The Street of Seven Stars

THE STREET OF SEVEN STARS

By Mary Roberts Rinehart

CHAPTER I

The old stucco house sat back in a garden, or what must once have been

a garden, when that part of the Austrian city had been a royal game

preserve. Tradition had it that the Empress Maria Theresa had used the

building as a hunting-lodge, and undoubtedly there was something royal

in the proportions of the salon. With all the candles lighted in the

great glass chandelier, and no sidelights, so that the broken paneling

was mercifully obscured by gloom, it was easy to believe that the great

empress herself had sat in one of the tall old chairs and listened to

anecdotes of questionable character; even, if tradition may be believed,

related not a few herself.

The chandelier was not lighted on this rainy November night. Outside

in the garden the trees creaked and bent before the wind, and the

heavy barred gate, left open by the last comer, a piano student named

Scatchett and dubbed “Scatch”--the gate slammed to and fro monotonously,

giving now and then just enough pause for a hope that it had latched

itself, a hope that was always destroyed by the next gust.

One candle burned in the salon. Originally lighted for the purpose of

enabling Miss Scatchett to locate the score of a Tschaikowsky concerto,

it had been moved to the small center table, and had served to give

light if not festivity to the afternoon coffee and cakes. It still

burned, a gnarled and stubby fragment, in its china holder; round it the

disorder of the recent refreshment, three empty cups, a half of a

small cake, a crumpled napkin or two,--there were never enough to go

round,--and on the floor the score of the concerto, clearly abandoned

for the things of the flesh.

The room was cold. The long casement windows creaked in time with the

slamming of the gate and the candle flickered in response to a draft

under the doors. The concerto flapped and slid along the uneven old

floor. At the sound a girl in a black dress, who had been huddled

near the tile stove, rose impatiently and picked it up. There was no

impatience, however, in the way she handled the loose sheets. She put

them together carefully, almost tenderly, and placed them on the top of

the grand piano, anchoring them against the draft with a china dog from

the stand.

The room was very bare--a long mirror between two of the windows, half

a dozen chairs, a stand or two, and in a corner the grand piano. There

were no rugs--the bare floor stretched bleakly into dim corners and

was lost. The crystal pendants of the great chandelier looked like

stalactites in a cave. The girl touched the piano keys; they were ice

under her fingers.

In a sort of desperation she drew a chair underneath the chandelier, and

armed with a handful of matches proceeded to the unheard-of extravagance

of lighting it, not here and there, but throughout as high as she could

reach, standing perilously on her tiptoes on the chair.

The resulting illumination revealed a number of things: It showed that

the girl was young and comely and that she had been crying; it revealed

the fact that the coal-pail was empty and the stove almost so; it let

the initiated into the secret that the blackish fluid in the cups had

been made with coffee extract that had been made of Heaven knows what;

and it revealed in the cavernous corner near the door a number of

trunks. The girl, having lighted all the candles, stood on the chair and

looked at the trunks. She was very young, very tragic, very feminine. A

door slammed down the hall and she stopped crying instantly. Diving into

one of those receptacles that are a part of the mystery of the sex, she

rubbed a chamois skin over her nose and her reddened eyelids.

The situation was a difficult one, but hardly, except to Harmony Wells,

a tragedy. Few of us are so constructed that the Suite “Arlesienne”

will serve as a luncheon, or a faulty fingering of the Waldweben from

“Siegfried” will keep us awake at night. Harmony had lain awake more

than once over some crime against her namesake, had paid penances of

early rising and two hours of scales before breakfast, working with

stiffened fingers in her cold little room where there was no room for a

stove, and sitting on the edge of the bed in a faded kimono where once

pink butterflies sported in a once blue-silk garden. Then coffee, rolls,

and honey, and back again to work, with little Scatchett at the piano in

the salon beyond the partition, wearing a sweater and fingerless gloves

and holding a hot-water bottle on her knees. Three rooms beyond, down

the stone hall, the Big Soprano, doing Madama Butterfly in bad German,

helped to make an encircling wall of sound in the center of which one

might practice peacefully.

Only the Portier objected. Morning after morning, crawling out at dawn

from under his featherbed in the lodge below, he opened his door and

listened to Harmony doing penance above; and morning after morning he

shook his fist up the stone staircase.

“Gott im Himmel!” he would say to his wife, fumbling with the knot of

his mustache bandage, “what a people, these Americans! So much noise and

no music!”

“And mad!” grumbled his wife. “All the day coal, coal to heat; and at

night the windows open! Karl the milkboy has seen it.”

And now the little colony was breaking up. The Big Soprano was going

back to her church, grand opera having found no place for her. Scatch

was returning to be married, her heart full, indeed, of music, but her

head much occupied with the trousseau in her trunks. The Harmar sisters

had gone two weeks before, their funds having given out. Indeed, funds

were very low with all of them. The “Bitte zum speisen” of the little

German maid often called them to nothing more opulent than a stew of

beef and carrots.

Not that all had been sordid. The butter had gone for opera tickets, and

never was butter better spent. And there had been gala days--a fruitcake

from Harmony's mother, a venison steak at Christmas, and once or twice

on birthdays real American ice cream at a fabulous price and worth it.

Harmony had bought a suit, too, a marvel of tailoring and cheapness, and

a willow plume that would have cost treble its price in New York. Oh,

yes, gala days, indeed, to offset the butter and the rainy winter and

the faltering technic and the anxiety about money. For that they all

had always, the old tragedy of the American music student abroad--the

expensive lessons, the delays in getting to the Master himself, the

contention against German greed or Austrian whim. And always back in

one's mind the home people, to whom one dares not confess that after

nine months of waiting, or a year, one has seen the Master once or not

at all.

Or--and one of the Harmar girls had carried back this scar in her

soul--to go back rejected, as one of the unfit, on whom even the

undermasters refuse to waste time. That has been, and often. Harmony

stood on her chair and looked at the trunks. The Big Soprano was calling

down the hall.

“Scatch,” she was shouting briskly, “where is my hairbrush?”

A wail from Scatch from behind a closed door.

“I packed it, Heaven knows where! Do you need it really? Haven't you got

a comb?”

“As soon as I get something on I'm coming to shake you. Half the teeth

are out of my comb. I don't believe you packed it. Look under the bed.”

Silence for a moment, while Scatch obeyed for the next moment.

“Here it is,” she called joyously. “And here are Harmony's bedroom

slippers. Oh, Harry, I found your slippers!” The girl got down off the

chair and went to the door.

“Thanks, dear,” she said. “I'm coming in a minute.”

She went to the mirror, which had reflected the Empress Maria Theresa,

and looked at her eyes. They were still red. Perhaps if she opened the

window the air would brighten them.

Armed with the brush, little Scatchett hurried to the Big Soprano's

room. She flung the brush on the bed and closed the door. She held her

shabby wrapper about her and listened just inside the door. There were

no footsteps, only the banging of the gate in the wind. She turned to

the Big Soprano, heating a curling iron in the flame of a candle, and

held out her hand.

“Look!” she said. “Under my bed! Ten kronen!”

Without a word the Big Soprano put down her curling-iron, and

ponderously getting down on her knees, candle in hand, inspected the

dusty floor beneath her bed. It revealed nothing but a cigarette, on

which she pounced. Still squatting, she lighted the cigarette in the

candle flame and sat solemnly puffing it.

“The first for a week,” she said. “Pull out the wardrobe, Scatch; there

may be another relic of my prosperous days.”

But little Scatchett was not interested in Austrian cigarettes with a

government monopoly and gilt tips. She was looking at the ten-kronen

piece.

“Where is the other?” she asked in a whisper.

“In my powder-box.”

Little Scatchett lifted the china lid and dropped the tiny gold-piece.

“Every little bit,” she said flippantly, but still in a whisper, “added

to what she's got, makes just a little bit more.”

“Have you thought of a place to leave it for her? If Rosa finds it,

it's good-bye. Heaven knows it was hard enough to get together, without

losing it now. I'll have to jump overboard and swim ashore at New

York--I haven't even a dollar for tips.”

“New York!” said little Scatchett with her eyes glowing. “If Henry meets

me I know he will--”

“Tut!” The Big Soprano got up cumbrously and stood looking down. “You

and your Henry! Scatchy, child, has it occurred to your maudlin young

mind that money isn't the only thing Harmony is going to need? She's

going to be alone--and this is a bad town to be alone in. And she is not

like us. You have your Henry. I'm a beefy person who has a stomach, and

I'm thankful for it. But she is different--she's got the thing that you

are as well without, the thing that my lack of is sending me back to

fight in a church choir instead of grand opera.”

Little Scatchett was rather puzzled.

“Temperament?” she asked. It had always been accepted in the little

colony that Harmony was a real musician, a star in their lesser

firmament.

The Big Soprano sniffed.

“If you like,” she said. “Soul is a better word. Only the rich ought to

have souls, Scatchy, dear.”

This was over the younger girl's head, and anyhow Harmony was coming

down the hall.

“I thought, under her pillow,” she whispered. “She'll find it--”

Harmony came in, to find the Big Soprano heating a curler in the flame

of a candle.

CHAPTER II

Harmony found the little hoard under her pillow that night when, having

seen Scatch and the Big Soprano off at the station, she had come back

alone to the apartment on the Siebensternstrasse. The trunks were

gone now. Only the concerto score still lay on the piano, where little

Scatchett, mentally on the dock at New York with Henry's arms about her,

had forgotten it. The candles in the great chandelier had died in tears

of paraffin that spattered the floor beneath. One or two of the sockets

were still smoking, and the sharp odor of burning wickends filled the

room.

Harmony had come through the garden quickly. She had had an uneasy sense

of being followed, and the garden, with its moaning trees and slamming

gate and the great dark house in the background, was a forbidding place

at best. She had rung the bell and had stood, her back against the door,

eyes and ears strained in the darkness. She had fancied that a figure

had stopped outside the gate and stood looking in, but the next moment

the gate had swung to and the Portier was fumbling at the lock behind

her.

The Portier had put on his trousers over his night garments, and his

mustache bandage gave him a sinister expression, rather augmented

when he smiled at her. The Portier liked Harmony in spite of the early

morning practicing; she looked like a singer at the opera for whom he

cherished a hidden attachment. The singer had never seen him, but it was

for her he wore the mustache bandage. Perhaps some day--hopefully! One

must be ready!

The Portier gave Harmony a tiny candle and Harmony held out his tip, the

five Hellers of custom. But the Portier was keen, and Rosa was a niece

of his wife and talked more than she should. He refused the tip with a

gesture.

“Bitte, Fraulein!” he said through the bandage. “It is for me a pleasure

to admit you. And perhaps if the Fraulein is cold, a basin of soup.”

The Portier was not pleasant to the eye. His nightshirt was open over

his hairy chest and his feet were bare to the stone floor. But to

Harmony that lonely night he was beautiful. She tried to speak and could

not but she held out her hand in impulsive gratitude, and the Portier in

his best manner bent over and kissed it. As she reached the curve of the

stone staircase, carrying her tiny candle, the Portier was following her

with his eyes. She was very like the girl of the opera.

The clang of the door below and the rattle of the chain were comforting

to Harmony's ears. From the safety of the darkened salon she peered out

into the garden again, but no skulking figure detached itself from the

shadows, and the gate remained, for a marvel, closed.

It was when--having picked up her violin in a very passion of

loneliness, only to put it down when she found that the familiar sounds

echoed and reechoed sadly through the silent rooms--it was when she was

ready for bed that she found the money under her pillow, and a scrawl

from Scatchy, a breathless, apologetic scrawl, little Scatchett having

adored her from afar, as the plain adore the beautiful, the mediocre the

gifted:--

DEAREST HARRY [here a large blot, Scatchy being addicted to blots]: I am

honestly frightened when I think what we are doing. But, oh, my dear, if

you could know how pleased we are with ourselves you'd not deny us this

pleasure. Harry, you have it--the real thing, you know, whatever it

is--and I haven't. None of the rest of us had. And you must stay. To go

now, just when lessons would mean everything--well, you must not think

of it. We have scads to take us home, more than we need, both of us, or

at least--well, I'm lying, and you know it. But we have enough, by being

careful, and we want you to have this. It isn't much, but it may help.

