that she had lost the anticipated pleasure of giving Peter a piece of her mind. She walked along beside him without speaking until they reached the street-car line. Then she turned.
“You called her–you spoke to her very affectionately, young man,” she accused him.
Peter smiled. The car was close. Some imp of recklessness, some perversion of humor seized him.
“My dear Mrs. Boyer,” he said, “that was in jest purely. Besides, I did not know that you were there!”
Mrs. Boyer was a literal person without humor. It was outraged American womanhood incarnate that got into the street-car and settled its broadcloth of the best quality indignantly on the cane seat. It was outraged American womanhood that flung open the door of Marie Jedlicka’s flat, and stalking into Marie Jedlicka’s sitting room confronted her husband as he read a month-old newspaper from home.
“Did you ever hear of a woman doctor named Gates?” she demanded.
Boyer was not unaccustomed to such verbal attacks. He had learned to meet domestic broadsides with a shield of impenetrable good humor, or at the most with a return fire of mild sarcasm.
“I never hear of a woman doctor if it can be avoided.”
“Dr. Gates–Anna Gates?”
“There are a number here. I meet them in the hospital, but I don’t know their names.”
“Where does Peter Byrne live?”
“In a pension, I believe, my dear. Are we going to have anything to eat or do we sup of Peter Byrne?”
Mrs. Boyer made no immediate reply. She repaired to the bedroom of Marie Jedlicka, and placed her hat, coat and furs on one of the beds with the crocheted coverlets. It is a curious thing about rooms. There was no change in the bedroom apparent to the eye, save that for Marie’s tiny slippers at the foot of the wardrobe there were Mrs. Boyer’s substantial house shoes. But in some indefinable way the room had changed. About it hung an atmosphere of solid respectability, of impeccable purity that soothed Mrs. Boyer’s ruffled virtue into peace. Is it any wonder that there is a theory to the effect that things take on the essential qualities of people who use them, and that we are haunted by things, not people? That when grandfather’s wraith is seen in his old armchair it is the chair that produces it, while grandfather himself serenely haunts the shades of some vast wilderness of departed spirits?
Not that Mrs. Boyer troubled herself about such things. She was exceedingly orthodox, even in the matter of a hereafter, where the most orthodox are apt to stretch a point, finding no attraction whatever in the thing they are asked to believe. Mrs. Boyer, who would have regarded it as heterodox to substitute any other instrument for the harp of her expectation, tied on her gingham apron before Marie Jedlicka’s mirror, and thought of Harmony and of the girls at home.
She told her husband over the supper-table and found him less shocked than she had expected.
“It’s not your affair or mine,” he said. “It’s Byrne’s business.”
“Think of the girl!”
“Even if you are right it’s rather late, isn’t it?”
“You could tell him what you think of him.”
Dr. Boyer sighed over a cup of very excellent coffee. Much living with a representative male had never taught his wife the reserves among members of the sex masculine.
“I might, but I don’t intend to,” he said. “And if you listen to me you’ll keep the thing to yourself.”
“I’ll take precious good care that the girl gets no pupils,” snapped Mrs. Boyer. And she did with great thoroughness.
We trace a life by its scars. Destiny, marching on by a thousand painful steps, had left its usual mark, a footprint on a naked soul. The soul was Harmony’s; the foot–was it not encased at that moment in Mrs. Boyer’s comfortable house shoes?
Anna was very late that night. Peter, having put Mrs. Boyer on her car, went back quickly. He had come out without his overcoat, and with the sunset a bitter wind had risen, but he was too indignant to be cold. He ran up the staircase, hearing on all sides the creaking and banging with which the old house resented a gale, and burst into the salon of Maria Theresa.
Harmony was sitting sidewise in a chair by the tea-table with her face hidden against its worn red velvet. She did not look up when he entered. Peter went over and put a hand on her shoulder. She quivered under it and he took it away.
“Crying?”
“A little,” very smothered. “Just dis-disappointment. Don’t mind me, Peter.”
“You mean about the pupil?”
Harmony sat up and looked at him. She still wore her hat, now more than ever askew, and some of the dye from the velvet had stained her cheek. She looked rather hectic, very lovely.
“Why did she change so when she saw you?”
Peter hesitated. Afterward he thought of a dozen things he might have said, safe things. Not one came to him.
“She–she is an evil-thinking old woman, Harry,” he said gravely.
“She did not approve of the way we are living here, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“But Anna?”
“She did not believe there was an Anna. Not that it matters,” he added hastily. “I’ll make Anna go to her and explain. It’s her infernal jumping to a conclusion that makes me crazy.”
“She will talk, Peter. I am frightened.”
“I’ll take Anna to-night and we’ll go to Boyer’s. I’ll make that woman get down on her knees to you. I’ll–“
“You’ll make bad very much worse,” said Harmony dejectedly. “When a thing has to be explained it does no good to explain it.”
The salon was growing dark. Peter was very close to her again. As in the dusky kitchen only a few days before, he felt the compelling influence of her nearness. He wanted, as he had never wanted anything in his life before, to take her in his arms, to hold her close and bid defiance to evil tongues. He was afraid of himself. To gain a moment he put a chair between them and stood, strong hands gripping its back, looking down at her.
“There is one thing we could do.”
“What, Peter?”
“We could marry. If you cared for me even a little it–it might not be so bad for you.”
“But I am not in love with you. I care for you, of course, but–not that way, Peter. And I do not wish to marry.”
“Not even if I wish it very much?”
“No.”
“If you are thinking of my future–“
“I’m thinking for both of us. And although just now you think you care a little for me, you do not care enough, Peter. You are lonely and I am the only person you see much, so you think you want to marry me. You don’t really. You want to help me.”
Few motives are unmixed. Poor Peter, thus accused, could not deny his altruism.
And in the face of his poverty and the little he could offer, compared with what she must lose, he did not urge what was the compelling motive after all, his need of her.
“It would be a rotten match for you,” he agreed. “I only thought, perhaps–You are right, of course; you ought not to marry.”
“And what about you?”
“I ought not, of course.”
Harmony rose, smiling a little.
“Then that’s settled. And for goodness’ sake, Peter, stop proposing to me every time things go wrong.” Her voice changed, grew grave and older, much older than Peter’s. “We must not marry, either of us, Peter. Anna is right. There might be an excuse if we were very much in love: but we are not. And loneliness is not a reason.”
“I am very lonely,” said Peter wistfully.
CHAPTER XIII
Peter took the polished horns to the hospital the next morning and approached Jimmy with his hands behind him and an atmosphere of mystery that enshrouded him like a cloak. Jimmy, having had a good night and having taken the morning’s medicine without argument, had been allowed up in a roller chair. It struck Peter with a pang that the boy looked more frail day by day, more transparent.
“I have brought you,” said Peter gravely, “the cod-liver oil.”
“I’ve had it!”
“Then guess.”
“Dad’s letter?”
“You’ve just had one. Don’t be a piggy.”
“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
“Vegetable,” said Peter shamelessly.
“Soft or hard!”
“Soft.”
This was plainly a disappointment. A pair of horns might be vegetable; they could hardly be soft.
“A kitten?”
“A kitten is not vegetable, James.”
“I know. A bowl of gelatin from Harry!” For by this time Harmony was his very good friend, admitted to the Jimmy club, which consisted of Nurse Elisabet, the Dozent with the red beard, Anna and Peter, and of course the sentry, who did not know that he belonged.
“Gelatin, to be sure,” replied Peter, and produced the horns.
It was a joyous moment in the long low ward, with its triple row of beds, its barred windows, its clean, uneven old floor. As if to add a touch of completeness the sentry outside, peering in, saw the wheeled chair with its occupant, and celebrated this advance along the road to recovery by placing on the window-ledge a wooden replica of himself, bayonet and all, carved from a bit of cigar box.
“Everybody is very nice to me,” said Jimmy contentedly. “When my father comes back I shall tell him. He is very fond of people who are kind to me. There was a woman on the ship–What is bulging your pocket, Peter?”
“My handkerchief.”
“That is not where you mostly carry your handkerchief.”
Peter was injured. He scowled ferociously at being doubted and stood up before the wheeled chair to be searched. The ward watched joyously, while from pocket after pocket of Peter’s old gray suit came Jimmy’s salvage–two nuts, a packet of figs, a postcard that represented a stout colonel of hussars on his back on a frozen lake, with a private soldier waiting to go through the various salutations due his rank before assisting him. A gala day, indeed, if one could forget the grave in the little mountain town with only a name on the cross at its head, and if one did not notice that the boy was thinner than ever, that his hands soon tired of playing and lay in his lap, that Nurse Elisabet, who was much inured to death and lived her days with tragedy, caught him to her almost fiercely as she lifted him back from the chair into the smooth white bed.
He fell asleep with Peter’s arm under his head and the horns of the deer beside him. On the bedside stand stood the wooden sentry, keeping guard. As Peter drew his arm away he became aware of the Nurse Elisabet beckoning to him from a door at the end of the ward Peter left the sentinel on guard and tiptoed down the room. Just outside, round a corner, was the Dozent’s laboratory, and beyond the tiny closet where he slept, where on a stand was the photograph of the lady he would marry when he had become a professor and required no one’s consent.
