 CHAPTER XXII Harmony's only thought had been flight. From Peter, from McClain, from Mrs. Boyer, she had devoted all her energies to losing herself, to cutting the threads that bound her to the life in the Siebensternstrasse. She had drawn all her money, as Peter discovered later. The discovery caused him even more acute anxiety. The city was full of thieves. Poverty, and its companion, crime, lurked on every shadowy staircase of the barrack-like houses, where peered red-eyed from every alleyway. And into this city of contrasts, of gray women in the night hugging gratings for warmth and accosting passers-by with loathsome gestures, of smug civilians hiding zenuous mouths under great mustaches, of dapper soldiers to whom the young girl unattended was a potential prey. Into this night-city of terror, the stay-city of frightful contrasts, ermine rubbing elbows with frost-nipped flesh, destitution sauntering along the fashionable praetor for lack of shelter, gilt wheels of royalty, and yellow wheels of courtesans. Harmony had ventured alone for the second time. And this time there was no Peter Byrne to accost her cheerily in the twilight and win her by sheer friendliness. She was alone. Her funds were lower, much lower, and something else had gone, her faith. Mrs. Boyer had seen to that. In the autumn Harmony had faced the city clear-eyed and unafraid. Now she feared it, met it with averted eyes, alas, understood it. It was not the Harmony who had bade a brave farewell to Scacci and the big Soprano in the station who fled to her refuge on the upper floor of the house in Volbagasa. This was a haunted creature, alternately flushed and pale, who locked her door behind her before she took off her hat and who, having taken off her hat, and surveyed her hiding place with tragic eyes, fell suddenly to trembling, alone there in the gaslight. She had had no plans beyond flight. She had meant, once alone, to think the thing out. But the room was cold, she had had nothing to eat, and the single slovenly maid was a Hungarian and spoke no German. The dressmaker had gone to the Roanacher. Harmony did not know where to find a restaurant, was afraid to trust herself to the streets alone. She went to bed supperless, with a tiny picture of Peter and Jimmy and the wooden sentry under her cheek. The pigeons, cooing on the windowsill, wakened her early. She was confused at first, got up to see if Jimmy had thrown off his blankets, and wakened to full consciousness with the sickening realization that Jimmy was not there. The dressmaker, whose name was Monia Reif, slept late after her evening out. Harmony, collapsing with hunger and fatenance, waited as long as she could. Then she put on her things desperately and ventured out. Surely at this hour Peter would not be searching, and even if he were he would never think of the sixteenth district. He would make inquiries, of course, the pension schvarts, boyers, the masters. The breakfast brought back her strength and the morning air gave her confidence. The district, too, was less formidable than the neighborhood of the Kirchnerstrasse and the Graben. The shops were smaller, the windows exhibited cheaper goods. There was a sort of family atmosphere about many of them, the head of the establishment in the doorway, the wife of the cashier's desk, daughters, cousins, nieces, behind the wooden counters. The shopkeepers were approachable, instead of familiar. Harmony met no rebuffs, was respectfully greeted and cheerfully listened to. In many cases the application ended in a general consultation, shopkeeper, wife, daughters, nieces, slim kerks with tiny mustaches. She got to dresses, followed them up, more consultations, more dresses, but no work. The reason dawned on her after a day of tramping during which she kept carefully away from that part of the city where Peter might be searching for her. The fact was, of course, that her knowledge of English was her sole asset as a clerk, and there were few English and no tourists in the sixteenth district. She was marketing a commodity for which there was no demand. She lunched at the Conditauré, more to rest her tired body than because she needed food. The afternoon was as the morning, at six o'clock, long after the midwinter darkness had fallen, she stumbled back to the volvaigasse and up the whitewashed staircase. She had a shock at the second landing. A man had stepped into the angle to let her pass. A gas jet flared over his head and she recognized the short heavy figure and ardent eyes of Kjorgav. She had her veil down luckily, and he gave no sign of recognition. She passed on, and she heard him a second later descending. But there had been something reminiscent after all in her figure and carriage. The little Kjorgav paused, halfway down, and thought a moment. It was impossible, of course. All women reminded him of the American. Had he not, only the day before, followed for two city blocks a woman old enough to be his mother merely because she carried a violin case. But there was something about the girl that he had just passed. Bah! A bad week for Harmony followed, a week of weary days and restless nights when she slept only to dream of Peter, of his hurt and incredulous eyes when he found she had gone, of Jimmy, that he needed her, was worse, was dying. More than once she heard him sobbing and wakened to the cooing of the pigeons on the windowsill. She grew thin and sunken eyed, took to dividing her small hoard, half of it with her, half under the carpet, so that in case of accident all would not be gone. This, as it happened, was serious. One day, the sixth, she came back wet to the skin from an all-day rain to find that the carpet-bank had been looted. There was no clue. The stolid Hungarian, startled out of her lethargy, protested innocence. The little dressmaker, who seemed honest and friendly, wept in sheer sympathy. The fact remained, half the small hoard was gone. Two days more, a Sunday and a Monday. On Sunday Harmony played, and Gjorgav, in the room below, translating into Seifer, a recent conference between the Austrian Minister of War and the German Ambassador, put aside his work and listened. She played, as once before she had played when life seemed sad and tragic, the Humoresque. Gjorgav, hands behind his head and eyes upturned, was back in the Pentium Schwarz that night months ago when Harmony played the Humoresque, and Peter stooped outside her door. The little Bulgarian sighed and dreamed. Harmony, a little sadder, a little more forlorn each day, pursued her hopeless quest. She ventured into the heart of the Stott and paid a part of her remaining money to an employment bureau to teach English or violin, whichever offered, or even both. After she had paid, they told her it would be difficult, almost impossible, without references. She had another narrow escape as she was leaving. She almost collided with Olga, the chambermaid, who, having clashed for the last time with Katrina, was seeking new employment. On another occasion she saw Marie in the crowd and was obsessed with a longing to call to her, to ask for Peter, for Jimmy. That meeting took the heart out of the girl. Marie was white and weary. Perhaps the boy was worse. Perhaps Peter. Her heart contracted. But that was absurd, of course. Peter was always well and strong. Two things occurred that week. One unexpected, the other inevitable. The unexpected occurrence was that Moni arrive, finding Harmony pressed for work, offered the girl a situation. The wage was small, but she could live on it. The inevitable was that she met Giorgev on the stairs without her veil. It was the first day in the workroom. The apprentices were carrying home boxes for a ball that night. Thread was needed and quickly. Harmony, who did odds and ends of sewing, was most easily spared. She slipped on her jacket and had to ran down to the shop nearby. It was on the return that she met Giorgev coming down. The afternoon was dark and the staircase unlighted. In the gloom one face was as another, Giorgev, listening intently, hearing footsteps, drew back into the embouchure of the window and waited. His swarthy face was tense, expectant. As the steps drew near, relied feminine instead of stealthy. The little spy relaxed somewhat, but still he waited, crouched. It was a second before he recognized Harmony. Another instant before he realized his good fortune. She had almost passed. He put out an unsteady hand. Froline. Here, Giorgev. The little Bulgarian was profoundly stirred. His fervent eyes gleamed. He struggled against the barrier of language, broke out in passionate Bulgar, switched to German pronounced with an English word here and there. Made intelligible, it was that he had found her at last. Harmony held her spools of thread and waited for the storm of languages to subside. Then. But you are not to say you have seen me, Hergiorgev. No. Harmony colored. I am. I am hiding, she explained. Something very uncomfortable happened and I came here. Please don't say you have seen me. Giorgev was puzzled at first. She had to explain very slowly, with his ardent eyes on her. But he understood at last and agreed, of course. His incredulity was turning to certainty. Harmony had actually been in the same building with him while he sought her everywhere else. Then, he said at last, it was you who played Sunday? I, surely. She made a move to pass him, but he held out an imploring hand. Fraulein, may I see you sometimes? We shall meet again, of course. Fraulein, with all respect. Sometime perhaps you will walk out with me. I am very busy all day. At night, then, for the exercise, I, with all respect. Fraulein? Harmony was touched. Sometime, she consented. And then, impulsively. I am very lonely, Herr Giorgev. She held out her hand and the little Bulgarian bent over it and kissed it reverently. The Herr Giorgev's father was a nobleman in his own country, and all the little spies' training had been to make of a girl in Harmony's situation lawful prey. But in the spies' glowing heart there was nothing for Harmony to fear. She knew it. He stood, had in hand, while she went up the staircase. Then, Fraulein, anxiously. Yes. Was there below at the entrance a tall man in a green velour's hat? I saw no one there. I thank you, Fraulein. He watched her slender figure ascend, lose itself in the shadows, listened until she reached the upper floors. Then with a sigh he clapped his hat on his head and made his cautious way down to the street. There was no man in a green velour's hat below, but the little spy had an uneasy feeling that eyes watched him, nevertheless. Life was growing complicated for the Herr Giorgev. Life was pressing very close to Harmony also in those days, a life she had never touched before. She discovered, after a day or two in the workroom, that Moni arrives at business they almost all together in the Demimonda. The sewing girls, of Marie's type many of them, found in the customer's endless topics of conversation. Some things Harmony was spared, much of the talk being in dialect, but a great deal of it she understood and she learned much that was not spoken. They talked freely of the women, their clothes, and they talked a great deal about a newcomer, an American dancer, for whom Monia was making an elaborate outfit. The American's name was Liliane Lagrand. She was dancing at one of the Variety theatres. Harmony was working on a costume for the Lagrand woman, a gold brocade slashed to the knee at one side and with a fragment of bodice made of guilt tissue. One day after her encounter with Giorgev she met her. There was a dispute over the gown, something about the draping. Monia, flushed with irritation, came to the workroom door and glanced over the girls. She singled out Harmony finally and called her. Come and put on the American's gown, she ordered. She wishes—heaven knows what she wishes. Harmony went unwillingly. Nothing she had heard of the Frawline Lagrand had prepossessed her. Her uneasiness was increased when she found herself obliged to shed her gown and to stand for one terrible moment before the little dress-makers amused eyes. Thou art very lovely, very chic, said Monia. The dress added to, rather than relieved, Harmony's discomforture. She donned it in one of the fitting rooms, made by the simple expedient of curting off a corner of the large reception room. The slashed skirt embarrassed her. The low cut made her shrink. Monia was frankly entranced. Above the gold tissue of the bodice rose Harmony's exquisite shoulders. Her hair was gold, even her eyes looked golden. The dressmaker, who worshipped beauty, gave a pull here, a pat there, if only all women were so beautiful in the things she made. She had an eye for the theatrical also. She posed Harmony behind the curtain, arranged lights, drew down the chiffon so that a bit more of the girl's round bosom was revealed. Then she drew the curtain aside and stood smiling. Legrand paid the picture, the tribute, of a second silence. Then, exquisite, she said in English, then in halting German. Do not change a line. It is perfect. Harmony must walk in the gown. Turn, sit. Once she caught a glimpse of herself and was startled. She had been wearing black for so long, and now this radiant golden creature was herself. She was enchanted and abashed. The slash in the skirt troubled her. Her slender leg had a way of revealing itself. The ordeal was over at last. The dancer was pleased. She ordered another gown. Harmony, behind the curtain, slipped out of the dress and into her own shabby frock. On the other side of the curtain the dancer was talking. Her voice was loud but rather agreeable. She smoked a cigarette. Scraps of chatter came to Harmony and, once, a laugh. That is too pink, something more delicate. Here is a shade. Hold it to your cheek. I'm a bad colour. I did not sleep last night. Still no news, froline. None. He has disappeared utterly. That isn't so bad, is it? I could use more rouge. It's not being much worn. It is strange, is it not, that a child could be stolen from the hospital and leave no sign? The dancer laughed, a mirthless laugh. Her voice changed, became nasal, full of venom. Oh, they know well enough, she snapped. Those nurses know, and there's a pig of a red-bearded doctor, and like to poison him, separating mother and child. I'm going to find him, if only to show them they are not so smart after all. In her anger she elapsed into English. Harmony, behind the curtain, had clutched at her heart. Jimmy's mother. 