Green Doors

Chapter One

Hello! What’s up with you?

Doctor Lewis Pryne was obviously surprised at the intrusion of a mere friend on office hours. How did you persuade Miss Frazier to bring you in? You aren’t—or are you—looking for a doctor?

Dick Wilder’s smile was tinged with awed diffidence.

No, I’m not wanting treatment myself, he said. All the same, I did get a regulation appointment from your secretary via the telephone, and I’ve been out there in your reception office meekly waiting my turn for hours. But first I have a message for you, from Cynthia. They want you for the week-end in Meadowbrook. Harry’s counting on golf with you, and the children—

Lewis broke in dryly. Sorry, Dick, but I’m most frightfully busy just now. If you insist on staying to chat, I’ll send you a bill—regulation fee for a first appointment. But if you vanish at once, I’ll let you off. Give my fondest love to Cynthia, tell her I’ll call her up; thanks, good-by.

But though the doctor rose, his visitor sat. You’re hard, Lewis, hard, he murmured. But it’s all right with me. I expect a bill. I’m here to offer you a lovely new patient on a silver platter. It is rather—ah—private, though.

His embarrassment was due plainly to the presence of the secretary, Miss Frazier. She had escorted him into the presence of the famous psychiatrist and she was now hovering near the door on tiptoes, it seemed, to escort him out again.

Lewis sighed, but with good nature. Miss Frazier needn’t bother you, he explained. She is my confidential secretary and it saves time having her here to make a record as we go along. How many people are out there, Miss Frazier?

Only two, Doctor. Mrs. Dickerman and—

A sullen but gorgeous fellow who doesn’t want to be spoken to, Dick finished for her. Or is he one of the really unhinged ones and not responsible for his manners?

Lewis smiled—fleetly—at his secretary. He said to Dick, That will be Mr. Neil McCloud. He is perfectly sane. He’s lost the power of speech, that’s all.

Really? Somehow it didn’t look all to me. He has a flash in his eye,—well—a flash—. But I thought the dumb were deaf, Lewis. That fellow heard every word I said—listened as if he heard—and then coolly turned his shoulder. He might have wriggled his eyebrows or something, to show he couldn’t speak. I only asked him were you likely to keep us waiting much longer—assuming, do you see, that he was a regular patient and knew the ropes. What was there in that to antagonize any one?

Lewis’ smile a moment ago had been very fleeting. Now his face had taken on its accustomed gravity. It was an unusual sort of gravity, however, lacking any element of heaviness. That encounter will have been harder on McCloud than on you, Dick, he said. He isn’t deaf. Merely can’t articulate. Hasn’t been able to for some months. It’s a rather perplexing case of shock. Temporary, I’m certain, but awkward for him while it lasts. It’s after four, I think, Miss Frazier. Did McCloud or Mrs. Dickerman have appointments?

No, Doctor. Neither of them. Mrs. Dickerman telephoned yesterday and there was no time I could give her within a week. She came on the chance you might be able to work her in somewhere. Mr. McCloud dropped in in the same way. I had no idea how long Mr. Wilder’s appointment would take, so I rather encouraged them both to wait. Shall I tell them there’s no use now? It’s quarter to five.

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

Shall I? Mrs. Dickerman telephoned yesterday, as I told you! She came in several minutes ahead of Mr. McCloud too.

Did she? I suppose then you’d better convey to McCloud, somehow, that I won’t be long with Mrs. Dickerman. Tell Mrs. Dickerman that I will be free in another few minutes. Do that now, please, and then come back to take this record. Pardon all this, Dick. Have a cigarette?

From the brief exchange between doctor and secretary, Dick had been able to form a pretty complete mental picture of what was back of it. Mrs. Dickerman must be some slightly neurotic lady of wealth who was falling over herself to pay fabulous fees to Lewis for a little mental coddling, while the rather gorgeous but definitely shabby dark-browed young giant was, of course, a charity case, and in real trouble. But supposing their needs had been equal, Dick suspected his friend still would favor the penniless down-and-outer, for Lewis was slightly snobbish in his mistrust of wealth and position. It was a little perverse in him. Even his own sister, Cynthia, thought so.