The Dozent was waiting for Peter. In the amiable conspiracy which kept the boy happy he was arch-plotter. His familiarity with Austrian intrigue had made him invaluable. He it was who had originated the idea of making Jimmy responsible for the order of the ward, so that a burly Trager quarreling over his daily tobacco with the nurse in charge, or brawling over his soup with another patient, was likely to be hailed in a thin soprano, and to stand, grinning sheepishly, while Jimmy, in mixed English and German, restored the decorum of the ward. They were a quarrelsome lot, the convalescents. Jimmy was so busy some days settling disputes and awarding decisions that he slept almost all night. This was as it should be.
The Dozent waited for Peter. His red beard twitched and his white coat, stained from the laboratory table, looked quite villainous. He held out a letter.
“This has come for the child,” he said in quite good English. He was obliged to speak English. Day by day he taught in the clinics Americans who scorned his native tongue, and who brought him the money with which some day he would marry. He liked the English language; he liked Americans because they learned quickly. He held out an envelope with a black border and Peter took it.
“From Paris!” he said. “Who in the world–I suppose I’d better open it.”
“So I thought. It appears a letter of–how you say it? Ah, yes, condolence.”
Peter opened the letter and read it. Then without a word he gave it open to the Dozent. There was silence in the laboratory while the Dozent read it, silence except for his canary, which was chipping at a lump of sugar. Peter’s face was very sober.
“So. A mother! You knew nothing of a mother?”
“Something from the papers I found. She left when the boy was a baby–went on the stage, I think. He has no recollection of her, which is a good thing. She seems to have been a bad lot.”
“She comes to take him away. That is impossible.”
“Of course it is impossible,” said Peter savagely. “She’s not going to see the child if I can help it. She left because–she’s the boy’s mother, but that’s the best you can say of her. This letter–Well, you’ve read it.”
“She is as a stranger to him?”
“Absolutely. She will come in mourning–look at that black border–and tell him his father is dead, and kill him. I know the type.”
The canary chipped at his sugar; the red beard of the Dozent twitched, as does the beard of one who plots. Peter re-read the gushing letter in his hand and thought fiercely.
“She is on her way here,” said the Dozent. “That is bad. Paris to Wien is two days and a night. She may hourly arrive.”
“We might send him away–to another hospital.”
The Dozent shrugged his shoulders.
“Had I a home–” he said, and glanced through the door to the portrait on the stand. “It would be possible to hide the boy, at least for a time. In the interval the mother might be watched, and if she proved a fit person the boy could be given to her. It is, of course, an affair of police.”
This gave Peter pause. He had no money for fines, no time for imprisonment, and he shared the common horror of the great jail. He read the letter again, and tried to read into the lines Jimmy’s mother, and failed. He glanced into the ward. Still Jimmy slept. A burly convalescent, with a saber cut from temple to ear and the general appearance of an assassin, had stopped beside the bed and was drawing up the blanket round the small shoulders.
“I can give orders that the woman be not admitted to-day,” said the Dozent. “That gives us a few hours. She will go to the police, and to-morrow she will be admitted. In the mean time–“
“In the mean time,” Peter replied, “I’ll try to think of something. If I thought she could be warned and would leave him here–“
“She will not. She will buy him garments and she will travel with him through the Riviera and to Nice. She says Nice. She wishes to be there for carnival, and the boy will die.”
Peter took the letter and went home. He rode, that he might read it again in the bus. But no scrap of comfort could he get from it. It spoke of the dead father coldly, and the father had been the boy’s idol. No good woman could have been so heartless. It offered the boy a seat in one of the least reputable of the Paris theaters to hear his mother sing. And in the envelope, overlooked before, Peter found a cutting from a French newspaper, a picture of the music-hall type that made him groan. It was indorsed “Mamma.”
Harmony had had a busy morning. First she had put her house in order, working deftly, her pretty hair pinned up in a towel–all in order but Peter’s room. That was to have a special cleaning later. Next, still with her hair tied up, she had spent two hours with her violin, standing very close to the stove to save fuel and keep her fingers warm. She played well that morning: even her own critical ears were satisfied, and the Portier, repairing a window lock in an empty room below, was entranced. He sat on the window sill in the biting cold and listened. Many music students had lived in the apartment with the great salon; there had been much music of one sort and another, but none like this.
“She tears my heart from my bosom,” muttered the Portier, sighing, and almost swallowed a screw that he held in his teeth.
After the practicing Harmony cleaned Peter’s room. She felt very tender toward Peter that day. The hurt left by Mrs. Boyer’s visit had died away, but there remained a clear vision of Peter standing behind the chair and offering himself humbly in marriage, so that a bad situation might be made better. And as with a man tenderness expresses itself in the giving of gifts, so with a woman it means giving of service. Harmony cleaned Peter’s room.
It was really rather tidy. Peter’s few belongings did not spread to any extent and years of bachelorhood had taught him the rudiments of order. Harmony took the covers from washstand and dressing table and washed and ironed them. She cleaned Peter’s worn brushes and brought a pincushion of her own for his one extra scarfpin. Finally she brought her own steamer rug and folded it across the foot of the bed. There was no stove in the room; it had been Harmony’s room once, and she knew to the full how cold it could be.
Having made all comfortable for the outer man she prepared for the inner. She was in the kitchen, still with her hair tied up, when Anna came home.
Anna was preoccupied. Instead of her cheery greeting she came somberly back to the kitchen, a letter in her hand. History was making fast that day.
“Hello, Harry,” she said. “I’m going to take a bite and hurry off. Don’t bother, I’ll attend to myself.” She stuffed the letter in her belt and got a plate from a shelf. “How pretty you look with your head tied up! If stupid Peter saw you now he would fall in love with you.”
“Then I shall take it off. Peter must be saved!”
Anna sat down at the tiny table and drank her tea. She felt rather better after the tea. Harmony, having taken the towel off, was busy over the brick stove. There was nothing said for a moment. Then:–
“I am out of patience with Peter,” said Anna.
“Why?”
“Because he hasn’t fallen in love with you. Where are his eyes?”
“Please, Anna!”
“It’s better as it is, no doubt, for both of you. But it’s superhuman of Peter. I wonder–“
“Yes?”
“I think I’ll not tell you what I wonder.”
And Harmony, rather afraid of Anna’s frank speech, did not insist.
As she drank her tea and made a pretense at eating, Anna’s thoughts wandered from Peter to Harmony to the letter in her belt and back again to Peter and Harmony. For some time she had been suspicious of Peter. From her dozen years of advantage in age and experience she looked down on Peter’s thirty years of youth, and thought she knew something that Peter himself did not suspect. Peter being unintrospective, Anna did his heart-searching for him. She believed he was madly in love with Harmony and did not himself suspect it. As she watched the girl over her teacup, revealing herself in a thousand unposed gestures of youth and grace, a thousand lovelinesses, something of the responsibility she and Peter had assumed came over her. She sighed and felt for her letter.
“I’ve had rather bad news,” she said at last.
“From home?”
“Yes. My father–did you know I have a father?”
“You hadn’t spoken of him.”
“I never do. As a father he hasn’t amounted to much. But he’s very ill, and–I ‘ve a conscience.”
Harmony turned a startled face to her.
“You are not going back to America?”
“Oh, no, not now, anyhow. If I become hag ridden with remorse and do go I’ll find some one to take my place. Don’t worry.”
The lunch was a silent meal. Anna was hurrying off as Peter came in, and there was no time to discuss Peter’s new complication with her. Harmony and Peter ate together, Harmony rather silent. Anna’s unfortunate comment about Peter had made her constrained. After the meal Peter, pipe in mouth, carried the dishes to the kitchen, and there it was that he gave her the letter. What Peter’s slower mind had been a perceptible time in grasping Harmony comprehended at onceÄand not only the situation, but its solution.
“Don’t let her have him!” she said, putting down the letter. “Bring him here. Oh, Peter, how good we must be to him!”
And that after all was how the thing was settled. So simple, so obvious was it that these three expatriates, these waifs and estrays, banded together against a common poverty, a common loneliness, should share without question whatever was theirs to divide. Peter and Anna gave cheerfully of their substance, Harmony of her labor, that a small boy should be saved a tragic knowledge until he was well enough to bear it, or until, if God so willed, he might learn it himself without pain.
The friendly sentry on duty again that night proved singularly blind. Thus it happened that, although the night was clear when the twin dials of the Votivkirche showed nine o’clock, he did not notice a cab that halted across the street from the hospital.
Still more strange that, although Peter passed within a dozen feet of him, carrying a wriggling and excited figure wrapped in a blanket and insisting on uncovering its feet, the sentry was able the next day to say that he had observed such a person carrying a bundle, but that it was a short stocky person, quite lame, and that the bundle was undoubtedly clothing going to the laundry.
