Part 19

“No, thanks. This is an exception. I’ll remember well enough.” And indeed he would. Every word that Teresa gave him, as he asked it, of family history, the course of the development of her disease and the treatment it had had, was etched on his mind for all of life, he felt. He needed no filing card for Teresa. But neither had he needed her answers to his short, quick questions. When he came to it, the examination he gave her lungs told him that she was doomed.

After that examination he sat back, trying to smile at Teresa, trying to be natural. Wasn’t there something simple and of ordinary day that he could say? But he was shy of this girl as he had never been shy of any one in all this mortal world before. Shy but not ill at ease. It was good to be here, he felt. Simply that.

Teresa was smiling into his attempted smile. “Are you really all done?” she asked.

“I think so. The specialists will be more thorough, of course. But I know what to do now, what man we want for you.”

“But you will tell me what you think yourself, Doctor? How ill I am?” She put her hand under her pillow as she asked the brave question and kept it there. Lewis knew that she had found her rosary and was holding it. “They say—Neil and Doctor Clark—even Petra—that I must go away to a sanitarium somewhere. Leave Mary’s Field. But that won’t happen, will it? I can stay here. I needn’t leave Mary’s Field. Is that what you think?”

Lewis had no lies for Teresa. He would not lie to her by so much as a glance. She was fit for the truth. Perfectly fit. Had he ever been face to face with any one else so stripped, fit and ready for truth!

“There won’t be any question about that now. I’m sure of so much,” Lewis said. “We’ll keep you right here at Mary’s Field. And Petra will stay with you all the time. Move her things here. Make it her home. And Neil will be near.”

She was smiling. Her hand stayed under her pillow. But tears came to her eyes. Only two escaped, though: one down either cheek. She ignored them but Lewis wiped them away with his own handkerchief. “My blessed child,” he said. “You wanted to know. It is right that you should, I think.”

“Of course,” she answered. “And I knew that you would tell me. I am—very satisfied. It will be nice, not leaving Mary’s Field. Having Petra here all the time. Having Neil near. Will you tell them how things are with me? You won’t leave it for me to tell them?”

“Yes. Soon, I’ll tell them. But not to-night, I think. They aren’t like you, Teresa. It will go harder with them. They will need time—and your prayers. You must pray that they may be brave. Neil suspects already, I can tell you. But he still hopes. Petra has only a bewildered, vague fear. So Neil says, anyway. They needn’t be told yet.”

“But when the time comes, it will be you—not Neil, nor Janet—nobody else but you, Doctor Pryne,—who tells Petra? Unless it’s me. I may want to be the one to tell her in the end. But otherwise you? And you’ll take care of her?”

“Why do you say this? Petra is the dearest thing in life to me, Teresa. But I don’t know that that will help her. She doesn’t let me very close to her. Neil or Janet might be better.”

“Please tell her now, this afternoon, that she’s the dearest thing in life to you. She doesn’t dream it. She’s so silly and humble. She’s sweet. She told me, just a little while ago, before she took your pills like a good child and went away to sleep in the meadow, that Dick had showed you that letter she wrote to him at Mount Desert. She’s simply dying with humiliation over it. You see, it was you, Doctor, she meant in the letter, and she has no other thought but that you know it was. That you might guess wrong hasn’t even occurred to her. You _did_ guess wrong, didn’t you?”

Lewis pushed back his chair. Got up. “Teresa, bless you. I wouldn’t believe any one but you—hardly Petra herself. It’s almost impossible to believe. But somehow—I can—I do believe that you know what you are saying.”

“You’re like Petra, I think. Humble and silly. But sweet.”

Neil, who for the last ten minutes or so had been pacing back and forth in the meadow, out of earshot and where Lewis did not see him, had started for the porch the minute Lewis moved back his chair. “All done?” he asked, coming up onto the porch and looking at Lewis for one swift, keen instant. Lewis nodded. “Yes and I want to see Petra. Is she still sleeping?”

“Oh, no. Janet kept her promise and woke her when you came. She’s in the kitchen, starting the supper. She and Janet—Teresa too—want you to stay for supper with us. Petra’s getting it started early on purpose, so you will. Janet’s gone across lots for an extra quart of milk just on the chance. You won’t disappoint us, Doctor?”

“First let me use the telephone. If McKinstry can come out this evening, I’ll want to wait and see him. That will make supping here very convenient. Don’t talk to this girl too much now. She should rest, Neil.”

