Lewis went into the living room. And even before his eyes began assembling details, he knew, with a start, that everything was here that he had looked to find this morning in Petra’s bedroom at Green Doors. This was her environment, her sanctuary, her own place in the sun. He felt Petra’s heart beating in this little room, no matter if they said she was up in the orchard, sleeping. The wide old boards of the floor slanted and dipped as the doorsill had slanted and dipped—fluid—one with the flow of life and time. And there, across the room, between two low-silled windows was the birthday present, his own Fra Angelico picture—perfectly hung. So Petra had brought it here, not to Green Doors. But of course. And under the Fra Angelico there were flowers growing in a dish. Fringed, blue gentians. A big, living clump of them. Planted in dark earth. It is impossible to gather them without the roots, Lewis knew, hence the replanting. On the table, beside the gentians, lay a book, open and face down.
Lewis, with an instinct to save any book, no matter what it was, from abuse, crossed the floor; he would find a marker and close the volume kindly. But when he had it in his hand, it defended its owner with dumb sweetness. It was a Modern Library publication, made for easy usage; the only value it set on itself the value of its word,—spirit not flesh. Lewis glanced at the title: “Marius the Epicurean.” Memory stirred. This was the book—wasn’t it?—Petra had claimed to have been reading when she did not come to play tennis with Clare that day Lewis first went to Green Doors! The identical volume. He was sure of it. So Clare had been wrong—as, poor creature, she was ever in peril of being: Petra had been reading “Marius” that afternoon. She had been lying out there in the orchard, near the horizon, side by side with Teresa. They had lain supported by their elbows, turn and turn about, reading “Marius” together. Lewis knew all about that afternoon now, as well as if he had been here himself, in the golden orchard with green doors opening to the sun, sharing “Marius” with them!
And he was glad to know! Then, that June Saturday, he had told himself it was nothing if Petra wanted to impress Clare with reading she had never done. It didn’t matter. It was a trivial schoolgirl variety of deception. But now he knew that it had mattered. He had cared more than a little, deep down in his heart. It had left a mark, a tiny wound, but still tender enough to feel the healing in this moment of discovery.
A paper fluttered from “Marius,” held open and face down in Lewis’ hand. He rescued it from the floor and stood staring. It was his own picture, cut from the rotogravure section of the New York Times,—a photograph of the head that young Italian artist, Ponini, had made when Lewis was in New York last spring, testifying in the Spalding murder case. Ponini had been one of the State’s witnesses. He had introduced himself to Lewis outside the courtroom and persuaded him to sit for him a few times during that tedious week of the trial. Ponini had won surprising acclaim for this particular work, and photographs of the head had been published endlessly, till Lewis was sick of opening magazine or paper and seeing it. But Petra! She had chanced on it, cut it out and preserved it. She must have done this before that Saturday when they met again at Green Doors. This was Petra’s writing, in the narrow white margin. She had written “Marius.”
But this was carrying things beyond strangeness—into truth itself, which cannot be strange or startling! Years ago, in college, Lewis had identified himself with Marius. A peculiarly poignant identification it had been.—Marius, born on the fringes of Christianity but never amalgamated into it. Always wistful, speculative, skeptical. Infinitely skeptical—but passionately searching. Drawn poignantly toward Christians whenever they came into his life. Loving them beyond others with a sure, contented love. Dying finally to save one of them from death. Ministered to in the act of dying by Christians who took it for granted that the martyr to friendship was one of themselves. Marius hungering for Christianity but never attaining communion with it until the instant of his death—and then attaining it by affinity and accident rather than conviction! But how had Petra seen Lewis in all this? How had Petra known!
Lewis replaced the marker in the book, and the book face down, open at the place he had found it, beside the gentians. Thin October late afternoon sunlight slanted through the little, low-ceiled room, casting a transparency over the white, old paneled walls and the wine-colored floorboards. It was a blest light. There was a blessing on this place. And the blessing, for Lewis, suddenly seemed flowing in one direction and coming to form and color in the clump of blue gentians under the Fra Angelico.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Teresa’s bed was on the porch off the dining room. Miss Frazier took Lewis as far as the door and left him to go out alone. But Neil was there, sitting on the foot of Teresa’s bed. There was room for no more than Teresa’s narrow cot, her long chair, a table and one other little wicker chair. Yet Lewis, who had a penchant for spaciousness, had no sense of crowding here. On the contrary, he felt that coming onto Teresa’s little porch was like coming out onto deck at sea. The disused farmlands rolled wavelike away on every side, with no glimpse of dwelling or human being anywhere; all was soft, long sweep of meadow and field, climbing waves of woodland, and over all the flowing sky. Teresa’s cot stood against the outer edge of the porch, protected above by deep eaves. Over its head, a dark crucifix, tarnished silver, and about a foot high, was nailed against a supporting post.
Not a breath of change seemed to have passed over Teresa since that October day four years ago, when she had opened the door for Lewis in the Farwells’ Cambridge apartment. She was fresh and vivid, with smiles rippling to light in brown-gold eyes, and an unselfish, lovely mouth, molded by gaiety and humor. And her voice, exactly as Lewis had remembered it through the years, bore out the smile in her eyes. Yes, Teresa was still all of one piece—spirit and body one. Lewis saw an almost palpable bloom upon her—not the bloom of health, since she was emaciated and flushed with fever—but a bloom, all the same, of freshness and well-being.