Perhaps–it is just possible–the sentry had his suspicions. It is undeniable that as Jimmy in the cab on Peter’s knee, with Peter’s arm close about him, looked back at the hospital, the sentry was going through the manual of arms very solemnly under the stars and facing toward the carriage.
CHAPTER XIV
For two days at Semmering it rained. The Raxalpe and the Schneeberg sulked behind walls of mist. From the little balcony of the Pension Waldheim one looked out over a sea of cloud, pierced here and there by islands that were crags or by the tops of sunken masts that were evergreen trees. The roads were masses of slippery mud, up which the horses steamed and sweated. The gray cloud fog hung over everything; the barking of a dog loomed out of it near at hand where no dog was to be seen. Children cried and wild birds squawked; one saw them not.
During the second night a landslide occurred on the side of the mountain with a rumble like the noise of fifty trains. In the morning, the rain clouds lifting for a moment, Marie saw the narrow yellow line of the slip.
Everything was saturated with moisture. It did no good to close the heavy wooden shutters at night: in the morning the air of the room was sticky and clothing was moist to the touch. Stewart, confined to the house, grew irritable.
Marie watched him anxiously. She knew quite well by what slender tenure she held her man. They had nothing in common, neither speech nor thought. And the little Marie’s love for Stewart, grown to be a part of her, was largely maternal. She held him by mothering him, by keeping him comfortable, not by a great reciprocal passion that might in time have brought him to her in chains.
And now he was uncomfortable. He chafed against the confinement; he resented the food, the weather. Even Marie’s content at her unusual leisure irked him. He accused her of purring like a cat by the fire, and stamped out more than once, only to be driven in by the curious thunderstorms of early Alpine winter.
On the night of the second day the weather changed. Marie, awakening early, stepped out on to the balcony and closed the door carefully behind her. A new world lay beneath her, a marvel of glittering branches, of white plain far below; the snowy mane of the Raxalpe was become a garment. And from behind the villa came the cheerful sound of sleigh-bells, of horses’ feet on crisp snow, of runners sliding easily along frozen roads. Even the barking of the dog in the next yard had ceased rumbling and become sharp staccato.
The balcony extended round the corner of the house. Marie, eagerly discovering her new world, peered about, and seeing no one near ventured so far. The road was in view, and a small girl on ski was struggling to prevent a collision between two plump feet. Even as Marie saw her the inevitable happened and she went headlong into a drift. A governess who had been kneeling before a shrine by the road hastily crossed herself and ran to the rescue.
It was a marvelous morning, a day of days. The governess and the child went on out of vision. Marie stood still, looking at the shrine. A drift had piled about its foot, where the governess had placed a bunch of Alpine flowers. Down on her knees on the balcony went the little Marie, regardless of the snow, and prayed to the shrine of the Virgin below–for what? For forgiveness? For a better life? Not at all. She prayed that the heels of the American girl would keep her in out of the snow.
The prayer of the wicked availeth nothing; even the godly at times must suffer disappointment. And when one prays of heels, who can know of the yearning back of the praying? Marie, rising and dusting her chilled knees, saw the party of Americans on the road, clad in stout boots and swinging along gayly. Marie shrugged her shoulders resignedly. She should have gone to the shrine itself; a balcony was not a holy place. But one thing she determined–the Americans went toward the Sonnwendstein. She would advise against the Sonnwendstein for that day.
Marie’s day of days had begun wrong after all. For Stewart rose with the Sonnwendstein in his mind, and no suggestion of Marie’s that in another day a path would be broken had any effect on him. He was eager to be off, committed the extravagance of ordering an egg apiece for breakfast, and finally proclaimed that if Marie feared the climb he would go alone.
Marie made many delays: she dressed slowly, and must run back to see if the balcony door was securely closed. At a little shop where they stopped to buy mountain sticks she must purchase postcards and send them at once. Stewart was fairly patient: air and exercise were having their effect.
It was eleven o’clock when, having crossed the valley, they commenced to mount the slope of the Sonnwendstein. The climb was easy; the road wound back and forward on itself so that one ascended with hardly an effort. Stewart gave Marie a hand here and there, and even paused to let her sit on a boulder and rest. The snow was not heavy; he showed her the footprints of a party that had gone ahead, and to amuse her tried to count the number of people. When he found it was five he grew thoughtful. There were five in Anita’s party. Thanks to Marie’s delays they met the Americans coming down. The meeting was a short one: the party went on down, gayly talking. Marie and Stewart climbed silently. Marie’s day was spoiled; Stewart had promised to dine at the hotel.
Even the view at the tourist house did not restore Marie’s fallen spirits. What were the Vienna plain and the Styrian Alps to her, with this impatient and frowning man beside her consulting his watch and computing the time until he might see the American again? What was prayer, if this were its answer?
They descended rapidly, Stewart always in the lead and setting a pace that Marie struggled in vain to meet. To her tentative and breathless remarks he made brief answer, and only once in all that time did he volunteer a remark. They had reached the Hotel Erzherzog in the valley. The hotel was still closed, and Marie, panting, sat down on an edge of the terrace.
“We have been very foolish,” he said.
“Why?”
“Being seen together like that.”
“But why? Could you not walk with any woman?”
“It’s not that,” said Stewart hastily. “I suppose once does not matter. But we can’t be seen together all the time.”
Marie turned white. The time had gone by when an incident of the sort could have been met with scorn or with threats; things had changed for Marie Jedlicka since the day Peter had refused to introduce her to Harmony. Then it had been vanity; now it was life itself.
“What you mean,” she said with pale lips, “is that we must not be seen together at all. Must I–do you wish me to remain a prisoner while you–” she choked.
“For Heaven’s sake,” he broke out brutally, “don’t make a scene. There are men cutting ice over there. Of course you are not a prisoner. You may go where you like.”
Marie rose and picked up her muff.
Marie’s sordid little tragedy played itself out in Semmering. Stewart neglected her almost completely; he took fewer and fewer meals at the villa. In two weeks he spent one evening with the girl, and was so irritable that she went to bed crying. The little mountain resort was filling up; there were more and more Americans. Christmas was drawing near and a dozen or so American doctors came up, bringing their families for the holidays. It was difficult to enter a shop without encountering some of them. To add to the difficulty, the party at the hotel, finding it crowded there, decided to go into a pension and suggested moving to the Waldheim.
Stewart himself was wretchedly uncomfortable. Marie’s tragedy was his predicament. He disliked himself very cordially, loathing himself and his situation with the new-born humility of the lover. For Stewart was in love for the first time in his life. Marie knew it. She had not lived with him for months without knowing his every thought, every mood. She grew bitter and hard those days, sitting alone by the green stove in the Pension Waldheim, or leaning, elbows on the rail, looking from the balcony over the valley far below. Bitter and hard, that is, during his absences; he had but to enter the room and her rage died, to be replaced with yearning and little, shy, tentative advances that he only tolerated. Wild thoughts came to Marie, especially at night, when the stars made a crown over the Rax, and in the hotel an orchestra played, while people dined and laughed and loved.
She grew obstinate, too. When in his desperation Stewart suggested that they go back to Vienna she openly scoffed.
“Why?” she demanded. “That you may come back here to her, leaving me there?”
“My dear girl,” he flung back exasperated, “this affair was not a permanent one. You knew that at the start.”
“You have taken me away from my work. I have two months’ vacation. It is but one month.”
“Go back and let me pay–“
“No!”
In pursuance of the plan to leave the hotel the American party came to see the Waldheim, and catastrophe almost ensued. Luckily Marie was on the balcony when the landlady flung open the door, and announced it as Stewart’s apartment. But Stewart had a bad five minutes and took it out, manlike, on the girl.
Stewart had another reason for not wishing to leave Semmering. Anita was beautiful, a bit of a coquette, too; as are most pretty women. And Stewart was not alone in his devotion. A member of the party, a New Yorker named Adam, was much in love with the girl and indifferent who knew it. Stewart detested him.
In his despair Stewart wrote to Peter Byrne. It was characteristic of Peter that, however indifferent people might be in prosperity,they always turned to him in trouble. Stewart’s letter concluded:–
“I have made out a poor case for myself; but I’m in a hole, as you can see. I would like to chuck everything here and sail for home with these people who go in January. But, confound it, Byrne, what am I to do with Marie? And that brings me to what I ‘ve been wanting to say all along, and haven’t had the courage to. Marie likes you and you rather liked her, didn’t you? You could talk her into reason if anybody could. Now that you know how things are, can’t you come up over Sunday? It’s asking a lot, and I know it; but things are pretty bad.”
Peter received the letter on the morning of the day before Christmas. He read it several times and, recalling the look he had seen more than once in Marie Jedlicka’s eyes, he knew that things were very bad, indeed.
But Peter was a man of family in those days, and Christmas is a family festival not to be lightly ignored. He wired to Stewart that he would come up as soon as possible after Christmas. Then, because of the look in Marie’s eyes and because he feared for her a sad Christmas, full of heartaches and God knows what loneliness, he bought her a most hideous brooch, which he thought admirable in every way and highly ornamental and which he could not afford at all. This he mailed, with a cheery greeting, and feeling happier and much poorer made his way homeward.