Neil laughed. “I won’t talk at all then. One doesn’t, much, with Teresa. She’s the conversationalist of our Mary’s Field crowd. Have you told her to keep quiet, not talk?”

Lewis shook his head, smiling down into Teresa’s eyes. “No,” he said. “I haven’t told her anything. Given no orders. Teresa is wiser than all of us put together. She’s her own best physician.”

But in the end, Lewis merely stood thoughtful by the telephone in the passage for an instant, and turned away, toward the kitchen. McKinstry, immediately Lewis asked it, if he could be reached at all by telephone to-day, would be at Lewis’ disposal; and if he were out of town or not on the telephone, there would be some one else available who was good, too. But there was no hurry. Getting a trained nurse out to Mary’s Field was of far more immediate importance than getting a specialist. Miss Frazier would help Lewis with that, when she returned with the milk. Lewis himself couldn’t remember the name of that woman who had taken such excellent care of the little Nolan girl last month. But Miss Frazier, Janet, would remember. She would remember, too, how one could reach her. The woman should come to-night, of course. Sleep here. Or failing her, some one else whom Janet would recommend. He could wait for Janet for all that.

Lewis went on down the passage to the kitchen door. It was the kitchen, supposedly, since Neil had said that Petra was here, and here she was; but for Lewis it was no special place at all. It was merely Petra. He had come to where Petra was, at last. Come up with her. He felt as if he had been running a long time through dark eternities to this overtaking of his beloved. Between Petra and himself there now only remained a little space of thin, late afternoon light. Blessed light! He saw her through it as through thin glass—a pace away.

She was standing close up against an open window. Her back to it. She was looking at Lewis through the glass-thin radiant atmosphere. Then Lewis heard Teresa say, “Janet was careful not to disturb the chessmen, Neil. The board’s on the dining-room table. Shall we finish the game?”

Neil said, “Sure, in a minute. Let me have a cigarette first, though, and just stay by you. You lie quiet. Shut your eyes, dear.”

Petra was facing Lewis, yes; but she was not seeing him. She was stone blind with tears. She had been here in the open window all the time. The porch came within a few feet of it. It must, since those voices—Neil’s and Teresa’s—sounded almost as if they were in the very room. And yet, they were speaking softly. Every bit as softly as Lewis and Teresa had been speaking. Petra had heard every word Lewis and Teresa had said, then. She knew—she knew—why, the child knew that Teresa was going to die. That was as far as Lewis’ thought went. Brutally, like that, merely overhearing, she had learned it. With no warning. Alone, here in the kitchen,—with supper to get.

Lewis could not move. Could not speak. He thought his heart would break for Petra. But though she was stone blind, she had heard him come into the passage, hesitate by the telephone, and then his every step to the kitchen door. And now she whispered, “Are you there?”

At that he took the last pace—in a stride. The long race was over. She was no longer a flying, mysterious shadow. Petra was flesh and blood within his arms. But their first kiss had a taste he had not dreamed for it. It was salt with both their tears.

As they drew apart, but not their hands—palm against palm they still held each other securely—Neil’s laugh was ringing in their ears. Quite heartily Neil was laughing, out there on the porch, sitting on the foot of Teresa’s cot, at something she just had said.

THE END

Green Doors

_By_ ETHEL COOK ELIOT Author of “Ariel Dances”

In this warm and colorful novel Dr. Lewis Pryne, asked by the beautiful Clare Farwell to psycho-analyze her stepdaughter, finds himself falling in love with the girl instead. Clare is Petra’s third stepmother and their interest in the same man teems with conflict and event.

Those who responded so happily to the author’s previous novel, “Ariel Dances,” will find an even deeper and more vital pleasure here. For again Mrs. Eliot has given us a story of fresh charm and has added an authentic element of joy which is born in a richly motivated soil of character and human aspirations toward the “durable satisfactions of life.”

The scene shifts between the doctor’s city office and Clare’s country home. The office atmosphere is now and again stark with human suffering. Luxury and an easy graciousness of living characterize the country home. But the final shift of scene is to the “green doors” through which Lewis and Petra and several others move toward the reality and meaning of their lives.

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_Transcriber’s Notes_

--Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication.

--Silently corrected palpable typos; left non-standard spellings and dialect unchanged.

--In the text versions, delimited italicized text by _underscores_.