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.