CHAPTER XV
Christmas-Eve in the saloon of Maria Theresa! Christmas-Eve, with the great chandelier recklessly ablaze and a pig’s head with cranberry eyes for supper! Christmas-Eve, with a two-foot tree gleaming with candles on the stand, and beside the stand, in a huge chair, Jimmy!
It had been a busy day for Harmony. In the morning there had been shopping and marketing, and such a temptation to be reckless, with the shops full of ecstasies and the old flower women fairly overburdened. There had been anxieties, too, such as the pig’s head, which must be done a certain way, and Jimmy, who must be left with the Portier’s wife as nurse while all of them went to the hospital. The house revolved around Jimmy now, Jimmy, who seemed the better for the moving, and whose mother as yet had failed to materialize.
In the afternoon Harmony played at the hospital. Peter took her as the early twilight was falling in through the gate where the sentry kept guard and so to the great courtyard. In this grim playground men wandered about, smoking their daily allowance of tobacco and moving to keep warm, offscourings of the barracks, derelicts of the slums, with here and there an honest citizen lamenting a Christmas away from home. The hospital was always pathetic to Harmony; on this Christmas-Eve she found it harrowing. Its very size shocked her, that there should be so much suffering, so much that was appalling, frightful, insupportable. Peter felt her quiver under his hand. A hospital in festivity is very affecting. It smiles through its tears. And in every assemblage there are sharply defined lines of difference. There are those who are going home soon, God willing; there are those who will go home some time after long days and longer nights. And there are those who will never go home and who know it. And because of this the ones who are never going home are most festively clad, as if, by way of compensation, the nurses mean to give them all future Christmasses in one. They receive an extra orange, or a pair of gloves, perhaps,–and they are not the less grateful because they understand. And when everything is over they lay away in the bedside stand the gloves they will never wear, and divide the extra orange with a less fortunate one who is almost recovered. Their last Christmas is past.
“How beautiful the tree was!” they say. Or, “Did you hear how the children sang? So little, to sing like that! It made me think–of angels.”
Peter led Harmony across the courtyard, through many twisting corridors, and up and down more twisting staircases to the room where she was to play. There were many Christmas trees in the hospital that afternoon; no one hall could have held the thousands of patients, the doctors, the nurses. Sometimes a single ward had its own tree, its own entertainment. Occasionally two or three joined forces, preempted a lecture-room, and wheeled or hobbled or carried in their convalescents. In such case an imposing audience was the result.
Into such a room Peter led Harmony. It was an amphitheater, the seats rising in tiers, half circle above half circle, to the dusk of the roof. In the pit stood the tree, candle-lighted. There was no other illumination in the room. The semi-darkness, the blazing tree, the rows of hopeful, hoping, hopeless, rising above, white faces over white gowns, the soft rustle of expectancy, the silence when the Dozent with the red beard stepped out and began to read an address–all caught Harmony by the throat. Peter, keenly alive to everything she did, felt rather than heard her soft sob.
Peter saw the hospital anew that dark afternoon, saw it through Harmony’s eyes. Layer after layer his professional callus fell away, leaving him quick again. He had lived so long close to the heart of humanity that he had reduced its throbbing to beats that might be counted. Now, once more, Peter was back in the early days, when a heart was not a pump, but a thing that ached or thrilled or struggled, that loved or hated or yearned.
The orchestra, insisting on sadly sentimental music, was fast turning festivity into gloom. It played Handel’s “Largo”; it threw its whole soul into the assurance that the world, after all, was only a poor place, that Heaven was a better. It preached resignation with every deep vibration of the cello. Harmony fidgeted.
“How terrible!” she whispered. “To turn their Christmas-Eve into mourning! Stop them!”
“Stop a German orchestra?”
“They are crying, some of them. Oh, Peter!”
The music came to an end at last. Tears were dried. Followed recitations, gifts, a speech of thanks from Nurse Elisabet for the patients. Then–Harmony.
Harmony never remembered afterward what she had played. It was joyous, she knew, for the whole atmosphere changed. Laughter came; even the candles burned more cheerfully. When she had finished, a student in a white coat asked her to play a German Volkspiel, and roared it out to her accompaniment with much vigor and humor. The audience joined in, at first timidly, then lustily.
Harmony stood alone by the tree, violin poised, smiling at the applause. Her eyes, running along the dim amphitheater, sought Peter’s, and finding them dwelt there a moment. Then she began to play softly and as softly the others sang.
“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,”–they sang, with upturned eyes.
“Alles schlaeft, einsam wacht…”
Visions came to Peter that afternoon in the darkness, visions in which his poverty was forgotten or mattered not at all. Visions of a Christmas-Eve in a home that he had earned, of a tree, of a girl-woman, of a still and holy night, of a child.
“Nur das traute, hoch heilige Paar Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar Schlaf’ in himmlischer Ruh’, Schlaf’ in himmlischer Ruh’,” they sang.
There was real festivity at the old lodge of Maria Theresa that night.
Jimmy had taken his full place in the household. The best room, which had been Anna’s, had been given up to him. Here, carefully tended, with a fire all day in the stove, Jimmy reigned from the bed. To him Harmony brought her small puzzles and together they solved them.
“Shall it be a steak to-night?” thus Harmony humbly. “Or chops?”
“With tomato sauce?”
“If Peter allows, yes.”
Much thinking on Jimmy’s part, and then:–
“Fish,” he would decide. “Fish with egg dressing.”
They would argue for a time, and compromise on fish.
The boy was better. Peter shook his head over any permanent improvement, but Anna fiercely seized each crumb of hope. Many and bitter were the battles she and Peter fought at night over his treatment, frightful the litter of authorities Harmony put straight every morning.
The extra expense was not much, but it told. Peter’s carefully calculated expenditures felt the strain. He gave up a course in X-ray on which he had set his heart and cut off his hour in the coffee-house as a luxury. There was no hardship about the latter renunciation. Life for Peter was spelling itself very much in terms of Harmony and Jimmy those days. He resented anything that took him from them.
There were anxieties of a different sort also. Anna’s father was failing. He had written her a feeble, half-senile appeal to let bygones be bygones and come back to see him before he died. Anna was Peter’s great prop. What would he do should she decide to go home? He had built his house on the sand, indeed.
So far the threatened danger of a mother to Jimmy had not materialized. Peter was puzzled, but satisfied. He still wrote letters of marvelous adventure; Jimmy still watched for them, listened breathless, treasured them under his pillow. But he spoke less of his father. The open page of his childish mind was being written over with new impressions. “Dad” was already a memory; Peter and Harmony and Anna were realities. Sometimes he called Peter “Dad.” At those times Peter caught the boy to him in an agony of tenderness.
And as the little apartment revolved round Jimmy, so was this Christmas-Eve given up to him. All day he had stayed in bed for the privilege of an extra hour propped up among pillows in the salon. All day he had strung little red berries that looked like cranberries for the tree, or fastened threads to the tiny cakes that were for trimming only, and sternly forbidden to eat.
A marvelous day that for Jimmy. Late in the afternoon the Portier, with a collar on, had mounted the stairs and sheepishly presented him with a pair of white mice in a wooden cage. Jimmy was thrilled. The cage was on his knees all evening, and one of the mice was clearly ill of a cake with pink icing. The Portier’s gift was a stealthy one, while his wife was having coffee with her cousin, the brushmaker. But the spirit Of Christmas does strange things. That very evening, while the Portier was roistering in a beer hall preparatory to the midnight mass, came the Portier’s wife, puffing from the stairs, and brought a puzzle book that only the initiated could open, and when one succeeded at last there was a picture of the Christ-Child within.
Young McLean came to call that evening–came to call and remained to worship. It was the first time since Mrs. Boyer that a visitor had come. McLean, interested with everything and palpably not shocked, was a comforting caller. He seemed to Harmony, who had had bad moments since the day of Mrs. Boyer’s visit, to put the hallmark of respectability on the household, to restore it to something it had lost or had never had.
She was quite unconscious of McLean’s admiration. She and Anna put Jimmy to bed. The tree candles were burned out; Peter was extinguishing the dying remnants when Harmony came back. McLean was at the piano, thrumming softly. Peter, turning round suddenly, surprised an expression on the younger man’s face that startled him.
For that one night Harmony had laid aside her mourning, and wore white, soft white, tucked in at the neck, short-sleeved, trailing. Peter had never seen her in white before.
It was Peter’s way to sit back and listen: his steady eyes were always alert, good-humored, but he talked very little. That night he was unusually silent. He sat in the shadow away from the lamp and watched the two at the piano: McLean playing a bit of this or that, the girl bending over a string of her violin. Anna came in and sat down near him.
“The boy is quite fascinated,” she whispered. “Watch his eyes!”
“He is a nice boy.” This from Peter, as if he argued with himself.
“As men go!” This was a challenge Peter was usually quick to accept. That night he only smiled. “It would be a good thing for her: his people are wealthy.”
