 CHAPTER VIII. So far Harmony's small world in the Old City had consisted of Scacci and the Big Soprano, Peter and Anna Gates, with far off in the firmament the Master. Scacci and the Big Soprano had gone, weeping anxious postcards from every way station it is true, but nevertheless gone. Peter and Anna Gates remained, and the Master as long as her funds held out. To them now she was about to add Jimmy. The bathrobe was finished. Out of the little doctor's chaos of pink flannel Harmony had brought order. The result, masculine and complete even to its tassels and cord of pink yarn, was ready to be presented. It was with mingled emotions that Anna Gates wrapped it up and gave it to Harmony the next morning. He hasn't been so well the last day or two, she said. He doesn't sleep much, that's the worst of those heart conditions. Sometimes while I've been working on this thing, I've wondered, well, we're making a fight anyhow, and better to take the letter too, Harry, I might forget and make lecture notes on it, and if I spoil that envelope. Harmony had arranged to carry the bathrobe to the hospital, meeting the doctor there after her early clinic. She knew Jimmy's little story quite well, and Anna Gates had told it to her in detail. Just one of the tragedies of the world, my dear, she had finished. You think you have a tragedy, but you have youth and hope. I think I have my own little tragedy, because I have to go through the rest of life alone, when taken in time I'd have been a good wife and mother. Still I have my work, but this little chap, brought over here by a father who hoped to see him cured, and spent all he had to bring him here, and then died. It gets me by the throat. And the boy does not know, Harmony had asked, her eyes wide. No, thanks to Peter. He thinks his father is still in the mountains. When we heard about it, Peter went up and saw that he was buried. It took about all the money there was. He wrote home about it, too, to the place they came from. There has never been any reply. And ever since Peter has written these letters, Jimmy lives with them. Peter. It was always Peter. Peter did this. Peter said that. Peter thought thus. A very large part of Harmony's life was Peter in those days. She was thinking of him as she waited at the gate of the hospital for Anna Gates, thinking of his shabby, gray suit and unkept hair, of his letter that she carried to Jimmy Conroy, of his quixotic proposal of the night before, of the proposal, most of all. It was so eminently characteristic of Peter, from the conception of the plan to its execution. Harmony's thought of Peter was very tender that morning as she stood in the arched gateway out of reach of the wind from the Schneeberg. The tenderness and the bright color brought by the wind made her very beautiful. Little Marie, waiting across the Alsastrasse for a bus, and stamping from one foot to the other to keep warm, recognized and admired her. After all, the American women were chic, she decided. Although some of the doctors had wives of a dowryness, himmel. And she could copy the Freiline's hat for two Cronin and a bit of ribbon she possessed. The presentation of the bathrobe was a success. Six nurses and a docent, with a red beard, stood about and watched Jimmy put into it. And the docent, who had been engaged for five years and could not marry because the hospital board forbade it, made a speech for Jimmy in awe-inspiring German, ending up with a poem that was intended to be funny, but that made the nurses cry, from which it will be seen that Jimmy was a great favorite. During the ceremony, for such it was, the Germans loving a ceremony, Jimmy kept his eyes on the letter in Anna Gates's hand and waited. That the letter had come was enough. He lay back in anticipatory joy and let himself be talked over and bathrobed, and his hair parted Austrian fashion and turned up over a finger which is very Austrian indeed. He liked Harmony. The girl caught his eyes on her more than once. He interrupted the speech once to ask her just what part of the robe she had made and whether she had made the tassel. When she admitted the tassel, his admiration became mixed with respect. It was a bright day for a marvel. Sunlight came in through the barred window behind Jimmy's bed and brought into dazzling radiance the pink bathrobe and Harmony's eyes and fat nurse Elizabeth's white apron. It lay on the bedspread in great squares outlined by the shadows of the window-bars. Now and then the sentry, pacing outside, would advance as far as Jimmy's window, and a war-like silhouette of military cap and the upper end of a carbine would appear on the coverlet. These events however were rare, the sentry preferring the shelter of the gateway and the odor of boiling onions from the lodge just inside. The docent retired to his room for the second breakfast. The nurses went about the business of the ward. Dr. Anne Gates drew a hairpin from her hair and made a great show of opening the many times-opened envelope. The letter at last, she said, shall I read it or will you? You read it. It takes me so long. I'll read it all day after you are gone. I always do. Anne Gates read the letter. She read aloud poor Peter's first halting lines when he was struggling against sleep and cold. They were mainly an apology for the delay. Then, forgetting discomfort in the joy of creation, he became more comfortable. The account of the near-accident was wonderfully graphic. The description of the chamois was fervid, if not accurate, but consternation came with the end. The letter apparently finished, there was yet another sheet. The doctor read on. For Heaven's sake, said Peter's frantic post-grip, find out how much a medium-sized chamois, Dr. Gates stopped. Aught to weigh, was the rest of it, and fix it right in the letter. The kids too smart to be fooled and I never saw a chamois outside of a drugstore. They have horns, haven't they? That's funny, said Jimmy Conroy. That was one of my papers slipped in by mistake, remarked Dr. Gates with dignity, and flashing a wild appeal for help to harmony. How did one of your papers get in when it was sealed? I think, observed Harmony, leaning forward, that little boys must not ask too many questions, especially when Christmas is only six weeks off. I know, he wants to send me the horns the way he sent me the boar's tusks. For Peter, having in one letter unwisely recorded the slaughter of a boar, had been obliged to ransack Vienna for a pair of tusks. The tusks had not been so difficult, but horns. Many was contented with his solution and asked no more questions. The morning's excitement had tired him, and he lay back. Dr. Gates went to hold a whispered consultation with the nurse, and came back, looking grave. The boy was asleep, holding the letter in his thin hands. The visit to the hospital was a good thing for Harmony, to find someone worse off than she was, to satisfy that eternal desire of women to do something, however small, for someone else. Her own troubles looked very small to her that day, as she left the hospital and stepped out into the bright sunshine. She passed the impassive sentry, and then turned and went back to him. Do you wish to do a very kind thing? She asked in German. Now, the conversation of an Austrian sentry consists of jä-jä and ne-ne, and not always that, but Harmony was lovely, and the sun was moderating the wind. The sentry looked round, no one was near. What do you wish? Inside that third window is a small boy, and he is very ill. I do not think. Perhaps he will never be well again. Could you not, now and then, pass the window? It pleases him. Pass the window? But why? In America we see few of our soldiers. He likes to see you and the gun. Ah, the gun! He smiled and nodded in comprehension. Then, as an officer appeared in the door of a coffee house across the street, he stiffened into immobility and stared past Harmony into space. But the girl knew he would do as she had desired. That day brought good luck to Harmony. The wife of one of the professors at the hospital desired English conversation at two kronan an hour. Peter brought the news home at noon, and that afternoon Harmony was engaged. It was little enough, but it was something. It did much more than offer her two kronan an hour. It gave her back her self-confidence, although the immediate result was rather tragic. The Frau Professor Bergmeister, infatuated with English and with Harmony, engaged her and took her first two kronan worth that afternoon. It was the day for a music lesson. Harmony arrived five minutes late, panting, hat awry, and so full of the Frau Professor Bergmeister that she could think of nothing else. Obedient to order she had placed the envelope containing her fifty kronan before the secretary as she went in. The master was out of humour. Should he, the teacher of the great cohort, be kept waiting for a chit of a girl, only, of course, he said, Das Kinchen, or some other German equivalent for chit, and then have her come into the sacred presence breathless and salute him between gasps as the Frau Professor Bergmeister? Being excited and now confused by her error and being also rather tremulous with three flights of stairs at top speed, Harmony dropped her bow. In point of geniusness, this classes with dropping one's infant child from an upper window or sitting on the wrong side of the carriage when with a lady. The master, thus thrice outraged, rose slowly and glared at Harmony. Then with a lordly gesture to her to follow, he stalked to the outer room and picking up the envelope with the fifty kronan held it out to her without a word. Harmony's world came crashing about her ears. She stared stupidly at the envelope in her hand, at the master's retreating back. Two girl students