Ten Kronen of it I found to-night under my bed, and it may be yours

anyhow.

“Sadie [Sadie was the Big Soprano] keeps saying awful things about our

leaving you here, and she has rather terrified me. You are so beautiful,

Harry,--although you never let us tell you so. And Sadie says you have

a soul and I haven't, and that souls are deadly things to have. I feel

to-night that in urging you to stay I am taking the burden of your soul

on me! Do be careful, Harry. If any one you do not know speaks to you

call a policeman. And be sure you get into a respectable pension. There

are queer ones.

“Sadie and I think that if you can get along on what you get from

home--you said your mother would get insurance, didn't you?--and will

keep this as a sort of fund to take you home if anything should go

wrong--. But perhaps we are needlessly worried. In any case, of course

it's a loan, and you can preserve that magnificent independence of yours

by sending it back when you get to work to make your fortune. And if you

are doubtful at all, just remember that hopeful little mother of yours

who sent you over to get what she had never been able to have for

herself, and who planned this for you from the time you were a kiddy and

she named you Harmony.

“I'm not saying good-bye. I can't.

“SCATCH.”

That night, while the Portier and his wife slept under their crimson

feather beds and the crystals of the chandelier in the salon shook in

the draft as if the old Austrian court still danced beneath, Harmony

fought her battle. And a battle it was. Scatchy and the Big Soprano had

not known everything. There had been no insurance on her father's life;

the little mother was penniless. A married sister would care for her,

but what then? Harmony had enough remaining of her letter of credit to

take her home, and she had--the hoard under the pillow. To go back and

teach the violin; or to stay and finish under the master, be presented,

as he had promised her, at a special concert in Vienna, with all the

prestige at home that that would mean, and its resulting possibility of

fame and fortune--which?

She decided to stay. There might be a concert or so, and she could

teach English. The Viennese were crazy about English. Some of the stores

advertised “English Spoken.” That would be something to fall back on, a

clerkship during the day.

Toward dawn she discovered that she was very cold, and she went into the

Big Soprano's deserted and disordered room. The tile stove was warm and

comfortable, but on the toilet table there lay a disreputable comb with

most of the teeth gone. Harmony kissed this unromantic object! Which

reveals the fact that, genius or not, she was only a young and rather

frightened girl, and that every atom of her ached with loneliness.

She did not sleep at all, but sat curled up on the bed with her feet

under her and thought things out. At dawn the Portier, crawling out

into the cold from under his feathers, opened the door into the hall

and listened. She was playing, not practicing, and the music was the

barcarolle from the “Tales” of Hoffmann. Standing in the doorway in

his night attire, his chest open to the frigid morning air, his face

upraised to the floor above, he hummed the melody in a throaty tenor.

When the music had died away he went in and closed the door sheepishly.

His wife stood over the stove, a stick of firewood in her hand. She eyed

him.

“So! It is the American Fraulein now!”

“I did but hum a little. She drags out my heart with her music.” He

fumbled with his mustache bandage, which was knotted behind, keeping one

eye on his wife, whose morning pleasure it was to untie it for him.

“She leaves to-day,” she announced, ignoring the knot.

“Why? She is alone. Rosa says--”

“She leaves to-day!”

The knot was hopeless now, double-tied and pulled to smooth compactness.

The Portier jerked at it.

“No Fraulein stays here alone. It is not respectable. And what saw I

last night, after she entered and you stood moon-gazing up the stair

after her! A man in the gateway!”

The Portier was angry. He snarled something through the bandage, which

had slipped down over his mouth, and picked up a great knife.

“She will stay if she so desire,” he muttered furiously, and, raising

the knife, he cut the knotted string. His mustache, faintly gray and

sweetly up-curled, stood revealed.

“She will stay!” he repeated. “And when you see men at the gate, let me

know. She is an angel!”

“And she looks like the angel at the opera, hein?”

This was a crushing blow. The Portier wilted. Such things come from

telling one's cousin, who keeps a brushshop, what is in one's heart.

Yesterday his wife had needed a brush, and to-day--Himmel, the girl must

go!

Harmony knew also that she must go. The apartment was large and

expensive; Rosa ate much and wasted more. She must find somewhere a tiny

room with board, a humble little room but with a stove. It is folly

to practice with stiffened fingers. A room where her playing would not

annoy people, that was important.

She paid Rosa off that morning out of money left for that purpose. Rosa

wept. She said she would stay with the Fraulein for her keep, because it

was not the custom for young ladies to be alone in the city--young girls

of the people, of course; but beautiful young ladies, no!

Harmony gave her an extra krone or two out of sheer gratitude, but she

could not keep her. And at noon, having packed her trunk, she went down

to interview the Portier and his wife, who were agents under the owner

for the old house.

The Portier, entirely subdued, was sweeping out the hallway. He looked

past the girl, not at her, and observed impassively that the lease was

up and it was her privilege to go. In the daylight she was not so like

the angel, and after all she could only play the violin. The angel had

a voice, such a voice! And besides, there was an eye at the crack of the

door.

The bit of cheer of the night before was gone; it was with a heavy heart

that Harmony started on her quest for cheaper quarters.

Winter, which had threatened for a month, had come at last. The

cobblestones glittered with ice and the small puddles in the gutters

were frozen. Across the street a spotted deer, shot in the mountains the

day before and hanging from a hook before a wild-game shop, was frozen

quite stiff. It was a pretty creature. The girl turned her eyes away. A

young man, buying cheese and tinned fish in the shop, watched after her.

“That's an American girl, isn't it?” he asked in American-German.

The shopkeeper was voluble. Also Rosa had bought much from him, and Rosa

talked. When the American left the shop he knew everything of Harmony

that Rosa knew except her name. Rosa called her “The Beautiful One.”

Also he was short one krone four beliers in his change, which is readily

done when a customer is plainly thinking of a “beautiful one.”

Harmony searched all day for the little room with board and a stove and

no objection to practicing. There were plenty--but the rates! The

willow plume looked prosperous, and she had a way of making the plainest

garments appear costly. Landladies looked at the plume and the suit and

heard the soft swish of silk beneath, which marks only self-respect in

the American woman but is extravagance in Europe, and added to their

regular terms until poor Harmony's heart almost stood still. And then

at last toward evening she happened on a gloomy little pension near the

corner of the Alserstrasse, and it being dark and the plume not showing,

and the landlady missing the rustle owing to cotton in her ears for

earache, Harmony found terms that she could meet for a time.

A mean little room enough, but with a stove. The bed sagged in the

center, and the toilet table had a mirror that made one eye appear

higher than the other and twisted one's nose. But there was an odor

of stewing cabbage in the air. Also, alas, there was the odor of many

previous stewed cabbages, and of dusty carpets and stale tobacco.

Harmony had had no lunch; she turned rather faint.

She arranged to come at once, and got out into the comparative purity

of the staircase atmosphere and felt her way down. She reeled once or

twice. At the bottom of the dark stairs she stood for a moment with her

eyes closed, to the dismay of a young man who had just come in with a

cheese and some tinned fish under his arm.

He put down his packages on the stone floor and caught her arm.

“Not ill, are you?” he asked in English, and then remembering. “Bist du

krank?” He colored violently at that, recalling too late the familiarity

of the “du.”

Harmony smiled faintly.

“Only tired,” she said in English. “And the odor of cabbage--“.

Her color had come back and she freed herself from his supporting hand.

He whistled softly. He had recognized her.

“Cabbage, of course!” he said. “The pension upstairs is full of it.

I live there, and I've eaten so much of it I could be served up with

pork.”

“I am going to live there. Is it as bad as that?”

He waved a hand toward the parcels on the floor.

“So bad,” he observed, “that I keep body and soul together by buying

strong and odorous food at the delicatessens--odorous, because only

rugged flavors rise above the atmosphere up there. Cheese is the only

thing that really knocks out the cabbage, and once or twice even cheese

has retired defeated.”

“But I don't like cheese.” In sheer relief from the loneliness of the

day her spirits were rising.

“Then coffee! But not there. Coffee at the coffee-house on the corner. I

say--” He hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Would you--don't you think a cup of coffee would set you up a bit?”

“It sounds attractive,”--uncertainly.

“Coffee with whipped cream and some little cakes?”

Harmony hesitated. In the gloom of the hall she could hardly see

this brisk young American--young, she knew by his voice, tall by his

silhouette, strong by the way he had caught her. She could not see his

face, but she liked his voice.

“Do you mean--with you?”

“I'm a doctor. I am going to fill my own prescription.”

That sounded reassuring. Doctors were not as other men; they were

legitimate friends in need.

“I am sure it is not proper, but--”

“Proper! Of course it is. I shall send you a bill for professional

services. Besides, won't we be formally introduced to-night by the

landlady? Come now--to the coffee-house and the Paris edition of the

'Herald'!” But the next moment he paused and ran his hand over his chin.

“I'm pretty disreputable,” he explained. “I have been in a clinic all

day, and, hang it all, I'm not shaved.”

“What difference does that make?”

“My dear young lady,” he explained gravely, picking up the cheese and

the tinned fish, “it makes a difference in me that I wish you to realize

before you see me in a strong light.”

He rapped at the Portier's door, with the intention of leaving his

parcels there, but receiving no reply tucked them under his arm. A

moment later Harmony was in the open air, rather dazed, a bit excited,

and lovely with the color the adventure brought into her face. Her

companion walked beside her, tall, slightly stooped. She essayed a

fugitive little side-glance up at him, and meeting his eyes hastily

averted hers.

They passed a policeman, and suddenly there flashed into the girl's mind

little Scatchett's letter.

“Do be careful, Harry. If any one you do not know speaks to you, call a

policeman.”

CHAPTER III

The coffee-house was warm and bright. Round its small tables were

gathered miscellaneous groups, here and there a woman, but mostly

men--uniformed officers, who made of the neighborhood coffee-house a

sort of club, where under their breath they criticized the Government

and retailed small regimental gossip; professors from the university,

still wearing under the beards of middle life the fine horizontal scars

of student days; elderly doctors from the general hospital across the

street; even a Hofrath or two, drinking beer and reading the “Fliegende

Blaetter” and “Simplicissimus”; and in an alcove round a billiard table

a group of noisy Korps students. Over all a permeating odor of coffee,

strong black coffee, made with a fig or two to give it color. It rose

even above the blue tobacco haze and dominated the atmosphere with

its spicy and stimulating richness. A bustle of waiters, a hum of

conversation, the rattle of newspapers and the click of billiard

balls--this was the coffee-house.

Harmony had never been inside one before. The little music colony had

been a tight-closed corporation, retaining its American integrity, in

spite of the salon of Maria Theresa and three expensive lessons a week

in German. Harmony knew the art galleries and the churches, which were

free, and the opera, thanks to no butter at supper. But of that backbone

of Austrian life, the coffee-house, she was profoundly ignorant.

Her companion found her a seat in a corner near a heater and disappeared

for an instant on the search for the Paris edition of the “Herald.” The

girl followed him with her eyes. Seen under the bright electric lights,

he was not handsome, hardly good-looking. His mouth was wide, his nose

irregular, his hair a nondescript brown,--but the mouth had humor, the

nose character, and, thank Heaven, there was plenty of hair. Not that

Harmony saw all this at once. As he tacked to and fro round the tables,

with a nod here and a word there, she got a sort of ensemble effect--a

tall man, possibly thirty, broadshouldered, somewhat stooped, as tall

men are apt to be. And shabby, undeniably shabby!

The shabbiness was a shock. A much-braided officer, trim from the points

of his mustache to the points of his shoes, rose to speak to him. The

shabbiness was accentuated by the contrast. Possibly the revelation

was an easement to the girl's nervousness. This smiling and unpressed

individual, blithely waving aloft the Paris edition of the “Herald” and

equally blithely ignoring the maledictions of the student from whom

he had taken it--even Scatchy could not have called him a vulture or

threatened him with the police.

He placed the paper before her and sat down at her side, not to

interfere with her outlook over the room.

“Warmer?” he asked.

“Very much.”

“Coffee is coming. And cinnamon cakes with plenty of sugar. They know me

here and they know where I live. They save the sugariest cakes for me.