Money, always money! Peter ground his teeth over his pipestem. Eminently it would be a good thing for Harmony, this nice boy in his well-made evening clothes, who spoke Harmony’s own language of music, who was almost speechless over her playing, and who looked up at her with eyes in which admiration was not unmixed with adoration.
Peter was restless. As the music went on he tiptoed out of the room and took to pacing up and down the little corridor. Each time as he passed the door he tried not to glance in; each time he paused involuntarily. Jealousy had her will of him that night, jealousy, when he had never acknowledged even to himself how much the girl was to him.
Jimmy was restless. Usually Harmony’s music put him to sleep; but that night he lay awake, even after Peter had closed all the doors. Peter came in and sat with him in the dark, going over now and then to cover him, or to give him a drink, or to pick up the cage of mice which Jimmy insisted on having beside him and which constantly slipped off on to the floor. After a time Peter lighted the night-light, a bit of wick on a cork floating in a saucer of lard oil, and set it on the bedside table. Then round it he arranged Jimmy’s treasures, the deer antlers, the cage of mice, the box, the wooden sentry. The boy fell asleep. Peter sat in the room, his dead pipe in his teeth, and thought of many things.
It was very late when young McLean left. The two had played until they stopped for very weariness. Anna had yawned herself off to bed. From Jimmy’s room Peter could hear the soft hum of their voices.
“You have been awfully good to me,” McLean said as he finally rose to go. “I–I want you to know that I’ll never forget this evening, never.”
“It has been splendid, hasn’t it? Since little Scatchy left there has been no one for the piano. I have been lonely sometimes for some one to talk music to.”
Lonely! Poor Peter!
“Then you will let me come back?”
“Will I, indeed! I–I’ll be grateful.”
“How soon would be proper? I dare say to-morrow you’ll be busy–Christmas and all that.”
“Do you mean you would like to come to-morrow?”
“If old Peter wouldn’t be fussed. He might think–“
“Peter always wants every one to be happy. So if you really care–“
“And I’ll not bore you?”
“Rather not!”
“How–about what time?”
“In the afternoon would be pleasant, I think. And then Jimmy can listen. He loves music.”
McLean, having found his fur-lined coat, got into it as slowly as possible. Then he missed a glove, and it must be searched for in all the dark corners of the salon until found in his pocket. Even then he hesitated, lingered, loath to break up this little world of two.
“You play wonderfully,” he said.
“So do you.”
“If only something comes of it! It’s curious, isn’t it, when you think of it? You and I meeting here in the center of Europe and both of us working our heads off for something that may never pan out.”
There was something reminiscent about that to Harmony. It was not until after young McLean had gone that she recalled. It was almost word for word what Peter had said to her in the coffee-house the night they met. She thought it very curious, the coincidence, and pondered it, being ignorant of the fact that it is always a matter for wonder when the man meets the woman, no matter where. Nothing is less curious, more inevitable, more amazing. “You and I,” forsooth, said Peter!
“You and I,” cried young McLean!
CHAPTER XVI
Quite suddenly Peter’s house, built on the sand, collapsed. The shock came on Christmas-Day, after young McLean, now frankly infatuated, had been driven home by Peter.
Peter did it after his own fashion. Harmony, with unflagging enthusiasm, was looking tired. Suggestions to this effect rolled off McLean’s back like rain off a roof. Finally Peter gathered up the fur-lined coat, the velours hat, gloves, and stick, and placed them on the piano in front of the younger man.
“I’m sorry you must go,” said Peter calmly, “but, as you say, Miss Wells is tired and there is supper to be eaten. Don’t let me hurry you.”
The Portier was at the door as McLean, laughing and protesting, went out. He brought a cablegram for Anna. Peter took it to her door and waited uneasily while she read it.
It was an urgent summons home; the old father was very low. He was calling for her, and a few days or week’ would see the end. There were things that must be looked after. The need of her was imperative. With the death the old man’s pension would cease and Anna was the bread-winner.
Anna held the paper out to Peter and sat down. Her nervous strength seemed to have deserted her. All at once she was a stricken, elderly woman, with hope wiped out of her face and something nearer resentment than grief in its place.
“It has come, Peter,” she said dully. “I always knew it couldn’t last. They’ve always hung about my neck, and now–“
“Do you think you must go? Isn’t there some way? If things are so bad you could hardly get there in time, and–you must think of yourself a little, Anna.”
“I am not thinking of anything else. Peter, I’m an uncommonly selfish woman, but I–“
Quite without warning she burst out crying, unlovely, audible weeping that shook her narrow shoulders. Harmony heard the sound and joined them. After a look at Anna she sat down beside her and put a white arm over her shoulders. She did not try to speak. Anna’s noisy grief subsided as suddenly as it came. She patted Harmony’s hand in mute acknowledgment and dried her eyes.
“I’m not grieving, child,” she said; “I’m only realizing what a selfish old maid I am. I’m crying because I’m a disappointment to myself. Harry, I’m going back to America.”
And that, after hours of discussion, was where they ended. Anna must go at once. Peter must keep the apartment, having Jimmy to look after and to hide. What was a frightful dilemma to him and to Harmony Anna took rather lightly.
“You’ll find some one else to take my place,” she said. “If I had a day I could find a dozen.”
“And in the interval?” Harmony asked, without looking at Peter.
“The interval! Tut! Peter is your brother, to all intents and purposes. And if you are thinking of scandal-mongers, who will know?”
Having determined to go, no arguments moved Anna, nor could either of the two think of anything to urge beyond a situation she refused to see, or rather a situation she refused to acknowledge. She was not as comfortable as she pretended. During all that long night, while snow sifted down into the ugly yard and made it beautiful, while Jimmy slept and the white mice played, while Harmony tossed and tried to sleep and Peter sat in his cold room and smoked his pipe, Anna packed her untidy belongings and added a name now and then to a list that was meant for Peter, a list of possible substitutes for herself in the little household.
She left early the next morning, a grim little person who bent over the sleeping boy hungrily, and insisted on carrying her own bag down the stairs. Harmony did not go to the station, but stayed at home, pale and silent, hovering around against Jimmy’s awakening and struggling against a feeling of panic. Not that she feared Peter or herself. But she was conventional; shielded girls are accustomed to lean for a certain support on the proprieties, as bridgeplayers depend on rules.
Peter came back to breakfast, but ate little. Harmony did not even sit down, but drank her cup of coffee standing, looking down at the snow below. Jimmy still slept.
“Won’t you sit down?” said Peter.
“I’m not hungry, thank you.”
“You can sit down without eating.”
Peter was nervous. To cover his uneasiness he was distinctly gruff. He pulled a chair out for her and she sat down. Now that they were face to face the tension was lessened. Peter laid Anna’s list on the table between them and bent over it toward her.
“You are hurting me very much, Harry,” he said. “Do you know why?”
“I? I am only sorry about Anna. I miss her. I–I was fond of her.”
“So was I. But that isn’t it, Harry. It’s something else.”
“I’m uncomfortable, Peter.”
“So am I. I’m sorry you don’t trust me. For that’s it.”
“Not at all. But, Peter, what will people say?’
“A great deal, if they know. Who is to know? How many people know about us? A handful, at the most, McLean and Mrs. Boyer and one or two others. Of course I can go away until we get some one to take Anna’s place, but you’d be here alone at night, and if the youngster had an attack–“
“Oh, no, don’t leave him!”
“It’s holiday time. There are no clinics until next week. If you’ll put up with me–“
“Put up with you, when it is your apartment I use, your food I eat!” She almost choked. “Peter, I must talk about money.”
“I’m coming to that. Don’t you suppose you more than earn everything? Doesn’t it humiliate me hourly to see you working here?”
“Peter! Would you rob me of my last vestige of self-respect?”
This being unanswerable, Peter fell back on his major premise.
“If you’ll put up with me for a day or so I’ll take this list of Anna’s and hunt up some body. Just describe the person you desire and I’ll find her.” He assumed a certainty he was far from feeling, but it reassured the girl. “A woman, of course?”
“Of course. And not young.”
“‘Not young,'” wrote Peter. “Fat?”
Harmony recalled Mrs. Boyer’s ample figure and shook her head.
“Not too stout. And agreeable. That’s most important.”
“‘Agreeable,'” wrote Peter. “Although Anna was hardly agreeable, in the strict sense of the word, was she?”
“She was interesting, and–and human.”
“‘Human!'” wrote Peter. “Wanted, a woman, not young, not too stout, agreeable and human. Shall I advertise?”
The strain was quite gone by that time. Harmony was smiling. Jimmy, waking, called for food, and the morning of the first day was under way.
Peter was well content that morning, in spite of an undercurrent of uneasiness. Before this Anna had shared his proprietorship with him. Now the little household was his. His vicarious domesticity pleased him. He strutted about, taking a new view of his domain; he tightened a doorknob and fastened a noisy window. He inspected the coal-supply and grumbled over its quality. He filled the copper kettle on the stove, carried in the water for Jimmy’s morning bath, cleaned the mouse cage. He even insisted on peeling the little German potatoes, until Harmony cried aloud at his wastefulness and took the knife from him.