waiting their turn, envelopes in hand, giggled together. Harmony saw them and flushed scarlet, but the lady secretary touched her arm. It does not matter, Frau Line. He does so sometimes. Always he is sorry. You will come for your next lesson, not so? And all will be well. You are his well-beloved pupil. Tonight he will not eat for grief that he has hurt you. The ring of sincerity in the shabby secretary's voice was unmistakable. Her tense throat relaxed. She looked across at the two students who had laughed. They were not laughing now. Something of fellowship and understanding passed between them in the glance. After all, it was in the day's work, would come to one of them next, perhaps, and they had much in common. The struggle, their faith, the everlasting loneliness, the little white envelopes each with its fifty cronin. Vaguely comforted but with the light gone out of her day of days, Harmony went down the three long flights and out into the brightness of the winter day. On the ring she had almost ran into Peter, he was striding toward her, giving a definite impression of being bound for some particular destination and of being behind time, that this was not the case was shown by the celerity with which, when he saw Harmony, he turned about and walked with her. I had an hour or two, he explained, and thought I'd walk, but walking is a social habit, like drinking. I hate to walk alone. How about the frail professor? She's taken me on. I'm very happy. But Dr. Byrne, you called me Peter last night. That was different. You had just proposed to me. Oh, if that's all that's necessary, he stopped in the center of the busy ring with every evident intention of proposing again. Please, Peter. Aha, victory. Well, what about the frail professor Bergmeister? She asks so many questions about America, and I cannot answer them. For instance? Well, taxes now. She's very much interested in taxes. Never owned anything taxable except a dog, and that wasn't a tax anyhow, it was a license. Can't you switch her on to medicine or surgery? Were I be of some use? She says tomorrow we'll talk of the tariff and customs duties. Well, I've got something to say on that. He pulled from his overcoat pocket a large-ish bundle. Peter always bulged with packages and held it out for her to see. Tell the frail professor Bergmeister with my compliments, he said, that because some idiot at home sent me five pounds of tobacco, hearing from afar my groans over the tobacco here, I have passed from mere financial stress to destitution. The Austrian customs have taken from me today the equivalent of $10 in duty. I offered them the tobacco on vended knee, but they scorned it. Really, Peter? Really. Under this lightness Harmony sensed the real anxiety. $10 was fifty cronin, and fifty cronin was a great deal of money. She reached over and patted his arm. You'll make it up in some way. Can't you cut off some little extravagance? I might cut down my tailor-bills. He looked down at himself whimsically. Or on ties. I'm positively reckless about ties. They walked on in silence, a detachment of soldiery, busy with that eternal military activity that seems to go nowhere passed on a dog-trot. Peter looked at them critically. Bosnians, he observed, raw, half-fed troops from Bosnia. Nine out of ten of them tubercular. It's a rotten game, this military play of Europe. How's Jimmy? We left him very happy with your letter, Peter flushed. I expect it was pretty poor stuff, he apologized. I've never seen the Alps, except from a train window, and as far as a chemise. He says his father will surely send him the horns. Peter groaned. Of course, he said. Why in heaven's name didn't I make it an eagle? One can always buy a feather or two, but horns. He really liked the letter? He adored it. He went to sleep almost at once with it in his hands. Peter glowed. The small irritation of the custom house forgotten. He talked of Jimmy, of what had been done and might still be done if only there were money. And from Jimmy he talked boy. He had had a boys' club at home during his short experience in general practice. Boys were his hobby. Scum of the earth, most of them, he said, his plain face glowing. Dirty little beggars off the street. At first they stole my tobacco, and one of them pawned a medical book or two. Then they got to playing the game right. By Jove Harmony I wish you could have seen them. Used to line them up and make them spell, and the two best spellers were allowed to fight it out with gloves. My own method. And it worked. Spell. They'd spell their heads off to get a chance at the gloves. Gee, how I hated to give them up. This was a new Peter, a boyish individual Harmony had never met before. For the first time it struck her that Peter was young. He had always seemed rather old, solid and dependable, the fault of his elder brother attitude to her, no doubt. She was suddenly rather shy, a bit aloof. Peter felt the change and thought she was bored. He talked of other things. A surprise was waiting for them in the cold, lower hallway of the pension schvarts. A trunk was there, locked and roped, and on the trunk, in ulster and hat, set Dr. Gates. Olga, looking rather frightened, was coming down with a traveling bag. She put down the bag and scuttled up the staircase like a scared rabbit. The doctor was grim. She eyed Peter in Harmony with an impersonal hostility referable to her humor. I've been waiting for you, too. She flung at them. I've had a terrific row upstairs and I'm going. That woman's a devil. It had been a bad day for Harmony, and this new development, after everything else, assumed the proportions of a crisis. She had clung at first out of sheer loneliness and recently out of affection to the sharp little doctor with her mannish affectations, her soft and womanly heart. Sit down, child. Anne Gates moved over on the trunk. You are fagged out. Peter, will you stop looking murderous and listen to me? How much does it cost the three of us to live in this abode of virtue? It was simple addition. The total was rather appalling. I thought so. Now this is my plan. It may not be conventional, but it will be respectable enough to satisfy anybody. And it will be cheaper, I'm sure of that. We are all going out to the hunting lodge of Maria Teresa. And Harmony shall keep house for us. End of Chapter 8. Chapter 9 of The Street of Seven Stars. It was the middle of November when Anne Gates, sitting on her trunk in the cold entrance hall on the Hirshenghasa, flung the conversational bomb that left empty three rooms in the Pentium Schwarz. Mid-December found Harmony back and fully established in the lodge of Maria Teresa on the street of Seven Stars, back but with a difference. True the Gates still swung back and forth on rusty hinges, obedient to every whim of the December gales, but the casement windows in the salon no longer creaked or admitted drafts, thanks to Peter and a roll of rubber weather casing. The grand piano, which had been scatchy's rented extravagance, had gone never to return, and in its corner stood a battered but still usable upright. Under the great chandelier sat a table with an oil lamp, an evening and morning the white tiled stove gleamed warm with fire. On the table by the lamp were the combined medical books of Peter and Anna Gates, and an ashtray which also they used in common. Shabby still, of course, there almost denuded the salon of Maria Teresa. But at night, with the lamp lighted and the little door of the stove open, and perhaps when the dishes from supper had been washed, with Harmony playing softly, it took resolution on Peter's part to put on his overcoat and face a lecture on the resection of a rib, or a discussion of the function of the pituitary body. The new arrangement had proved itself in more ways than one, not only greater in comfort but in economy. Food was amazingly cheap. Coal, which had cost ninety hellers a bucket at the pensions-schwarz, they bought in quantity and could afford to use lavishly. Oil for the lamp was a trifle. They dined on venison now and then, when the shop across boasted a deer from the mountains. They had other game occasionally, when Peter, carrying home a mysterious package, would make them guess what it might contain. Always on such occasions Harmony guessed rabbits, she knew how to cook rabbits, and some of the other game worried her. For Harmony was the cook. It had taken many arguments and much coaxing to make Peter see it that way. In vain Harmony argued the extravagance of Rosa, now married to the soldier from Salzburg with one lung, or the tendency of the delicatessen seller to weigh short if one did not watch him. Peter was firm. It was Dr. Gates after all who found the solution. Don't be too obstinate, Peter, she admonished him. The child needs occupation. She can't practice all day. You and I can keep up the financial end well enough, reduced as it is. Let her keep house to her heart's content. That can be her contribution to the general fund. And that, eventually, was the way it settled itself. Not without demer from Harmony, who feared her part was too small, and who irritated Anna almost to a frenzy by cleaning the apartment from end to end to make certain of her usefulness. A curious little household surely, one that made the wife of the portier shake her head, and speak much beneath her breath, with the wife of the brushmaker about the Americans having queer ways and not as the Austrians. The short month had seen a change in all of them. Peter showed at least of all, perhaps. Men feel physical discomfort less cleanly than women, and Peter had been only subconsciously wretched. He had gained a pound or two in flesh, perhaps, and he was unmistakably tidier. Anna Gates was growing round and rosy, and