23 Jimmy was not so well, although Harmony's flight had had nothing to do with the relapse. He had found Marie a slavishly devoted substitute, and besides Peter had indicated that Harmony's absence was purely temporary. But the breaking up was inevitable. All day long the child lay in the white bed, apathetic but sleepless. In vain Marie made flower fairies for his pillow. In vain the little mice, now quite tame, played hide and seek over the bed. In vain Peter paused long enough in his frantic search for Harmony to buy coloured postcards and bring them to him. He was contented enough, he did not suffer at all, and he had no apprehension of what was coming. He asked for nothing, tried obediently to eat, liked to have Marie in the room, but he did not beg to be taken into the salon, as he once had done. There was a sort of mental confusion also. He liked Marie to read his father's letters, but as he grew weaker the occasional confusing of Peter with his dead father became a fixed idea. Peter was Daddy. Peter took care of him at night. He had moved into Harmony's adjacent room and dressed there, but he had never slept in the bed. At night he put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn slippers and lay on a hair-cloth sofa at the foot of Jimmy's bed, lay but hardly slept. So afraid was he that the slender thread of life might snap when it was drawn out to its slenderest during the darkest hours before the dawn. More than once in every night Peter rose and stood, hardly breathing, with a tiny lamp in his hand watching for the rise and fall of the boy's thin little chest. Peter grew old these days. He turned gray over the ears and developed lines about his mouth that never left him again. He felt gray and old and sometimes bitter and hard also. The boy's condition could not be helped. It was inevitable, hopeless. But the thing that was eating his heart out had been unnecessary and cruel. Where was Harmony? When it stormed, as it did almost steadily, he wondered how she was sheltered. When the occasional sun shone he hoped it was bringing her a bit of cheer. Now and then, in the night, when the lamp burned low and the gusts of wind shook the old house, fearful thoughts came to him, the canal with its filthy depths. Daylight brought reason, however. Harmony had been too rational, too sane for such an end. McClain was Peter's great support in those terrible days. He was young and hopeful. Also he had money. Peter could not afford to grease the machinery of the police service. McClain could and did. In Berlin Harmony could not have remained hidden for two days. In Vienna, however, it was different. Returns were made to the department but irregularly. An American music student was missing. There were thousands of American music students in the city. One fell over them in the coffee houses. McClain offered a reward and followed up innumerable music students. The alternating hope and despair was most trying. Peter became old and haggard. The boy grew thin and white. But there was this difference, that with Peter the strain was cumulative, hour on hour, day on day. With McClain each night found him worn and exhausted, but each following morning he went to work with renewed strength and energy. Perhaps, after all, the iron had not struck so deep into his soul. With Peter it was a life and death matter. Clinics and lectures had begun again, but he had no heart for work. The little household went on methodically. Marie remained. There had seemed nothing else to do. She cooked Peter's food, what little he would eat. She nursed Jimmy while Peter was out on the long search, and she kept the apartment neat. She was never intrusive, never talkative. Indeed she seemed to have lapsed into definite silence. She deferred absolutely to Peter, adored him, indeed, from afar. She never ate with him in spite of his protests. The little apartment was very quiet, where formerly had been music and harmony soft laughter, where Anna Gates had been wont to argue with Peter in loud, incisive tones, where even the prisms of the chandelier had once vibrated in response to Harmony's violin. Almost absolute silence now reigned. Even the gate, having been repaired, no longer creaked, and the loud altercations between the portier and his wife had been silenced out of deference to the sick child. On the day that Harmony, in the gold dress, had discovered Jimmy's mother in the American dancer, Peter had had an unusually bad day. McClain had sent him a note by messenger earlier in the morning to the effect that a young girl, answering Harmony's description, had been seen in the park at Shonebrunn, and traced to an apartment nearby. Harmony had liked Shonebrunn, and it seemed possible. They had gone out together, McClain optimistic, Peter afraid to hope, and it had been as he feared. A pretty little viola student, indeed, who had been washing her hair, and only opened the door an inch or two. McClain made a lame apology, Peter too sick with disappointment to speak. Then back to the city again. He had taken to be making a daily round to the masters, to the frau Professor Bergmeisters, along the Graben and the Kartnerstrasse, ending up at the doctor's club in the faint hope of a letter. Wrath still smoldered deep in Peter. He would not enter a room at the club if Mrs. Boyer sat within. He had had a long hour with Dr. Jennings, and left that cheerful person writhing in a basement. And he had held a stormy interview with the frau Schwarz, which left her humble for a week and exceedingly nervous, being of the impression from Peter's manner that in the event of harmony not turning up an American gumboat would sail right up the arm of the Danube, and bombard the pensions Schwarz. Schoenbrunn, having failed them, McClain and Peter went back to the city in the streetcar, neither one saying much. Even McClain's elasticity was deserting him. His eyes, from much peering into crowds, had taken on a strained, concentrated look. Peter was shabbier than ever beside the other man's ultra-fashionable dress. He sat, bent forward, his long arms dangling between his knees, his head down. Their common trouble had drawn the two together, or had drawn McClain close to Peter, as if he recognized that there were degrees in grief and that Peter had received almost a death wound. His old rage at Peter had died. Harmony's flight had proved the situation as no amount of protestation would have done. The thing now was to find the girl, then he and Peter would start even, and the battle to the best man. They had the car almost to themselves. Peter had not spoken since he sat down. McClain was busy over a notebook in which he jotted down from day to day such details of their search as might be worth keeping. Now and then he glanced at Peter as if he wished to say something, hesitated, fell to work again over the notebook. Finally he ventured. How's the boy? Not so well today. I'm having a couple of men in to see him tonight. He didn't sleep. Do you sleep? Not much. He's on my mind, of course. That and other things, Peter. Don't you think, wouldn't it be better to have a nurse? You can't go on like this all day and be up all night, you know, and Marie has him most of the day. McClain, of course, had known Marie before. The boy ought to have a nurse, I think. He doesn't move without my hearing him. That's an argument for me. Do you want to get sick? Peter turned a white face toward McClain, a face in which exasperation struggled with fatigue. Good Lord, boy, he rasped. Don't you suppose I'd have a nurse if I could afford it? Would you like me to help? I'd like to do something. I'm a useless cub in a sick room, but I could do that. Who's the woman he liked in the hospital? Nurse Elizabeth. I don't know, Mac. There's no reason why I shouldn't let you help, I suppose. It hurts, of course, but if he would be happier. Then it's settled, then, said McClain. Nurse Elizabeth, if she can come, and—look, here, old man, I've been trying to say this for a week and haven't had the nerve. Let me help you out for a while. You can send it back when you get it any time, a year or ten years. I'll not miss it. But Peter refused. He tempered the refusal in his kindly way. I can't take anything now, he said. But I'll remember it, and if things get very bad, I'll come to you. It isn't costing much to live. Maria's a good manager, almost as good as— Harmony was. This with difficulty. He found it always hard to speak of Harmony. His throat seemed to close on the name. That was the best McClain could do, but he made a mental reservation to see Marie that night and slip her a little money. Peter'd need never know, would never notice. At a cross-street the car stopped and the little Bulgarian, Gjorgav, got on. He inspected the car carefully before he came in from the platform, and sat down unobtrusively in a corner. Things were not going well with him, either. His small black eyes darted from face to face suspiciously until they came to arrest on Peter. It was Gjorgav's business to read men. Quickly he put together the bits he had gathered from Harmony on the staircase. Added to them Peter's despondent attitude, his strained face, the abstraction which required a touch on the arm from his companion when they reached their destination. Recall Peter outside the door of Harmony's room in the pensions' farts, and built him a little story that was not far from the truth. Peter left the car without seeing him. It was the hour of the promenade when the ring and the larger business streets were full of people, when demals was thronged with pretty women eating American ices, with military men drinking tea and nibbling Austrian pastry, and the hour when the flower women, along the Stevens plots, did a rousing business in roses, when sterile women burned candles before the Madonna in the cathedral, when the lottery did the record business of the day. It was Peter's forlorn hope that somewhere among the crowd he might happen on Harmony. For some reason he thought of her always as in a crowd, with people close, touching her, men staring at her, following her. He had spent a frightful night in the opera, scanning seat after seat, not so much because he hoped to find her as because in action was intolerable. And so, on that afternoon he made his slow progress along the Kartnerstrasse, halting now and then to scrutinize the crowd. He even peered through the doors of shops here and there, hoping while he feared that the girl might be seeking employment within, as she had before in the early days of the winter. Because of his stature and powerful physique, and perhaps too because of the wretchedness in his eyes, people noticed him. There was one place where Peter lingered, where a new building was being erected, and where because of the narrowness of the passage, the dense crowd was thinned as it passed. He stood by choice outside a hairdresser's window, where brilliant light shone on each face that passed. Inside the clerks had noticed him, two of them standing together by the desk, a spoke of him. Here he is there again, the gray man. Ah, so, but yes, there is his back. Poor one, it is the frail line angle he waits to see, perhaps. More likely the La Grande, the American, he is American. He is Russian, look at his size. But his shoes, triumphantly, they are American, little one. The third girl had not spoken, she was wrapping in tissue a great golden rose made for the hair. She placed it in a box carefully. I think he is of the police, she said, or a spy, there is much talk of war. Foolishness, does a police officer sigh always, or a spy have such sadness in his face? And he grows thin and white. The rose frail line. The clerk who had wrapped up the flower held it out to the customer. The customer, however, was not looking. She was gazing with strange intentness at the back of a worn gray overcoat. Then, with a curious clutch at her heart, she went white. Harmony, of course. Harmony come to fetch the golden rose that was to complete La Grande's costume. She recovered almost at once and made an excuse to leave by another exit. She took a final look