Dick frowned to himself. This matter of Lewis’ prejudice against paying patients was rather pertinent to himself at the moment on account of the errand which had brought him here. What could Petra Farwell seem to Lewis beyond what Dick himself thought her—a beautiful but dull ingénue whose psychic maladjustments (if that was the term) were the result of too much leisure and spoiling?

Dick took out his cigarette case, waving Lewis’ aside, for Lewis, he knew, was as economical when it came to cigarette brands as he was about clothes and office furniture. What a bare room this sanctum was! The reception office had been on the luxurious side, but that was Cynthia’s taste and doing. She had insisted on decorating it, and Dick could not doubt she had drawn on her own purse for most of the accessories. But even as he passed it up, Dick noticed that Lewis’ cigarette case holding the Luckies or whatever they were, was rather wonderful. Finest jade. You could see at a glance. Marvelous color. Some grateful woman patient, of course, had forced the gem on Lewis, and probably he did not dream what its value was; if he did, he would sell it, to give to the deserving poor....

Miss Frazier was back and ready with her shorthand pad. Since they were smoking, Dick offered her a cigarette, one of his own Club variety. But she refused it, coldly, her eyes on her pad. Dick did not so much get the idea of having been put in his place as of the secretary having insisted on keeping hers, which was that of an invisible, impersonal automaton—a dicta-phone with judgment. Suddenly Dick did not mind talking before her.

It’s a stepmother stepdaughter situation, he explained to Lewis. The stepmother is my friend. She is a wonderful person. She knows that you and I are related in a way. (The relationship between them consisted in the fact that Lewis’ sister, Cynthia, was married to Dick’s first cousin, Harry Allen.) And she got the idea that because of the relationship I might have some sort of a pull with you, do you see? But perhaps that’s stupid. Perhaps nobody has a pull with you in that sense. I warned her. Is it stupid?

Lewis smiled, that peculiar fleeting smile of his. But it was for himself this time. He had assumed the position he kept through all these office interviews. His chair was swung half around on its pivot so that he did not directly face the patient, and his eyes, for the most part, were on the knob of the door leading into Miss Frazier’s little private office. Of course you have pull, Dick, all the pull in the world. But I don’t see what that has to do with it. When it comes to taking on patients, one does it on the merits of the cases themselves, naturally. Let me hear.

"Well, it’s the stepdaughter who is—funny. Clare, who is my friend the stepmother, do you see, is utterly devoted to the girl. In fact, to my mind, she is almost obsessed with the idea that it’s up to her to make the girl happy. That’s far-fetched, of course. You can’t do that for any one. But Clare tries desperately. And all she gets for her pains is very nice polite manners and nothing under ’em. It is absurd. You would think so—you will think so—when you see Clare. But even if Clare weren’t so wonderful as she is, the girl’s indifference would still be absurd, for just on the material side she owes Clare everything she’s got in the world. She and her father were as poor as poverty until Clare came into their lives, married the father. Now that she is there, their lives are all luxury.—Charm.—Beauty too. But what good does it do? Clare is only getting her heart broken.

But I ought to tell you, Dick went on quickly, after a second’s pause in which he had suddenly remembered some last admonishments of Clare’s, "Clare doesn’t mind personal heartbreaks and things like that. That is not why she wants you to psychoanalyze the girl. It is for the girl’s own sake and her father’s sake. She doesn’t want those two to become estranged. And it is bound to happen if things go on the way they are going. The girl must be more responsive to Clare, return some of her devotion, or the father is going to begin to feel the antagonism in the air and blame his daughter for it. For, in a choice of loyalties, the man is Clare’s. It isn’t Clare’s fault it’s that way, though. From the very beginning she has worked to preserve—even to create—a fine relationship between her husband and his daughter. She is big enough, detached enough, to keep herself and her personal disappointments out of the situation and think only of those two. And that’s why she sent me here, at dollars a minute, I suppose, to ask you to see the girl and straighten her out. She has an idea that there is some deeply hidden resentment—some mix-up, anyway—in the girl’s subconscious mind and that it only needs you to excavate it. She thinks—"