Harmony had trimmed her a hat. But the real change was in Harmony herself. The girl had become a woman. Who knows the curious psychology by which such changes come? Not in a month or a year, but in an hour, a breath. One moment Harmony was a shy, tender young creature, with all emotion quivering at a word, aloft at a glance, prone to occasional introspection and mysterious daydreams. The next she was a young woman, tender but not shyly so, incredibly poised, almost formidable dignified on occasion, but with little girlish lapses and defrolic in high spirits. The transition moment with Harmony came about in this wise. They had been settled for three weeks. The odor of stewing cabbages at the Pentium Schwarz had retired into the oblivion of lost sense, to be recalled, along with its accompanying memory of discomfort, with every odor of stewing cabbages for years to come. At the hospital Jimmy had had a bad week again. It had been an anxious time for all of them. In vain the sentry had stopped outside the third window and smiled and nodded through it. In vain, when the street was deserted and there was none to notice, he went through a bit of the manual of arms on the pavement outside, ending by setting his gun down with a marshal and ringing clang. In vain had Peter exhausted himself in literary efforts, climbing unheard-of peaks, taking walking tours through such a Switzerland as never was, shooting animals of various sorts, but all hornless as he carefully emphasized. And now Jimmy was better again. He was propped up in bed, and with the aid of nurse Elizabeth he had cut out a paper sentry and set it in the barred window. The real sentry had been very much astonished. He had almost fallen over backward. On recovering he went entirely through the manual of arms and was almost seen by an Oberst Lieutenant. It was almost exciting. Harmony had been to see Jimmy on the day in question. She had taken him some gelatin, not without apprehension, it being her first essay in jelly, and Jimmy being frank in the candor of childhood. The jelly had been a great success. It was when she was about to go that Jimmy broached a matter very near his heart. The horns haven't come, have they? He asked wistfully. No, not yet. Do you think he got my letter about them? He answered it didn't he? Jimmy drew a long breath. It's very funny. He's mostly so quick. If I had the horns, sister Elizabeth would tie them there at the foot of the bed, and I could pretend I was hunting. Harmony had a great piece of luck that day. As she went home she saw hanging in front of the wild game-shop next to the delicatessen store a fresh deer, and this time it was a stag, like the others it hung head down, and, as it swayed on its hook, its great antlers tapped against the shop door, as if mutely begging admission. She could not buy the antlers. In vain she pleaded, explained, implored. Harmony enlisted the portier and took him across with her. The wild game-seller was obdurate. He would sell the deer entire, or he would mount head and antlers for his wife's cousin in Galicia as a Christmas gift. Harmony went back to the lodge and climbed the stairs. She was profoundly depressed. Even the discovery that Peter had come home early and was building a fire in the kitchen brought only a fleeting smile. Anna was not yet home. Peter built the fire. The winter dusk was falling and Harmony made of movement to light the candles. Peter stopped her. Can't we have the firelight for a little while? You are always beautiful, but you are lovely in the firelight, Harmony. That is because you like me. We always think our friends are beautiful. I am fond of Anna, but I have never thought her beautiful. The kitchen was small. Harmony, rolling up her sleeves by the table, and Peter, before the stove, were very close together. The dusk was fast fading into the darkness. To this tiny room at the back of the old house, few street sounds penetrated. Peter had been very careful. He had cultivated a camaraderie manner with the girl that had kept her entirely at her ease with him. But it had been growing increasingly hard. He was only human after all, and he was very comfortable. Love. Healthy human love. Thickness. And he was very comfortable. Love. Healthy human love. Thickness. And he was very comfortable. Love. Thrive's unphysical ease. Indigestion is a greater foe to it than poverty. Great love songs are written, not by poets starving in hall bedrooms, with insistent hunger gnawing and undermining all that is of the spirit, but by full-fed gentlemen who sing out of an overflowing of content and wide fellowship, and who write, no doubt, just after dinner. Love, being a hunger, does not thrive on hunger. Thus Peter. He had never found women essential, being occupied in the struggle for other essentials. Once or twice he had seen visions, dream dreams, to awaken himself savagely to the fact that not for many years could he afford the luxury of tender eyes looking up into his, of soft arms about his neck. So he had kept away from women with almost ferocious determination. And now. He drew a chair before the stove and sat down. Standing or sitting he was much too large for the kitchen. He sat in the chair, with his hands hanging, fingers interlaced between his knees. The firelight glowed over his strong, rather irregular features. Harmony, knife poised over the evening's potatoes, looked at him. I think you are sad tonight, Peter. Depressed a bit, that's all. It isn't money again. It was generally money with any of the three, and only the week before Peter had found an error in his bank balance which meant that he was a hundred cronin or so poor that he had thought. The discovery had been very upsetting. Not more than usual. Don't mind me. I'll probably end in a roaring bad temper and smash something. My moody spells often break up that way. Harmony put down the paring knife and going over to where he sat rested a hand on his shoulder. Peter drew away from it. I have hurt you in some way? Of course not. Could… could you talk about whatever it is? That helps sometimes. You wouldn't understand. You haven't quarreled with Anna, Harmony asked, real concern in her voice. No, good lord Harmony, don't ask me what's wrong. I don't know myself. He got up almost violently and set the little chair back against the wall. Hurt and astonished Harmony went back to the table. The kitchen was entirely dark, say for the firelight which gleamed on the bare floor and the red legs of the table. She was fumbling with a match and the candle when she realized that Peter was just behind her, very close. Dearest, he said huskily, the next moment he had caught her to him was kissing her lips, her hair. Harmony's heart beat wildly. There was no use struggling against him. The gates of his self-control were down. All his loneliness, his starved senses rushed forth in tarty assertion. After a moment Peter kissed her eyelids very gently and let her go. Harmony was trembling but was shock and alarm only. The storm that had torn him root and branch from his firm ground of self-restraint left her only shaken. He was still very close to her, she could hear him breathing. He did not attempt to speak. With every atom of strength that was left in him he was fighting a mad desire to take her in his arms again and keep her there. That was the moment when Harmony became a woman. She lighted the candle with the match she still held. Then she turned and phased him. That sort of thing is not for you and me, Peter, she said quietly. Why not? There isn't any question about it. He was still reckless, even argumentative. The crying need of her still obsessed him. Why not? Why should I not take you in my arms? If there is a moment of happiness to be had in this grind of work and loneliness, it has not made me happy. Perhaps nothing else she could have said would have been so effectual. Love demands reciprocation. He could read no passion in her voice. He knew then that he had left her unstirred. He dropped his outstretched arms. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do it. I would rather not talk about it, please. The banging of a door far off told them that Anagates had arrived and was taking off her galoshes in the entry. Peter drew a long breath and, after his habit, shook himself. Very well. We'll not talk of it, but for heaven's sake, Harmony, don't avoid me. I'm not a cad. I'll let you alone. There was only time for glance of understanding between them, of promise from Peter, of acceptance from the girl. When Anagates entered the kitchen she found Harmony peeling potatoes, and Peter filling up an already overfed stove. That night, during the darkest hour before the dawn, when the thrifty city fathers of the old town had shut off the street lights because two hours later the sun would rise and furnish light that cost the taxpayers nothing, the Porteer's wife awakened. The room was very silent, too silent. On those rare occasions when the Porteer's wife awakened in the night and heard the twin clocks of the vote of Kierke's strike three and listened, perhaps, while the delicatessen cellar ambled home from the Schubert society, singing dearly as he ambled. She was wont to hear from the bed beside her the rhythmic respiration that told her how safe from Schubert societies and such like evils was her lord. There was no sound at all. The Porteer's wife raised herself on her elbow and reached over, owing to the width of the table that stood between the beds, and, to a sweeping that day which had left the beds far apart, she meant nothing but empty air. Words had small effect on the Porteer, who slept fathoms deep in unconsciousness. Also she did not wish to get up, the floor was cold and a wind blowing. Could she not hear it and the