at the gray sleeve that was all she could see of Peter, who had shifted a bit, and stumbled out into the crowd. Walking along with her lip trembling under her veil, and with the slow and steady ache at her heart, that she had thought she had stilled for good. It had never occurred to Harmony that Peter loved her. He had proposed to her twice, but that had been in each case to solve a difficulty for her. And once he had taken her in his arms. But that was different. Even then he had not said he loved her, had not even known it, to be exact. Nor had Harmony realized what Peter meant to her until she had put him out of her life. The sight of the familiar gray coat, the scrap of conversation, so enlightening as to pour Peter's quest, that Peter was growing thin and white, made her almost real. She had been too occupied with her own position to realize Peter's. With the glimpse of him came a great longing for the house on the Siebensternstrasse, for Jimmy's arms about her neck, for the salon with the lamp lighted and the sleep beating harmlessly against the casement windows, for the little kitchen with the brick stove, for Peter. Doubts of the wisdom of her course assailed her. But to go back meant, at the best, adding to Peter's burden of Jimmy and Marie, meant the old situation again too, for Marie most certainly did not add to the respectability of the establishment. And other Doubts assailed her. What if Jimmy were not so well, should die, as was possible, and she had not let his mother see him? Monia Reif was very busy that day. Harmony did not leave the workroom until eight o'clock. During all that time, while her slim fingers worked over fragile laces and soft chiffons, she was seeing Jimmy as she had seen him last, with the flower fairies on his pillow and Peter keeping watch over the crowd in the Kartnerstrasse, looking with his steady eyes for her. No part of the city was safe for a young girl after night, she knew. The sixteenth district was no better than the rest, rather worse in places. But the longing to see the house on the Siebensternstrasse grew on her, became from an ache to a sharp and insistent pain. She must go, must see once again the comfortable glow of Peter's lamp, the flicker that was the fire. She ate no supper, she was too tired to eat, and there was the pain. She put on her wraps and crept down the whitewashed staircase. The paved courtyard below was to be crossed, and it was poorly lighted. She achieved the street, however, without molestation. To the streetcar was only a block, but during that block she was accosted twice. She was white and frightened when she reached the car. The Siebensternstrasse at last. The street was always dark, the delicatessen shop was closed, but in the wild game store next a light was burning low, and a flame flickered before the little shrine over the money drawer. The game cellar was a religious man. The old stucco house dominated the neighbourhood. From the time she left the car Harmony saw it, its long, flat rough, black against the dark sky, its rows of unlighted windows, its long wall broken in the centre by the gate. Now from across the street its whole façade lay before her. Peter's lamp was not lighted, but there was a glow of soft firelight from the salon windows. The light was not regular. It disappeared at regular intervals, was blotted out. Harmony knew what that meant. Someone beyond range of where she stood was pasting the floor, back and forward, back and forward. When he was worried or anxious Peter always pasted the floor. She did not know how long she stood there. One of the soft rains was falling, or more accurately, condensing. The saturated air was hardly cold. She stood on the pavement unmolested, while the glow died lower and lower, until at last it was impossible to trace the pacing figure. No one came to any of the windows. The little lamp before the shrine in the wild game shop burned itself out. The portier across the way came to the door, glanced up at the sky, and went in. Harmony heard the rattle of the chain as it was stretched across the door inside. Not all of the windows of the suite opened on the street. Jimmy's windows, and Peter's, opened toward the back of the house, where in a brick paved courtyard the wife of the portier hung her washing, and where the portier himself kept a hutch of rabbits. A wild and reckless desire to see at least the light from the child's room possessed Harmony. Even the light would be something. To go like this, to carry with her only memory of a dark, looming house without cheer, was unthinkable. The gate was never locked, but if she went into the garden and round by the spruce tree to the back of the house, it would be something. She knew the garden quite well. Even the darkness had no horror for her. Little Scatchy had had the habit of leaving various articles on her windowsill, and of instigating searches for them at untimely hours of night. Once they had found her hairbrush in the rabbit-hutch. So Harmony, ashamed but unalarmed, made her way by the big spruce to the corner of the old lodge and thus to the courtyard. Ah, this was better. Lights all along the apartment floor and moving shadows. On Jimmy's windowsill, a jar of milk, and voices, someone was singing. Peter was singing, droning softly as one who puts a drowsy child to sleep. Slower and slower, softer and softer. Over and over, the little song Harmony had been want to sing. Ah, well, for us all some sweet hope lies, deeply buried from human eyes. And in the, hereafter, angels may roll the stone from its grave away. Slower and slower, softer and softer, until it died away altogether. Peter, in his old dressing gown, came to the window and turned down the gaslight beside it to a blue point. Harmony did not breathe for a minute, two minutes. He stood there looking out. Far off the twin clocks of the votive kirkus struck the hour. All about lay the lights of the old city. So very old. So wise. So cunning. So cold. Peter stood looking out as he had each night since Harmony went away. Each night he sang the boy to sleep, turned down the light, and stood by the window. And each night he whispered to the city that sheltered Harmony somewhere, what he had whispered to the little sweater coat the night before he went away. Good night, dear. Good night, Harmony. The rabbit stirred uneasily in the hutch. A passing gust shook the great tree overhead and sent down a sharp shower onto the bricks below. Peter struck a match and lit his pipe. The flickering light illuminated his face, his rough hair, his steady eyes. Good night, Peter, whispered Harmony. Good night, dear. End of Chapter 23 Chapter 24 of The Street of Seven Stars. This Libervox recording is in the public domain, recording by Mary Ann. The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts-Reinhardt. Chapter 24 Walter Steward had made an uncomplicated recovery, helped along by relief at the turn events had taken. In a few days he was going about again, weak, naturally, rather handsomer than before because a little less florid. But the week's confinement had given him an opportunity to think over many things. Peter had set him thinking, on the day when he had packed up the last of Marie's small belongings and sent them down to Vienna. Steward, lying in bed, had watched him. Just how much talk do you suppose this has made, Byrne? He asked. Haven't an idea. Some probably. The people in the Russian villa saw it, you know. Steward's brows contracted. Damned nation! Then the hotel has it, of course. Probably. Steward groaned. Peter closed Marie's American trunk, of which she had been so proud, and coming over looked down at the injured man. Don't you think you'd better tell the girl all about it? No, doggedly. I know, of course, it wouldn't be easy. But you can't get away with it, Steward. That's one way of looking at it. There's another. What's that? Starting with a clean slate. If she's the sort you want to marry, and not a prude, she'll understand. Not at first, but after she gets used to it. She wouldn't understand in a thousand years. Then you'd better not marry her. You know, Steward, I have an idea that women imagine a good many pretty rotten things about us anyhow. A sensible girl would rather know the truth and be done with it. What a man has done with his life before a girl, the right girl, comes into it, isn't a personal injury to her, since she wasn't a part of his life then. You know what I mean. But she has a right to know it before she chooses. How many would choose under those circumstances, he jibed. Peter smiled. Quite a few, he said cheerfully. It's a wrong system, of course, but we can get a little truth out of it. You can't get away with it, stuck in Steward's mind for several days. It was the one thing Peter said that did stick, and before Steward had recovered enough to be up and about he had made up his mind to Talanita. In his mind he had made quite a case for himself. He argued the affair against his conscience and came out victorious. Anita's party had broken up. The winter sports did not compare, they complained, with St. Moritz. They disliked German cooking. Into the bargain the weather was not good. The night snows turned soft by midday, and the crowds that began to throng the hotels were solid citizens, not the fashionables of the Riviera. Anita's arm forbade her travelling. In the reassembling of the party she went to the curhouse in the valley below the pension, with one of the women who wished to take the baths. It was to the curhouse then that Steward made his first excursion after the accident. He went to dinner. Part of the chaperone's treatment called for an early retiring hour, which was highly as he had wished it and rather unnerving after all. A man may decide that a dose of poison is the remedy for all his troubles, but he does not approach his hour with any hilarity. Steward was a stupid dinner-guest, ate very little, and looked haggard beyond belief when the hour came for the older woman to leave. He did not lack courage, however. It was his great asset, physical and mental rather than moral, but courage nevertheless. The evening was quiet, and they elected to sit on the balcony outside Anita's sitting-room. The girl swallowed in white furs and leaning back in her steamer chair. Below lay the terrace of the curhouse, edged with evergreen trees. Beyond and far below that was the mountain village, a few scattered houses along a frozen stream. The townspeople retired early. Light after light was extinguished until only one in the priest's house remained. A train crept out of one tunnel and into another, like a glowing worm crawling from burrow to burrow. The girl felt a change in Steward. During the weeks he had known her there had been a curious restraint in his manner to her. There were times when an avowal seemed to tremble on his lips, when his eyes looked into hers with the look no woman ever mistakes. The next moment he would glance away, his face would harden. They were miles apart, and perhaps the situation had peaked with the girl. Certainly it had lost nothing for her by its unusualness. Tonight there was a difference in the man. His eyes met her squarely without evasion, but with a new quality, a searching, perhaps, for something in her to give him courage. The girl had character, more than ordinary decision. It was what Steward admired in her most, and the thing, of course, that the little Marie had lacked. Moreover Anita, barely twenty, was a woman, not a young girl. Her knowledge of the world, not so deep as Marie's, was more comprehensive. Where Marie would have been merciful, Anita would be just unless she cared for him. In that case she might be less than just, or more. Anita in daylight was a pretty young woman, rather incisive of speech, very intelligent, having a wit without malice, charming to look at, keenly alive. Anita in the dusk of the balcony, waiting to hear she knew not what, was a judicial white goddess, formidably still, frightfully potential. Steward, who had embraced many women, did not dare a finger on her arm. He had decided on a way to tell the girl the story. A preamble about his upbringing, which had been indifferent, his struggle to get to Vienna, his loneliness there, all leading with inevitable steps to Marie. From that, if she did not utterly shrink from him, to his love for her. It was his big hour, that hour on the balcony. He was reaching, through love, heights of honesty he had never scaled before. But as a matter of fact he reversed utterly his order of procedure. The situation got him, this first evening absolutely alone with her. That, and her nearness, and the pathos of her bandaged, useless arm. Still he had not touched her. The thing he was trying to do was more difficult for that. General crudulity to the contrary, men do not often make spoken love first. How many men propose marriage to their women across the drawing-room, or from chair to chair? Absurd. Their eyes speak first, then the arms, the lips last. The woman is in his arms before he tells his love. It is by her response that he gauges his chances and speaks of marriage. Actually, the thing is already settled. Tardy's speech only follows on swift instinct. Stewart, wooing as men woo, would have taken the girl's hand, gained an