare. We can talk in the car.”
But Petra misunderstood the reason for his insistence. She had suddenly remembered that Janet wouldn’t be in the office. The night she had passed had blurred her memory of ordinary things. But now she took hold of ordinary things again, even steadied herself by their cognizance. She was young, strong, and no shirker.
“Oh, of course, I must come. I had forgotten Janet wasn’t coming. Truly I had. Will you wait while I change? I saw your car outside. We’ll still be in time. It is still early.”
Lewis went out to wait in the car. He would not think. There was not one single thing that ordinary conjecture could do for him. Petra must confide in him before he would ever be able to think one straight thought again. In an amazingly short time she came running out, pulling on a polo coat over one of her office dresses. Shewaited till she was in the car beside him to put on her felt hat. Petra’s hats and coats, Lewis had noticed gradually, as the summer wore on, had nothing of the magic and unique loveliness of her frocks. They were merely concealing and casual. In fact, this same violet-colored felt, with its moderately wide and down-tilting brim, had sufficed her all summer in town, and this polo coat was the only coat he had ever seen her wear.
“I’m sorry that I had to keep you waiting.” She said it in her ordinary ingenuous and clear, clipped tones as he started his engine.
That she was not wavering in her good manners, that not so much as her voice was nicked by the night’s experience (whatever it had been!), brought all Lewis’ anger sweeping back. What was she made of! She might play this game with Clare, years on end, if she liked,—this game of good manners covering a secret, vital, beating heart. But she could not play it with Lewis himself any longer. They were to understand each other now. He felt capable of wrenching Petra’s secret from her heart with the strength of his bare hands. Her reticence—it should go down. He would destroy it. Never in his life had he been more exasperated.
Then they came to the one sharp turn in Clare’s beloved little country road, and Lewis’ violent feelings almost ended in a violent smash; for a stalled roadster was there, taking up the middle of the way. Only by a superhuman pulling of his whole steering gear to one side, then steadying the bounding car among threateningtree boles and so somehow getting it back to the road, did Lewis avoid calamity. Back, safe in the road, Lewis pressed his accelerator and sped on without a backward glance or even a curse at the driver of the stalled car. Lewis had seen the man well enough in that split second when he jammed on the brakes and turned the wheel. It was Neil McCloud, on his knees, struggling to get a tire either on or off one of the wheels of his gaudy roadster. Neil McCloud, on the almost unused road to Green Doors, not fifteen minutes after Petra had appeared from her mysterious night away from home! If the tire had not punctured, Neil could have been a quarter of the way back to Boston by this time. And he would have been. Certainly he had not meant Lewis and Petra to pass him.
Lewis shut his lips and waited for Petra to speak. If she would only exclaim, “Wasn’t that Neil?” Or “Why didn’t you stop? That man needed help!” Or she might say, “Whatever is Neil McCloud doing out here so early!” Yes, Petra might say practically any inane thing at this minute, and Lewis, God help him, would have believed it ingenuous. It was her saying nothing that was so blasting....
They had rushed on for almost a full minute’s damning silence before Lewis gave up his desperate hope that Petra would say some innocent word and looked at her. Her face under the rakish, slouched felt hat was utterly colorless, but her eyes wereswimmingly bright. Lewis could see that. And even as he looked,although she did not turn her face or give the slightest voluntary sign that she was conscious of his regard, her pallor vanished. Fire kindled on her cheeks.
Now Lewis knew why he had been so bitterly angry all these minutes since Petra’s safe return, with her hair brushed to glisteningness, and a violet ribbon binding her curls. Intuition had outleapt conjecture. Even before Petra had spoken a word, while she had stood, an angel, against the bright gold plaque of the October sunlight filling the doorway, Lewis had known that he hated her beyond reason, that he loved her beyond reason—more than he had ever loved her before,—and that she was not his.
Lewis gathered the morning’s mail out of the box let into the office door, and passing through the reception room, shut himself into his own office. He had let Petra out at the street entrance and then driven on to find a parking place for his car. She had come up ahead of him and would be in the dressing room now. He put the mail down on his desk and settled himself into his chair.
This was Tuesday, the morning Lewis gave to the clinic. But he must sort his mail first. He could not hear Petra come out of the dressing room and move around in the reception-office, but he was as conscious of all her motions out there beyond his shut door as if she were making them in his heart. He saw her looking down, glancing up, picking up the telephone. She must stop moving about in his consciousness....