Don't let me bother you; go on and read. See which of the smart set is

getting a divorce--or is it always the same one? And who's President

back home.”

“I'd rather look round. It's curious, isn't it?”

“Curious? It's heavenly! It's the one thing I am going to take back

to America with me--one coffee-house, one dozen military men for local

color, one dozen students ditto, and one proprietor's wife to sit in the

cage and shortchange the unsuspecting. I'll grow wealthy.”

“But what about the medical practice?”

He leaned over toward her; his dark-gray eyes fulfilled the humorous

promise of his mouth.

“Why, it will work out perfectly,” he said whimsically. “The great

American public will eat cinnamon cakes and drink coffee until the

feeble American nervous system will be shattered. I shall have an office

across the street!”

After that, having seen how tired she looked, he forbade conversation

until she had had her coffee. She ate the cakes, too, and he watched her

with comfortable satisfaction.

“Nod your head but don't speak,” he said. “Remember, I am prescribing,

and there's to be no conversation until the coffee is down. Shall I or

shall I not open the cheese?”

But Harmony did not wish the cheese, and so signified. Something

inherently delicate in the unknown kept him from more than an occasional

swift glance at her. He read aloud, as she ate, bits of news from the

paper, pausing to sip his own coffee and to cast an eye over the crowded

room. Here and there an officer, gazing with too open admiration on

Harmony's lovely face, found himself fixed by a pair of steel-gray eyes

that were anything but humorous at that instant, and thought best to

shift his gaze.

The coffee finished, the girl began to gather up her wraps. But the

unknown protested.

“The function of a coffee-house,” he explained gravely, “is twofold.

Coffee is only the first half. The second half is conversation.”

“I converse very badly.”

“So do I. Suppose we talk about ourselves. We are sure to do that well.

Shall I commence?”

Harmony was in no mood to protest. Having swallowed coffee, why choke

over conversation? Besides, she was very comfortable. It was warm

there, with the heater at her back; better than the little room with the

sagging bed and the doors covered with wall paper. Her feet had stopped

aching, too, She could have sat there for hours. And--why evade it?--she

was interested. This whimsical and respectful young man with his absurd

talk and his shabby clothes had roused her curiosity.

“Please,” she assented.

“Then, first of all, my name. I'm getting that over early, because it

isn't much, as names go. Peter Byrne it is. Don't shudder.”

“Certainly I'm not shuddering.”

“I have another name, put in by my Irish father to conciliate a German

uncle of my mother's. Augustus! It's rather a mess. What shall I put on

my professional brassplate? If I put P. Augustus Byrne nobody's fooled.

They know my wretched first name is Peter.”

“Or Patrick.”

“I rather like Patrick--if I thought it might pass as Patrick! Patrick

has possibilities. The diminutive is Pat, and that's not bad. But

Peter!”

“Do you know,” Harmony confessed half shyly, “I like Peter as a name.”

“Peter it shall be, then. I go down to posterity and fame as Peter

Byrne. The rest doesn't amount to much, but I want you to know it, since

you have been good enough to accept me on faith. I'm here alone, from

a little town in eastern Ohio; worked my way through a coeducational

college in the West and escaped unmarried; did two years in a drygoods

store until, by saving and working in my vacations, I got through

medical college and tried general practice. Didn't like it--always

wanted to do surgery. A little legacy from the German uncle, trying to

atone for the 'Augustus,' gave me enough money to come here. I've got a

chance with the Days--surgeons, you know--when I go back, if I can hang

on long enough. That's all. Here's a traveler's check with my name on

it, to vouch for the truth of this thrilling narrative. Gaze on it with

awe; there are only a few of them left!”

Harmony was as delicately strung, as vibratingly responsive as the

strings of her own violin, and under the even lightness of his tone she

felt many things that met a response in her--loneliness and struggle,

and the ever-present anxiety about money, grim determination, hope and

fear, and even occasional despair. He was still young, but there were

lines in his face and a hint of gray in his hair. Even had he been less

frank, she would have known soon enough--the dingy little pension, the

shabby clothes--

She held out her hand.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said simply. “I think I understand very

well because--it's music with me: violin. And my friends have gone, so I

am alone, too.”

He leaned his elbows on the table and looked out over the crowd without

seeing it.

“It's curious, isn't it?” he said. “Here we are, you and I, meeting

in the center of Europe, both lonely as the mischief, both working our

heads off for an idea that may never pan out! Why aren't you at home

to-night, eating a civilized beefsteak and running upstairs to get ready

for a nice young man to bring you a box of chocolates? Why am I not

measuring out calico in Shipley & West's? Instead, we are going to

Frau Schwarz', to listen to cold ham and scorched compote eaten in six

different languages.”

Harmony made no immediate reply. He seemed to expect none. She was

drawing on her gloves, her eyes, like his, roving over the crowd.

Far back among the tables a young man rose and yawned. Then,

seeing Byrne, he waved a greeting to him. Byrne's eyes, from being

introspective, became watchful.

The young man was handsome in a florid, red-checked way, with black hair

and blue eyes. Unlike Byrne, he was foppishly neat. He was not alone. A

slim little Austrian girl, exceedingly chic, rose when he did and threw

away the end of a cigarette.

“Why do we go so soon?” she demanded fretfully in German. “It is early

still.”

He replied in English. It was a curious way they had, and eminently

satisfactory, each understanding better than he spoke the other's

language.

“Because, my beloved,” he said lightly, “you are smoking a great many

poisonous and highly expensive cigarettes. Also I wish to speak to

Peter.”

The girl followed his eyes and stiffened jealously.

“Who is that with Peter?”

“We are going over to find out, little one. Old Peter with a woman at

last!”

The little Austrian walked delicately, swaying her slim body with a slow

and sensuous grace. She touched an officer as she passed him, and paused

to apologize, to the officer's delight and her escort's irritation. And

Peter Byrne watched and waited, a line of annoyance between his brows.

The girl was ahead; that complicated things.

When she was within a dozen feet of the table he rose hastily, with a

word of apology, and met the couple. It was adroitly done. He had taken

the little Austrian's arm and led her by the table while he was still

greeting her. He held her in conversation in his absurd German until

they had reached the swinging doors, while her companion followed

helplessly. And he bowed her out, protesting his undying admiration for

her eyes, while the florid youth alternately raged behind him and stared

back at Harmony, interested and unconscious behind her table.

The little Austrian was on the pavement when Byrne turned, unsmiling, to

the other man.

“That won't do, you know, Stewart,” he said, grave but not unfriendly.

“The Kid wouldn't bite her.”

“We'll not argue about it.”

After a second's awkward pause Stewart smiled.

“Certainly not,” he agreed cheerfully. “That is up to you, of course. I

didn't know. We're looking for you to-night.”

A sudden repulsion for the evening's engagement rose in Byrne, but the

situation following his ungraciousness was delicate.

“I'll be round,” he said. “I have a lecture and I may be late, but I'll

come.”

The “Kid” was not stupid. She moved off into the night, chin in air,

angrily flushed.

“You saw!” she choked, when Stewart had overtaken her and slipped a hand

through her arm. “He protects her from me! It is because of you. Before

I knew you--”

“Before you knew me, little one,” he said cheerfully, “you were exactly

what you are now.”

She paused on the curb and raised her voice.

“So! And what is that?”

“Beautiful as the stars, only--not so remote.”

In their curious bi-lingual talk there was little room for subtlety. The

“beautiful” calmed her, but the second part of the sentence roused her

suspicion.

“Remote? What is that?”

“I was thinking of Worthington.”

The name was a signal for war. Stewart repented, but too late.

In the cold evening air, to the amusement of a passing detail of

soldiers trundling a breadwagon by a rope, Stewart stood on the pavement

and dodged verbal brickbats of Viennese idioms and German epithets. He

drew his chin into the up-turned collar of his overcoat and waited, an

absurdly patient figure, until the hail of consonants had subsided

into a rain of tears. Then he took the girl's elbow again and led her,

childishly weeping, into a narrow side street beyond the prying ears and

eyes of the Alserstrasse.

Byrne went back to Harmony. The incident of Stewart and the girl was

closed and he dismissed it instantly. That situation was not his, or

of his making. But here in the coffee-house, lovely, alluring, rather

puzzled at this moment, was also a situation. For there was a situation.

He had suspected it that morning, listening to the delicatessen-seller's

narrative of Rosa's account of the disrupted colony across in the old

lodge; he had been certain of it that evening, finding Harmony in the

dark entrance to his own rather sordid pension. Now, in the bright

light of the coffee-house, surmising her poverty, seeing her beauty, the

emotional coming and going of her color, her frank loneliness, and God

save the mark!--her trust in him, he accepted the situation and adopted

it: his responsibility, if you please.

He straightened under it. He knew the old city fairly well--enough to

love it and to loathe it in one breath. He had seen its tragedies and

passed them by, or had, in his haphazard way, thrown a greeting to them,

or even a glass of native wine. And he knew the musical temperament;

the all or nothing of its insistent demands; its heights that are higher

than others, its wretchednesses that are hell. Once in the Hofstadt

Theater, where he had bought standing room, he had seen a girl he had

known in Berlin, where he was taking clinics and where she was cooking

her own meals. She had been studying singing. In the Hofstadt Theater

she had worn a sable coat and had avoided his eyes.

Perhaps the old coffee-house had seen nothing more absurd, in its years

of coffee and billiards and Munchener beer, than Peter's new resolution

that night: this poverty adopting poverty, this youth adopting youth,

with the altruistic purpose of saving it from itself.

And this, mind you, before Peter Byrne had heard Harmony's story or knew

her name, Rosa having called her “The Beautiful One” in her narrative,

and the delicatessen-seller being literal in his repetition.

Back to “The Beautiful One” went Peter Byrne, and, true to his new part

of protector and guardian, squared his shoulders and tried to look much

older than he really was, and responsible. The result was a grimness

that alarmed Harmony back to the forgotten proprieties.

“I think I must go,” she said hurriedly, after a glance at his

determinedly altruistic profile. “I must finish packing my things. The

Portier has promised--”

“Go! Why, you haven't even told me your name!”

“Frau Schwarz will present you to-night,” primly and rising.

Peter Byrne rose, too.

“I am going back with you. You should not go through that lonely yard

alone after dark.”

“Yard! How do you know that?”

Byrne was picking up the cheese, which he had thoughtlessly set on the

heater, and which proved to be in an alarming state of dissolution. It

took a moment to rewrap, and incidentally furnished an inspiration. He

indicated it airily.

“Saw you this morning coming out--delicatessen shop across the street,”

he said glibly. And then, in an outburst of honesty which the girl's

eyes seemed somehow to compel: “That's true, but it's not all the truth.

I was on the bus last night, and when you got off alone I--I saw you

were an American, and that's not a good neighborhood. I took the liberty

of following you to your gate!”

He need not have been alarmed. Harmony was only grateful, and said so.

And in her gratitude she made no objection to his suggestion that he see

her safely to the old lodge and help her carry her hand-luggage and her

violin to the pension. He paid the trifling score, and followed by many

eyes in the room they went out into the crisp night together.

At the lodge the doors stood wide, and a vigorous sound of scrubbing

showed that the Portier's wife was preparing for the inspection of

possible new tenants. She was cleaning down the stairs by the light of

a candle, and the steam of the hot water on the cold marble invested her

like an aura. She stood aside to let them pass, and then went cumbrously

down the stairs to where, a fork in one hand and a pipe in the other,

the Portier was frying chops for the evening meal.

“What have I said?” she demanded from the doorway. “Your angel is here.”

“So!”

“She with whom you sing, old cracked voice! Whose money you refuse,

because she reminds you of your opera singer! She is again here, and

with a man!”

“It is the way of the young and beautiful--there is always a man,” said

the Portier, turning a chop.

His wife wiped her steaming hands on her apron and turned away,

exasperated.

“It is the same man whom I last night saw at the gate,” she threw back

over her shoulder. “I knew it from the first; but you, great booby, can

see nothing but red lips. Bah!”