creaking of the deer across the street as it swung on its hook? The wife of the Porteer was a person of resource. She took the iron candlestick from the table and flung it into the darkness at the Porteer's pillow. No startled yell followed. Suspicion thus confirmed the Porteer's wife forgot the cold floor and the wind and barefoot felled her way into the hall. Suspicion was doubly confirmed. The chain was off the door. It even stood open an inch or two. Armed with the second candlestick, she stationed herself inside the door and waited. The stone floor was icy, but the fury of a woman scorned kept her warm. The vote of Kirka struck one, two, three-quarters of an hour. The candlestick in her hand changed from iron to ice, from ice to red-hot fire. Still the Porteer had not come back and the door chain swung in the wind. At four o'clock she retired to the bedroom again. Indignation had changed to fear, coupled with sneezing. Surely even the Schubert Society. What was that? From the Porteer's bed was coming arrhythmic respiration. She roused him, standing over him with the iron candlestick now lighted, and gazing at him with eyes in which alarm struggled with suspicion. Thou has been out of thy bed. But no, an hour since the bed was empty. Thou dreamest. The chain is off the door. Let it remain so and sleep. What have we to steal, or the Americans above? Sleep and keep peace. He yawned and was instantly asleep again. The Porteer's wife crawled into her bed and warmed her aching feet under the crimson feather comfort. But her soul was shaken. The devil had been known to come at night and take innocent ones out to do his evil. The innocent ones knew it not, but it might be told by the soles of their feet which were always soiled. At dawn the Porteer's wife cautiously uncovered the soles of her sleeping lord's feet and fell back gasping. They were quite black as of one who had tramped in garden mold. Early the next morning harmony, after a restless night, opened the door from the salon of Maria Teresa into the hall and set out a pitcher for the milk. On the floor, just outside, lay the antlers from the deer across the street. Tied to them was a bit of paper, and on it was written the one word, still. In looking back after a catastrophe, it is easy to trace the steps by which the inevitable advanced. Destiny marches, not by great leaps, but with a thousand small and painful steps. And here and there it leaves its mark, a footprint on a naked soul. We trace a life by its scars, as a tree by its rings. Anna Gates was not the best possible companion for harmony, and this with every allowance for her real kindness, her genuine affection for the girl. Life had destroyed her illusions, and it was of illusions that Harmony's veil had been woven. To Anna Gates, worn with a thousand sleepless nights, a thousand thankless days, withered before her time with the struggling routine of medical practice, sapped with endless calls for sympathy and aid, existence ceased to be spiritual and became psychological. Life and birth and death had lost their mysteries. The veil was rent. To fit this existence of hers, she had built herself a curious creed, a philosophy of individualism, from behind which she flung strange bomb-shells of theories, shafts of deserted moralities, personal liberties, irresponsibilities, a supreme scorn for modern law and the prophets. Nature, she claimed, was her law and her prophet. In her hard-working, virginal life, her theories had wrought no mischief. Temptation had been lacking to exploit them, and even in the event of the opportunity it was doubtful whether she would have had the strength of her convictions. Men loved theories, but seldom had the courage of them, and Anna Gates was largely masculine. Women, being literal, are apt to absorb dangerous doctrine and put it to the test. When it is false doctrine, they discover it too late. Harmony was now a woman. Anna would have cut off her hands sooner than have brought the girl to harm, but she loved to generalize. It amused her to see Harmony's eyes widen with horror at one of her radical beliefs. Nothing pleased her more than to pit her individualism against the girl's rigid and conventional morality and down her by some apparently unanswerable argument. On the day after the incident in the kitchen such an argument took place, hardly an argument, for Harmony knew nothing of mental fencing. Anna had taken a heavy cold and remained at home. Harmony had been practicing, and at the end she played, a little winter song by some modern composer. It breathed all the purity of a white winter's day. It was as chased as ice and as cold. Yet throughout was the thought of green things hiding beneath the snow and the hope of spring. Harmony, having finished, voiced some such feeling. She was rather ashamed of her thought. It seems that way to me, she finished apologetically. It sounds rather silly. I always think I can tell the sort of person who composes certain things. And this gentleman who writes of winter? I think he is very reserved, and that he has never loved anyone. Indeed. When there is any love in music, any heart, one always feels it, exactly as in books, the difference between a love story and... and... a dictionary. You always laugh, Harmony complained. That's better than weeping. When I think of the rotten way things go in this world, I want to weep always. I don't find it a bad world. Of course there are bad people, but there are good ones. Where? Peter, and you, and I, I suppose? There are plenty of good men. What do you call a good man? Harmony hesitated, then went on bravely. Honourable men. Anna smiled. My dear child, she said, you substitute the code of a gentleman for the Mosaic law. Of course your good man is a monogamous. Harmony nodded. Puzzled eyes on Anna. Then there are no good people in the polygamous countries, I suppose. When there were twelve women to every man, a man took a dozen wives. Today, in our part of the globe, there is one woman and a fifth over for every man. Each man gets one woman, and for every five couples there is a derelict like myself, mate-less. Anna's amazing frankness about herself often confused Harmony. Her resentment at her single condition, because it left her childless, brought forth theories that shocked and alarmed the girl. In the atmosphere in which Harmony had been reared, single women were always presumed to be thus by choice, and to regard with a certain tolerance those weaker sisters who had married. Anna, on the contrary, was frankly a derelict, frankly regretting her vain condition, and railed with bitterness against her enforced childlessness. The near approach of Christmas had for years found her morose and resentful. There are, here and there, such women, essentially mothers but not necessarily wives, their sole passion that of maternity. Anna, argumentative and reckless, talked on. She tore away in her resentment every theory of existence the girl had ever known, and offered her instead an incredible liberty in the name of the freedom of the individual. Harmony found all her foundations of living shaken, and though refusing to accept Anna's theories, found her faith in her own weakened. She sat back, pale and silent, listening, while Anna built up out of her discontent a new heaven and a new earth, with liberty written high in its firmament. When her reckless mood had passed, Anna was regretful enough at the girl's trick and face. I'm a fool, she said contritely. If Peter had been here he'd have throttled me, I deserve it. I'm a theorist, pure and simple, and theorists are the anarchists of society. There's only one comfort about us. We never live up to our convictions. Now forget all this rod I've been talking. Peter brought up the mail that afternoon, a Christmas card or two for Anna, depressingly early, and a letter from the big soprano for Harmony from New York. The big soprano was very glad to be back and spent two pages over her chances for concert work. I could have done as well had I stayed at home. If I had had the money they wanted, to go to Geneva and sing Brunhilda, it would have helped a lot. I could have said I'd sung in opera in Europe, and at least have had a hearing at the Met. But I didn't, and I'm back at the church again and glad to get my old sorry. If it's at all possible, stay until the Master has presented you in a concert. He's quite right, you haven't a chance unless he does. And now I'll quit grumbling. Scacci met her Henry at the dock and looked quite lovely, flushed with excitement in having been up since Don curling her hair. He was rather a disappointment, small and blond, with light blue eyes and almost-apper. But oh, my dear, I wouldn't care how pale a man's eyes were, if he looked at me the way Henry looked at her. They asked me to luncheon with them, but I knew they wanted to be alone together, and so I ate a bite or two, all I could swallow for the lump in my throat, by myself. I was homesick enough in old Veen, but I am just as homesick now that I am here, for we are really homesick only for people, not places, and no one really cared whether I came back or not. Peter had had a miserable day, not with regret for the day before, but with fear. What if Harmony should decide that the situation was unpleasant and decide to leave? What if a reckless impulse, recklessly carried out, were to break up an arrangement that had made a green oasis of happiness and content for all of them in the desert of their common despair? If he had only let her go and apologized, but no, he had had to argue, to justify himself, to make an idiot of himself generally. He almost groaned aloud as he opened the gate and crossed the wintery garden. He'd need not have feared. Harmony had taken him entirely