“Oh, that’s all right.” Dick turned off Lewis’ apology, embarrassed, then added quickly, “But look here. I’m taking the Farwell family to the Meadowbrook Country Club for dinner. And there’s a tea party at Green Doors first. Very special! In honor of little Sophia’s second birthday. Her grandmother is coming—Clare’s mother. No one else. Clare’s counting on Petra, of course. Why, she’ll be terribly disappointed if I don’t get Petra there in the shortest possible time now. Do you see?”
Lewis did see, perfectly. Again Petra was to be forced into the role of baby-snubber. Only this time it was his, Lewis’, fault.
“Too bad,” he said. “A pity. But what Petra is doing now is even more important than two-year-old birthday parties. Take my deepest apologies to Mrs. Farwell, will you please, and tell her that I was tiresome and unreasonable and that Petra had nothing to say about it. Do that and I’ll drive her out myself—get her there in time for your dinner at the latest. I promise.”
“Well, Lewis, old-timer, I can only say that it seems to me you’re taking a funny way to help Petra learn how to treat Clare. I don’t see how anything can be quite so important as you’re making this out to be. Really! If Clare forgives you, she’s an angel. But she will, of course. She is an angel.”
“That’s reassuring. But seriously, Dick, it’s none of my business how Petra treats her stepmother. Thought I’d made that plain. As a matter of fact, though, and just from the outside, she seems to me to be playing her part at Green Doors rather well.—If you aren’t going to wait, you’d better get along and explain, hadn’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose I had. Clare can’t keep little Sophia up, of course. Somebody must be there before the cake and the candles to explain about Petra and help make a party. But be sure to get her out in time to dress for dinner, won’t you! Where will you dine yourself, Lewis? At the Allens’?”
“Perhaps. It doesn’t matter.... Cynthia’ll think I have a Meadowbrook complex for sure, if I turn up three times within the week!”
The last was spoken to himself as he stood on the curb, watching Dick’s car nose out and creep away in the traffic. Lewis would give Petra and McCloud another ten minutes before returning to his office. He went across to the Public Garden in the hope of finding an empty bench where he could smoke while waiting that ten minutes. But he wondered, as he went, what Dick would have thought, could he know how Lewis had left Petra occupied up there,—if he could see her, as Lewis had seen her from the door before he closed it softly. Dick would, of course, think him quite mad. But he was not mad. Lewis knew himself as sane—and as collected—as he had ever been in his life.
McCloud, after his declaration of love, had walked past Petra and Lewis, not seeing them any more, and dropped on his knees by the patients’ chair. There he had put his head down in his folded arms on the leather cushion. Lewis himself had stayed where he was, inert and doubtful of what to do. As a psychiatrist, he had no cue for further action. But Petra felt no hesitation. She did not even so much as glance at Lewis for approval of her intention when she quickly followed McCloud, and quietly seating herself on the arm of the patients’ chair, put her hand down on his dark head. After that, there was no sound or motion in the place.
... Petra’s eyes met Lewis’ through the stillness. He smiled his slight, fleeting smile—a smile that declared both his gravity and his comprehension. Then he got out of there, leaving Petra alone with McCloud, as quietly as he could. McCloud, when he returned to common day, had better find himself with Petra than with a psychiatrist. It was his best chance—Lewis was certain—of hanging on to the liberty he had regained, over the first minutes of difficult adjustments.