He was here, alone, with the day’s work before him. Why, he needn’t even think about Petra if he didn’t want to, still less let her move about, looking up, lookingdown, picking up the telephone, through the very tissues of his heart.
But what was it Petra had said to McCloud that day of the miracle? Lewis knew it by heart, it was often in his mind; yet now he was groping for it confusedly! He put his head into his hands. Was this it?—“Love is the word. You must say that. Try to say ‘I love.’”
And McCloud had said it—while the shackles of hate and rebellion fell away and left him a free man—free in love. If Lewis’ shackles could only fall, as had Neil’s! If he could only love Petra and not hate her, then he would be able to bear, perhaps, not having her. And hatred of Petra seemed to make him hate everything else. What was even his work to him now! He was bored by the sight of this pile of letters. He was unnerved, paralyzed. But love does not unnerve and paralyze. It isn’t in its nature. Hate does that. Yes, if only he could say, as Neil had said, “I love!”
But how could he say it? How could an ordinary person like himself love as the saints love? Well, Neil was no saint and he had said it. But the Little Flower herself had helped Neil. She wasn’t helping Lewis. And why should she? Lord have mercy on him, a sinner!
Lewis lifted his head from his hands. He must get to work, anyway. That meant he must begin to use his mind—stop writhing! That was all his mind had done ever since he had seen that hot blush spread over Petra’s face. He and Petra had scarcely spoken to each other onthe twenty-mile drive which had been made in less time than Lewis cared to remember now. What had he thought speed would do for the situation? But here was this bunch of mail. He’d got to concentrate. This was his life, his job, here under his hand. His plain duty.
Lewis tore open an envelope. Inside was a scrawl from Nelson, the brain surgeon, giving the hour set for a certain Eric Larsen’s operation. Nine-thirty, this morning. The chances of the man’s recovering were slim, Lewis knew, but there was no choice; an operation there must be. Lewis’ responsibility had ended, once he had passed the man on to Nelson, of course. But he had promised Eric Larsen to go with him to the operating room and stand by until the affair was over. Lewis had been at the hospital yesterday just before driving out to Meadowbrook; had spent the better part of an hour beside Larsen’s bed in the midst of the ward. That Larsen did not once rouse to the point of recognizing him had not made Lewis feel the time wasted. Who was he to say that the man’s consciousness—at some incommunicable level—was not aware of his friend at hand, sympathetic and hopeful for him. And when Larsen came out of ether this morning, if he did come out, it would be no strange, chance nurse whom his glance should meet, but the one person who knew all about his failures, his crimes,—and his hopes of regeneration: the only friend he laid claim to, Lewis himself.
But nine-thirty! That meant that Lewis must get along. The rest of this mail must be handed over to—Petra.
“Let me love again! Give me the love to love You with. Not for my sake. For Eric Larsen’s sake. He needs me now, this minute, worthless as I am. Give me this love so that I may go on and do this one morning’s work that You have given me. Make your gifts whole—the work and the love to do it with.—For this suffering Eric Larsen’s sake, not mine, who am unworthy, Lord.”
Lewis was looking around for his hat, as he prayed. There it was, knocked onto the floor somehow. The office certainly needed Miss Frazier. He collected the hat and snatched up the remaining bunch of letters. And as he performed these simple, objective acts, the shackles fell. There was no vision, no sensible response from on High. Nothing like that. Nothing in the world—but hatred and anger dissolving from his consciousness with the rapidity of light. “Deo Gratias” was all Lewis breathed in recognition of the Spirit’s blowing, and in another instant he was out in the reception office, by Petra’s desk.
Petra was talking to McCloud over the telephone. Lewis recognized the vibrations of McCloud’s voice, although he caught nothing of the words. Petra, glancing up at her employer, said quickly, interrupting the voice, “The doctor’s here, Neil. Waiting to speak to me. Call me up when I get back from lunching withDick. Two this afternoon. Good-by,” and put the instrument down sharply.
“I’m in a tearing hurry, Petra,” Lewis said. “You’ll have to go over these letters. Clip all that look personal together. Whether they’re marked personal or not. Make notes about the rest on the envelopes. If anything urgent comes up, I’ll be at the hospital till noon, anyway, but don’t call me for anything there till after eleven. No matter how urgent. I’m watching an operation. I’ll be back here by two, and if it’s possible, I’ll let you go home then. There’s aspirin in the right top drawer of my desk. Better take two. If that Philadelphia man shows up or calls, tell him I’ll see him at three, with the boy, here. But aside from that, keep the afternoon clear. I don’t like your looking so tired. Think you can stick it until two?”