And afterward, while Harmony in the sickroom read aloud and Jimmy put the wooden sentry into the cage to keep order, he got out his books and tried to study. But he did little work. His book lay on his knee, his pipe died beside him. The strangeness of the situation came over him, sitting there, and left him rather frightened. He tried to see it from the viewpoint of an outsider, and found himself incredulous and doubting. McLean would resent the situation. Even the Portier was a person to reckon with. The skepticism of the American colony was a thing to fear and avoid.
And over all hung the incessant worry about money; he could just manage alone. He could not, by any method he knew of, stretch his resources to cover a separate arrangement for himself. But he had undertaken to shield a girl-woman and a child, and shield them he would and could.
Brave thoughts were Peter’s that snowy morning in the great salon of Maria Theresa, with the cat of the Portier purring before the fire; brave thoughts, cool reason, with Harmony practicing scales very softly while Jimmy slept, and with Anna speeding through a white world, to the accompaniment of bitter meditation.
Peter had meant to go to Semmering that day, but even the urgency of Marie’s need faded before his own situation. He wired Stewart that he would come as soon as he could, and immediately after lunch departed for the club, Anna’s list in his pocket, Harmony’s requirements in mind. He paused at Jimmy’s door on his way out.
“What shall it be to-day?” he inquired. “A postcard or a crayon?”
“I wish I could have a dog.”
“We’ll have a dog when you are better and can take him walking. Wait until spring, son.”
“Some more mice?”
“You will have them–but not to-day.”
“What holiday comes next?”
“New Year’s Day. Suppose I bring you a New Year’s card.”
“That’s right,” agreed Jimmy. “One I can send to Dad. Do you think he will come back this year?” wistfully.
Peter dropped on his baggy knees beside the bed and drew the little wasted figure to him.
“I think you’ll surely see him this year, old man,” he said huskily.
Peter walked to the Doctors’ Club. On the way he happened on little Georgiev, the Bulgarian, and they went on together. Peter managed to make out that Georgiev was studying English, and that he desired to know the state of health and the abode of the Fraulein Wells. Peter evaded the latter by the simple expedient of pretending not to understand. The little Bulgarian watched him earnestly, his smouldering eyes not without suspicion. There had been much talk in the Pension Schwarz about the departure together of the three Americans. The Jew from Galicia still raved over Harmony’s beauty.
Georgiev rather hoped, by staying by Peter, to be led toward his star. But Peter left him at the Doctors’ Club, still amiable, but absolutely obtuse to the question nearest the little spy’s heart.
The club was almost deserted. The holidays had taken many of the members out of town. Other men were taking advantage of the vacation to see the city, or to make acquaintance again with families they had hardly seen during the busy weeks before Christmas. The room at the top of the stairs where the wives of the members were apt to meet for chocolate and to exchange the addresses of dressmakers was empty; in the reading room he found McLean. Although not a member, McLean was a sort of honorary habitue, being allowed the privilege of the club in exchange for a dependable willingness to play at entertainments of all sorts.
It was in Peter’s mind to enlist McLean’s assistance in his difficulties. McLean knew a good many people. He was popular, goodlooking, and in a colony where, unlike London and Paris, the great majority were people of moderate means, he was conspicuously well off. But he was also much younger than Peter and intolerant with the insolence of youth. Peter was thinking hard as he took off his overcoat and ordered beer.
The boy was in love with Harmony already; Peter had seen that, as he saw many things. How far his love might carry him, Peter had no idea. It seemed to him, as he sat across the reading-table and studied him over his magazine, that McLean would resent bitterly the girl’s position, and that when he learned it a crisis might be precipitated.
One of three things might happen: He might bend all his energies to second Peter’s effort to fill Anna’s place, to find the right person; he might suggest taking Anna’s place himself, and insist that his presence in the apartment would be as justifiable as Peter’s; or he might do at once the thing Peter felt he would do eventually, cut the knot of the difficulty by asking Harmony to marry him. Peter, greeting him pleasantly, decided not to tell him anything, to keep him away if possible until the thing was straightened out, and to wait for an hour at the club in the hope that a solution might stroll in for chocolate and gossip.
In any event explanation to McLean would have required justification. Peter disliked the idea. He could humble himself, if necessary, to a woman; he could admit his asininity in assuming the responsibility of Jimmy, for instance, and any woman worthy of the name, or worthy of living in the house with Harmony, would understand. But McLean was young, intolerant. He was more than that, though Peter, concealing from himself just what Harmony meant to him, would not have admitted a rival for what he had never claimed. But a rival the boy was. Peter, calmly reading a magazine and drinking his Munich beer, was in the grip of the fiercest jealousy. He turned pages automatically, to recall nothing of what he had read.
McLean, sitting across from him, watched him surreptitiously. Big Peter, aggressively masculine, heavy of shoulder, direct of speech and eye, was to him the embodiment of all that a woman should desire in a man. He, too, was jealous, but humbly so. Unlike Peter he knew his situation, was young enough to glory in it. Shameless love is always young; with years comes discretion, perhaps loss of confidence. The Crusaders were youths, pursuing an idea to the ends of the earth and flaunting a lady’s guerdon from spear or saddle-bow. The older men among them tucked the handkerchief or bit of a gauntleted glove under jerkin and armor near the heart, and flung to the air the guerdon of some light o’ love. McLean would have shouted Harmony’s name from the housetops. Peter did not acknowledge even to himself that he was in love with her.
It occurred to McLean after a time that Peter being in the club, and Harmony being in all probability at home, it might be possible to see her alone for a few minutes. He had not intended to go back to the house in the Siebensternstrasse so soon after being peremptorily put out; he had come to the club with the intention of clinching his resolution with a game of cribbage. But fate was playing into his hands. There was no cribbage player round, and Peter himself sat across deeply immersed in a magazine. McLean rose, not stealthily, but without unnecessary noise.
So far so good. Peter turned a page and went on reading. McLean sauntered to a window, hands in pockets. He even whistled a trifle, under his breath, to prove how very casual were his intentions. Still whistling, he moved toward the door. Peter turned another page, which was curiously soon to have read two columns of small type without illustrations.
Once out in the hall McLean’s movements gained aim and precision. He got his coat, hat and stick, flung the first over his arm and the second on his head, and–
“Going out?” asked Peter calmly.
“Yes, nothing to do here. I’ve read all the infernal old magazines until I ‘m sick of them.” Indignant, too, from his tone.
“Walking?”
“Yes.”
“Mind if I go with you?”
“Not at all.”
Peter, taking down his old overcoat from its hook, turned and caught the boy’s eye. It was a swift exchange of glances, but illuminating–Peter’s whimsical, but with a sort of grim determination; McLean’s sheepish, but equally determined.
“Rotten afternoon,” said McLean as they started for the stairs. “Half rain, half snow. Streets are ankle-deep.”
“I’m not particularly keen about walking, but–I don’t care for this tomb alone.”
Nothing was further from McLean’s mind than a walk with Peter that afternoon. He hesitated halfway down the upper flight.
“You don’t care for cribbage, do you?”
“Don’t know anything about it. How about pinochle?”
They had both stopped, equally determined, equally hesitating.
“Pinochle it is,” acquiesced McLean. “I was only going because there was nothing to do.”
Things went very well for Peter that afternoon–up to a certain point. He beat McLean unmercifully, playing with cold deliberation. McLean wearied, fidgeted, railed at his luck. Peter played on grimly.
The club filled up toward the coffee-hour. Two or three women, wives of members, a young girl to whom McLean had been rather attentive before he met Harmony and who bridled at the abstracted bow he gave her. And, finally, when hope in Peter was dead, one of the women on Anna’s list.
Peter, laying down pairs and marking up score, went over Harmony’s requirements. Dr. Jennings seemed to fit them all, a woman, not young, not too stout, agreeable and human. She was a large, almost bovinely placid person, not at all reminiscent of Anna. She was neat where Anna had been disorderly, well dressed and breezy against Anna’s dowdiness and sharpness. Peter, having totaled the score, rose and looked down at McLean.
“You’re a nice lad,” he said, smiling. “Sometime I shall teach you the game.”
“How about a lesson to-night in Seven-Star Street?”
“To-night? Why, I’m sorry. We have an engagement for to-night.”
The “we” was deliberate and cruel. McLean writhed. Also the statement was false, but the boy was spared that knowledge for the moment.
Things went well. Dr. Jennings was badly off for quarters. She would make a change if she could better herself. Peter drew her off to a corner and stated his case. She listened attentively, albeit not without disapproval.
She frankly discredited the altruism of Peter’s motives when he told her about Harmony. But as the recital went on she found herself rather touched. The story of Jimmy appealed to her. She scolded and lauded Peter in one breath, and what was more to the point, she promised to visit the house in the Siebensternstrasse the next day.
“So Anna Gates has gone home!” she reflected. “When?”
“This morning.”
“Then the girl is there alone?”