encouragement from it, ventured to kiss it, perhaps, and finding no rebuff would then and there have crushed her to him. What need of words? They would follow in due time, not to make a situation, but to clarify it. But he could not woo as men woo. The barrier of his own weakness stood between them and must be painfully taken down. I'm afraid this is stupid for you, said Anita, out of the silence. Would you like to go into the music room? God forbid, I was thinking. Of what? Encouragement this, surely. I was thinking how you had come into my life and stirred it up. Really? I? You know that. How did I stir it up? That's hardly the way I meant to put it. You've changed everything for me. I care for you. A very great deal. He was still carefully in hand, his voice steady, and still he did not touch her. Other men had made love to her, but never in this fashion, or was he making love? I'm very glad you like me. Like you, almost out of hand that time, the thrill in his voice was unmistakable. It's much more than that, Anita, so much more that I'm going to try to do a hideously hard thing. Will you help a little? Yes, if I can. She was stirred, too, and rather frightened. Stuart drew his chair nearer to her and sat forward, his face set, and dogged. Have you any idea how you were hurt, or why? No. There's a certain proportion of accidents that occur at all these places, isn't there? This was not an accident. No? The branch of a tree was thrown out in front of the sled to send us over the bank. It was murder, if intention is crime. After a brief silence, somebody who wished to kill you, or me? Both of us, I believe. It was done by a woman, a girl, Anita, a girl I had been living with. A brutal way to tell her, no doubt, but admirably courageous, for he was quivering with dread when he said it, the courage of the man who faces a canon, and here, where a less poised woman would have broken into speech, Anita took the refuge of her kind, and was silent. Stuart watched her, as best he could in the darkness, trying to gather further courage to go on. He could not see her face, but her fingers touching the edge of the chair, quivered. May I tell you the rest? I don't think I want to hear it. Are you going to condemn me, unheard? There isn't anything you can say against the fact. But there was much to say, and sitting there in the darkness he made his plea. He made no attempt to put his case, he told what happened simply. He told of his loneliness and discomfort, and he emphasized the lack of sentiment that prompted the arrangement. Anita spoke then for the first time. And when you tried to terminate it, she attempted to kill you? I was acting the beast. I brought her up here, and then neglected her for you. Then it was hardly only a business arrangement for her. It was at first. I never dreamed of anything else. I swear that, Anita. But lately, in the last month or two, she—I suppose I should have seen that she—that she had fallen in love with you. How old is she? Nineteen. A sudden memory came to Anita of a slim young girl who had watched her with wide, almost childish eyes. Then it was she who is in the compartment with you, on the train coming up? Yes. Where is she now? In Vienna I have not heard from her. Byrne, the chap who came up to see me after the—after the accident, sent her away. I think he's looking after her. I haven't heard from him. Why did you tell me all this? Because I love you, Anita. I want you to marry me. What? After that? That or something similar is in many men's lives. They don't tell it. That's the difference. I'm not taking any credit for telling you this. I'm ashamed to the bottom of my soul, and when I look at your bandaged arm I'm suicidal. Peter Byrne urged me to tell you. He said I couldn't get away with it. Some time or another it would come out. Then he said something else. He said you'd probably understand, and that if you married me, it was better to start with a clean slate. No love, no passion in the interview now, a clear statement of fact and offer, his past against hers, his future with hers. Her hand was steady now, the light in the priest's house had been extinguished, the chill of the mountain night penetrated Anita's white furs and said her, or was it the chill, to shivering? If I had not told you, would you have married me? I think so. I'll be honest too. Yes. I am the same man you would have married, only more honest. I cannot argue about it. I am tired and cold. Stewart glanced across the valley to where the cluster of villas hugged the mountain side. There was a light in his room. Outside was the little balcony where Marie had leaned against the railing and looked down. Down. Some of the arrogance of his new virtue left the man. He was suddenly humbled. For the first time he realized a part of what Marie had endured in that small room where the light burned. Poor little Marie, he said softly. The involuntary exclamation did more for him than any plea he could have made. Anita rose and held out her hand. Go and see her, she said quietly. You owe her that. We'll be leaving here in a day or so and I'll not see you again. But you've been honest and I will be honest too. I... I cared a great deal, too. And this has killed it? I hardly comprehend it yet. I shall have to have time to think. But if you're going away, I'm afraid to leave you. You'll think this thing over alone and all the rules of life you've been taught will come. Please, I must think. I will write you, I promise. He caught her hand and crushed it between both of his. I suppose you would rather I did not kiss you, humbly. I do not want you to kiss me. He released her hand and stood looking down at her in the darkness. If he could only have crushed her to him, made her feel the security of his love, of his sheltering arms, but the barrier of his own building was between them. His voice was husky. I want you to try to remember, past what I have told you, to the thing that concerns us both. I love you. I never loved the other woman. I never pretended I loved her. And there will be nothing more like that. I shall try to remember. Anita left Semering the next day against the protests of the doctor and the pleadings of the chaperone. She did not see Stuart again. But before she left, with the luggage gone and the facra at the door, she went out on the terrace and looked across to the Villa Waldheim, rising from among its clustering trees. Although it was too far to be certain, she thought she saw the figure of a man on the little balcony standing with folded arms, gazing across the valley to the curhouse. Having promised to see Marie, Stuart proceeded to carry out his promise in his direct fashion. He left Semering the evening of the following day for Vienna. The strain of the confession was over, but he was a victim of sickening dread. To one thing only he dared to pin his hopes. Anita had said she cared, cared a great deal. And, after all, what else mattered? The story had been a jolt, he told himself. Girls were full of queer ideas of right and wrong, bless them, but she cared. She cared. He arrived in Vienna at nine o'clock that night. The imminence of his interview with Marie hung over him like a cloud. He ate a hurried supper, and calling up the doctor's club by telephone found Peter's address in the Siebenstern Straße. He had no idea, of course, that Marie was there. He wanted to see Peter to learn where Marie had taken refuge, and incidentally to get from Peter a fresh supply of moral courage for the interview. For he needed courage. In vain on the journey down had he clothed himself in armour of wrath against the girl. The very compartment in the train provoked softened memories of her. Here they had bought a luncheon. There Marie had first seen the racks. Again at this station she had curled up and put her head on his shoulder for a nap. Ah, but again, at this part of the journey he had first seen Anita. He took a car to the Siebenstern Straße. His idea of Peter's manner of living those days was exceedingly vague. He had respected Peter's reticence after the manner of men with each other. Peter had once mentioned a boy he was looking after, an excuse for leaving so soon after the accident. That was all. The house on the Siebenstern Straße loomed large and unlighted, the street was dark, and it was only after a search that Stewart found the gate. Even then he lost the path and found himself among a group of trees to touch the lowest branches of any of which resulted in a shower of raindrops. To add to his discomfort someone was walking in the garden, coming toward him with light, almost stealthy steps. Stewart by his trees stood still, waiting. The steps approached, were very close, were beside him. So intense was the darkness that even then all he saw was a black or shadow, and that was visible only because it moved. Then a hand touched his arm, stopped as if paralyzed, drew back slowly, fearfully. Good heavens! said poor Harmony faintly. Please don't be alarmed. I've lost the path. Stewart's voice was almost equally nervous. Is it to the right or to the left? It was a moment before Harmony had breathed to speak, then. To the right, a dozen paces or so. Thank you. Perhaps I can help you to find it? I know it quite well. Please don't bother. The whole situation was so unexpected that only then did it dawn on Stewart that this black or shadow was a countrywoman speaking God's own language. Together, Harmony afford or so in advance, they made the path. The house is there, ring hard, the bell is out of order. Are you not coming in? No, I do not live here. She must have gone just after that. Stewart glancing at the dark facade of the house turned round to find her gone, and a moment later heard the closing of the gate. He was bewildered. What sort of curious place was this? A great looming house that concealed in its garden a fugitive American girl who came and went like a shadow, leaving only the memory of a sweet voice strained with fright. Stewart was full of his encounter as he took the candle the portier gave him and followed the gentleman's gruff directions up the staircase. Peter admitted him, looking a trifle uneasy, as well he might with Marie in the salon. Stewart was too preoccupied to notice Peter's expression. He shook the rain off his hat, smiling. How are you? asked Peter dutifully. Pretty good, except for a headache when I'm tired. What sort of place have you got here anyhow, Byrne? Old hunting lodge of Maria Teresa, replied Peter, still preoccupied with Marie and what was coming. Rather interesting old place. Rather, commented Stewart, with goddesses in the garden and all the usual stunts. Goddesses? Ran into one just now among the trees. A woman I foreswore, but thou being a goddess I foreswore not thee. English-speaking goddess by George. Peter was staring at him incredulously. Now he bent forward and grasped his arm in fingers of steel. For heaven's sake, Stewart, tell me what you mean. Who was in the garden? Stewart was amused and interested. It was not for him to belittle a situation of his own making and incident of his own telling. I lost my way in your garden. Wandered among the trees. Broke through a hedgerow or two. Struck a match and consulted the compass. Peter's fingers closed. Quick, he said. Stewart's manner lost his jauntiness. There was a girl there, he said shortly. Quentin Sear, she spoke English, said she didn't live here, and broke for the gate the minute I got to the path. You didn't Sear? No. Nice voice, though. Young. The next moment he was alone, Peter in his dressing gown was running down the staircase to the lower floor, was shouting to the portier to unlock the door. Was a madman in everything but purpose. The portier let him out and returned to the bedroom. The boy above is worse, he said briefly. A strange doctor has just come, and but now the hair-doctor Byrne runs to the drug store. The portier's wife shrugged her shoulders, even while tears filled her eyes. What can one expect, she demanded. The good haircut has forbidden theft, and Rosa says the boy was stolen. Also the drugist has gone to visit his wife's mother. Perhaps I may be of service. I shall go up. And see for a moment that hussy of the streets remain here. I shall go. Slowly and ponderously she climbed the stairs. Stuart left alone, wandered along the dim corridor. He found Peter's excitement rather amusing. So this was where Peter lived, an old house, isolated in a garden where rambled young women with soft voices. Hello, a youngster asleep. The boy no doubt. He wandered on toward the lighted door of the salon, and Marie, the place was warm and comfortable, but over it all hung the indescribable odor of drugs that meant illness. He remembered that the boy was frail. Marie turned as he stopped in the salon doorway, and then rose, white-faced. Across the white spaces of the room they eyed each other. Marie's crisis had come. Like all crises it was bigger than speech. It was after a distinct pause that she spoke. Hesla brought the police. Curiously human, curiously masculine at least with Stuart's mental condition at that moment. He had never loved the girl. It was with tremendous relief he had put her out of his life, and yet. So it's old Peter now, is it? No. No. Not that, Walter. He has given me shelter. That is