Upstairs in the salon of Maria Theresa, lighted by one candle and

freezing cold, in a stiff chair under the great chandelier Peter Byrne

sat and waited and blew on his fingers. Down below, in the Street of

Seven Stars, the arc lights swung in the wind.

CHAPTER IV

The supper that evening was even unusually bad. Frau Schwarz, much

crimped and clad in frayed black satin, presided at the head of the long

table. There were few, almost no Americans, the Americans flocking to

good food at reckless prices in more fashionable pensions; to the Frau

Gallitzenstein's, for instance, in the Kochgasse, where there was to

be had real beefsteak, where turkeys were served at Thanksgiving and

Christmas, and where, were one so minded, one might revel in whipped

cream.

The Pension Schwarz, however, was not without adornment. In the center

of the table was a large bunch of red cotton roses with wire stems and

green paper leaves, and over the side-table, with its luxury of compote

in tall glass dishes and its wealth of small hard cakes, there hung

a framed motto which said, “Nicht Rauchen,” “No Smoking,”--and which

looked suspiciously as if it had once adorned a compartment of a

railroad train.

Peter Byrne was early in the dining-room. He had made, for him, a

careful toilet, which consisted of a shave and clean linen. But he had

gone further: He had discovered, for the first time in the three months

of its defection, a button missing from his coat, and had set about to

replace it. He had cut a button from another coat, by the easy method

of amputating it with a surgical bistoury, and had sewed it in its new

position with a curved surgical needle and a few inches of sterilized

catgut. The operation was slow and painful, and accomplished only with

the aid of two cigarettes and an artery clip. When it was over he tied

the ends in a surgeon's knot underneath and stood back to consider the

result. It seemed neat enough, but conspicuous. After a moment or two of

troubled thought he blacked the white catgut with a dot of ink and went

on his way rejoicing.

Peter Byrne was entirely untroubled as to the wisdom of the course he

had laid out for himself. He followed no consecutive line of thought as

he dressed. When he was not smoking he was whistling, and when he was

doing neither, and the needle proved refractory in his cold fingers,

he was swearing to himself. For there was no fire in the room. The

materials for a fire were there, and a white tile stove, as cozy as an

obelisk in a cemetery, stood in the corner. But fires are expensive,

and hardly necessary when one sleeps with all one's windows open--one

window, to be exact, the room being very small--and spends most of the

day in a warm and comfortable shambles called a hospital.

To tell the truth he was not thinking of Harmony at all, except

subconsciously, as instance the button. He was going over, step by

step, the technic of an operation he had seen that afternoon, weighing,

considering, even criticizing. His conclusion, reached as he brushed

back his hair and put away his sewing implements, was somewhat to the

effect that he could have done a better piece of work with his eyes

shut and his hands tied behind his back; and that if it were not for the

wealth of material to work on he'd pack up and go home. Which brought

him back to Harmony and his new responsibility. He took off the necktie

he had absently put on and hunted out a better one.

He was late at supper--an offense that brought a scowl from the head

of the table, a scowl that he met with a cheerful smile. Harmony was

already in her place. Seated between a little Bulgarian and a Jewish

student from Galicia, she was almost immediately struggling in a sea of

language, into which she struck out now and then tentatively, only to

be again submerged. Byrne had bowed to her conventionally, even coldly,

aware of the sharp eyes and tongues round the table, but Harmony did

not understand. She had expected moral support from his presence, and

failing that she sank back into the loneliness and depression of the

day. Her bright color faded; her eyes looked tragic and rather aloof.

She ate almost nothing, and left the table before the others had

finished.

What curious little dramas of the table are played under unseeing eyes!

What small tragedies begin with the soup and end with dessert! What

heartaches with a salad! Small tragedies of averted eyes, looking

away from appealing ones; lips that tremble with wretchedness nibbling

daintily at a morsel; smiles that sear; foolish bits of talk that mean

nothing except to one, and to that one everything! Harmony, freezing at

Peter's formal bow and gazing obstinately ahead during the rest of the

meal, or no nearer Peter than the red-paper roses, and Peter, showering

the little Bulgarian next to her with detestable German in the hope of a

glance. And over all the odor of cabbage salad, and the “Nicht Rauchen”

sign, and an acrimonious discussion on eugenics between an American

woman doctor named Gates and a German matron who had had fifteen

children, and who reduced every general statement to a personal insult.

Peter followed Harmony as soon as he dared. Her door was closed, and she

was playing very softly, so as to disturb no one. Defiantly, too, had he

only known it, her small chin up and her color high again; playing the

“Humoresque,” of all things, in the hope, of course, that he would

hear it and guess from her choice the wild merriment of her mood. Peter

rapped once or twice, but obtained no answer, save that the “Humoresque”

rose a bit higher; and, Dr. Gates coming along the hall just then, he

was forced to light a cigarette to cover his pausing.

Dr. Gates, however, was not suspicious. She was a smallish woman of

forty or thereabout, with keen eyes behind glasses and a masculine

disregard of clothes, and she paused by Byrne to let him help her into

her ulster.

“New girl, eh?” she said, with a birdlike nod toward the door. “Very

gay, isn't she, to have just finished a supper like that! Honestly,

Peter, what are we going to do?”

“Growl and stay on, as we have for six months. There is better food, but

not for our terms.”

Dr. Gates sighed, and picking a soft felt hat from the table put it on

with a single jerk down over her hair.

“Oh, darn money, anyhow!” she said. “Come and walk to the corner with

me. I have a lecture.”

Peter promised to follow in a moment, and hurried back to his room.

There, on a page from one of his lecture notebooks, he wrote--

“Are you ill? Or have I done anything?”

“P. B.”

This with great care he was pushing under Harmony's door when the little

Bulgarian came along and stopped, smiling. He said nothing, nor did

Peter, who rose and dusted his knees. The little Bulgarian spoke no

English and little German. Between them was the wall of language. But

higher than this barrier was the understanding of their common sex. He

held out his hand, still smiling, and Peter, grinning sheepishly, took

it. Then he followed the woman doctor down the stairs.

To say that Peter Byrne was already in love with Harmony would be

absurd. She attracted him, as any beautiful and helpless girl attracts

an unattracted man. He was much more concerned, now that he feared he

had offended her, than he would have been without this fillip to his

interest. But even his concern did not prevent his taking copious and

intelligent notes at his lecture that night, or interfere with his

enjoyment of the Stein of beer with which, after it was over, he washed

down its involved German.

The engagement at Stewart's irked him somewhat. He did not approve of

Stewart exactly, not from any dislike of the man, but from a lack of

fineness in the man himself--an intangible thing that seems to be a

matter of that unfashionable essence, the soul, as against the clay; of

the thing contained, by an inverse metonymy, for the container.

Boyer, a nerve man from Texas, met him on the street, and they walked

to Stewart's apartment together. The frosty air and the rapid exercise

combined to drive away Byrne's irritation; that, and the recollection

that it was Saturday night and that to-morrow there would be no clinics,

no lectures, no operations; that the great shambles would be closed down

and that priests would read mass to convalescents in the chapels. He was

whistling as he walked along.

Boyer, a much older man, whose wife had come over with him, stopped

under a street light to consult his watch.

“Almost ten!” he said. “I hope you don't mind, Byrne; but I told Jennie

I was going to your pension. She detests Stewart.”

“Oh, that's all right. She knows you're playing poker?”

“Yes. She doesn't object to poker. It's the other. You can't make a good

woman understand that sort of thing.”

“Thank God for that!”

After a moment of silence Byrne took up his whistling again. It was the

“Humoresque.”

Stewart's apartment was on the third floor. Admission at that hour was

to be gained only by ringing, and Boyer touched the bell. The lights

were still on, however, in the hallways, revealing not overclean stairs

and, for a wonder, an electric elevator. This, however, a card announced

as out of order. Boyer stopped and examined the card grimly.

“'Out of order'!” he observed. “Out of order since last spring, judging

by that card. Vorwarts!”

They climbed easily, deliberately. At home in God's country Boyer played

golf, as became the leading specialist of his county. Byrne, with a

driving-arm like the rod of a locomotive, had been obliged to

forswear the more expensive game for tennis, with a resulting muscular

development that his slight stoop belied. He was as hard as nails,

without an ounce of fat, and he climbed the long steep flights with an

elasticity that left even Boyer a step or so behind.

Stewart opened the door himself, long German pipe in hand, his coat

replaced by a worn smoking-jacket. The little apartment was thick with

smoke, and from a room on the right came the click of chips and the

sound of beer mugs on wood.

Marie, restored to good humor, came out to greet them, and both men

bowed ceremoniously over her hand, clicking their heels together and

bowing from the waist. Byrne sniffed.

“What do I smell, Marie?” he demanded. “Surely not sausages!”

Marie dimpled. It was an old joke, to be greeted as one greets an old

friend. It was always sausages.

“Sausages, of a truth--fat ones.'

“But surely not with mustard?”

“Ach, ja--englisch mustard.”

Stewart and Boyer had gone on ahead. Marie laid a detaining hand on

Byrne's arm.

“I was very angry with you to-day.”

“With me?”

Like the others who occasionally gathered in Stewart's unconventional

menage, Byrne had adopted Stewart's custom of addressing Marie in

English, while she replied in her own tongue.

“Ja. I wished but to see nearer the American Fraulein's hat, and

you--She is rich, so?”

“I really don't know. I think not.”

“And good?”

“Yes, of course.”

Marie was small; she stood, her head back, her eyes narrowed, looking

up at Byrne. There was nothing evil in her face, it was not even hard.

Rather, there was a sort of weariness, as of age and experience. She

had put on a white dress, cut out at the neck, and above her collarbones

were small, cuplike hollows. She was very thin.

“I was sad to-night,” she said plaintively. “I wished to jump out the

window.”

Byrne was startled, but the girl was smiling at the recollection.

“And I made you feel like that?”

“Not you--the other Fraulein. I was dirt to her. I--” She stopped

tragically, then sniffled.

“The sausages!” she cried, and gathering up her skirts ran toward the

kitchen. Byrne went on into the sitting-room.

Stewart was a single man spending two years in post-graduate work in

Germany and Austria, not so much because the Germans and Austrians could

teach what could not be taught at home, but because of the wealth of

clinical material. The great European hospitals, filled to overflowing,

offered unlimited choice of cases. The contempt for human life of

overpopulated cities, coupled with the extreme poverty and helplessness

of the masses, combined to form that tragic part of the world which dies

that others may live.

Stewart, like Byrne, was doing surgery, and the very lack of fineness

which Byrne felt in the man promised something in his work, a sort of

ruthlessness, a singleness of purpose, good or bad, an overwhelming

egotism that in his profession might only be a necessary self-reliance.

His singleness of purpose had, at the beginning of his residence in

Vienna, devoted itself to making him comfortable. With the narrow means

at his control he had the choice of two alternatives: To live, as Byrne

was living, in a third-class pension, stewing in summer, freezing in

winter, starving always; or the alternative he had chosen.

The Stewart apartment had only three rooms, but it possessed that luxury

of luxuries, a bath. It was not a bath in the usual sense of water

on tap, and shining nickel plate, but a bath for all that, where with

premeditation and forethought one might bathe. The room had once been

a fuel and store room, but now boasted a tin tub and a stove with a

reservoir on top, where water might be heated to the boiling point, at

the same time bringing up the atmosphere to a point where the tin tub

sizzled if one touched it.

Behind the bathroom a tiny kitchen with a brick stove; next, a bedroom;

the whole incredibly neat. Along one side of the wall a clothespress,

which the combined wardrobes of two did not fill. And beyond that again,

opening through an arch with a dingy chenille curtain, the sitting-room,

now in chaotic disorder.

Byrne went directly to the sitting-room. There were four men already

there: Stewart and Boyer, a pathology man named Wallace Hunter, doing

research work at the general hospital, and a young piano student from

Tennessee named MacLean. The cards had been already dealt, and Byrne

stood by waiting for the hand to be played.

The game was a small one, as befitted the means of the majority. It was

a regular Saturday night affair, as much a custom as the beer that sat

in Steins on the floor beside each man, or as Marie's boiled Wiener

sausages.

The blue chips represented a Krone, the white ones five Hellers.