“Yes. She is very young and inexperienced, and the boy–it’s myocarditis. She’s afraid to be left with him.”
“Is she quite alone?”
“Absolutely, and without funds, except enough for her lessons. Our arrangement was that she should keep the house going; that was her share.”
Dr. Jennings was impressed. It was impossible to talk to Peter and not believe him. Women trusted Peter always.
“You’ve been very foolish, Dr. Byrne,” she said as she rose; “but you’ve been disinterested enough to offset that and to put some of us to shame. To-morrow at three, if it suits you. You said the Siebensternstrasse?”
Peter went home exultant.
CHAPTER XVII
Christmas-Day had had a softening effect on Mrs. Boyer. It had opened badly. It was the first Christmas she had spent away from her children, and there had been little of the holiday spirit in her attitude as she prepared the Christmas breakfast. After that, however, things happened.
In the first place, under her plate she had found a frivolous chain and pendant which she had admired. And when her eyes filled up, as they did whenever she was emotionally moved, the doctor had come round the table and put both his arms about her.
“Too young for you? Not a bit!” he said heartily. “You’re better-looking then you ever were, Jennie; and if you weren’t you’re the only woman for me, anyhow. Don’t you think I realize what this exile means to you and that you’re doing it for me?”
“I–I don’t mind it.”
“Yes, you do. To-night we’ll go out and make a night of it, shall we? Supper at the Grand, the theater, and then the Tabarin, eh?”
She loosened herself from his arms.
“What shall I wear? Those horrible things the children bought me–“
“Throw ’em away.”
“They’re not worn at all.”
“Throw them out. Get rid of the things the children got you. Go out to-morrow and buy something you like–not that I don’t like you in anything or without–“
“Frank!”
“Be happy, that’s the thing. It’s the first Christmas without the family, and I miss them too. But we’re together, dear. That’s the big thing. Merry Christmas.”
An auspicious opening, that, to Christmas-Day. And they had carried out the program as outlined. Mrs. Boyer had enjoyed it, albeit a bit horrified at the Christmas gayety at the Tabarin.
The next morning, however, she awakened with a keen reaction. Her head ached. She had a sense of taint over her. She was virtue rampant again, as on the day she had first visited the old lodge in the Siebensternstrasse.
It is hardly astonishing that by association of ideas Harmony came into her mind again, a brand that might even yet be snatched from the burning. She had been a bit hasty before, she admitted to herself. There was a woman doctor named Gates, although her address at the club was given as Pension Schwarz. She determined to do her shopping early and then to visit the house in the Siebensternstrasse. She was not a hard woman, for all her inflexible morality, and more than once she had had an uneasy memory of Harmony’s bewildered, almost stricken face the afternoon of her visit. She had been a watchful mother over a not particularly handsome family of daughters. This lovely young girl needed mothering and she had refused it. She would go back, and if she found she had been wrong and the girl was deserving and honest, she would see what could be done.
The day was wretched. The snow had turned to rain. Mrs. Boyer, shopping, dragged wet skirts and damp feet from store to store. She found nothing that she cared for after all. The garments that looked chic in the windows or on manikins in the shops, were absurd on her. Her insistent bosom bulged, straight lines became curves or tortuous zigzags, plackets gaped, collars choked her or shocked her by their absence. In the mirror of Marie Jedlicka, clad in familiar garments that had accommodated themselves to the idiosyncrasies of her figure, Mrs. Boyer was a plump, rather comely matron. Here before the plate glass of the modiste, under the glare of a hundred lights, side by side with a slim Austrian girl who looked like a willow wand, Mrs. Boyer was grotesque, ridiculous, monstrous. She shuddered. She almost wept.
It was bad preparation for a visit to the Siebensternstrasse. Mrs. Boyer, finding her vanity gone, convinced that she was an absurdity physically, fell back for comfort on her soul. She had been a good wife and mother; she was chaste, righteous. God had been cruel to her in the flesh, but He had given her the spirit.
“Madame wishes not the gown? It is beautiful–see the embroidery! And the neck may be filled with chiffon.”
“Young woman,” she said grimly, “I see the embroidery; and the neck may be filled with chiffon, but not for me! And when you have had five children, you will not buy clothes like that either.”
All the kindliness was gone from the visit to the Siebensternstrasse; only the determination remained. Wounded to the heart of her self-esteem, her pride in tatters, she took her way to the old lodge and climbed the stairs.
She found a condition of mild excitement. Jimmy had slept long after his bath. Harmony practiced, cut up a chicken for broth, aired blankets for the chair into which Peter on his return was to lift the boy.
She was called to inspect the mouse-cage, which, according to Jimmy, had strawberries in it.
“Far back,” he explained. “There in the cotton, Harry.”
But it was not strawberries. Harmony opened the cage and very tenderly took out the cotton nest. Eight tiny pink baby mice, clean washed by the mother, lay curled in a heap.
It was a stupendous moment. The joy of vicarious parentage was Jimmy’s. He named them all immediately and demanded food for them. On Harmony’s delicate explanation that this was unnecessary, life took on a new meaning for Jimmy. He watched the mother lest she slight one. His responsibility weighed on him. Also his inquiring mind was very busy.
“But how did they get there?” he demanded.
“God sent them, just as he sends babies of all sorts.”
“Did he send me?”
“Of course.”
“That’s a good one on you, Harry. My father found me in a hollow tree.”
“But don’t you think God had something to do with it?”
Jimmy pondered this.
“I suppose,” he reflected, “God sent Daddy to find me so that I would be his little boy. You never happened to see any babies when you were out walking, did you, Harry?”
“Not in stumps–but I probably wasn’t looking.”
Jimmy eyed her with sympathy.
“You may some day. Would you like to have one?”
“Very much,” said Harmony, and flushed delightfully.
Jimmy was disposed to press the matter, to urge immediate maternity on her.
“You could lay it here on the bed,” he offered, “and I’d watch it. When they yell you let ’em suck your finger. I knew a woman once that had a baby and she did that. And it could watch Isabella.” Isabella was the mother mouse. “And when I’m better I could take it walking.”
“That,” said Harmony gravely, “is mighty fine of you, Jimmy boy. I–I’ll think about it.” She never denied Jimmy anything, so now she temporized.
“I’ll ask Peter.”
Harmony had a half-hysterical moment; then:
“Wouldn’t it be better,” she asked, “to keep anything of that sort a secret? And to surprise Peter?”
The boy loved a secret. He played with it in lieu of other occupation. His uncertain future was sown thick with secrets that would never flower into reality. Thus Peter had shamelessly promised him a visit to the circus when he was able to go, Harmony not to be told until the tickets were bought. Anna had similarly promised to send him from America a pitcher’s glove and a baseball bat. To this list of futurities he now added Harmony’s baby.
Harmony brought in her violin and played softly to him, not to disturb the sleeping mice. She sang, too, a verse that the Big Soprano had been fond of and that Jimmy loved. Not much of a voice was Harmony’s, but sweet and low and very true, as became her violinist’s ear.
“Ah, well! For us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes,”
she sang, her clear eyes luminous.
“And in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!”
Mrs. Boyer mounted the stairs. She was in a very bad humor. She had snagged her skirt on a nail in the old gate, and although that very morning she had detested the suit, her round of shopping had again endeared it to her. She told the Portier in English what she thought of him, and climbed ponderously, pausing at each landing to examine the damage.
Harmony, having sung Jimmy to sleep, was in the throes of an experiment. She was trying to smoke.
A very human young person was Harmony, apt to be exceedingly wretched if her hat were of last year’s fashion, anxious to be inconspicuous by doing what every one else was doing, conventional as are the very young, fearful of being an exception.
And nearly every one was smoking. Many of the young women whom she met at the master’s house had yellowed fingers and smoked in the anteroom; the Big Soprano had smoked; Anna and Scatchy had smoked; in the coffee-houses milliners’ apprentices produced little silver mouth-pieces to prevent soiling their pretty lips and smoked endlessly. Even Peter had admitted that it was not a vice, but only a comfortable bad habit. And Anna had left a handful of cigarettes.
Harmony was not smoking; she was experimenting. Peter and Anna had smoked together and it had looked comradely. Perhaps, without reasoning it out, Harmony was experimenting toward the end of establishing her relations with Peter still further on friendly and comradely grounds. Two men might smoke together; a man and a woman might smoke together as friends. According to Harmony’s ideas, a girl paring potatoes might inspire sentiment, but smoking a cigarette–never!
She did not like it. She thought, standing before her little mirror, that she looked fast, after all. She tried pursing her lips together, as she had seen Anna do, and blowing out the smoke in a thin line. She smoked very hard, so that she stood in the center of a gray nimbus. She hated it, but she persisted. Perhaps it grew on one; perhaps, also, if she walked about it would choke her less. She practiced holding the thing between her first and second fingers, and found that easier than smoking. Then she went to the salon where there was more air, and tried exhaling through her nose. It made her sneeze.
On the sneeze came Mrs. Boyer’s ring. Harmony thought very fast. It might be the bread or the milk, but again–She flung the cigarette into the stove, shut the door, and answered the bell.