But there Dick faltered. Lewis was smiling and no longer fleetingly. Miss Frazier, noticing Dick look around for it, pushed an ashtray along the desk toward him. He crushed out his cigarette stub in it, looking miserable and a little angry. I can see what you’re thinking, Lewis, he exclaimed. You think that it is a simple case of stepdaughterish jealousy and that Clare and I are just too ingenuous for words to have come bothering a top-notch psychiatrist with it. But you happen to be wrong. You don’t know the people. Petra’s not jealous. Not for a minute. She hasn’t enough warmth in her for such a passion, if it comes to that. Really, she’s no jollier with her own father than with her stepmother. But Clare doesn’t see that. She thinks it’s only herself Petra pushes off. And what is there so absurd in her getting the idea that you might help?

But if Dick had only noticed, his belated mention of the girl’s name had effectually changed his friend’s expression.

Is it Petra Farwell you’re talking about? he asked quickly. Daughter of Lowell Farwell, the novelist?

Dick hesitated an instant, glancing a little painfully at Miss Frazier’s efficient hand with its pen poised but so far idle—above her pad. But after all, Miss Frazier’s presence at this conference was Lewis’ responsibility, and one had to trust Lewis.

So he said, Yes. It’s the Farwells. I thought you would guess. You know I built their house, Green Doors. We started it the minute they were back from the honeymoon. Clare made Featherstone’s give me a free hand with it. It was my first real chance at self expression. But Clare had as many ideas as I had and the nice part was that our ideas didn’t clash—merely supplemented. Until that summer I had only known Clare socially and even so not very well. She is in an older crowd. It’s an interesting crowd. The Lovings, you know,—the Stracheys, Jim Strange, Isabell Peters Clough. Rather exciting, being accepted by them! Clare sees to it that I am. And Lowell Farwell is the lion of the lot, I suppose. Clare herself ought to be. Wait till you meet her!

I have met Mrs. Farwell, once, for a few minutes, Lewis said. She was Mrs. Tom Otis then. It was just before the former Mrs. Farwell abdicated. But it’s Petra, the girl, I’m interested to hear about. Is she prepared to come to a psychiatrist for treatment for—what do you say the trouble is? General lack of appropriate feeling toward the latest Mrs. Novelist’s Wife? Or hasn’t she been consulted?

You keep on laughing at us, Dick complained. "If I were a stranger, would you? Yes, I knew about that meeting with Clare, of course. But I meant, wait till you really know her. Clare hasn’t said a word about you to Petra, not yet. Petra would be sure to resent it, don’t you think? What Clare wants is to have it come about—gradually. If you’re week-ending at Cynthia’s, right there in Meadowbrook, you can drop around at Green Doors, meet the family, have tea informally in the garden, chat with Petra,—and let that call seem to put the idea of having Petra psychoanalyzed into Clare’s head. That way, Petra might get the idea that being psychoanalyzed by Doctor Lewis Pryne would be a pretty interesting experience, do you see? That’s Clare’s scheme and I think it’s a good one."

Lewis, lighting himself another cigarette, murmured, Good is an adjective that I myself seldom apply to the word ‘scheme.’ But it happens that I’ll like meeting Lowell Farwell. His psychological novels interest me—at least, to the point of wanting to find out how he gets that way. Even more I shall be glad of an excuse to see Petra again. I met her at the same time I met your Mrs. Clare. By the way, Mrs. Clare is Petra’s second or third stepmother, isn’t she! Mightn’t it be that the child’s stand-offish attitude toward the species is cumulative and not, strictly speaking, personal? Had that occurred to either of you?... But it doesn’t matter. I’m charmed by the invitation to tea at Green Doors. It’s only fair, though, that you should warn Mrs. Farwell that it cannot, not possibly, be a professional call. And just remind yourself, will you, Dick, if only now and then, that I’m not a psychoanalyst. It always annoys me a little, being called one.