at his word. I am not a beast, I'll let you alone, he had said. She had had a bad night, as nights go. She had gone through the painful introspection which, in a thoroughly good girl, always follows such an outburst as Peter's. Had she said or done anything to make him think? Surely she had not. Had she been wrong about Peter after all? Surely not again. While the porter's wife, waked, as may happen, by an unaccustomed silence, was standing guard in the hall below, iron candlestick in hand. Harmony, having read the litany through, in the not particularly religious hope of getting to sleep, was dreaming placidly. It was Peter who tossed and turned almost all night. Truly there had been little sleep that night in the old hunting lodge of Maria Teresa. Peter, still not quite at ease, that evening kept out of the kitchen while supper was preparing. Anna, radical theories forgotten and wearing a knitted shawl against drafts, was making a salad, and Harmony, all anxiety and flushed with heat, was boiling a steak. Steak was an extravagance, to be cooked with clear hot coals and prayer. Peter, she called, you may set the table, and try to lay the cloth straight. Peter, exiled in the salon, came joyously. Obviously the wretched business of yesterday was forgiven. He came to the door, pipe, in mouth. Suppose I refuse, he questioned. You haven't been very friendly with me today, Harry. I? Don't quarrel, you children, cried Anna, beating eggs vigorously. Harmony is always friendly, too friendly. The porter loves her. I'm sure I said good evening to you. You usually say good evening, Peter. And I did not? You did not. Then, good evening, Peter. Thank you. His steady eyes met hers. In them there was a renewal of his yesterday's promise, a basement regret. Harmony met him with forgiveness and restoration. Sometimes, said Peter humbly. When I am in very great favor, you say, good evening, Peter dear. Good evening, Peter dear. Said Harmony. End of chapter 10 The affairs of young Stewart and Marie Jethica were not moving smoothly. Having rented their apartment to the Boyers, and through Marie's frugality and the extra month's wages at Christmas, which was Marie's annual perquisite, being temporarily in funds the sky seemed clear enough, and Walter Stewart started on his holiday with a comfortable sense of financial security. Mrs. Boyer, shown over the flat by Stewart during Marie's temporary exile in the apartment across the hall, was captivated by the comfort of the little suite and by its order. Her housewife-re-mind, restless with long inactivity in a pension, seized on the bright pans of Marie's kitchen and the promise of the brick and sheet-iron stove. She disapproved of Stewart, having heard strange stories of him, but there was nothing becanal or suspicious about this orderly establishment. Mrs. Boyer was a placid, motherly-looking woman, torn from her church and her car-club, her grown children, her household gods of thirty years' accumulation, that Frank might catch up with his profession. She had explained it rather tremulously at home. Father wants to go, she said. You children are big enough now to be left. He always wanted to do it, but we couldn't go while you were little. But mother, expostulated the oldest girl, when you are so afraid of the ocean and a year. What is to be will be, she had replied. If I'm going to be drowned, I'll be drowned, whether it's in the sea or in a bathtub, and I'll not let Father go alone. Fatalism being their mother's last argument and always final, the children gave up. They let her go. More, they prepared for her so elaborate a wardrobe that the poor soul had had no excuse to purchase anything abroad. She had gone through Paris looking straight ahead, lest her eyes lead her into the temptation of the shops. In Vienna she wore her hometown outfit with determination, vaguely conscious that the women about her had more style, were different. She priced unsuitable garments wistfully and went home to her trunks full of best materials that would never wear out. The children, knowing her, had bought the best. To this couple then, Stuart had rented his apartment. It is hard to say by what psychology he found their respectability so satisfactory. It was as though his own status gained by it. He had much the same feeling about the order and decency with which Marie managed the apartment, as if irregularity were thus regularized. Marie had met him once for a walk along the Graven. She had worn an experimental touch of rouge under a veil, and fine lines were drawn under her blue eyes, darkening them. She had looked very pretty, rather frightened. Stuart had sent her home and had sulked for an entire evening. So a curious thing is the mind masculine, such an order of disorder, so conventional its defiance of convention. Stuart breaking the law and trying to keep the letter. On the day they left for simmering, Marie was up at dawn. There was much to do. The house must be left clean and shining. There must be no feminine gigas to reveal to the Frau Doctor that it was not a purely masculine establishment. At the last moment, so late that it sent her heart into her mouth, she happened on the box of rouge hidden from Stuart's watchful eyes. She gave it to the milk girl. Finally she folded her meager wardrobe and placed it in her Doctor's American trunk, a marvel that trunk, so firm, so heavy, bound with iron, and with her own clothing she packed Stuart's, the dress suit he had worn once to the Embassy, a hat that folded, strange American shoes, and books, always books. The Hair Doctor would be studying at simmering. When all was in readiness and Stuart was taking a final survey, Marie ran downstairs and summoned a cab. It did not occur to her to ask him to do it. Marie's small life was one of service, and besides there was an element in their relationship that no one but Marie suspected, and that she hid even from herself. She was very much in love with this indifferent American, this captious temporary god of her domestic altar. Such a contingency had never occurred to Stuart. But Peter, smoking gravely in the little apartment, had more than once caught a look in Marie's eyes as she turned them to the other man, and had surmised it. It made him uncomfortable. When the train was well under way, however, and he found no disturbing element among the three others in the compartment, Stuart relaxed. Simmering was a favorite resort with the American colony, but not until later in the winter. In December there were rains in the mountains, and low-lying clouds that invested some of the chalets in constant fog. It was not until the middle of January that the little mountain train became crowded with tourists. Nicker-bockered men with knapsacks, and jaunty feathers in their soft hats, boys carrying ski, women with alpine cloaks and iron-pointed sticks. Marie was childishly happy. It was the first real vacation of her life, and more than that she was going to simmering in the very shadow of the Raxalpa, the beloved mountain of the Viennese. Marie had seen the racks all her life, as it towered thirty miles or so away above the plain. On peaceful Sundays, having climbed the Cog Railroad, she had seen its white head turn rosy in the setting sun. And once when a German tourist from Munich had handed her his vial glass, she had even made out some of the crosses that showed where travellers had met their desks. Now she would be very close. If the weather were good she might even say a prayer in the chapel on its crest for the souls of those who had died. It was of a marvel, truly. So far one may go when one has money and leisure. The small, single-trucked railway carriages bumped and rattled up the mountain sides, always rising, always winding. There were moments when the track held the cliffs only by gigantic fingers of steel, while far below were peaceful valleys and pink and blue houses and churches with gilded spires. There were vistas of snow-peak and avalanche shed, and always there were tunnels. Marie, so wise in some things, was a child in others. She slid close to Stuart in the darkness and touched him for comfort. It is so dark, she apologised, and it frightens me, the mountain heart. In your America, have you so great mountains? Stuart patted her hand, a patronising touch that sent her blood racing. Much larger, he said magnificently. I haven't seen a hill in Europe I'd exchange for the Rockies, and when we cross the mountains there we use railway coaches. These toy railroads are a joke. At home we'd use them as streetcars. Really, I should like to see America. So should I. The conversation was taking a dangerous trend. Mention of America was apt to put the hair doctor in a bad humour or to depress him, which was even worse. Marie, her hand still in his arm and not repulsed, became silent. At a small way station the three Germans in the compartment left the train. Stuart, lowering a window, bought from a boy on the platform beer and sausages and a bag of pretzels. As the train resumed its clanking progress, they ate luncheon, drinking the beer from the bottles and slicing the sausage with a pen knife. It was a joyous trip, a red-letter day, and the girls rather sorted, if not uneventful life. The hair doctor was pleased with her. He liked her hat, and when she flushed with pleasure, demanded proof that she was not rouged. Proof was forthcoming. She rubbed her cheeks vigorously with a handkerchief and produced in triumph its unreddened purity. Thou suspicious one, she pouted. I must take off the skin to assure thee. When the hair doctor says no rouge, I use none. You're a good child. He stooped over and kissed one scarlet cheek, and then becoming very comfortable, and the beer having made him drowsy, he put his head in her