all. I swear it. I look after the boy. Who else is here? No one else, but… Then tell that rot to someone who does not know you. It is true. He never even looks at me. I am wicked, but I do not lie. There was a catch of hope in her voice. Marie knew men somewhat, but she still cherished the feminine belief that jealousy is love, whereas it is only injured pride. She took a step towards him. Walter, I am sorry. Do you hate me? She had dropped the familiar thou. Stuart crossed the room until only Peter's table and lamps stood between them. I didn't mean to be brutal, he said, rather largely. Entirely conscious of his own magnanimity. It was pretty bad up there, and I know it. I don't hate you, of course. That's hardly possible after… everything. You would take me back? No. It's over, Marie. I wanted to know where you were, that's all, to see that you were comfortable and not frightened. You're a silly child to think of the police. Marie put her hand to her throat. It is the American, of course. Yes. She staggered a trifle, recovered, threw up her head. Then I wish I had killed her. No man ever violently resents the passionate hate of one woman for her rival in his affections. Stuart, finding the situation in hand and Marie only feebly formidable, was rather amused and flattered by the honest fury in her voice. The mouse was under his paw. He would play a bit. You'll get over feeling that way, kid. You don't really love me. You were my god, that is all. Will you let me help you? Money, I mean. Keep it for her. Peter will be here in a minute. He bent over the table and eyed her with his old, half-bullying, half playful manner. Come round here and kiss me, for old times. No. Come. She stood stubbornly still, and Stuart, still smiling, took a step or two toward her. Then he stopped, cease smiling, and drew himself up. You are quite right, and I'm a robber. Marie's English did not comprehend robber, but she knew the tone. Listen, Marie, I've told the other girl, and there's a chance for me, anyhow. Someday she may marry me. She asked me to see you. I do not wish her pity. You're wasting your life here. You cannot marry, you say, without a dot. There is a chance in America for a clever girl. You are clever, little Marie. The first money I can spare I'll send you, if you'll take it. It's all I can do. This was a new Stuart. A man she had never known. Marie recoiled from him, eyed him nervously, sought in her childish mind for an explanation. When at last she understood that he was sincere, she broke down. Stuart, playing a new part and raw in it, found the situation irritating. But Marie's tears were not entirely bitter. Back of them her busy young mind was weaving a new warp of life, with all of America for its loom. Hope that had died lived again. Before her already lay that great country where women might labor and live by the fruit of their labor, where her tawdry past would be buried in the center of distant Europe. New life beckoned to the little Marie that night in the old salon of Maria Teresa. Beckoned to her as it called to Stuart, opportunity to one, love and work to the other, to America. I will go, she said at last simply, and I will not trouble you there. Good. Stuart held out his hand and Marie took it. With a quick gesture she held it to her cheek, dropped it. Peter came back half an hour later, downcast but not hopeless. He had not found harmony, but life was not all gray. She was well, still in Vienna, and she had come back. She had cared then enough to come back. Tomorrow he would commence again, would comb the city fine, and when he had found her he would bring her back, the wanderer, to a marvelous welcome. He found Stuart gone, and Marie feverishly overhauling her few belongings by the salon lamp. She turned to him aface still stained with tears but radiant with hope. Peter, she said gravely, I must prepare my outfit, I go to America. With Stuart? Alone, Peter, to work, to be very good, to be something, I am very happy, although Peter, may I kiss you? Certainly, said Peter, and he took her caress gravely, patting her thin shoulder. His thoughts were in the garden with harmony, who had cared enough to come back. Life, said Peter soberly, life is just one damned thing after another, isn't it? But Marie was anxiously examining the hem of a skirt. The letter from Anita reached Stuart the following morning. She said, I have been thinking things over, Walter, and I am going to hurt you very much, but not, believe me, without hurting myself. Perhaps my uppermost thought just now is that I am disappointing you, that I am not so big as you thought I would be. For now, in this final letter, I can tell you how much I cared. Oh my dear, I did care. But I will not marry you, and when this reaches you I shall have gone very quietly out of your life. I find that such philosophy as I have does not support me tonight, that all my little rules of life are inadequate. Individual liberty was one, but there is no liberty of the individual. Life, other lives, press too closely. You, living your life as seemed best and easiest, and carrying down with you into shipwreck the little Marie and myself. For, face to face with the fact, I cannot accept it, Walter. It is not only a question of my past against yours. It is a steady revolt and loathing of the whole thing. Not the flash of protest before one succumbs to the inevitable, but a deep-seated hatred that is part of me and that would never forget. You say that you are the same man I would have married, only more honest for concealing nothing, but and forgive me for this, it insists on coming up in my mind. Were you honest? Really? You told me, and it took courage, but wasn't it partly fear? What motive is unmixed? Honesty, and fear, Walter. You were preparing against a contingency, although you may not admit this to yourself. I am not passing judgment on you. God forbid that I should. I am only trying to show you what is in my mind, and that this break is final. The revolt is in myself, against something sorted and horrible which I will not take into my life, and for that reason time will make no difference. I am not a child, and I am not unreasonable. But I ask a great deal of this life of mine that stretches ahead, Walter, home and children, the love of a good man, the fulfillment of my ideals, and you ask me to start with a handicap. I cannot do it. I know you are resentful, but I know that you understand. Anita. End of Chapter 24 The little Georgiev was in trouble those days. The Balkan engine was threatening to explode, but continued to gather steam, with Bulgaria sitting on the safety valve. Austria was mobilizing troops, and there were long conferences in the burg between the emperor and various bearded gentlemen, while the military prayed in the churches for war. The little Georgiev hardly ate or slept. Much hammering went on all day in the small room below harmonies, on the Volbaggassa. At night, when the man in the green velours hat took a little sleep, mysterious packages were carried down the whitewashed staircase and loaded into wagons waiting below. Once on her windowsill, harmony found among the pigeons, a carrier pigeon with a brass tube fastened to its leg. On the morning after harmony's flight from the garden in the street of Seven Stars, she received a visit from Georgiev. She had put in a sleepless night full of heart-searching. She charged herself with cowardice in running away from Peter and Jimmy when they needed her, and in going back like a thief the night before. The conviction that the boy was not so well brought with it additional introspection. Her sacrifice seemed useless, almost childish. She had fled because two men thought it necessary, in order to save her reputation, to marry her, and she did not wish to marry. Marriage was fatal to the career she had promised herself, had been promised. But this career, for which she had given up everything else, would she find it in the workroom of a dressmaker? But there was more to it than that. Suppose, how her cheeks burned when she thought of it, suppose she had taken Peter at his word and married him. What about Peter's career? Was there any way by which Peter's poverty, for one, would be comfort for two? Was there any reason why Peter, with his splendid ability, should settle down to the hackwork of general practice, the very slew out of which he had so painfully climbed? Either of two things. Go back to Peter but not to marry him, or stay where she was. How she longed to go back only Harmony knew. There, in the little room, with only the pigeons to see, she's held out her arms longingly. Peter, she said. Peter, dear. She decided, of course, to stay where she was, a burden to no one. The instinct of the young girl to preserve her good name at any cost outweighed the vision of Peter at the window, haggard and tired, looking out. It was Harmony's chance, perhaps, to do a bigger thing, to prove herself bigger than her fears, stronger than convention. But she was young, bewildered, afraid, and there was this element, stronger than any of the others. Peter had never told her, he loved her. To go back, throwing herself again on his mercy, was unthinkable. On his love, that was different. But what if he did not love her? He had been good to her. But then Peter was good to everyone. There was something else. If the boy was worse, what about his mother? Whatever she was, or had been, she was his mother. Suppose he were to die and his mother not see him. Harmony's sense of fairness rebelled. In the small community at home, mother was sacred, her claims insistent. It was very early, hardly more than dawn. The pigeons coot on the cell. Over the ridge of the church roof, across, a luminous strip foretold the sun. An ox cart, laden with vegetables for the market, lumbered along the streets. Puzzled and unhappy, Harmony rose and lighted her fire, drew on her slippers and the faded silk kimono with the pink butterflies. In the next room the dressmaker still slept, dreaming early morning dreams of lazy apprentices, overdue bills, complaining customers. Harmony moved lightly not to disturb her. She set her room in order, fed the pigeons. It was then she saw the carrier with its message. Made her morning coffee by setting the tiny pot inside the stove, and all the time moving quietly through her morning routine, she was there in that upper room, in body only. In soul she was again in the courtyard back of the old lodge, in the street of seven stars, with the rabbits stirring in the hutch, and Peter, with wrapped eyes, gazing out over the city. Bed, toilet table, coffee pot, Peter. Pigeons, rolls, Peter. Sunrise over the church roof, and Peter again, always Peter. Harmony arrived with stirring in the next room. Harmony could hear her, muttering and putting coal on the stove and calling to the Hungarian maid for breakfast. Harmony dressed hastily. It was one of her new duties to prepare the workroom for the day. The luminous streak above the church was rose now, time for the day to begin. She was not certain at once that someone had knocked at the door, so faint was the sound. She hesitated. Listen. The knob turned slightly. Harmony, expecting Monia, called, come in. It was the little Gjorgav, very apologetic, rather gray a face. He stood in the doorway with his fingers on his lips, one ear toward the stairway. It was very silent. Monia was drinking her coffee in bed, with her she had retired for warmth. Pardon! said the Bulgarian in a whisper. I listened until I heard you moving about. Ah! Fraulein, that I must disturb you. Nothing has happened, exclaimed Harmony, thinking of Peter, of course. Not yet, but I fear it is about to happen. Fraulein, do me the honour to open your window. My pigeon comes now to you to be fed, and I fear, on the sill, Fraulein. Harmony opened the window. The wild pigeon scattered at once, but the carrier, flying out of wood or two, came back and promptly said about its breakfast. Will he let me catch him? Pardon, Fraulein, if I may enter. Come in, of course. Evidently the defection of the carrier had been serious, a handful of grain on the wrong window sill and kingdoms overthrown. Gjorgav caught the pigeon and drew the message from the tube. Even Harmony grasped the seriousness of the situation. The little Bulgarian's face, from gray, became livid. Tiny beads of cold sweat came out on his forehead. What have I done? cried Harmony. Oh! what have I done? If I had known about the pigeon, Gjorgav recovered himself. The Fraulein can do nothing wrong, he said. It is a matter of an hour's delay, that is all. It may not be too late. Monia Reif, from the next room, called loudly for more coffee. The Sulky Hungarian brought it without a glance in their direction. Too late for what? Fraulein, if I may trouble you, but glance from the window to the street below. It is of an urgency, or I—please, Fraulein. Harmony glanced down into the half light of the street. Gjorgav behind her, watched her, breathless, expectant. Harmony drew in her head. Only a man in a green hat, she said, and down the street, a group of soldiers. Ah! the situation dawned on the girl then, at least partially. They are coming for you. It is possible, but there are many soldiers in Vienna. And I, with the pigeon— it's too horrible. Gjorgav, stay