MacLean, who was hardly more than a boy, was winning, drawing in chips

with quick gestures of his long pianist's fingers.

Byrne sat down and picked up his cards. Stewart was staying out, and so,

after a glance, did he. The other three drew cards and fell to betting.

Stewart leaned back and filled his long pipe, and after a second's

hesitation Byrne turned to him.

“I don't know just what to say, Stewart,” he began in an undertone. “I'm

sorry. I didn't want to hurt Marie, but--”

“Oh, that's all right.” Stewart drew at his pipe and bent forward to

watch the game with an air of ending the discussion.

“Not at all. I did hurt her and I want to explain. Marie has been kind

to me, and I like her. You know that.”

“Don't be an ass!” Stewart turned on him sharply. “Marie is a little

fool, that's all. I didn't know it was an American girl.”

Byrne played in bad luck. His mind was not on the cards. He stayed

out of the last hand, and with a cigarette wandered about the room. He

glanced into the tidy bedroom and beyond, to where Marie hovered over

the stove.

She turned and saw him.

“Come,” she called. “Watch the supper for me while I go down for more

beer.”

“But no,” he replied, imitating her tone. “Watch the supper for me while

I go down for more beer.”

“I love thee,” she called merrily. “Tell the Herr Doktor I love thee.

And here is the pitcher.”

When he returned the supper was already laid in the little kitchen. The

cards were put away, and young MacLean and Wallace Hunter were replacing

the cover and the lamp on the card-table. Stewart was orating from a

pinnacle of proprietorship.

“Exactly,” he was saying, in reply to something gone before; “I used

to come here Saturday nights--used to come early and take a bath.

Worthington had rented it furnished for a song. Used to sit in a corner

and envy Worthington his bathtub, and that lamp there, and decent food,

and a bed that didn't suffer from necrosis in the center. Then when he

was called home I took it.”

“Girl and all, wasn't it?”

“Girl and all. Old Worth said she was straight, and, by Jove, she is. He

came back last fall on his wedding trip--he married a wealthy girl and

came to see us. I was out, but Marie was here. There was the deuce to

pay.”

He lowered his voice. The men had gathered about him in a group.

“Jealous, eh?” from Hunter.

“Jealous? No! He tried to kiss her and she hit him--said he didn't

respect her!”

“It's a curious code of honor,” said Boyer thoughtfully. And indeed to

none but Stewart did it seem amusing. This little girl of the streets,

driven by God knows what necessity to make her own code and, having made

it, living up to it with every fiber of her.

“Bitte zum speisen!” called Marie gayly from her brick stove, and the

men trooped out to the kitchen.

The supper was spread on the table, with the pitcher of beer in the

center. There were Swiss cheese and cold ham and rolls, and above all

sausages and mustard. Peter drank a great deal of beer, as did the

others, and sang German songs with a frightful accent and much vigor and

sentiment, as also did the others.

Then he went back to the cold room in the Pension Schwarz, and told

himself he was a fool to live alone when one could live like a prince

for the same sum properly laid out. He dropped into the hollow center of

his bed, where his big figure fitted as comfortably as though it lay in

a washtub, and before his eyes there came a vision of Stewart's flat and

the slippers by the fire--which was eminently human.

However, a moment later he yawned, and said aloud, with considerable

vigor, that he'd be damned if he would--which was eminently Peter Byrne.

Almost immediately, with the bed coverings, augmented by his overcoat,

drawn snug to his chin, and the better necktie swinging from the gasjet

in the air from the opened window, Peter was asleep. For four hours he

had entirely forgotten Harmony.

CHAPTER V

The peace of a gray Sunday morning hung like a cloud over the little

Pension Schwarz. In the kitchen the elderly maid, with a shawl over her

shoulders and stiffened fingers, made the fire, while in the dining-room

the little chambermaid cut butter and divided it sparingly among a dozen

breakfast trays--on each tray two hard rolls, a butter pat, a plate,

a cup. On two trays Olga, with a glance over her shoulder, placed two

butter pats. The mistress yet slept, but in the kitchen Katrina had a

keen eye for butter--and a hard heart.

Katrina came to the door.

“The hot water is ready,” she announced. “And the coffee also. Hast thou

been to mass?”

“Ja.”

“That is a lie.” This quite on general principle, it being one of the

cook's small tyrannies to exact religious observance from her underling,

and one of Olga's Sunday morning's indulgences to oversleep and avoid

the mass. Olga took the accusation meekly and without reply, being

occupied at that moment in standing between Katrina and the extra pats

of butter.

“For the lie,” said Katrina calmly, “thou shalt have no butter this

morning. There, the Herr Doktor rings for water. Get it, wicked one!”

Katrina turned slowly in the doorway.

“The new Fraulein is American?”

“Ja.”

Katrina shrugged her shoulders.

“Then I shall put more water to heat,” she said resignedly. “The

Americans use much water. God knows it cannot be healthy!”

Olga filled her pitcher from the great copper kettle and stood with it

poised in her thin young arms.

“The new Fraulein is very beautiful,” she continued aloud. “Thinkest

thou it is the hot water?”

“Is an egg more beautiful for being boiled?” demanded Katrina. “Go, and

be less foolish. See, it is not the Herr Doktor who rings, but the new

American.”

Olga carried her pitcher to Harmony's door, and being bidden, entered.

The room was frigid and Harmony, at the window in her nightgown, was

closing the outer casement. The inner still swung open. Olga, having put

down her pitcher, shivered.

“Surely the Fraulein has not slept with open windows?”

“Always with open windows.” Harmony having secured the inner casement,

was wrapping herself in the blue silk kimono with the faded butterflies.

Merely to look at it made Olga shiver afresh. She shook her head.

“But the air of the night,” she said, “it is full of mists and

illnesses! Will you have breakfast now?”

“In ten minutes, after I have bathed.”

Olga having put a match to the stove went back to the kitchen, shaking

her head.

“They are strange, the Americans!” she said to latrine. “And if to be

lovely one must bathe daily, and sleep with open windows--”

Harmony had slept soundly after all. Her pique at Byrne had passed

with the reading of his note, and the sensation of his protection and

nearness had been almost physical. In the virginal little apartment in

the lodge of Maria Theresa the only masculine presence had been that

of the Portier, carrying up coals at ninety Hellers a bucket, or of the

accompanist who each alternate day had played for the Big Soprano to

practice. And they had felt no deprivation, except for those occasional

times when Scatchy developed a reckless wish to see the interior of a

dancing-hall or one of the little theaters that opened after the opera.

But, as calmly as though she had never argued alone with a cabman or

disputed the bill at the delicatessen shop, Harmony had thrown herself

on the protection of this shabby big American whom she had met but

once, and, having done so, slept like a baby. Not, of course, that

she realized her dependence. She had felt very old and experienced and

exceedingly courageous as she put out her light the night before and

took a flying leap into the bed. She was still old and experienced, if a

trifle less courageous, that Sunday morning.

Promptly in ten minutes Olga brought the breakfast, two rolls, two pats

of butter--shades of the sleeping mistress and Katrina the thrifty--and

a cup of coffee. On the tray was a bit of paper torn from a notebook:--

“Part of the prescription is an occasional walk in good company. Will

you walk with me this afternoon? I would come in person to ask you, but

am spending the morning in my bathrobe, while my one remaining American

suit is being pressed.

“P. B.”

Harmony got the ink and her pen from her trunk and wrote below:--

“You are very kind to me. Yes, indeed.

“H. W.”

When frequent slamming of doors and steps along the passageway told

Harmony that the pension was fully awake, she got out her violin.

The idea of work obsessed her. To-morrow there would be the hunt for

something to do to supplement her resources, this afternoon she had

rashly promised to walk. The morning, then, must be given up to work.

But after all she did little.

For an hour, perhaps, she practiced. The little Bulgarian paused outside

her door and listened, rapt, his eyes closed. Peter Byrne, listening

while he sorted lecture memoranda at his little table in bathrobe and

slippers, absently filed the little note with the others--where he came

across it months later--next to a lecture on McBurney's Point, and spent

a sad hour or so over it. Over all the sordid little pension, with its

odors of food and stale air, its spotted napery and dusty artificial

flowers, the music hovered, and made for the time all things lovely.

In her room across from Harmony's, Anna Gates was sewing, or preparing

to sew. Her hair in a knob, her sleeves rolled up, the room in violent

disorder, she was bending over the bed, cutting savagely at a roll of

pink flannel. Because she was working with curved surgeon's scissors,

borrowed from Peter, the cut edges were strangely scalloped. Her method

as well as her tools was unique. Clearly she was intent on a body

garment, for now and then she picked up the flannel and held it to her.

Having thus, as one may say, got the line of the thing, she proceeded to

cut again, jaw tight set, small veins on her forehead swelling, a small

replica of Peter Byrne sewing a button on his coat.

After a time it became clear to her that her method was wrong. She

rolled up the flannel viciously and flung it into a corner, and

proceeded to her Sunday morning occupation of putting away the garments

she had worn during the week, a vast and motley collection.

On the irritability of her mood Harmony's music had a late but certain

effect. She made a toilet, a trifle less casual than usual, seeing that

she put on her stays, and rather sheepishly picked up the bundle from

the corner. She hunted about for a thimble, being certain she had

brought one from home a year before, but failed to find it. And finally,

bundle under her arm and smiling, she knocked at Harmony's door.

“Would you mind letting me sit with you?” she asked. “I'll not stir. I

want to sew, and my room is such a mess!”

Harmony threw the door wide. “You will make me very happy, if only my

practicing does not disturb you.”

Dr. Gates came in and closed the door.

“I'll probably be the disturbing element,” she said. “I'm a noisy

sewer.”

Harmony's immaculate room and radiant person put her in good humor

immediately. She borrowed a thimble--not because she cared whether

she had one or not, but because she knew a thimble was a part of the

game--and settled herself in a corner, her ragged pieces in her lap. For

an hour she plodded along and Harmony played. Then the girl put down her

bow and turned to the corner. The little doctor was jerking at a knot in

her thread.

“It's in the most damnable knot!” she said, and Harmony was suddenly

aware that she was crying, and heartily ashamed of it.

“Please don't pay any attention to me,” she implored. “I hate to sew.

That's the trouble. Or perhaps it's not all the trouble. I'm a fool

about music.”

“Perhaps, if you hate to sew--”

“I hate a good many things, my dear, when you play like that. I hate

being over here in this place, and I hate fleas and German cooking and

clinics, and I hate being forty years old and as poor as a church-mouse

and as ugly as sin, and I hate never having had any children!”

Harmony was very uncomfortable and just a little shocked. But the next

moment Dr. Gates had wiped her eyes with a scrap of the flannel and was

smiling up through her glasses.

“The plain truth really is that I have indigestion. I dare say I'm

really weeping in anticipation over the Sunday dinner! The food's bad

and I can't afford to live anywhere else. I'd take a room and do my own

cooking, but what time have I?” She spread out the pieces of flannel on

her knee. “Does this look like anything to you?”

“A petticoat, isn't it?”

“I didn't intend it as a petticoat.”

“I thought, on account of the scallops--”

“Scallops!” Dr. Gates gazed at the painfully cut pink edges and from

them to Harmony. Then she laughed, peal after peal of joyous mirth.

“Scallops!” she gasped at last. “Oh, my dear, if you'd seen me cutting

'em! And with Peter Byrne's scissors!”

Now here at last they were on common ground. Harmony, delicately

flushed, repeated the name, clung to it conversationally, using little

adroitnesses to bring the talk back to him. All roads of talk led to

Peter--Peter's future, Peter's poverty, Peter's refusing to have his

hair cut, Peter's encounter with a major of the guards, and the duel

Peter almost fought. It developed that Peter, as the challenged, had had

the choice of weapons, and had chosen fists, and that the major had been

carried away. Dr. Gates grew rather weary of Peter at last and fell back

on the pink flannel. She confided to Harmony that the various pieces,

united, were to make a dressing-gown for a little American boy at the

hospital. “Although,” she commented, “it looks more like a chair cover.”

Harmony offered to help her, and got out a sewing-box that was lined

with a piece of her mother's wedding dress. And as she straightened the

crooked edges she told the doctor about the wedding dress, and about the

mother who had called her Harmony because of the hope in her heart.