lap and slept. When he awakened they were still higher. The snow-peak towered above and the valleys were dizzying. Simmering was getting near. They were frequently in darkness, and between the tunnels were long lines of gradient, avalanche sheds. The little passage of the car was full of tourists looking down. We are very close, I am sure, an American girl was just saying outside the doorway. See, isn't that the Curhouse? There, it is lost again. The tourists in the passage were Americans, and the girl who had spoken was young and attractive. Stuart noticed them for the first time, and moved to a more decorous distance from Marie. Marie Jadlika took her cue and lapsed into silence, but her thoughts were busy. Perhaps this girl was going to simmering also, and the hair doctor would meet her. But that was foolish. There were other resorts besides simmering, and in the little villa to which they went there would be no Americans. It was childish to worry about a girl whose back and profile only she had seen. Also profiles were deceptive. There was the matter of the ears. Marie's ears were small and set close to her head. If the American Freiline's ears stuck out, or her face were only short and wide. But no, the American Freiline turned and glanced once swiftly into the compartment. She was quite lovely. Stuart thought so too. He got up with a great show of stretching and yawning and lounged into the passage. He did not speak to the girl. Marie noted that with some comfort. But shortly after she saw him conversing easily with a male member of the party. Her heart sank again. Life was moving very fast for Marie Jadlika that afternoon on the train. Stuart was duly presented to the party of Americans and offered his own cards, bowing from the waist and clicking his heels together, a German custom he had picked up. The girl was impressed. Marie saw that. When they drew into the station at simmering, Stuart helped the American party off first and then came back for Marie. Less keen eyes the little Austrians would have seen his nervous anxiety to escape attention once they were out of the train and moving toward the gate of the station. He stopped to light a cigarette. He put down the hand luggage and picked it up again as though it weighed heavily whereas it was both small and light. He loitered through the gate and paused to exchange a word with the gateman. The result was, of course, that the Americans were in a sleigh and well up the mountain side before Stuart and Marie were seated side by side in a straw-aligned sledge, their luggage about them, a robe over their knees, and a noisy driver high above them on the driving seat. Stuart spoke to her then the first time for half an hour. Marie found some comfort. The villas at simmering were scattered wide over the mountain breast, set in deep clumps of evergreens, hidden from the roads and from each other by trees and shrubbery separated by valleys. One might live in one part of simmering for a month and never suspect the existence of other parts, or wander over steep roads and paths for days and never pass twice over the same one. The hair doctor might not see the American girl again and if he did, did he not see American girls wherever he went? The sleigh climbed on. It seemed they would never stop climbing. Below in the valley, Twilight already rained, a twilight of blue shadows, of cows with bells wandering home over frosty fields, of houses with dark faces that opened an eye of lamplight as one looked. Across the valley and far above, Marie pointed without words. Her small heart was very full. Greater than she had ever dreamed it, steeper, more beautiful, more deadly, and crowned with its sunset hue of rose was the racks. Even Stuart lost his look of irritation as he gazed with her. He reached over and covered both her hands with his large one under the robe. The sleigh climbed steadily. Marie Jadlika, in a sort of ecstasy, leaned back and watched the mountain. Its crown faded from rose to gold, from gold to purple with a thread of black. There was a shadow on the side that looked like a cross. Marie stopped the sleigh at a wayside shrine and getting out knelt to say a prayer for the travelers who had died on the racks. They had taken a room at a small villa where board was cheap and where the guests were usually Germans of the thriftier sort from Bavaria. Both the season and the modest character of the establishment promised them quiet and seclusion. To Marie the house seemed the epitome of elegance, even luxury. It clung to a steep hillside. Their room, on the third floor, looked out from the back of the building over the valley which fell away almost sheer from beneath their windows. A tiny balcony outside, with access to it by a door from the bedroom, looked far down on the tops of tall pines. It made Marie dizzy. She was cheerful again and busy. The American trunk was to be unpacked and the hair doctor's things put away, his shoes in rose as he liked them, and his shaving materials laid out on the wash stand. Then there was a new dress to put on that she might do him credit at supper. Stuart's bed humor had returned. He complained of the room and the draft under the balcony door. The light was wrong for shaving, but the truth came out at last and found Marie not unprepared. The fact is, he said, I'm not going to eat with you tonight, dear. I'm going to the hotel. With the Americans? Yes. I know a chap who went to college with the brother, with the young man you saw. Marie glanced down at her gala toilette. Then she began to slowly take off the dress, reaching behind her for a hook he had just fastened and fighting back tears as she struggled with it. Now, remember, Marie, I will have no sulking. I am not sulking. Why should you change your clothes? Because the dress was for you. If you are not here, I do not wish to wear it. Stuart went out in a bad humor, which left him before he had walked five minutes in the clear mountain air. At the hotel he found the party waiting for him, the women in evening gowns, the girl, whose name was Anita, was bewitching in pale green. That was a memorable night for Walter Stuart, with his own kind once more, a perfect dinner, brisk and clever conversation, enlivened by a bit of sweet champagne, an hour or two on the terrace afterward with the women in furs and stars making a jeweled crown for the racks. He entirely forgot Marie until he returned to the villa and opening the door of the room found her missing. She had not gone far. At the sound of his steps she moved on the balcony and came in slowly. She was pale and pinched with cold, but she was wise with the wisdom of her kind. She smiled. Didst thou have a fine evening? Wonderful. I am sorry if I was unpleasant. I was tired. Now I am rested. Good little Marie. CHAPTER XII The card in the American Doctors' Club brought a response, finally. It was just in time. Harmony's funds were low and the frail Professor Bergmeister had gone to St. Moritz for the winter. She regretted the English lessons, but they were always English at St. Moritz, and it cost nothing to talk with them. Before she left she made Harmony a present. For Christmas, she explained. It was a glass pin tray, decorated beneath with labels from her Professor's cigars, and in the centre a picture of the Emperor. The response came in this wise. Harmony's struggling home against an east wind and holding the pin tray and her violin case opened the old garden gate by the simple expedient of leaning against it. It flew back violently, almost overthrowing a stout woman in process of egress down the walk. The stout woman was Mrs. Boyer, clad as usual in the best broadcloth and wearing her old sable cape, made over according to her oldest daughter's ideas into a staid stole and muff. The muff lay on the path now and Mrs. Boyer was gasping for breath. I'm so sorry, Harmony exclaimed. It was stupid of me, but the wind, is this your muff? Mrs. Boyer took the muff coldly. From its steps she proceeded to extract a handkerchief, and with the handkerchief she brushed down the broadcloth. Harmony stood apologetically by. It is explanatory of Mrs. Boyer's face, attitude and costume, that the girl addressed her in English. I backed in, she explained. So few people come and no Americans. Mrs. Boyer, having finished her brushing and responded to this humble apology in her own tongue, condescended to look at Harmony. It really is no matter, she said, still coolly but with indications of thawing. I'm only glad it did not strike my nose. I daresay it would have, but I was looking up to see if it were going to snow. Here she saw the violin case and became almost affable. There was a card in the doctor's club, and I called. She hesitated. I am Miss Wells. The card is mine. One of the women here has a small boy who wishes to take violin lessons, and I offer it to come. The mother is very busy. I see. Will you come in? I can make you a cup of tea and we can talk about it. Mrs. Boyer was very willing, although she had doubts about the tea. She had had no good teas since she had left England and was inclined to suspect all of it. They went in together. Harmony chatting gaily as she ran ahead, explaining this bit of the old staircase, that walled up door, here an ancient bit of furniture not considered worthy of salvage. They are closed in locked room, home of ghosts and legends. To Harmony this elderly woman, climbing slowly behind her, was a bit of home. There had been many such in her life, women no longer young, friends of her mothers who were friends of hers, women to whom she had been want to pay the courtesy of a potted hyacinth at Easter, or wreath at Christmas, or bit of custard during an illness. She had missed them all cruelly, as she had missed