here in this room. Lock the door. Monia will say that it's mine. Ah, no, Fraulein. It is quite hopeless. Nor is it a matter of the pigeon. It is war, Fraulein. Do not distress yourself. It is but a matter of imprisonment. There must be something I can do, desperately. I hear them below. Is there no way to the roof? No escape? None, Fraulein. It was an oversight. War is not my game. I am a man of peace. You have been very kind to me, Fraulein. I thank you. You are not going down. Pardon, but it is better so. Soldiers, they are of the provinces mostly, and not for a lady to confront. They're coming up. He listened. The clank of scabbards against the stone stairs was unmistakable. The little Gjorgav straightened. Throughout his chest, turned to descend, faltered, came back a step or two. His small black eyes were fixed on Harmony's face. Fraulein, he said huskily, you are very lovely. I carry always in my heart your image. Always so long as I live. At you. He drew his heels together, gave a stiff little bow, and was gone down the staircase. Harmony was frightened, stricken. She collapsed in a heap on the floor of her room, her fingers in her ears. But she need not have feared. The little Gjorgav made no protest, submitted to the inevitable like a gentleman and a soldier. Went out of her life, indeed, as unobtrusively as he had entered it. The carrier pigeon preened itself comfortably on the edge of the wash stand. Harmony seized her hysterical crying at last, and pondered what was best to do. Monia was still breakfasting, so incredibly brief our great moments. After little thought Harmony wrote a tiny message, English, German, and French, and enclosed it in the brass tube. The hair of Gjorgav has been arrested, she wrote. An hour later the carrier rose lazily from the windowsill, flapped its way over the church roof and disappeared, like Gjorgav, out of her life. Grimm visaged war had touched her and passed on. The incident was not entirely closed, however. A search of the building followed the capture of the little spy. Protesting tenants were turned out, beds were dismantled, closets searched, walls sounded for hidden hollows. In one room on Harmony's floor was found a stored quantity of ammunition. It was when the three men who had conducted the search had finished, when the boxes of ammunition had been gathered in the hall and the chattering sewing-girls had gone back to work, that Harmony, on her way to her dismantled room, passed through the upper passage. She glanced down the staircase where little Gjorgav had so manfully descended. I carry always in my heart your image, always so long as I live. The clatter of soldiers on their way down to the street came to her ears, the soft cooing of the pigeons, the whir of sewing machines from the workroom. The incident was closed, except for the heap of ammunition boxes on the landing, guarded by an impassive soldier. Harmony glanced at him. He was eyeing her steadily, thumbs in, heels in, toes out, chest out. Harmony put her hand to her heart. You, she said. The conversation of a century save on holiday is ye ye and ne ne. Yes, Frawline. Harmony put her hands together, a little gesture of appeal, infinitely touching. You will not say that you have found—have seen me. No, Frawline. It was in Harmony's mind to ask all her hungry heart craved to learn, of Peter, of Jimmy, of the portier, of anything that belonged to the old life in the Siebensternstrasse. But there was no time. The century's impassive face became rigid. He looked through her, not at her. Harmony turned. The man in the green hat was coming up the staircase. There was no further chance to question. The century was set to carrying the boxes down the staircase. Full morning now, with the winter sun shining on the beggars in the market, on the crowds in the parks, on the flower-sellers in the Stevens plots, shining on Harmony's golden head as she bent over a bit of chiffon, on the old milkwoman carrying up the white wash staircase her heavy cans of milk, on the carrier pigeon winging its way to the south, beating in through bars to the exalted face of Hergiorguev, resting on Peter's drooping shoulders, on the neglected mice and the wooden soldier, on the closed eyes of a sick child, the worshiped sun peering forth, the golden window of the east. Peter, fighting hard, was beaten at last. All through the night he had felt it. During the hours before the dawn there had been many times when the small pulse wavered, flickered, almost ceased. With the daylight there had been a trifle of recovery, enough for a bit of hope, enough to make harder Peter's acceptance of the inevitable. The boy was very happy, quite content and comfortable. When he opened his eyes he smiled at Peter, and Peter, gray a face, smiled back. Peter died many deaths that night. At daylight Jimmy fell into a sleep that was really stupor. Marie, creeping to the door in the faint dawn, found the boy apparently asleep and Peter on his knees beside the bed. He raised his head at her footstep, and the girl was startled at the suffering in his face. He motioned her back. But you must have a little sleep, Peter. No, I'll stay until— Go back to bed. It is very early. Peter had not been able, after all, to secure the nurse Elizabeth, and now it was useless. At eight o'clock he let Marie take his place. Then he bathed, and dressed, and prepared to face another day, perhaps another night. For the child's release came slowly. He tried to eat breakfast but managed only a cup of coffee. Many things had come to Peter in the long night, and one was insistent. The boy's mother was in Vienna and he was dying without her. Peter might know in his heart that he had done the best thing for the child, but like Harmony his early training was rising now to accuse him. He had separated mother and child. Who was he to have decided the mother's unfitness to a play destiny? How lightly he had taken the lives of others in his hand, and to what end? Harmony, God knows where. The boy, dying without his mother. Whatever that mother might be, her place that day was with her boy. What a wreck he had made of things. He was humbled as well as stricken, poor Peter. In the morning he sent a note to Maclean, asking him to try to trace the mother and enclosing the music hall clipping in the letter. The letter, signed only, Mama, was not helpful. The clipping might prove valuable. And for heaven's sake, be quick, wrote Peter. This is a matter of hours. I meant well, but I've done a terrible thing. Bring her, Mac, no matter what she is or where you find her. The portier carried the note. When he came up to get it, he brought in his pocket a small rabbit and a lettuce leaf. Never before had the culmination failed to arouse and amuse the boy. He carried the rabbit down again, sorrowfully. He saw it not, he reported sadly to his wife. Be off to the church while I deliver this letter, and this rabbit we will not cook, but keep in remembrance. At eleven o'clock Marie called Peter, who was asleep on the horsehair sofa. He asks for you. Peter was instantly awakened on his feet. The boy's eyes were open and fixed on him. Is it another day? He asked. Yes, boy, another morning. I am cold, Peter. They blanketed him, although the room was warm. From where he lay he could see the mice. He watched them for a moment. Poor Peter, very humble, found himself wondering in how many ways he had been remiss to see this small soul launched into eternity without a forward, without a bit of light for the journey. Peter's religion had been one of life and living, not of creed. Marie bringing jugs of hot water bent over Peter. He knows. Poor little one, she whispered. And so indeed it would seem. The boy revived by a spoonful or two of broth, asked to have the two tame mice on the bed. Peter, opening the cage, found one dead, very stiff and stark. The catastrophe he kept from the boy. One is sick, Jimmy boy, he said, and placed the mate forlorn and shivering on the pillow after a minute. If the sick one dies, will it go to heaven? Yes, honey, I think so. The boy was silent for a time, thinking was easier than speech. His mind, too, worked slowly. It was after a pause while he lay there with closed eyes that Peter saw two tears slip from under his long lashes. Peter bent over and wiped them away, a great ache in his heart. What is it, dear? I'm afraid it's going to die. Would that be so terrible, Jimmy boy? asked Peter gently. To go to heaven, where there is no more death or dying. Where it is always summer and the sun always shines. No reply for a moment. The little mouse sat up on the pillow and rubbed its nose with a pinkish paw. The baby mice in the cage nuzzled their dead mother. Is there grass? Yes, soft green grass. Do boys in heaven go in their bare feet? A small mind in heart, so terrified and yet so curious. Indeed, yes. And there on his knees beside the white bed, Peter painted such a heaven as no theologue has ever had the humanity to paint. A heaven of babbling brooks and laughing, playing children. A heaven of dear, departed puppies and resurrected birds. A friendly deer of trees and fruit. A speckled fish in bright rivers. Painted his heaven with smiling eyes and death in his heart. A child's heaven of games and friendly Indians. Of sunlight and rain, sweet sleep and brisk awakening. The boy listened. He was silent when Peter had finished. Speech was increasingly an effort. I should like to go there. He whispered at last. He did not speak again during all the long afternoon, but just at dusk he roused again. I would like to see this century, he said with difficulty. And so again and for the last time, rose a soldier from Salzburg with one lung. Through all that long day then, Harmony sat over her work, unaccustomed muscles aching, the whirring machines in her ears. Monia, upset over the morning's excitement, was irritable and unreasonable. The gold tissue costume had come back from the ground with a complaint. Below in the courtyard all day, curious groups stood gaping up the staircase, where the morning had seen such occurrences. At the noon hour, while the girls heated soup and carried impales of salad from the corner restaurant, Harmony had fallen into the way of playing for them. To the music-loving Viennese girls, this was the hour of the day. To sit back, soup bowl on knee, the machine silent, Monia quarreling in the kitchen with the Hungarian servant, and while the pigeons ate crusts on the window sills, to hear this American girl play such music as was played at the opera, her slim figure swaying, her whole beautiful face and body glowing with the melody she made, the girls found the situation bequaint, altogether delightful. Although she did not suspect it, many rumors were rife about Harmony in the workroom. She was not of the people, they said, the daughter of a great American, of course, run away to escape a loveless marriage. This was borne out by the report of one of them who had glimpsed the silk petticoat. It was rumored also that she wore no chemise, but instead an infinitely coquettish series of lace and namesook garments of a fineness. Harmony played for them that day, played perhaps as she had not played since the day she had moved the master to tears, played to Peter as she had seen him at the window, to Jimmy, to the little Gjorghev as he went down the staircase, and finally with a choke in her throat, to the little mother back home, so hopeful, so ignorant. In the evening, as was her custom, she took the one real meal of the day at the corner restaurant, going early to avoid the crowd and coming back quickly through the winter night. The staircase was always apparel, to be encountered and conquered night after night, and even in the daytime not to be lightly regarded. On her way up this night she heard steps ahead, heavy, measured steps that climbed steadily without pauses. For an instant Harmony thought it sounded like Peter's step, and she went dizzy. But it was not Peter. Standing in the upper hall, much as he had stood that morning over the ammunition boxes, thumbs in, heels in, toes out, chest out, was the sentry. Harmony's first thought was of Gjorghev and more searching of the building. Then she saw that the sentry's impassive face wore lines of trouble. He saluted. Please, Rowline. Yes. I have not told the her doctor. I thank you. But the child dies. Jimmy. He dies all of last night and today. Tonight it is, perhaps, but of moments. Harmony clutched at the iron stair rail for support. You are sure you are not telling me so that I will go back? He dies, Rowline. The hair doctor has not slept for many hours. My wife, Rosa, sits on the stair to see that none disturb, and her cousin, the wife of the portier, weeps over the stove. Please, Rowline, come with me. When did you leave the Siebensternstrasse? But now. And he still lives. Yeah, Rowline, and asks for you. Now suddenly fell away from the girl all pride, all fear, all that was personal and small and frightened, before the reality of death. She rose as women by divine gift do rise to the crisis, ceased trembling, got her hat and coat and her shabby gloves, and joined the sentry again. Another moment's delay, to secure the Legrand's address from Monia. Then out into the night, Harmony to the Siebensternstrasse, the