And soon, by dint of skillful listening, which is always better than

questioning, the faded little woman doctor knew all the story.

She was rather aghast.

“But suppose you cannot find anything to do?”

“I must,” simply.

“It's such a terrible city for a girl alone.”

“I'm not really alone. I know you now.”

“An impoverished spinster! Much help I shall be!”

“And there is Peter Byrne.”

“Peter!” Dr. Gates sniffed. “Peter is poorer than I am, if there is any

comparison in destitution!”

Harmony stiffened a trifle.

“Of course I do not mean money,” she said. “There are such things as

encouragement, and--and friendliness.”

“One cannot eat encouragement,” retorted Dr. Gates sagely. “And

friendliness between you and any man--bah! Even Peter is only human, my

dear.”

“I am sure he is very good.”

“So he is. He is very poor. But you are very attractive. There, I'm a

skeptic about men, but you can trust Peter. Only don't fall in love with

him. It will be years before he can marry. And don't let him fall in

love with you. He probably will.”

Whereupon Dr. Gates taking herself and her pink flannel off to prepare

for lunch, Harmony sent a formal note to Peter Byrne, regretting that

a headache kept her from taking the afternoon walk as she had promised.

Also, to avoid meeting him, she did without dinner, and spent the

afternoon crying herself into a headache that was real enough.

Anna Gates was no fool. While she made her few preparations for dinner

she repented bitterly what she had said to Harmony. It is difficult for

the sophistry of forty to remember and cherish the innocence of twenty.

For illusions it is apt to substitute facts, the material for the

spiritual, the body against the soul. Dr. Gates, from her school of

general practice, had come to view life along physiological lines.

With her customary frankness she approached Peter after the meal.

“I've been making mischief, Peter. I been talking too much, as usual.”

“Certainly not about me, Doctor. Out of my blameless life--”

“About you, as a representative member of your sex. I'm a fool.”

Peter looked serious. He had put on the newly pressed suit and his best

tie, and was looking distinguished and just now rather stern.

“To whom?”

“To the young Wells person. Frankly, Peter, I dare say at this moment

she thinks you are everything you shouldn't be, because I said you were

only human. Why it should be evil to be human, or human to be evil--”

“I cannot imagine,” said Peter slowly, “the reason for any conversation

about me.”

“Nor I, when I look back. We seemed to talk about other things, but it

always ended with you. Perhaps you were our one subject in common. Then

she irritated me by her calm confidence. The world was good, everybody

was good. She would find a safe occupation and all would be well.”

“So you warned her against me,” said Peter grimly.

“I told her you were human and that she was attractive. Shall I make

'way with myself?”

“Cui bono?” demanded Peter, smiling in spite of himself. “The mischief

is done.”

Dr. Gates looked up at him.

“I'm in love with you myself, Peter!” she said gratefully. “Perhaps it

is the tie. Did you ever eat such a meal?”

CHAPTER VI

A very pale and dispirited Harmony it was who bathed her eyes in cold

water that evening and obeyed little Olga's “Bitte sum speisen.” The

chairs round the dining-table were only half occupied--a free concert

had taken some, Sunday excursions others. The little Bulgarian, secretly

considered to be a political spy, was never about on this one evening of

the week. Rumor had it that on these evenings, secreted in an attic room

far off in the sixteenth district, he wrote and sent off reports of what

he had learned during the week--his gleanings from near-by tables in

coffee-houses or from the indiscreet hours after midnight in the cafe,

where the Austrian military was wont to gather and drink.

Into the empty chair beside Harmony Peter slid his long figure, and met

a tremulous bow and silence. From the head of the table Frau Schwarz was

talking volubly--as if, by mere sound, to distract attention from the

scantiness of the meal. Under cover of the Babel Peter spoke to the

girl. Having had his warning his tone was friendly, without a hint of

the intimacy of the day before.

“Better?”

“Not entirely. Somewhat.”

“I wish you had sent Olga to me for some tablets. No one needs to suffer

from headache, when five grains or so of powder will help them.”

“I am afraid of headache tablets.”

“Not when your physician prescribes them, I hope!”

This was the right note. Harmony brightened a little. After all, what

had she to do with the man himself? He had constituted himself her

physician. That was all.

“The next time I shall send Olga.”

“Good!” he responded heartily; and proceeded to make such a meal as

he might, talking little, and nursing, by a careful indifference, her

new-growing confidence.

It was when he had pushed his plate away and lighted a

cigarette--according to the custom of the pension, which accorded the

“Nicht Rauchen” sign the same attention that it did to the portrait of

the deceased Herr Schwarz--that he turned to her again.

“I am sorry you are not able to walk. It promises a nice night.”

Peter was clever. Harmony, expecting an invitation to walk, had nerved

herself to a cool refusal. This took her off guard.

“Then you do not prescribe air?”

“That's up to how you feel. If you care to go out and don't mind my

going along as a sort of Old Dog Tray I haven't anything else to do.”

Dr. Gates, eating stewed fruit across the table, gave Peter a swift

glance of admiration, which he caught and acknowledged. He was rather

exultant himself; certainly he had been adroit.

“I'd rather like a short walk. It will make me sleep,” said Harmony,

who had missed the by-play. “And Old Dog Tray would be a very nice

companion, I'm sure.”

It is doubtful, however, if Anna Gates would have applauded Peter

had she followed the two in their rambling walk that night. Direction

mattering little and companionship everything, they wandered on, talking

of immaterial things--of the rough pavements, of the shop windows, of

the gray medieval buildings. They came to a full stop in front of the

Votivkirche, and discussed gravely the twin Gothic spires and the

Benk sculptures on the facade. And there in the open square, casting

diplomacy to the winds, Peter Byrne turned to Harmony and blurted out

what was in his heart.

“Look here,” he said, “you don't care a rap about spires. I don't

believe you know anything about them. I don't. What did that idiot of a

woman doctor say to you to-day?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“You do very well. And I'm going to set you right. She starts out with

two premises: I'm a man, and you're young and attractive. Then she draws

some sort of fool deduction. You know what I mean?”

“I don't see why we need discuss it,” said poor Harmony. “Or how you

know--”

“I know because she told me. She knew she had been a fool, and she

came to me. I don't know whether it makes any difference to you or not,

but--we'd started out so well, and then to have it spoiled! My dear

girl, you are beautiful and I know it. That's all the more reason why,

if you'll stand for it, you need some one to look after you--I'll not

say like a brother, because all the ones I ever knew were darned poor

brothers to their sisters, but some one who will keep an eye on you and

who isn't going to fall in love with you.”

“I didn't think you were falling in love with me; nor did I wish you

to.”

“Certainly not. Besides, I--” Here Peter Byrne had another inspiration,

not so good as the first--“Besides, there is somebody at home, you

understand? That makes it all right, doesn't it?”

“A girl at home?”

“A girl,” said Peter, lying manfully.

“How very nice!” said Harmony, and put out her hand. Peter, feeling all

sorts of a cheat, took it, and got his reward in a complete restoral of

their former comradely relations. From abstractions of church towers

and street paving they went, with the directness of the young, to

themselves. Thereafter, during that memorable walk, they talked

blissful personalities, Harmony's future, Peter's career, money--or

its lack--their ambitions, their hopes, even--and here was intimacy,

indeed!--their disappointments, their failures of courage, their

occasional loss of faith in themselves.

The first real snow of the year was falling as they turned back toward

the Pension Schwarz, a damp snow that stuck fast and melted with a

chilly cold that had in it nothing but depression. The upper spires of

the Votivkirche were hidden in a gray mist; the trees in the park took

on, against the gloom of the city hall, a snowy luminosity. Save for

an occasional pedestrian, making his way home under an umbrella, the

streets were deserted. Byrne and Harmony had no umbrella, but the girl

rejected his offer of a taxicab.

“We should be home too quickly,” she observed naively. “And we have

so much to say about me. Now I thought that perhaps by giving English

lessons in the afternoon and working all morning at my music--”

And so on and on, square after square, with Peter listening gravely,

his head bent. And square after square it was borne in on him what

a precarious future stretched before this girl beside him, how very

slender her resources, how more than dubious the outcome.

Poverty, which had only stimulated Peter Byrne in the past, ate deep

into his soul that night.

Epochmaking as the walk had been, seeing that it had reestablished a

friendship and made a working basis for future comradely relations, they

were back at the corner of the Alserstrasse before ten. As they turned

in at the little street, a man, lurching somewhat, almost collided

with Harmony. He was a short, heavy-set person with a carefully curled

mustache, and he was singing, not loudly, but with all his maudlin

heart in his voice, the barcarolle from the “Tales” of Hoffmann. He saw

Harmony, and still singing planted himself in her path. When Byrne would

have pushed him aside Harmony caught his arm.

“It is only the Portier from the lodge,” she said.

The Portier, having come to rest on a throaty and rather wavering note,

stood before Harmony, bowing.

“The Fraulein has gone and I am very sad,” he said thickly. “There is no

more music, and Rosa has run away with a soldier from Salzburg who has

only one lung.”

“But think!” Harmony said in German. “No more practicing in the early

dawn, no young ladies bringing mud into your newscrubbed hall! It is

better, is it not? All day you may rest and smoke!”

Byrne led Harmony past the drunken Portier, who turned with caution and

bowed after them.

“Gute Nacht,” he called. “Kuss die Hand, Fraulein. Four rooms and the

salon and a bath of the finest.”

As they went up the Hirschengasse they could hear him pursuing his

unsteady way down the street and singing lustily. At the door of the

Pension Schwarz Harmony paused.

“Do you mind if I ask one question?”

“You honor me, madam.”

“Then--what is the name of the girl back home?”

Peter Byrne was suddenly conscious of a complete void as to feminine

names. He offered, in a sort of panic, the first one he recalled:--

“Emma.”

“Emma! What a nice, old-fashioned name!” But there was a touch of

disappointment in her voice.

Harmony had a lesson the next day. She was a favorite pupil with the

master. Out of so much musical chaff he winnowed only now and then a

grain of real ability. And Harmony had that. Scatchy and the Big Soprano

had been right--she had the real thing.

The short half-hour lesson had a way with Harmony of lengthening itself

to an hour or more, much to the disgust of the lady secretary in the

anteroom. On that Monday Harmony had pleased the old man to one of his

rare enthusiasms.

“Six months,” he said, “and you will go back to your America and show

them how over here we teach violin. I will a letter--letters--give you,

and you shall put on the programme, of your concerts that you are my

pupil, is it not so?”

Harmony was drawing on her worn gloves; her hands trembled a little with

the praise and excitement.

“If I can stay so long,” she answered unsteadily.

“You must stay. Have I so long labored, and now before it is finished

you talk of going! Gott im Himmel!”

“It is a matter of money. My father is dead. And unless I find something

to do I shall have to go back.”

The master had heard many such statements. They never ceased to rouse

his ire against a world that had money for everything but music. He

spent five minutes in indignant protest, then:--

“But you are clever and young, child. You will find a way to stay.

Perhaps I can now and then find a concert for you.” It was a lure he

had thrown out before, a hook without a bait. It needed no bait, being

always eagerly swallowed. “And no more talk of going away. I refuse to

allow. You shall not go.”

Harmony paid the lady secretary on her way out. The master was

interested. He liked Harmony and he believed in her. But fifty Kronen

is fifty Kronen, and South American beef is high of price. He followed

Harmony into the outer room and bowed her out of his studio.

“The Fraulein has paid?” he demanded, turning sharply to the lady

secretary.

“Always.”

“After the lesson?”

“Ja, Herr Professor.”

“It is better,” said the master, “that she pay hereafter before the

lesson.”

“Ja, Herr Professor.”

Whereupon the lady secretary put a red-ink cross before Harmony's name.

There were many such crosses on the ledger.

CHAPTER VII

For three days Byrne hardly saw Harmony. He was off early in the

morning, hurried back to the midday meal and was gone again the moment

it was over. He had lectures in the evenings, too, and although he

lingered for an hour or so after supper it was to find Harmony taken

possession of by the little Bulgarian, seized with a sudden thirst for

things American.