“Oh, yes! I’m perfectly all right. The aspirin will help a lot. Everything will be all right here. Is it Eric Larsen—the operation?”
Petra had a special interest in Eric Larsen, the big shambling Swede, with his shifty eyes and oddly contrasting child-like trust in the goodness and power of Doctor Pryne. But she had been almost afraid of him when he first started coming. She had hidden her nervousness, however, and even Janet had not guessed what an ordeal those first few visits had been. Soon fear had turned to pity. Then had come the afternoon when Eric Larsen had appeared before her desk, roaring drunk and dangerously ugly, just after Doctor Pryne hadgone for the day. Petra, though in a very agony of terror, had stood by Janet when she insisted they must get him quietly back to his lodging house and up to his bedroom safe. Janet said that otherwise he would spend the night in jail and that wouldn’t help what Doctor Pryne was doing for him,—now would it! The next day Doctor Pryne had been appalled by their temerity, or tried to seem so; but the truth was, and they both knew it, that he was, in his heart, delighted.—So now, naturally, Petra had a special interest, if this was the day they were operating on Eric Larsen.
“Yes, it’s Larsen,” Lewis replied. “Nine-thirty. If he pulls through, we’ll write all about him to his mother in Upsala. She may send for him to come home. Almost any mother would now, in spite of everything.”
Petra tingled with gratification. Why, this was the way Doctor Pryne talked with Janet herself, confiding plans and hopes to her concerning his cases! To cover up her sudden delight she said again, “Everything will be all right here. Don’t give anything a thought, Doctor Pryne.”—How ready she was to forget his unreasonableness of the early morning, now that he was treating her not only with the respect he gave Janet, but almost with the same intimacy of confidence! Perhaps he hadn’t been really angry with her, after all, nor intended to humiliate and wound her. Perhaps it was only because she had been so terribly tired Petra had felt, suddenly, in the hall at Green Doors early this morning, that Doctor Pryne disliked and mistrustedher. It must have been just her stupid mistake. Even without his being so sweet now, she would have come to realize her stupid mistake, given a little time. For Doctor Pryne would never use the tone she thought he had used to her, even if he had wanted to; he was too innately kind. And his silence all the long drive in had had nothing to do with her, as she in her mean selfish egoism had thought it had! He had been worrying about Eric Larsen. About the operation. Naturally, he wouldn’t want to talk!—Now, if only Petra weren’t just a little frightened about Teresa, she would be happy indeed! For Doctor Pryne had said, “If he pulls through, we’ll write all about him to his mother in Upsala. She may send for him to come home. Almost any mother would now, in spite of everything.”We will write. We.NotI! She might have been Janet!
The happiness of feeling herself not only reinstated but lifted even higher than ordinary in Doctor Pryne’s good will did more for Petra than the two aspirin tablets which she immediately and obediently gulped down. She was hardly tired at all now, in spite of having had no sleep.
Lewis got back to the office before Petra had returned from lunching with Dick. He supposed that date must have been made before last night. He left his door open so that he would hear when Petra came in.
He heard her step at last and called out to her. “I’m back, Petra. Please come in here.”
He was surprised that she neither answered nor came, for a long minute. But he felt her there, all that tense, hesitant minute, just beyond the line of his vision. He knew, by some sixth sense, that she was struggling mightily with herself to obey his command. Then she came.
“But what is it? What has happened?” Lewis was up and around the desk the instant he saw her face. “Petra! You frighten me, looking like that!”
“Oh, no, I don’t. You’re like some kind of god, above everything. Above being frightened.”
“You’d better tell me what’s happened, though. You’ve no reason to be angry with me, anyway. What have I done?”
“I’m not angry with you. You haven’t done anything. How is Larsen?”
“Larsen’s dead. But don’t cry. Everything was done that could be. He just had to die, I guess.Don’t cry.”
“I’m not crying. Or am I? I thought I wasn’t!” She was wiping the tears from her face with the back of her wrist. “We’ll never write that letter to his mother in Upsala now, will we!”
“It may be better so. I’m afraid she was never much of a mother, you know. What has happened between you and Dick, Petra? Anything you want to tell me? I can see you have had some sort of a shock.”