tall soldier to find the dancer at her hotel, and failing that, at the Ronekar Music Hall. Harmony took a taxi cab. Nothing must be spared now. Bribed the chauffeur to greater speed. Arrived at the house and ran across the garden, still tearless. Up the stairs passed Rosa on the upper flight and rang the bell. Marie admitted her with only a little gasp of surprise. There was nothing to warn Peter. One moment he sat by the bed, watch in hand, alone, drear, tragic-eyed. The next he had glanced up, saw Harmony and went white, holding to the back of his chair. Their eyes met, agony and hope in them, love and death, rapture and bitterness. In Harmony's pleading, promise, something of doubt. In Peter's, only yearning as of empty arms. Then Harmony dared to look at the bed and fell on her knees in a storm of grief beside it. Peter bent over and gently stroked her hair. La Grande was singing. The boxes were full. In the body of the immense theatre, waiters scurried back and forward among the tables. Everywhere was the clatter of silver and steel on porcelain, the clink of glasses. Smoke was everywhere, pipes, cigars, cigarettes. Women smoked between bites at the table, using small paper or silver mouthpieces, even a gold one shown here and there. Men walked up and down among the diners, spraying the air with chemicals to clear it. At a table just below the stage sat the red-bearded dozent with the lady of the photograph. They were drinking cheap native wines and were very happy. From the height of his worldly wisdom he was explaining the people to her. In the box, don't stare, he looks. Is the prinsling I have told you of? Roses, of course. Last night it was orchids. Last night, were you here? He coughed. I have been told, Liebchen, every night he sits there and when she finishes her song he rises in the box, kisses the flowers, and tosses them to her. Shameless! Is she so beautiful? No, but you shall see. She comes. La Grande was very popular. She occupied the best place on the program, and because she sang an American, which was not exactly English and more difficult to understand, her songs were considered exceedingly risqué. As a matter of fact they were merely ragtime melodies, with a lilt to them that caught the Viennese fancy, accustomed to German sentimental ditties and the artificial forms of grand opera. And there was another reason for her success. She carried with her a chorus of a dozen Picaninis. In Austria darkies were as rare as cats, and there were no cats. So the little chorus had made good. La Grande was a good advertiser. Each day she walked in the praetor, ermined from head to foot, and behind her two by two trailed twelve little southern darkies in red velvet coats and caps, grinning sociably, when she drove a pair sat on the boot. Her voice was strong, not sweet, spoiled by years of singing against dishes and bottles and smoky music halls, spoiled by cigarettes and absinthe, and foreign cocktails that resemble their American prototypes as night resembles the day. She wore the gold dress, de colité, slashed to the knee over rhinestones mangled stockings, and back of her trailed the twelve little darkies. She sang Dixie, of course, and the old folks at home, then a ragtime melody, with the chorus showing rows of white teeth and clogging with their short legs. La Grande danced to that, a whirling nimble dance. The little rhinestones on her stockings flashed, her opulent bosom quivered. The docent, eyes on the dancer, squeezed his companion's hand. I love thee, he whispered rather flushed. And then she sang Donya Cry, my honey. Her voice, rather coarse but melodious, lent itself to the negro rhythm, the swing and lilt of the lullaby. The little darkies, eyes rolling, perturnaturally solemn, linked arms and swayed rhythmically. Right, left, right, left. The glasses ceased clinking, sturdy citizens forgot their steak and beer for a moment and listened, knife and fork poised. Under the table the docent's hand pressed its captive affectionately. His eyes no longer on the ground, but on the woman across, his sweetheart, she who would be mother of his children. The words meant little to the audience. The rich, rolling, southern lullaby, held them wrapped. Donya cry, my honey. Donya weep no more. Mamie's going to hold her baby. All the utter black trash leaping on the floor. Mamie only loves her bore. The little darkies swayed, the singer swayed, empty arms cradled. Donya cry, my honey. Donya weep no more. She picked the tiniest darkie up and held him, wooly head against her breast, and crooned to him, rocking him on her jeweled heels. The crowd applauded, the man in the box kissed his flowers and flung them. Glasses and dishes clinked again. The docent bent across the table. Some day, he said, the girl blushed. La Grande made her way into the wings, surrounded by her little troop. A motherly colored woman took them, shoved them off, rounded them up like a flock of chickens. And there in the wings, grimly impassive, stood a private soldier of the old Franz Josef, blocking the door to her dressing room. For a moment gold dress and dark blue-gray uniform fronted each other. Then the sentry touched his cap. Madame, he said, the child is in the Siebensternstrasse, and to-night he dies. What child? Her arms were full of flowers. The child from the hospital pleased to make haste. Jimmy died an hour after midnight, quite peacefully, died with one hand in harmonies and one between Peter's two big ones. Toward the last, he called Peter, Daddy, and asked for a drink. His eyes, moving slowly round the room, passed without notice the gray-faced woman in a gold dress, who stood staring down at him, rested a moment on the cage of mice, came to a stop in the doorway, where stood the sentry, white and weary, but refusing to rest. It was Harmony who defined the child's unspoken wish. The manual, she whispered. The boy nodded, and so just inside the door of the bedroom, across from the old salon of Maria Teresa the sentry, with sad eyes but no lack of vigor, went again through the Austrian manual of arms, and because he had no carbine, he used Peter's old walking stick. When it was finished, the boy smiled faintly, tried to salute, lay still. End of Chapter 26. Chapter 27 of The Street of Seven Stars. Peter was going back to America, and still he had not told Harmony he loved her. It was necessary that he go back. His money had about given out, and there was no way to get more saved by earning it. The drain of Jimmy's illness, the inevitable expense of the small grave and the tiny stone Peter had insisted on buying, had made retreat his only course. True, LeGrand had wished to defray all expenses, but Peter was inexorable. No money earned as the dancer earns hers should purchase peaceful rest for the loved little boy. And after seeing Peter's eyes, the dancer had not insisted. A week had seen many changes. Marie was gone. After a conference between Stuart and Peter that had been decided on, Stuart raised the money somehow, and Peter saw her off, palpitant and eager, with the pin he had sent her to simmering at her throat. She kissed Peter on the cheek in the station, rather to his embarrassment. From the lowered window, as the train pulled out, she waved a moist handkerchief. I shall be very good, she promised him. The last words he heard above the grinding of the train were her cheery, to America. Peter was living alone in the street of Seven Stars, getting food where he might happen to be, buying a little now and then from the delicatessen shop across the street. For Harmony had gone back to the house in the Volpagasa. She had stayed until all was over and until Marie's small preparations for departure were over. Then, while Peter was at the station, she slipped away again. But this time she left her address. She wrote, You will come to visit me, dear Peter, because I was so lonely before and that is unnecessary now. But you must know that I cannot stay in the Siebensternstraße. We each have our own fight to make, and you have been trying to fight for us all, for Marie, for dear little Jimmy, for me. You must get back to work now. You have lost so much time. And I am managing well. The frau professor is back and will take an evening lesson, and soon I shall have more money from Fraulein Reif. You can see how things are looking up for me. In a few months I shall be able to renew my music lessons. And then Peter, the career, Harmony. Her address was beneath. Peter had suffered much. He was thinner, greyer, and as he stood with the letter in his hand he felt that Harmony was right. He could offer her nothing but his shabby self, his problematic future. Perhaps, surely, everything would have been settled, without reason, had he only once taken the girl in his arms, told her she was the breath of life itself to him. But adversity, while it had roused his fighting spirit in everything else, had zapped his confidence. He had found the letter on his dressing table, and he found himself confronting his image over it. A tall, stooping figure. A tired, lined face. A coat that bore the impress of many days with the sick child's head against its breast. So it was over. She had come back and gone again, and this time he must let her go. Who was he to detain her? She would carry herself on to success, he felt. She had youth, hope, beauty, and ability. And she had proved the thing he had not dared to believe, that she could take care of herself in the old city. Only, to go away and leave her there. McClane would remain, no doubt he already had Harmony's address in the Vobacasa. Peter was not subtle, no psychologist. But he had seen during the last few days how the boy watched Harmony's every word, every gesture. And, perhaps, when loneliness and hard work began to tell on her, McClane's devotion would win its reward. McClane's devotion, with all that it meant, the lessons again, community of taste, their common youth. Peter felt old, very tired. Nevertheless, he went that night to the Vobacasa. He sent his gray suit to the portier's wife to be pressed, and getting out his surgical case, as he had once done in the Pencian Schwarz, he sewed a button on his overcoat, using the curved needle and the cat-cut, and working with surgeon's precision. Then, still working very carefully, he trimmed the edges of graying hair over his ears, trimmed his cuffs, trimmed his best silk tie, now almost hopeless. He blacked his shoes, and the suit not coming, he donned his dressing-gown, and went into Jimmy's room to feed the mice. Peter stood a moment beside the smooth white bed, with his face working. The wooden sentries still stood on the bedside table. It was in Peter's mind to take the mice to Harmony, confess his defeat, and approaching retreat, and ask her to care for them. Then he decided against this palpable appeal for sympathy, elected to go empty-handed and discover merely how comfortable she was, or was not. When the time came he would slip out of her life, sending her a letter and leaving McClane on guard. Harmony was home. Peter climbed the dark staircase, where Harmony had met the little Georgiv, and where he had gone down to his death. Climbed steadily, but without his usual elasticity. The place appalled him. It's gloom. It's dinginess. It's sombre quiet. In the daylight, with the pigeons on the sills and the morning sunlight printing the cross of the church steeple on the whitewashed wall, it was peaceful, cloister-like, with landings that were crypts. But at night it was almost terrifying that staircase. Harmony was playing. Peter heard her when he reached the upper landing, playing a sad little strain that gripped his heart. He waited outside before ringing, heard her begin something determinedly cheerful. Falter, seesaw together. Peter rang. Harmony herself admitted him. Perhaps—oh, certainly she had expected him. It would be Peter, of course, to come and see how she was getting on, how she was housed. She held out her hand and Peter took it. Still no words, only a half-smile from her, and no smile at all from Peter, but his heart in his eyes. I hoped you would come, Peter. We may have the reception room. You knew I would come, said Peter, in the reception room, where customers wait. She still carried her violin and slipped back to her room to put it away. Peter had a glimpse of its poverty and its meagerness. He drew a long breath. Monia was at the opera, and the Hungarian sat in the kitchen knitting a stocking. The reception room was warm from the day's fire and in order. All the pins and scraps of the day had been swept up, and the portiers that made fitting rooms of the corners were pushed back. Peter saw only a big room with empty corners, and that at a glance. His eyes were harmonies. He sat down awkwardly on a stiff chair, harmony on a velvet satay. They were suddenly two strangers meeting for the first time. In the squalor of the pensionsch farts, in the comfortable intimacies of the street of seven stars, they had been easy, unconstrained. Now suddenly Peter was tongue-tied. Only one thing in him clamored for utterance, and that he sternly silenced. I... I could not stay there, Peter. You understood? No. Of course I understood. You were not angry? Why should I be angry? You came like an angel of light when I needed you. Only, of