many things, her mother, her church, her small gayities. She had thought at first that Frau Professor Bergmeister might allay her longing for these comfortable, middle-aged, placid-eyed friends of hers. But the Frau Professor Bergmeister had proved to be a frivolous and garrulous old woman, who substituted ease for comfort, and who burned a candle on the name-day of her first husband while her second was safely out of the house. So it was with something of excitement that Harmony led the way up the stairs and into the salon of Maria Teresa. Peter was there. He was sitting with his back to the door, busily engaged in polishing the horns of the deer. Whatever scruples Harmony had had about the horns, Peter had none whatever, saved to get them safely out of the place and to the hospital. So Peter was polishing the horns. Harmony had not expected to find him home, and paused, rather startled. Oh! I didn't know you were home. Peter spoke without turning. Try to bear up under it, he said. I'm home and hungry, sweetheart. Peter, please! Peter turned at that and rose instantly. It was rather dark in the salon, and he did not immediately recognize Mrs. Boyer. But that keen-eyed lady had known him before he turned, had taken in the domesticity of the scene and Peter's part in it, and had drawn the swift conclusion of the pure of heart. I'll come again, she said hurriedly. I—I really must get home. Dr. Boyer will be there and wondering. Mrs. Boyer, Peter knew her. Oh! Dr. Byrne, isn't it? How unexpected to find you here. I live here. So I surmised. Three of us, said Peter. You know Anna Gates, don't you? I'm afraid not. Really, I— Peter was determined to explain. His very eagerness was almost damning. She and Miss Wells are keeping house here, and have kindly taken me in as a border. Please sit down. Harmony found nothing strange in the situation, and was frankly puzzled at Peter. The fact that there was anything unusual in two single women and one unmarried man, unrelated and comparative strangers, setting up housekeeping together had never occurred to her. Many a single woman, whom she knew at home, took a gentleman into the house as a rumour, and thereafter referred to him as he, and spent hours airing the curtains and smoke, and even, as he, became a member of the family, in sewing on his buttons. There was nothing in decorious about such an arrangement, merely a concession to economic pressure. She made tea, taking off her jacket and gloves to do it, but bustling about cheerfully, with her hat rather awry, and her cheeks flushed with excitement and hope. Just now, when the frail professor had gone, the prospect of a music pupil meant everything. An American child, too. Found as Harmony was of children, the sedate and dignified youngsters who walked the parks daily with a governess, or sat with folded hands and fixed eyes through hours of heavy music at the opera, rather daunted her. They were never alone, these Austrian children, always under surveillance, always restrained, always prepared to kiss the hand of whatever relative might be near, and to take themselves off to anywhere, so it were somewhere else. I'm so glad you were going to talk to me about an American child, said Harmony, bringing in the tea. But Mrs. Boyer was not so sure that she was going to talk about the American child. She was not sure of anything, except that the household looked most irregular, and that Peter Byrne was trying to cover a difficult situation with much conversation. He was almost glib, was Peter. The tea was good, that was one thing. She sat back with her muff on her knee, having refused the concession of putting it on a chair as savoring too much of acceptance, if not approval, and sipped her tea out of a spoon as becomes a tea lover. Peter, who loathed tea, lounged about the room, clearly in the way, but fearful to leave Harmony alone with her. She was quite likely, at the first opportunity, to read her a lesson on the conventions, if nothing worse, to upset the delicate balance of the little household he was guarding. So he stayed, praying for Anna to come and bear out his story, while Harmony toyed with her spoon and waited for some mention of the lessons. None came. Mrs. Boyer, having finished her tea, rose and put down her cup. That was very refreshing, she said. Where shall I find the streetcar? I walked out, but it is late. I'll take you to the car, Peter picked up his old hat. Thank you. I am always lost in this wretched town. I give the conductor's double tips to put me down where I want to go, but how can they when it is the wrong car? She bowed to Harmony without shaking hands. Thank you for the tea. It was really good. Where do you get it? There's a tea shop or door to from the Grand Hotel. I must remember that. Thank you again. Goodbye. Not a word about the lessons or the American child. You said something about my card in the doctor's club. Something wistful in the girl's eye, caught and held Mrs. Boyer. After all, she was the mother of daughters. She held out her hand and her voice was not so hard. That will have to wait until another time. I have made a social visit and will not spoil it with business. But I really think the boy's mother must attend to that herself, but I shall tell her where to find you, and here she glanced at Peter, all about it. Thank you, said Harmony gratefully. Peter had no finesse. He escorted Mrs. Boyer across the yard and through the gate with hardly a word. With the gate closed behind them he turned and faced her. You are going away with the wrong impression, Mrs. Boyer. Mrs. Boyer had been thinking hard as she crossed the yard. The result was a resolution to give Peter a piece of her mind. She drew her ample proportions into a dignity that was almost majesty. Yes? I—I can understand why you think as you do. It is quite without foundation. I am glad of that. There was no conviction in her voice. Of course, went on Peter. Humbling himself for Harmony's sake. I suppose it has been rather unconventional, but Dr. Gates is not a young woman by any means, and she takes very good care of Miss Wells. There were reasons why this seemed the best thing to do. Miss Wells was alone and— There is a Dr. Gates? Of course. If you will come back and wait, she'll be along very soon. Mrs. Boyer was convinced and defrauded in one breath. Convinced that there might be a Dr. Gates, but equally convinced that the situation was anomalous and certainly suspicious. Defrauded in 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 streetcar 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 ingest, 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 streetcar, 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 Jadlika's flat, and stalking into Marie Jadlika'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 that 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 Jadlika and placed her hat, coat, and furs on one of the beds, with the crochet 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 Jethika'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 Burns 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 it. Mr. 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 harmonies, 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 Teresa. 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 a skew, and some of the dye from the velvet had stained her cheek. She looked rather hectic, very lovely. Why did she change so much 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'm frightened. I'll take Anna tonight, and we'll go to Boyers. 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 before in his life, 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 was one thing we could do. What, Peter? We could marry. If you cared for me even a little it might not be so bad for you. But I am not in love with you. I care for you, of course, but not in 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 am 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 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. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of The Street of Seven Stars This lipovox recording is in the public domain, recording by Marianne. The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Reinhart, Chapter 13 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 then 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 a 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 Elizabeth, the dozen 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 wheelchair 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. Everyone 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 in 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 wheelchair 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 in his rank before assisting him. A gala day, indeed, if one could forget the grave in the little mountain town with only the name on the cross at its head, and if one did not notice that the boy was thinner than ever, that his hand soon tired of playing and laying his lap, that nurse Elizabeth, who was much injured 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 Elizabeth beckoning him from a door at the end of the ward. Peter left the sentinel on guard and tiptoed down the room. Just outside, round the corner, was the docent'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 docent was waiting for Peter. In the amiable conspiracy which kept the boy happy, he was arch-plotter. His familiarity with Australian 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 traeger 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 bot, 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 docent 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 someday 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 