“I have. It’s my letter. The one I wrote him. You read it, he said. That simply idiotic letter. I wrote it because I was sorry for Dick. I thought I’d been allwrong about him and Clare. I thought I’d been cruel to him! I thought I’d insulted him, unforgivably. So I told him why I couldn’t—couldn’t marry him. And you read it. And I won’t work here any more. I couldn’t, now. But where can I work? How can I earn money? I want never to see you again.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about, Petra. Why you don’t want to work for me, I mean, or see me again. But that’s all right. No reason I should know. There are other jobs. We’ll find you one. Is that all that makes you—that makes you look like this? I thought something terrible had happened. I really did.”
“Something has. Worse than his showing you that letter and your knowing everything about me!” She stopped, took off her hat, dropped it into the patients’ chair. That incongruously worn-looking, slouchy felt hat! Her hands went to her hair, pressing it back from her forehead. Then, standing very straight, and with eyes on the window, not Lewis, she said, “Dick says that things are wearing ‘pretty thin’ between my father and Clare. He says that he and Clare belong to each other ‘by right of understanding and sympathy.’ He says he worships her and that—that she kissed him. On the road. Last night. When they went out. You remember? He says Clare wants me to know. He says Clare thinks that they owe it to me, toletme know. He says Clare is so fond of me that for a long time—for months—she has tried to think that black was white, and white black,so that she might not lose me as her daughter. He says Clare feels more a traitor to me than to my father. He says Clare feels that I need her more than my father needs her. He says Clare will never, never stop loving me and taking care of me, as long as I will let her. He says he means both financially and spiritually. He says it would simply break Clare’s heart if I change in my feelings toward her simply because she has changed in her feelings toward my father. He says Clare trusts me to be objective and detached in this difficult situation. More difficult for Clare than for any of us, but she is being big and brave. He says Clare wants him, Dick, to help me to a sane, large-minded, unselfish point of view.... But before he said anything at all, he swore me to secrecy about what he was going to say. They are going to wait to tell Father, you see, until he has finished the last chapter of the novel. It might upset him, hurt the book. Clare thought even of that. But there’s even a better reason for secrecy. Clare hasn’t actually decided she will marry Dick. Dick says he has still to get her definite promise. Dick says she is terrified that she can’t make him absolutely happy. But she can. He will make her see she can. So he swore me to secrecy and then told me all this. And my first conscious act, since, is to tell you every word he said,—the whole business. That’s the kind of a girl I am. You see the kind of girl I am. You see. You see. You see. The kind of girl I am. You see! You see! You—”
But Lewis by now had stopped her. He had laidfirm hands on her and put her into his own chair, even in that moment remembering that the patients’ chair was occupied by a violet felt hat,—shabby, yes, but since it seemed to be Petra’s only hat, probably worth preserving....
“Sit there, Petra. Stop. There’s nothing to cry about. Be as mad as you like. But don’t cry. Dick must have gone crazy. This is beyond reason. Of course, a woman like Clare will never give up a Lowell Farwell for that callow fool. She never expected him to believe she would. She was merely practicing her art—out on the moonlit road last night. Dick happened to be there to practice on, that was all. The poor boy’s stark crazy. And Clare was rather mad herself, last night. She was horribly wounded in the most vulnerable part of her spirit’s anatomy.”
But Petra was going on again. Her head was in her hands, as his had been in his hands earlier in the day. And she was talking now not to him, but to herself, behind her hands. “They are horrible. All of them. Clare, Father, Dick, Marian. All the people who belong to me. All I belong to. I have known it a long time. But I was weak. I didn’t know how to escape. How to get out. Now I shall escape. Now I shall get out. Only how can I earn the money? I won’t work here. Not for you. But I must get away from Green Doors.”
Lewis heard Petra, faintly, going on with it while he was off getting her a glass of water. He came back,said, “Drink this. Stop talking. Let me think a minute. We’re both too excited.”
She stopped talking, but she did not take the water. And she kept her head in her hands. Lewis sat himself on the corner of the desk. He took his cigarette case from his pocket but put it back unopened.
He said, “Petra, I understand. Everything, almost, I think. Yes, you must get away from Green Doors. Live your own life. I thought that, you know, that first day, when I went there to tea. And last night it was even more clear to me. But there’s nothing to be so frightened about. You are silly to be scared about the money. You’ll make enough. And if you don’t want to go on with this job, well, there’s no need to. At least, not after Miss Frazier gets back. You must stand by till then, of course. You wouldn’t like yourself if you didn’t. But after she’s back, you can go. I’d already been thinking about it. There are other jobs, you know. And what about Teresa? Can’t you live with her? The way you planned—once before?”