On the evening of the second day he had left Harmony, enmeshed and

helpless in a tangle of language, trying to explain to the little

Bulgarian the reason American women wished to vote. Byrne flung down the

stairs and out into the street, almost colliding with Stewart.

They walked on together, Stewart with the comfortably rolling gait of

the man who has just dined well, Byrne with his heavy, rather solid

tread. The two men were not congenial, and the frequent intervals

without speech between them were rather for lack of understanding than

for that completeness of it which often fathers long silences. Byrne was

the first to speak after their greeting.

“Marie all right?”

“Fine. Said if I saw you to ask you to supper some night this week.”

“Thanks. Does it matter which night?”

“Any but Thursday. We're hearing 'La Boheme.'”

“Say Friday, then.”

Byrne's tone lacked enthusiasm, but Stewart in his after-dinner mood

failed to notice it.

“Have you thought any more about our conversation of the other night?”

“What was that?”

Stewart poked him playfully in the ribs.

“Wake up, Byrne!” he said. “You remember well enough. Neither the Days

nor any one else is going to have the benefit of your assistance if you

go on living the way you have been. I was at Schwarz's. It is the double

drain there that tells on one--eating little and being eaten much. Those

old walls are full of vermin. Why don't you take our apartment?”

“Yours?”

“Yes, for a couple of months. I'm through with Schleich and Breidau

can't take me for two months. It's Marie's off season and we're going to

Semmering for the winter sports. We're ahead enough to take a holiday.

And if you want the flat for the same amount you are spending now, or

less, you can have it, and--a home, old man.”

Byrne was irritated, the more so that he realized that the offer tempted

him. To his resentment was added a contempt of himself.

“Thanks,” he said. “I think not.”

“Oh, all right.” Stewart was rather offended. “I can't do more than give

you a chance.”

They separated shortly after and Byrne went on alone. The snow of Sunday

had turned to a fine rain which had lasted all of Monday and Tuesday.

The sidewalks were slimy; wagons slid in the ooze of the streets; and

the smoke from the little stoves in the street-cars followed them in

depressing horizontal clouds. Cabmen sat and smoked in the interior of

musty cabs. The women hod-carriers on a new building steamed like horses

as they worked.

Byrne walked along, his head thrust down into his up-turned collar;

moisture gathered on his face like dew, condensed rather than

precipitated. And as he walked there came before him a vision of the

little flat on the Hochgasse, with the lamp on the table, and the

general air of warmth and cheer, and a figure presiding over the brick

stove in the kitchen. Byrne shook himself like a great dog and turned in

at the gate of the hospital. He was thoroughly ashamed of himself.

That week was full of disappointments for Harmony. Wherever she turned

she faced a wall of indifference or, what was worse, an interest that

frightened her. Like a bird in a cage she beat helplessly against

barriers of language, of strange customs, of stolidity that were not far

from absolute cruelty.

She held to her determination, however, at first with hope, then, as

the pension in advance and the lessons at fifty Kronen--also in

advance,--went on, recklessly. She played marvelously those days, crying

out through her violin the despair she had sealed her lips against. On

Thursday, playing for the master, she turned to find him flourishing

his handkerchief, and went home in a sort of daze, incredulous that she

could have moved him to tears.

The little Bulgarian was frankly her slave now. He had given up the

coffee-houses that he might spend that hour near her, on the chance of

seeing her or, failing that, of hearing her play. At night in the Cafe

Hungaria he sat for hours at a time, his elbows on the table, a bottle

of native wine before him, and dreamed of her. He was very fat, the

little Georgiev, very swarthy, very pathetic. The Balkan kettle was

simmering in those days, and he had been set to watch the fire. But

instead he had kindled a flame of his own, and was feeding it with stray

words, odd glances, a bit of music, the curve of a woman's hair behind

her ears. For reports he wrote verses in modern Greek, and through one

of those inadvertences which make tragedy, the Minister of War down in

troubled Bulgaria once received between the pages of a report in cipher

on the fortifications of the Danube a verse in fervid hexameter that

made even that grim official smile.

Harmony was quite unconscious. She went on her way methodically: so

many hours of work, so many lessons at fifty Kronen, so many afternoons

searching for something to do, making rounds of shops where her English

might be valuable.

And after a few weeks Peter Byrne found time to help. After one

experience, when Harmony left a shop with flaming face and tears in her

eyes, he had thought it best to go with her. The first interview,

under Peter's grim eyes, was a failure. The shopkeeper was obviously

suspicious of Peter. After that, whenever he could escape from clinics,

Peter went along, but stayed outside, smoking his eternal cigarette, and

keeping a watchful eye on things inside the shop.

Only once was he needed. At that time, suspecting that all was not

well, from the girl's eyes and the leer on the shopkeeper's face, he

had opened the door in time to hear enough. He had lifted the proprietor

bodily and flung him with a crash into a glass showcase of ornaments

for the hair. Then, entirely cheerful and happy, and unmolested by the

frightened clerks, he led Harmony outside and in a sort of atavistic

triumph bought her a bunch of valley lilies.

Nevertheless, in his sane moments, Peter knew that things were very

bad, indeed. He was still not in love with the girl. He analyzed his own

feeling very carefully, and that was his conclusion. Nevertheless he did

a quixotic thing--which was Peter, of course, all over.

He took supper with Stewart and Marie on Friday, and the idea came to

him there. Hardly came to him, being Marie's originally. The little flat

was cozy and bright. Marie, having straightened her kitchen, brought in

a waist she was making and sat sewing while the two men talked. Their

conversation was technical, a new extirpation of the thyroid gland, a

recent nephrectomy.

In her curious way Marie liked Peter and respected him. She struggled

with the technicalities of their talk as she sewed, finding here and

there a comprehensive bit. At those times she sat, needle poised,

intelligent eyes on the speakers, until she lost herself again in the

mazes of their English.

At ten o'clock she rose and put away her sewing. Peter saw her get the

stone pitcher and knew she was on her way for the evening beer. He took

advantage of her absence to broach the matter of Harmony.

“She's up against it, as a matter of fact,” he finished. “It ought to be

easy enough for her to find something, but it isn't.”

“I hardly saw her that day in the coffee-house; but she's rather

handsome, isn't she?”

“That's one of the difficulties. Yes.”

Stewart smoked and reflected. “No friends here at all?”

“None. There were three girls at first. Two have gone home.”

“Could she teach violin?”

“I should think so.”

“Aren't there any kids in the American colony who want lessons? There's

usually some sort of infant prodigy ready to play at any entertainments

of the Doctors' Club.”

“They don't want an American teacher, I fancy; but I suppose I could put

a card up in the club rooms. Damn it all!” cried Peter with a burst of

honest resentment, “why do I have to be poor?”

“If you were rolling in gold you could hardly offer her money, could

you?”

Peter had not thought of that before. It was the only comfort he found

in his poverty. Marie had brought in the beer and was carefully filling

the mugs. “Why do you not marry her?” she asked unexpectedly. “Then you

could take this flat. We are going to Semmering for the winter sports. I

would show her about the stove.”

“Marry her, of course!” said Peter gravely. “Just pick her up and carry

her to church! The trifling fact that she does not wish to marry me need

have nothing to do with it.”

“Ah, but does she not wish it?” demanded Marie. “Are you so certain,

stupid big one? Do not women always love you?”

Ridiculous as the thought was, Peter pondered it as he went back to the

Pension Schwarz. About himself he was absurdly modest, almost humble. It

had never occurred to him that women might care for him for himself.

In his struggling life there had been little time for women. But about

himself as the solution of a problem--that was different.

He argued the thing over. In the unlikely contingency of the girl's

being willing, was Stewart right--could two people live as cheaply as

one? Marie was an Austrian and knew how to manage--that was different.

And another thing troubled him. He dreaded to disturb the delicate

adjustment of their relationship; the terra incognita of a young

girl's mind daunted him. There was another consideration which he put

resolutely in the back of his mind--his career. He had seen many a

promising one killed by early marriage, men driven to the hack work of

the profession by the scourge of financial necessity. But that was a

matter of the future; the necessity was immediate.

The night was very cold. Gusts of wind from the snow-covered Schneeberg

drove along the streets, making each corner a fortress defended by the

elements, a battlement to be seized, lost, seized again. Peter Byrne

battled valiantly but mechanically. And as he fought he made his

decision.

He acted with characteristic promptness. Possibly, too, he was afraid of

the strength of his own resolution. By morning sanity might prevail, and

in cold daylight he would see the absurdity of his position. He almost

ran up the winding staircase. At the top his cold fingers fumbled the

key and he swore under his breath. He slammed the door behind him. Peter

always slammed doors, and had an apologetic way of opening the door

again and closing it gently, as if to show that he could. Harmony's room

was dark, but he had surprised her once into a confession that when

she was very downhearted she liked to sit in the dark and be very blue

indeed. So he stopped and knocked. There was no reply, but from Dr.

Gates's room across there came a hum of conversation. He knew at once

that Harmony was there.

Peter hardly hesitated. He took off his soft hat and ran a hand over his

hair, and he straightened his tie. These preliminaries to a proposal of

marriage being disposed of, he rapped at the door.

Anna Gates opened it. She wore a hideous red-flannel wrapper, and in

deference to Harmony a thimble. Her flat breast was stuck with pins, and

pinkish threads revealed the fact that the bathrobe was still under way.

“Peter!” she cried. “Come in and get warm.”

Harmony, in the blue kimono, gave a little gasp, and flung round her

shoulders the mass of pink on which she had been working.

“Please go out!” she said. “I am not dressed.”

“You are covered,” returned Anna Gates. “That's all that any sort of

clothing can do. Don't mind her, Peter, and sit on the bed. Look out for

pins!”

Peter, however, did not sit down. He stood just inside the closed door

and stared at Harmony--Harmony in the red light from the little

open door of the stove; Harmony in blue and pink and a bit of white

petticoat; Harmony with her hair over her shoulders and tied out of her

eyes with an encircling band of rosy flannel.

“Do sit!” cried Anna Gates. “You fill the room so. Bless you, Peter,

what a collar!”

No man likes to know his collar is soiled, especially on the eve of

proposing marriage to a pink and blue and white vision. Peter, seated

now on the bed, writhed.

“I rapped at Miss Wells's door,” he said. “You were not there.”

This last, of course, to Harmony.

Anna Gates sniffed.

“Naturally!”

“I had something to say to you. I--I dare say it is hardly pension

etiquette for you to go over to your room and let me say it there?”

Harmony smiled above the flannel.

“Could you call it through the door?”

“Hardly.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Dr. Gates, rising. “I'll go over, of course, but

not for long. There's no fire.”

With her hand on the knob, however, Harmony interfered.

“Please!” she implored. “I am not dressed and I'd rather not.” She

turned to Peter. “You can say it before her, can't you? She--I have told

her all about things.”

Peter hesitated. He felt ridiculous for the second time that night.

Then:--

“It was merely an idea I had. I saw a little apartment furnished--you

could learn to use the stove, unless, of course, you don't like

housekeeping--and food is really awfully cheap. Why, at these

delicatessen places and bakeshops--”

Here he paused for breath and found Dr. Gates's quizzical glance fixed

on him, and Harmony's startled eyes.

“What I am trying to say,” he exploded, “is that I believe if you would

marry me it would solve some of your troubles anyhow.” He was talking

for time now, against Harmony's incredulous face. “You'd be taking on

others, of course. I'm not much and I'm as poor--well, you know. It--it

was the apartment that gave me the idea--”

“And the stove!” said Harmony; and suddenly burst into joyous laughter.

After a rather shocked instant Dr. Gates joined her. It was real mirth

with Harmony, the first laugh of days, that curious laughter of women

that is not far from tears.

Peter sat on the bed uncomfortably. He grinned sheepishly and made a

last feeble attempt to stick to his guns.

“I mean it. You know I'm not in love with you or you with me, of course.

But we are such a pair of waifs, and I thought we might get along. Lord

knows I need some one to look after me!”

“And Emma?”

“There is no Emma. I made her up.”

Harmony sobered at that.

“It is only”--she gasped a little for breath--“it is only your--your

transparency, Peter.” It was the first time she had called him Peter.