course. Yes? I'll not say that, I think. Please say it, Peter. Peter writhed, looked everywhere but at her. Please, Peter. You said I always came when you needed me. Only... Only I always need you. Peter. Peter. Not always, I think. Of course when one is in trouble one needs a woman, but... Well, of course, but I'm generally in trouble, Harry dear. Frightfully ashamed of himself by that time was Peter, ashamed of his weakness. He sought to give a casual air to the speech by stooping for a neglected pin on the carpet. By the time he had stuck it in his lapel he had saved his mental forces from the rout of harmony's eyes. His next speech he made to the center table and missed a most delectable look in the aforesaid eyes. I didn't come here to be silly, he said to the table. I hate people who whine, and I've got into a damnable habit of being sorry for myself. It's to laugh, isn't it? A great hulking carcass like me to be. Peter, said harmony softly, aren't you going to look at me? I'm afraid. It's cowardice, and I fixed my hair a new way. Do you like it? Splendid, said Peter to the center table. You didn't look. The rout of harmony's eyes was supplemented by the rout of harmony's hair. Peter, goaded, got up and walked about. Harmony was half exasperated. She would have boxed Peter's ears with a tender hand had she dared. His hands thrust savagely in his pockets. Peter turned and faced her at last. First of all, he said, I'm going back to America, Harmony. I've got all I can get here, all I came for. He stopped, seeing her face. Well, of course that's not true. I haven't. But I'm going back anyhow. You needn't look so stricken. I haven't lost my chance. I'll come back sometime again and finish when I've earned enough to do it. You will never come back, Peter. You have spent all your money on others, and now you are going back just where you were and you are leaving me here alone. You are alone anyhow, said Peter, making your own way and getting along, and McLean will be here. Are you turning me over to him? No reply. Peter was pacing the floor. Peter? Yes, dear? Do you remember the night in Anna's room at the Schwarz when you proposed to me? No reply. Peter found another pin. And that night in the old lodge when you proposed to me again? Peter turned and looked at her, at her slender, swaying young figure, her luminous eyes, her parted childish lips. Peter, I want you to—to ask me again. No. Why? Now listen to me, Harmony. You're sorry for me, that's all, and I don't want to be pitted. You stay here and work. You'll do big things. I had a talk with the master while I was searching for you, and he says you can do anything. But he looked at me, and a sight I was with worry and fright, and he warned me off, Harmony. He says you must not marry. Old pig! said Harmony. I will marry if I please. Nevertheless, Peter's refusal and the master's speech had told somewhat. She was colder, less vibrant. Peter came to her, stood close, looking down at her. I've said a lot I didn't mean to, he said. There's only one thing I haven't said. I oughtn't to say it, dear. I'm not going to marry you. I won't have such a thing on my conscience. But it doesn't hurt a woman to know that a man loves her. I love you, dear. You are my heaven and my earth, even my god, I'm afraid. But I will not marry you. Not even if I ask you to? Not even then, dear, to share my struggle? I see, slowly. It is to be a struggle. A hard fight, Harmony. I'm a pauper practically. And what am I? Two poverties don't make a wealth, even of happiness, said Peter's steadily. In the time to come, you would think of what you might have been. It would be a thousand deaths to me, dear. People have married, women have married and carried on their work, too, Peter. Not your sort of woman or your sort of work. And not my sort of man, Harry. I'm jealous. Jealous of everyone about you. It would have to be the music or me. And you make the choice, said Harmony proudly. Very well, Peter. I shall do as you say. But I think it is a very curious sort of love. I wonder, Peter cried, if you realize what love it is that loves you enough to give you up. You have not asked me if I care, Peter. Peter looked at her. She was very near to tears. Very sad. Very beautiful. I'm afraid to ask, said Peter, and picking up his hat he made for the door. There he turned, looked back, was lost. My sweetest heart, he cried, and took her into his hungry arms. But even then, with her arms about his neck at last, with her slender body held to him, her head on his shoulder, his lips to her soft throat, Peter put her from him as a starving man might put away food. He held her off and looked at her. I'm a fool and a weakling, he said gravely. I love you so much that I would sacrifice you. You are very lovely, my girl. My girl. As long as I live, I shall carry your image in my heart. Ah, what the little Yorkev had said on his way to the death that waited him down the staircase. Peter, not daring to look at her again, put away her detaining hand, squared his shoulders, went to the door. Goodbye, Harmony, he said steadily, always in my heart. Very near the end now, the little Marie on the way to America, with the recording angel opening a new page in life's ledger for her, and a red ink line erasing the other, with Jimmy and his daddy wandering through the heaven of friendly adventure in green fields, hand in hand, with the carrier resting after its labors in the pigeon house by the rose fields of Sophia, with the sentry casting martial shadows through the barred windows of the hospital, and the little Yorkev about to die, dividing his heart as a heritage between his country and a young girl. Very near the end, with the morning light of the next day shining into the saloon of Maria Teresa, and on to Peter's open trunk and shabby wardrobes spread over chairs, and end of trunks and departure, as was the beginning. Early morning at the Cotus Acker, or God's Acre, whence little Jimmy had started on his comfortable journey. Early morning on the frost-covered grass, the frozen woods, the snap and sparkle of the denow. Harmony had taken her problem there. In the early hour before Monia would summon her to labor, took her problem and found her answer. The Great Cemetery was still and deserted. Harmony, none too warmly clad, walked briskly, a bunch of flowers in oiled paper against the cold. Already the air carried a hint of spring. There was a feeling of resurrection and promise. The dead earth felt alive underfoot. Harmony knelt by the grave and said the little prayer the child had repeated at night and morning. And, because he had loved it, with some vague feeling of giving him comfort, she recited the little verse. Ah, well, for us all some sweet hope lies, deeply buried from human eyes. And in the hereafter, angels may roll the stone from its grave away. When she looked up, La Grande was standing beside her. There was no scene, hardly any tears. She had brought out a great bunch of roses that bore only too clearly the stamp of whence they came. One of the Pichianis had carried the box and stood impassively by, gazing at Harmony. La Grande placed her flowers on the grave. They almost covered it, quite eclipsed Harmony's. I come here every morning, she said simply. She had a cab waiting and offered to drive Harmony back to the city. Her quiet, almost irritated Harmony, until she had looked once into the woman's eyes. After that she knew. It was on the drive back, with the little darkie on the box beside the driver that Harmony got her answer. La Grande put her hand over Harmony's. I tried to tell you before how good I know you were to him. He loved him. And I resented it. But Dr. Byrne was right. I was not a fit person, too, to have him. It was not that. Not only that. Did he ever ask for me? But of course not. No. He had no remembrance. Silence for a moment. The loose windows of the cab clattered. I loved him very much when he came, said the ground. Although I did not want him. I had been told I could have a career on the stage. My dear, I chose the career and look at me. What have I? A grave in the cemetery back there, an on it, Rosa sent me by a man I loathe. If I could live it over again. The answer was very close now. Would you stay at home? Who knows, I being I, and my husband did not love me. It was the boy always. There's only one thing worthwhile, the love of a good man. I have lived, lived hard, and I know. But supposing that one has real ability, I mean some achievement already, and a promise. La Grande turned and looked at Harmony shrewdly. I see. You are a musician, I believe. Yes. And it is Dr. Bern? Yes. La Grande bent forward earnestly. My child, she said, if one man in all the world looked at me as your doctor looks at you, I would be a better woman. And my music. Play for your children as you play for my little boy. Peter was packing, wrapping medical books in old coats, putting clean collars next to boots, folding pajamas and such like negligible garments with great care, and putting his dressing coat in a roll. His pipes took time, and the wooden sentry he packed with great care and a bit of healthy emotion. Once or twice he came across trifles of harmonies, and he put them carefully aside. The sweater coat, a folded handkerchief, a bow she had worn at her throat. The bow brought back the night before and the reckless kiss on her white throat. Well for Peter to get away if he is to keep his resolution, when the sight of a ribbon bow can bring that look of suffering into his eyes. The portier below was polishing floors, right foot, left foot, any foot at all, and as he polished he sang in a throaty tenor. Qu'en stu'e d'as l'ant v'ot y citron en blune, he sang at the top of his voice, and coughed a bit of floor wax having got into the air. The antlers of the deer from the wild game-shop hung now in his bedroom. When the wild game-seller came over for coffee there would be a discussion, probably, but were not the antlers of all deers similar? The portier's wife came to the doorway with a cooking-fork in her hand. A cab, she announced, with a devil's imp on the box. Perhaps it is that American dancer. Run and pretty thyself. It was too late for more than an upward twist of a moustache. Harmony was at the door, but not the sad-eyed harmony of a week before, or the undecided and troubled girl of before that. A radiant harmony this, who stood in the doorway, who wished them good morning, and ran up the old staircase with glowing eyes and a heart that leaped and throgged. A woman now, this harmony, one who had looked on life and learned, one who had chosen her fate and was running to meet it. One who feared only death, not life or anything that life could offer. The door was not locked. Perhaps Peter was not up, not dressed. What did that matter? What did anything matter but Peter himself? Peter, sorting out lectures on McBernie's point, had come across a bit of paper that did not belong there, and was sitting by his open trunk, staring blindly at it. You are very kind to me, yes, indeed, H.W. Quite the end now, with Harmony running across the room and dropping down on her knees among a riot of garments. Down on her knees, with one arm around Peter's neck, drying his tired head lower until she could kiss him. Oh, Peter, Peter, dear, she cried, I'll love you all my life if only you'll love me and never, never let me go. Peter was dazed at first. He put his arms about her rather unsettly, because he had given her up and had expected to go through the rest of his life empty of arm and heart, and when one has one's arms set, as one may say, for loneliness and relinquishment, it is rather difficult. Ah, but Peter got the way of it swiftly. Always, he said incoherently, for ever the two of us, whatever comes Harmony, whatever comes, and you'll not be sorry, not if you love me. Peter kissed her on the eyes very solemnly. God helping me, I'll be good to you always, and I'll always love you. He tried to hold her away from him for a moment after that. To tell her what she was not doing, what she was giving up, she would not be reasoned with. I love you, was her answer to every line, and it was no divided allegiance she promised him. Career? I shall have a career, yours. And your music? She colored, held him closer. Someday, she whispered, I shall tell you about that. Late winter morning in Vienna, with the school children hurrying home, the Alzerstrasse alive with humanity, soldiers and chimney sweeps, housewives and beggars. Before the hospital, the crowd lines up along the curb, the head waiter from the coffee house across comes to the doorway and looks out. The sentry in front of the hospital ceases pacing and stands at attention. In the street, a small procession comes at the double quick, a handful of troopers, a black van with tiny high-barred windows, more troopers. Inside the van, a Bulgarian spy going out to death, a swarthy little man with black eyes and short thick hands, going out like a gentleman and a soldier to meet the god of patriots and lovers. The sentry, who was only a soldier from Salzburg with one lung, was also a gentleman and a patriot. He uncovered his head. End of Chapter Twenty-Seven and end of The Street of Seven Stars. Written by Mary Ann Spiegel in Chicago, Illinois, December 29, 2009.