Petra had listened, hardly breathing. Now she lifted her ravaged young face and looked at him, hope dawning. “But do you mean it? Am I good enough to recommend? Any one would believe you, of course, if you said I was. But can you really say it? You have to go slow when you dictate to me, you know. And yesterday in that letter I spelt hypophrenia wrong.”
“Iusedit wrong, you mean,” he said. “It was a sillyword to use. I intended feeble-mindedness and should have said it.”
“You are laughing. You are making fun!”
“Not at all. But I’m not crying.”
“And you will recommend me? In spite of the spelling and all? But—but eighteen dollars a week won’t be enough. If I don’t live at Green Doors, if I go right away, I must have more than that. I’m not worth it, I know, but Imusthave it.”
“I don’t agree with you there. You could manage well enough. But we needn’t go into that now. There’s loads of time. We’ll work the whole thing out together. You and I. When you are quiet and rested. Once we face the whole situation squarely and intelligently, the next steps will come clear. But you must go home now and rest. That’s what I called you in for, to tell you I wouldn’t need you this afternoon.”
“Has Neil called up? I’d better wait for that.”
“The telephone hasn’t rung since I came in.” Lewis took out his cigarette case again and this time lit a cigarette. “Drink that water, Petra,” he said. “You know, I thought you were going to have hysterics here a minute ago. Congratulations that you didn’t. You had cause enough. But now I want to tell you something. About Neil—. He can’t help you disentangle yourself from this Green Doors spider web. Or if he does, it will only be for you and him another web that you’ll start spinning together with the same disastrous cruelty to lives. It doesn’t matter what you two are to eachother. It doesn’t matter what has happened between you. If you wantreallyto be free of Green Doors—of what Green Doors stands for in your life—you’ve got to do it alone. Neil can’t help you.”
Petra had dropped her head into her hands again, when he assured her that the telephone had not rung since he came in; but he thought she was listening. He went on, anyway, speaking gently and with a kind of brittle clearness. “Neil is married, Petra. Married. Just as long as Edyth Dayton lives, he is married. No matter how devotedly he loves another woman, Edyth will remain, in his deepest consciousness, his wife.... Didn’t you know that, Petra?”
Lewis had never been farther from thinking of his own interests. For the moment he, Lewis Pryne, existed only to save this girl from calamity. He knew now that his yesterday’s intention of asking Petra to be his wife, no matter if she did love Neil, had been mad and wrong. A heart like Petra’s—so passionate and whole—must break or be reborn; it could never be patched up and used again, like a broken vase.
“Didn’t you know that, Petra,” he repeated, when the silence grew too painful. “Didn’t you know that Neil will consider himself married, no matter how good a divorce his wife brings home from Switzerland?”
This she did hear and looked up at Lewis. She seemed, strangely, almost herself, he thought,—almost natural now and calm. And she bore it out by saying in her normal, ingenuous, even winged voice, “You are talkingabout Neil? But I do know that about him, Doctor Pryne. Of course Neil won’t marry as long as Edyth lives. He can’t. I understand perfectly. It breaks my heart.”
It was rather ironic, perhaps, that those four definite, simple, unenigmatic words spoken in that winged voice were what now finished the business of Lewis’ own heart’s breaking.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “I know it does. But Petra, that isn’t the point. The point is not to break Neil’s heart, and little children’s hearts and—and Teresa’s. You must tell everything to Teresa, I think. She, of all people, can help you.... But now you must get home and rest. We’ll go in my car. No, I forgot. We can’t. There’s that appointment at three you made with the Philadelphia people. You must go in a taxi then. But look here, Petra. What about Clare? The maid—Elise?—will have told her all about your coming in this morning. That you didn’t sleep at Green Doors! You’d better, after all, wait till I’m free. That’s something we’ll have to fix up. And these people are due now, almost. My dear, I hadn’t realized what a mess I may have made for you this morning until this minute. Had you?”
Petra was looking at him with the strangest, faint smile. Her eyes had come blue. They must have been not blue but dark with pain and fear all this time, or now they would not be coming blue like this as he looked into them! There was a little color in her face too.