do you say it? Yes. Condolence. Peter opened the letter and read it. Then, without a word, he gave it open to the docent. There was a silence in the laboratory while the docent 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 is not going to see the child if I can help it. She's left because— She's the boy's mother, but that's the best you could say of her. This letter. Boy, you've read it. She is a stranger to him? Absolutely. She will come in the morning, 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 docent twitched, as does the beard of one who plots. Peter re-read the gushing letter in his hand and thought fiercely. She's on her way here, said the docent. That is bad. Paris-Tavine is two days and a night. She may hourly arrive. We might send him away to another hospital. The docent shrugged his shoulders. Had I a home, he said, and glanced through the door to the portal 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 docent. That will give us a few hours. She will go to the police, and tomorrow she will be admitted, in the meantime. In the meantime, 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 rowed that he might read it again on 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 theatres to hear his mother sing. And in the envelope, overlooked before, Peter found a cutting from a French newspaper, a picture of the musical type that made him groan. It was endorsed, Mama. Harmony had had a busy morning. First, she had put the 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 windowsill 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 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 view belongings did not spread to any extent, and years of bachelorhood had taught him the rudiments of order. Harmony took the covers from wash stand and dressing table and washed and ironed them. She cleaned Peter's warm brushes and brought a pin cushion of her own for his one extra scarf pin. 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 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 it myself. She stuffed the letter in her belt and got a plate from the shelf. How pretty you look with your hair 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 pretence 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 Anna had been suspicious of Peter. From her dozen years of advantage and 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 tea-cup, 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 haven't spoken of him? I never do. As a father he hasn't amounted to much, but he's very ill and I have 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-written with remorse and do go, I'll find someone 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's comprehended at once, and not only the situation, but the 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 waves and the strays, 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 labour, 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 votive Kirka 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 to say the next day 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. One looked out over a sea of cloud, pierced here and there by islands that were crags, or by the tops of sunken mess 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 lifted 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. Stuart, 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 Stuart, grown to be part of her, was largely maternal. She held him by mothering him, by keeping him comfortable, not by 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 onto 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 main of the Roxalpa was become a garment, and from behind the villa came the cheerful sounds 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 became sharps to kato. 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 his 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 gaily. 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 Sonvinstein. She would advise against the Sonvinstein for that day. Marie's day of days had become wrong after all. For Stuart rose with the Sonvinstein 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. Stuart 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 Sonvinstein. The climb was easy. The road wound back and forth on itself, so that one ascended with hardly an effort. Stuart 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, gaily talking. Marie and Stuart climbed slowly. Marie's day was spoiled. Stuart 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 plane 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. Stuart 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 the edge of the terrace. We've 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 Stuart 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 Jadlika 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 simmering. Stuart 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. Stuart himself was wretchedly uncomfortable. Marie's tragedy was his predicament. He disliked himself very cordially, loathing himself and his situation with the newborn humility of the lover. For Stuart 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 rocks and in the hotel an orchestra played, while people dined and laughed and loved. She grew obstinate too. When in his desperation Stuart 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 Stuart's apartment. But Stuart had a bad five minutes and took it out, manlike, on the girl. Stuart had another reason for not wishing to leave simmering. Anita was beautiful, a bit of a coquette, too, as our most pretty women, and Stuart 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. Stuart detested him. In his despair Stuart wrote to Peter Byrne. It was characteristic of Peter that, however indifferent people might be in prosperity, they always turned to him in trouble. Stuart'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 those people who go in January, but, confound at Byrne, what am I to do with Marie, and that brings me to what I've been wanting to say all alone 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, I know, 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 Jadleyka'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 Stuart 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. Wrecklessly 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 all 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 a portier's wife as nerves 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, off-scourings of the barracks, derelicts of the slums, with here and there and on a 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 infestivity is very affecting, it smiles through its tears, and in every assemblage there are sharply divided lines of difference. There are those who are going home soon, God willing. There are those who will go home sometime 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 Christmases 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 quarters 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 convalescence. In such a case an imposing audience was the result. In such a room Peter led harmony it was an amphitheater, the seats rising in tears, half-circle above half-circle, to the dusk of the roof. In the pits 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 docent 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, sought through harmony's eyes. Layer after layer of his professional callas 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 Elizabeth for the patients. Then Harmony. Harmony never remembered afterward what she 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 Volksspiel, 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, saw Peter's, and finding them, dwelt their moment. Then she began to play softly, and as softly the other sang. They sang with upturned eyes. 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. 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 battle 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 these 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-seen-out 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 marvellous 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, were fastened threads to the tiny cakes that were for trimming only and sternly forbidden to eat. A marvellous 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 from 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-box 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 probably 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 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, throwing 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 taught 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 pipe-stream. 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 upon 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 away 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 in which constantly slipped off onto the floor. After 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 McClane 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, McClane 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 sketchy left, there has been no one for the piano. I've been lonely sometimes for someone 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 daresay tomorrow, but 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 everyone 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. McClane, 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 he found it in his pocket. Even then he hesitated, lingered, loathed 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 McClane 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 McClane.