Mrs. Boyer’s greeting was colder than she had intended. It put Harmony on the defensive at once, made her uncomfortable. Like all the innocent falsely accused she looked guiltier than the guiltiest. Under Mrs. Boyer’s searching eyes the enormity of her situation overwhelmed her. And over all, through salon and passage, hung the damning odor of the cigarette. Harmany, leading the way in, was a sheep before her shearer.
“I’m calling on all of you,” said Mrs. Boyer, sniping. “I meant to bring Dr. Boyer’s cards for every one, including Dr. Byrne.”
“I’m sorry. Dr. Byrne is out.”
“And Dr. Gates?”
“She–she is away.”
Mrs. Boyer raised her eyebrows and ostentatiously changed the subject, requesting a needle and thread to draw the rent together. It had been in Harmony’s mind to explain the situation, to show Jimmy to Mrs. Boyer, to throw herself on the older woman’s sympathy, to ask advice. But the visitor’s attitude made this difficult. To add to her discomfort, through the grating in the stove door was coming a thin thread of smoke.
It was, after all, Mrs. Boyer who broached the subject again. She had had a cup of tea, and Harmony, sitting on a stool, had mended the rent so that it could hardly be seen. Mrs. Boyer, softened by the tea and by the proximity of Harmony’s lovely head bent over her task, grew slightly more expansive.
“I ought to tell you something, Miss Wells,” she said. “You remember my other visit?”
“Perfectly.” Harmony bent still lower.
“I did you an injustice at that time. I’ve been sorry ever since. I thought that there was no Dr. Gates. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to deny it. People do things in this wicked city that they wouldn’t do at home. I confess I misjudged Peter Byrne. You can give him my apologies, since he won’t see me.”
“But he isn’t here or of course he’d see you.”
“Then,” demanded Mrs. Boyer grimly, “if Peter Byrne is not here, who has been smoking cigarettes in this room? There is one still burning in that stove!”
Harmony’s hand was forced. She was white as she cut the brown-silk thread and rose to her feet.
“I think,” she said, “that I’d better go back a few weeks, Mrs. Boyer, and tell you a story, if you have time to listen.”
“If it is disagreeable–“
“Not at all. It is about Peter Byrne and myself, and–some others. It is really about Peter. Mrs. Boyer, will you come very quietly across the hall?”
Mrs. Boyer, expecting Heaven knows what, rose with celerity. Harmony led the way to Jimmy’s door and opened it. He was still asleep, a wasted small figure on the narrow bed. Beside him the mice frolicked in their cage, the sentry kept guard over Peter’s shameless letters from the Tyrol, the strawberry babies wriggled in their cotton.
“We are not going to have him very long,” said Harmony softly. “Peter is making him happy for a little while.”
Back in the salon of Maria Theresa she told the whole story. Mrs. Boyer found it very affecting. Harmony sat beside her on a stool and she kept her hand on the girl’s shoulder. When the narrative reached Anna’s going away, however, she took it away. From that point on she sat uncompromisingly rigid and listened.
“Then you mean to say,” she exploded when Harmony had finished, “that you intend to stay on here, just the two of you?”
“And Jimmy.”
“Bah! What has the child to do with it?”
“We will find some one to take Anna’s place.”
“I doubt it. And until you do?”
“There is nothing wicked in what we are doing. Don’t you see, Mrs. Boyer, I can’t leave the boy.”
“Since Peter is so altruistic, let him hire a nurse.”
Bad as things were, Harmony smiled.
“A nurse!” she said. “Why, do you realize that he is keeping three people now on what is starvation for one?”
“Then he’s a fool!” Mrs. Boyer rose in majesty. “I’m not going to leave you here.”
“I’m sorry. You must see–“
“I see nothing but a girl deliberately putting herself in a compromising portion and worse.”
“Mrs. Boyer!”
“Get your things on. I guess Dr. Boyer and I can look after you until we can send you home.”
“I am not going home–yet,” said poor Harmony, biting her lip to steady it.
Back and forth waged the battle, Mrs. Boyer assailing, Harmony offering little defense but standing firm on her refusal to go as long as Peter would let her remain.
“It means so much to me,” she ventured, goaded. “And I earn my lodging and board. I work hard and–I make him comfortable. It costs him very little and I give him something in exchange. All men are not alike. If the sort you have known are–are different–“
This was unfortunate. Mrs. Boyer stiffened. She ceased offensive tactics, and retired grimly into the dignity of her high calling of virtuous wife and mother. She washed her hands of Harmony and Peter. She tied on her veil with shaking hands, and prepared to leave Harmony to her fate.
“Give me your mother’s address,” she demanded.
“Certainly not.”
“You absolutely refuse to save yourself?”
“From what? From Peter? There are many worse people than Peter to save myself from, Mrs. Boyer–uncharitable people, and–and cruel people.”
Mrs. Boyer shrugged her plump shoulders.
“Meaning me!” she retorted. “My dear child, people are always cruel who try to save us from ourselves.”
Unluckily for Harmony, one of Anna’s specious arguments must pop into her head at that instant and demand expression.
“People are living their own lives these days, Mrs. Boyer; old standards have gone. It is what one’s conscience condemns that is wrong, isn’t it? Not merely breaking laws that were made to fit the average, not the exception.”
Anna! Anna!
Mrs. Boyer flung up her hands.
“You are impossible!” she snapped. “After all, I believe it is Peter who needs protection! I shall speak to him.”
She started down the staircase, but turned for a parting volley.
“And just a word of advice: Perhaps the old standards have gone. But if you really expect to find a respectable woman to chaperon YOU, keep your views to yourself.”
Harmony, a bruised and wounded thing, crept into Jimmy’s room and sank on her knees beside the bed. One small hand lay on the coverlet; she dared not touch it for fear of waking him–but she laid her cheek close to it for comfort. When Peter came in, much later, he found the boy wide awake and Harmony asleep, a crumpled heap beside the bed.
“I think she’s been crying,” Jimmy whispered. “She’s been sobbing in her sleep. And strike a match, Peter; there may be more mice.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Mrs. Boyer, bursting with indignation, went to the Doctors’ Club. It was typical of the way things were going with Peter that Dr. Boyer was not there, and that the only woman in the clubrooms should be Dr. Jennings. Young McLean was in the reading room, eating his heart out with jealousy of Peter, vacillating between the desire to see Harmony that night and fear lest Peter forbid him the house permanently if he made the attempt. He had found a picture of the Fraulein Engel, from the opera, in a magazine, and was sitting with it open before him. Very deeply and really in love was McLean that afternoon, and the Fraulein Engel and Harmony were not unlike. The double doors between the reading room and the reception room adjoining were open. McLean, lost in a rosy future in which he and Harmony sat together for indefinite periods, with no Peter to scowl over his books at them, a future in which life was one long piano-violin duo, with the candles in the chandelier going out one by one, leaving them at last alone in scented darkness together–McLean heard nothing until the mention of the Siebensternstrasse roused him.
After that he listened. He heard that Dr. Jennings was contemplating taking Anna’s place at the lodge, and he comprehended after a moment that Anna was already gone. Even then the significance of the situation was a little time in dawning on him. When it did, however, he rose with a stifled oath.
Mrs. Boyer was speaking.
“It is exactly as I tell you,” she was saying. “If Peter Byrne is trying to protect her reputation he is late doing it. Personally I have been there twice. I never saw Anna Gates. And she is registered here at the club as living in the Pension Schwarz. Whatever the facts may be, one thing remains, she is not there now.”
McLean waited to hear no more. He was beside himself with rage. He found a “comfortable” at the curb. The driver was asleep inside the carriage. McLean dragged him out by the shoulder and shouted an address to him. The cab bumped along over the rough streets to an accompaniment of protests from its frantic passenger.
The boy was white-lipped with wrath and fear. Peter’s silence that afternoon as to the state of affairs loomed large and significant. He had thought once or twice that Peter was in love with Harmony; he knew it now in the clearer vision of the moment. He recalled things that maddened him: the dozen intimacies of the little menage, the caress in Peter’s voice when he spoke to the girl, Peter’s steady eyes in the semi-gloom of the salon while Harmony played.
At a corner they must pause for the inevitable regiment. McLean cursed, bending out to see how long the delay would be. Peter had been gone for half an hour, perhaps, but Peter would walk. If he could only see the girl first, talk to her, tell her what she would be doing by remaining–
He was there at last, flinging across the courtyard like a madman. Peter was already there; his footprints were fresh in the slush of the path. The house door was closed but not locked. McLean ran up the stairs. It was barely twilight outside, but the staircase well was dark. At the upper landing he was compelled to fumble for the bell.
Peter admitted him. The corridor was unlighted, but from the salon came a glow of lamplight. McLean, out of breath and furious, faced Peter.
“I want to see Harmony,” he said without preface.
Peter eyed him. He knew what had happened, had expected it when the bell rang, had anticipated it when Harmony told him of Mrs. Boyer’s visit. In the second between the peal of the bell and his