Sorry. Yes, I do know, of course. But the differences are too slight for the laity to master. Then you will come for tea? That’s fine. All we wanted, as a start-off, really. Clare knows you won’t be lionized and I can promise you it will be informal. Shall we say Saturday afternoon? It’ll be just the Farwells themselves and me. I’m there such a lot, I’m almost family, he added, flushing a little.

Dick was ready to get out now and give place to Mrs. Dickerman and Mr. McCloud. But he had a diffident feeling that since this was actually a professional seance he had been having with Lewis, it was up to Lewis to bring it to an end. And Lewis had not stirred in his chair. He was saying, I’ll like seeing your work with that house, too. I’ve meant to get Cynthia to take me over, ever since you finished it. Why do they call it Green Doors?

Lewis’ gaze, as he spoke, was still attached to the knob on Miss Frazier’s door. Dick, now that he had secured part of what Clare wanted and was no longer anxious, was looking at his friend with an increasing discernment in his vision.

He’s got the look of a medieval monk, he told himself,—seeing it, strangely, for the first time. Well, perhaps asceticism was the price Lewis had had to pay for his astonishing success. He had accomplished in ten years or so what usually takes a man in his profession the better part of his life, if he ever achieves it at all. Naturally Lewis hasn’t had much time for the flesh-pots along the way, mused Dick.

Doctor Lewis Pryne was only thirty-three, and yet in the years since graduating from Harvard Medical he had made himself a specialist in psychiatry, written three instantly famous books on dynamic psychology, and accumulated a clientele which might be the envy of any other psychiatrist not congenitally superior to envy, in the country. And he was self-made. At least, ever since his father had died when Lewis was a Senior in Latin High, he had earned his own way, and looked out for Cynthia as well, until she married Dick’s cousin, Harry Allen. Yet here he was, in spite of that stupendous early handicap, loaded with fame and honor—and if not with money, that was simply because money did not seem to be one of his goals.

Meeting Lewis in the ordinary way—that is, outside of an office visit—you got no hint of past struggles and their necessary austerities. His gray eyes were more sleepy than austere, with a languid droop at the outer corners of the heavy upper lids. His mouth curled, slightly, as if fleeting little smiles were habitual, and most of the time an almost palpable light played over the lower part of the face, particularly the full but chiseled lips. Without that light and the odd, fleeting smile, Lewis’ mouth would have been definitely sensuous. As it was, you never thought of that—only of its sensitive but exquisitely impersonal sympathy.

The gray sleepy eyes released the door knob, came to rest on Dick Wilder’s face. How did Green Doors come by its name?

Dick started, realizing that this was a repeated question. What had he been woolgathering about? Lewis, himself. He had been busy seeing Lewis in a new, fresh way, after a fifteen years’ friendship. That was strange. Then he understood it. He had been seeing Lewis as Clare would soon be seeing him,—looking at him through Clare’s eyes.

"Oh? The name? It was Clare’s idea. It’s in a poem. Published in The Glebe, 1914." (He got up as he answered. Lewis’ time was precious, and staying to chatter now would be inexcusable, after Lewis had been so altogether patient and friendly.) "I don’t remember it all. But there’s a line—

"‘I know an orchard old and rare,

I will not tell you where,

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

Something like that anyway. Clare said we wouldn’t plan a house at all, but just green doors, opening to the sun. We’ve done it too! You’ll see, Saturday. I’ll pick you up at the Allens’ around four. Crazy to show the place to you!

During the brief interval between Dick Wilder’s departure from the office and Mrs. Dickerman’s entrance, Lewis stood in the big window at the back of his desk, looking down onto the glistening river of automobile tops which was Marlboro Street, and recalled his first and only meeting with Petra—the girl who was, so it seemed, the one discordant note in the idyllic existence at that country estate, already famous to literature,—Green Doors, in Meadowbrook.

