Part 17

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 with Dick. 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 had gone 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 mistrusted her. 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._ Not _I_! 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 all wrong 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, to _let_ me 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 laid firm 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.”

“I _used_ it wrong, you mean,” he said. “It was a silly word 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 I _must_ have 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 each other. It doesn’t matter what has happened between you. If you want _really_ to 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 talking about 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.

“You’re sweet to care about such little things—concerning me!” she was saying. “But I’d rather go right along on the train now. I’ll just make it. I haven’t a dollar to spend on a taxi. Clare has already questioned me. She called up the first thing we got in this morning. But it’s all right. I told her I slept in the guest house under one of the steamer blankets. I said my room seemed airless and my head ached. She and Father have gone to the Cape, anyway, for over night. That’s why she called up instead of waiting till I came home. She won’t be there, you see.”

Petra put her own construction on the strange gravity that grew in Doctor Pryne’s eyes as she made these explanations, and added quickly, “Yes, I know. A lie. But I have had to lie to Clare. She lies to me with action. If I was to live with her at all, I had to protect myself, hadn’t I! But now it will end. After I am away from her, I hope I shall never tell another lie as long as I live. I am going to try terribly hard. It is Neil who has made me ashamed of my lies. Teresa never knew about them, of course. That’s why Neil stopped coming to Green Doors with me. He wouldn’t lie, and simply hated having me.”

Lewis was suddenly aware of sounds out in the reception room. Somebody coughed—to get his attention, he imagined. It would be the Philadelphia people, with their son. He said in a low voice to Petra, and hurriedly, “Go wash your face now, while I call the taxi. We’ll charge the mileage to office expenses, so don’t fuss.” And when Petra—her face innocent of tear stains and well powdered—returned from the dressing room through Miss Frazier’s door, Lewis was tipping two small white pills from the palm of his hand into an envelope. He put the envelope, carefully sealed, into the pocket of Petra’s polo coat, and said, “Take two when you get to Green Doors. They’re a sedative. Then go to bed. Really to bed. Make them give you dinner on a tray. It won’t matter, since Clare and your father are away.—_Would_ they have gone to the Cape, do you think, on this jaunt, if Dick had things straight? Of course they wouldn’t. Put that out of your head.—By eight or so you’ll be rested. Then we can talk. Get dressed and I’ll be out as near nine as I can manage. Perhaps we can go over to the guest-house piazza? Like the first time, remember? We’ll talk out the whole thing,—about Neil, I mean now. And after all, you mustn’t tell Teresa. You’d better tell me. It will be easier—and save Teresa from being hurt. _We’ll protect Teresa._ You want to, don’t you?”

Then, because the bewildered look she gave him stabbed him almost beyond endurance, he whispered—for the door all this while was open into the reception room—“My dearest, everything will be all right. In the end. Why, the whole world is waiting spread out for you, lovely long years of your life. Things pass. Even loneliness passes. Truly. I have—been lonely—and I know.”

Down at the curb the taxi driver opened the taxi door when he saw them emerge from the foyer of the office building. But Lewis stopped short, midway across the pavement. There was something more he must say, even if those people were waiting for him up there in his office, the pale mother holding the writhing idiot boy desperately in tired arms.

“Petra,” Lewis exclaimed, “we’re in this together, you and I. You can trust my devotion as you’d trust a brother’s. If you had a brother, I mean, who loved you very deeply! I’m going to help you get clear of the spider web of Green Doors—and you can talk to me about Neil all you want. You can tell me anything. You see, my dear, I’m fond of Neil too. There’s nothing I won’t understand when you tell it.”

Petra took Lewis’ hand, lifted it, and pressed her mouth on its back. A warm, quick kiss. There in the middle of the sidewalk on Marlborough Street in the midst of the foot traffic! Then she ran, before Lewis could follow her, and stumbled blindly into the taxi. The driver stayed waiting a second to see whether Doctor Pryne was coming with the young lady all the way to Meadowbrook, decided he wasn’t—Lewis gave him no sign one way or the other—and shut the door. As the cab drove off, Petra kept her face turned away so that Lewis could not see it.

_Chapter Twenty-Three_

As Lewis reëntered the reception office, Petra’s telephone was ringing. It was Neil, calling Petra as he had promised, but one hour late. He was surprised that it was Lewis who answered, but said hastily, “I’m grateful it is you, Doctor. I’m calling from Meadowbrook. Is there any chance, if I drive right in now, you could see me? It’s something pretty important, Doctor!”

“About yourself?—Or Petra?” If McCloud had been there in the room, instead of merely on the wire, he would have been shocked by the expression on the face of the man of whom he was so confidently asking a favor. The accustomed light was quite gone from Lewis’ features. He was gray and stern and looked ten years older.

“It concerns us both. Equally, I guess,” was Neil’s reply after an instant’s hesitation. “But I wouldn’t ask for your time like this if it weren’t pretty important, Doctor.”

“Well, if you start now, I’ll be free about the time you get here. But make it snappy, for I’ve half a dozen professional calls slated between now and dinner.”

“Thanks awfully. Will you tell Petra I’m coming? I’d rather not talk to her now. Tell her everything’s all right; I’ll explain everything when I get there and she mustn’t worry.”

To this casual request Lewis made a sound that McCloud accepted as both promise and good-by—and hung up. He had not even asked was Petra there. But Meadowbrook? McCloud must be calling from Green Doors itself. Had he been there all day? Had it been more than a sick tire that ailed his car? Well, Lewis did not care about the details—just so long as Petra and Neil did not see each other again until Lewis himself could talk with Petra on the edge of the meadow to-night.

He went through into his own office where the tragic trio awaited him. He took the boy from the mother’s arms. The poor little creature came quietly, without the struggle the parents obviously expected, and from that moment, so kind are the ways of God with mortals when they have learned to pray, Lewis’ expectation of Neil’s near visit and even his anguish for and over Petra were dropped from his consciousness until the work in hand was over—until, in fact, he escorted the parents, himself still holding the boy, out to the elevator, and saw Neil sitting in the reception office in a patient attitude that bore the stamp of having lasted some time.

“Hello,” Lewis remarked, coming back. “The coast is clear now.”

Neil followed him into his office and took the patients’ chair. But memory assailed him in the act and he went a little pale. The feeling passed quickly, however. That page had been turned forever, he knew well. His cure was permanent. Heaven would not take back its boon.

“Where’s Petra?” he asked. “I suppose you packed her off to Meadowbrook early. I’m glad.”

“Yes, I did exactly that. You didn’t pass her on the road?”

“No, but I wasn’t expecting to, you see. I drove like blazes. But I’m going right back. Pretty plucky of Petra, don’t you think, to come right along to work this morning! I couldn’t. I couldn’t have gone to work this morning if not going would bring the end of the world.”

“Well, Petra’s not working on commission. We have to keep hours here,” Lewis remarked shortly. “You’re your own boss. That’s different.”