Chapter Two

Lowell Farwell’s voice making the appointment over the telephone—it was three or four years ago now—still vibrated through Lewis’ memory, melodious, interesting. Lewis had never happened to catch sight of the novelist at that time, nor had he since, but he knew from numberless newspaper cuts what he looked like. And the voice perfectly fitted those leonine, distinguished heads.

My wife has been ill for months and now a friend has persuaded her to see you. Her doctor agrees that it may be a wise move to get your opinion, Doctor Pryne. You are acquainted with him. Doctor MacKay, here in Cambridge. He has come to the end of his resources and is ready to give psychiatry a try.

It was a wind-clear, blue-red-gold October afternoon, when Lewis made that call in Cambridge. The Farwells were living on the upper floor of an unpretentious double house on Fayerweather Street. Instead of the expected maid in cap and apron opening the door, there was a girl in a brown smock.—Strange to be remembering color, and shades of color, after so many months!—Her eyes were brown-gold, and as photographically as Lewis remembered those gay and sincere eyes, he remembered the curves of the smiling mouth.

The room into which she brought Lewis was a blank in memory. Perhaps, even at the time, it had been a blank to his consciousness. Except for the blue gentians. There was a clump of them growing out of dark earth near where he laid down his hat. He supposed the flowers must have been planted in some sort of dish, but his memory of the Farwells’ Cambridge living room was fringed blue gentians growing out of dark earth.

The girl’s voice was as smiling as her mouth. Mrs. Farwell will see you in a minute, Doctor.

Are you Miss Farwell? he asked, for he knew, from Cynthia, probably, who read the columns of literary gossip in the Sunday papers, that Lowell Farwell had a daughter.

The smile became laughter. Laughter which sounded like pure happiness, translating itself into sound. The rarest sort of laughter in the world. Not amusement. Not embarrassment. Mere self-unknown joy.

"No. I am Teresa Kerr. This is Petra."

The novelist’s daughter was sitting on the sill of an open window, her background wall-less—a sea of blue October air and light. She was a schoolgirl then, in a navy blue jersey schoolgirl dress. Her attentive, innocent eyes, set wide in a grave young brow, were the precise color of the gentians. That repetition of color and the eyes’ innocent attentiveness stabbed Lewis like some too pure, too perfect note in music. It was the most beautiful child’s face—or any face—of his memory. No wonder he remembered that so vividly! The short, straight nose, the upper lip—short to the exquisite point of breath-taking beauty—the Botticelli mouth, the strong, white, round chin!—The child was hardly human, she was so lovely!—Her head against the window’s blue background was a sculptor’s dream. Fine, very alive brown curls molded rather than obscured its classic contours. The gawky schoolgirl body, in its clinging jersey, was sculpture, too, with its wide shoulders and long thighs....

Lewis had supposed, since, that the mood which took possession of him when Teresa Kerr had opened the door to the Farwells’ Cambridge apartment, and which had increased like daylight upon dawn during the brief minutes he spent with those girls waiting for Mrs. Farwell to be ready to see him, was merely a state of rapport with their youth and happiness. Their relationship with life and with each other had by some miracle extended itself to him and created what at the time, and in memory ever since, had seemed a golden age circumferenced by a passing moment.

When the circumference contracted upon its enclosed eternity (these were Lewis’ similes, far-fetched, of course, but for himself alone), it was by way of a trivial voice calling out from the next room. Then he left timelessness, passed through a door into a ceilinged, four-walled space, and took a chair facing an emotional, pretty woman who lay relaxed among cushions on a chaise-longue; and at once, quite as if he had never passed through the sound of Teresa’s laugh and the sight of Petra’s attentive, innocent gaze to reach this meeting, he gave his complete attention to Mrs. Farwell and her woes.

She had