“You know how things are with me and you want to help me, and out of

your generosity you are willing to take on another burden. Oh, Peter!”

And here, Harmony being an emotional young person, the tears beat the

laughter to the surface and had to be wiped away under the cover of

mirth.

Anna Gates, having recovered herself, sat back and surveyed them both

sternly through her glasses.

“Once for all,” she said brusquely, “let such foolishness end. Peter,

I am ashamed of you. Marriage is not for you--not yet, not for a dozen

years. Any man can saddle himself with a wife; not every man can be what

you may be if you keep your senses and stay single. And the same is true

for you, girl. To tide over a bad six months you would sacrifice the

very thing you are both struggling for?”

“I'm sure we don't intend to do it,” replied Harmony meekly.

“Not now. Some day you may be tempted. When that time comes, remember

what I say. Matrimonially speaking, each of you is fatal to the other.

Now go away and let me alone. I'm not accustomed to proposals of

marriage.”

It was in some confusion of mind that Peter Byrne took himself off

to the bedroom with the cold tiled stove and the bed that was as

comfortable as a washtub. Undeniably he was relieved. Also Harmony's

problem was yet unsolved. Also she had called him Peter.

Also he had said he was not in love with her. Was he so sure of that?

At midnight, just as Peter, rolled in the bedclothing, had managed to

warm the cold concavity of his bed and had dozed off, Anna Gates knocked

at his door.

“Yes?” said Peter, still comfortably asleep.

“It is Dr. Gates.”

“Sorry, Doctor--have to 'xcuse me,” mumbled Peter from the blanket.

“Peter!”

Peter roused to a chilled and indignant consciousness and sat up in bed.

“Well?”

“Open the door just a crack.”

Resignedly Peter crawled out of bed, carefully turning the coverings up

to retain as much heat as possible. An icy blast from the open window

blew round him, setting everything movable in the little room to

quivering. He fumbled in the dark for his slippers, failed to find them,

and yawning noisily went to the door.

Anna Gates, with a candle, was outside. Her short, graying hair was out

of its hard knot, and hung in an equally uncompromising six-inch plait

down her back. She had no glasses, and over the candle-frame she peered

shortsightedly at Peter.

“It's about Jimmy,” she said. “I don't know what's got into me, but I've

forgotten for three days. It's a good bit more than time for a letter.”

“Great Scott!”

“Both yesterday and to-day he asked for it and to-day he fretted a

little. The nurse found him crying.”

“The poor little devil!” said Peter contritely. “Overdue, is it? I'll

fix it to-night.”

“Leave it under the door where I can get it in the morning. I'm off at

seven.”

“The envelope?”

“Here it is. And take my candle. I'm going to bed.”

That was at midnight or shortly after. Half after one struck from the

twin clocks of the Votivkirche and echoed from the Stephansplatz across

the city. It found Peter with the window closed, sitting up in bed, a

candle balanced on one knee, a writing-tablet on the other.

He was writing a spirited narrative of a chamois hunt in which he had

taken part that day, including a detailed description of the quarry,

which weighed, according to Peter, two hundred and fifty pounds, Peter

being strong on imagination and short on facts as regards the Alpine

chamois. Then, trying to read the letter from a small boy's point of

view and deciding that it lacked snap, he added by way of postscript a

harrowing incident of avalanche, rope, guide, and ice axe. He ended in a

sort of glow of authorship, and after some thought took fifty pounds off

the chamois.

The letter finished, he put it in a much-used envelope addressed to

Jimmy Conroy--an envelope that stamped the whole episode as authentic,

bearing as it did an undecipherable date and the postmark of a tiny

village in the Austrian Tyrol.

It was almost two when Peter put out the candle and settled himself to

sleep.

It was just two o'clock when the night nurse, making rounds in her

ward in the general hospital, found a small boy very much awake on his

pillow, and taking off her felt slipper shook it at him in pretended

fury.

“Now, thou bad one!” she said. “Awake, when the Herr Doktor orders

sleep! Shall I use the slipper?”

The boy replied in German with a strong English accent.

“I cannot sleep. Yesterday the Fraulein Elisabet said that in the

mountains there are accidents, and that sometimes--”

“The Fraulein Elisabet is a great fool. Tomorrow comes thy letter of a

certainty. The post has been delayed with great snows. Thy father has

perhaps captured a great boar, or a--a chamois, and he writes of it.”

“Do chamois have horns?”

“Ja. Great horns--so.”

“He will send them to me! And there are no accidents?”

“None. Now sleep, or--the slipper.”

CHAPTER VIII

So far Harmony's small world in the old city had consisted of Scatchy

and the Big Soprano, Peter, and Anna Gates, with far off in the

firmament the master. Scatchy and the Big Soprano had gone, weeping

anxious postcards from every way station it is true, but nevertheless

gone. Peter and Anna Gates remained, and the master as long as her funds

held out. To them now she was about to add Jimmy.

The bathrobe was finished. Out of the little doctor's chaos of pink

flannel Harmony had brought order. The result, masculine and complete

even to its tassels and cord of pink yarn, was ready to be presented. It

was with mingled emotions that Anna Gates wrapped it up and gave it to

Harmony the next morning.

“He hasn't been so well the last day or two,” she said. “He doesn't

sleep much--that's the worst of those heart conditions. Sometimes, while

I've been working on this thing, I've wondered--Well, we're making a

fight anyhow. And better take the letter, too, Harry. I might forget and

make lecture notes on it, and if I spoil that envelope--”

Harmony had arranged to carry the bathrobe to the hospital, meeting the

doctor there after her early clinic. She knew Jimmy's little story quite

well. Anna Gates had told it to her in detail.

“Just one of the tragedies of the world, my dear,” she had finished.

“You think you have a tragedy, but you have youth and hope; I think I

have my own little tragedy, because I have to go through the rest of

life alone, when taken in time I'd have been a good wife and mother.

Still I have my work. But this little chap, brought over here by a

father who hoped to see him cured, and spent all he had to bring him

here, and then--died. It gets me by the throat.”

“And the boy does not know?” Harmony had asked, her eyes wide.

“No, thanks to Peter. He thinks his father is still in the mountains.

When we heard about it Peter went up and saw that he was buried. It took

about all the money there was. He wrote home about it, too, to the place

they came from. There has never been any reply. Then ever since Peter

has written these letters. Jimmy lives for them.”

Peter! It was always Peter. Peter did this. Peter said that. Peter

thought thus. A very large part of Harmony's life was Peter in those

days.

She was thinking of him as she waited at the gate of the hospital for

Anna Gates, thinking of his shabby gray suit and unkempt hair, of his

letter that she carried to Jimmy Conroy, of his quixotic proposal of

the night before. Of the proposal, most of all--it was so eminently

characteristic of Peter, from the conception of the plan to its

execution. Harmony's thought of Peter was very tender that morning

as she stood in the arched gateway out of reach of the wind from the

Schneeberg. The tenderness and the bright color brought by the wind made

her very beautiful. Little Marie, waiting across the Alserstrasse for

a bus, and stamping from one foot to the other to keep warm, recognized

and admired her. After all, the American women were chic, she decided,

although some of the doctors had wives of a dowdiness--Himmel! And she

could copy the Fraulein's hat for two Kronen and a bit of ribbon she

possessed.

The presentation of the bathrobe was a success. Six nurses and a Dozent

with a red beard stood about and watched Jimmy put into it, and the

Dozent, who had been engaged for five years and could not marry because

the hospital board forbade it, made a speech for Jimmy in awe-inspiring

German, ending up with a poem that was intended to be funny, but that

made the nurses cry. From which it will be seen that Jimmy was a great

favorite.

During the ceremony, for such it was, the Germans loving a ceremony,

Jimmy kept his eyes on the letter in Anna Gates's hand and waited. That

the letter had come was enough. He lay back in anticipatory joy, and

let himself be talked over, and bathrobed, and his hair parted Austrian

fashion and turned up over a finger, which is very Austrian indeed.

He liked Harmony. The girl caught his eyes on her more than once. He

interrupted the speech once to ask her just what part of the robe she

had made, and whether she had made the tassel. When she admitted the

tassel, his admiration became mixed with respect.

It was a bright day, for a marvel. Sunlight came through the barred

window behind Jimmy's bed, and brought into dazzling radiance the pink

bathrobe, and Harmony's eyes, and fat Nurse Elisabet's white apron. It

lay on the bedspread in great squares, outlined by the shadows of the

window bars. Now and then the sentry, pacing outside, would advance as

far as Jimmy's window, and a warlike silhouette of military cap and

the upper end of a carbine would appear on the coverlet. These events,

however, were rare, the sentry preferring the shelter of the gateway and

the odor of boiling onions from the lodge just inside.

The Dozent retired to his room for the second breakfast; the nurses went

about the business of the ward; Dr. Anna Gates drew a hairpin from her

hair and made a great show of opening the many times opened envelope.

“The letter at last!” she said. “Shall I read it or will you?”

“You read it. It takes me so long. I'll read it all day, after you are

gone. I always do.”

Anna Gates read the letter. She read aloud poor Peter's first halting

lines, when he was struggling against sleep and cold. They were mainly

an apology for the delay. Then forgetting discomfort in the joy of

creation, he became more comfortable. The account of the near-accident

was wonderfully graphic; the description of the chamois was fervid, if

not accurate. But consternation came with the end.

The letter apparently finished, there was yet another sheet. The doctor

read on.

“For Heaven's sake,” said Peter's frantic postscript, “find out how much

a medium-sized chamois--”

Dr. Gates stopped “--ought to weigh,” was the rest of it, “and fix it

right in the letter. The kid's too smart to be fooled and I never saw a

chamois outside of a drug store. They have horns, haven't they?”

“That's funny!” said Jimmy Conway.

“That was one of my papers slipped in by mistake,” remarked Dr. Gates,

with dignity, and flashing a wild appeal for help to Harmony.

“How did one of your papers get in when it was sealed?”

“I think,” observed Harmony, leaning forward, “that little boys must

not ask too many questions, especially when Christmas is only six weeks

off.”

“I know! He wants to send me the horns the way he sent me the boar's

tusks.”

For Peter, having in one letter unwisely recorded the slaughter of a

boar, had been obliged to ransack Vienna for a pair of tusks. The tusks

had not been so difficult. But horns!

Jimmy was contented with his solution and asked no more questions. The

morning's excitement had tired him, and he lay back. Dr. Gates went to

hold a whispered consultation with the nurse, and came back, looking

grave.

The boy was asleep, holding the letter in his thin hands.

The visit to the hospital was a good thing for Harmony--to find some one

worse off than she was, to satisfy that eternal desire of women to do

something, however small, for some one else. Her own troubles looked

very small to her that day as she left the hospital and stepped out into

the bright sunshine.

She passed the impassive sentry, then turned and went back to him.

“Do you wish to do a very kind thing?” she asked in German.

Now the conversation of an Austrian sentry consists of yea, yea, and

nay, nay, and not always that. But Harmony was lovely and the sun was

moderating the wind. The sentry looked round; no one was near.

“What do you wish?”

“Inside that third window is a small boy and he is very ill. I do not

think--perhaps he will never be well again. Could you not, now and then,

pass the window? It pleases him.”

“Pass the window! But why?”

“In America we see few of our soldiers. He likes to see you and the

gun.”

“Ah, the gun!” He smiled and nodded in comprehension, then, as an

officer appeared in the door of a coffee-house across the street, he

stiffened into immobility and stared past Harmony into space. But the

girl knew he would do as she had desired.

That day brought good luck to Harmony. The wife of one of the professors

at the hospital desired English conversation at two Kronen an hour.

Peter brought the news home at noon, and that afternoon Harmony was

engaged. It was little enough, but it was something. It did much more

than offer her two Kronen an hour; it gave her back her self-confidence,

although the immediate result was rather tragic.

The Frau Professor Bergmeister, infatuated with English and with

Harmony, engaged her, and took her first two Kronen worth that

afternoon. It was the day for a music-lesson. Harmony arrived five

minutes late, panting, hat awry, and so full of the Frau Professor

Bergmeister that she could think of nothing else.

Obedient to orders she had placed the envelope containing her fifty

Kronen before the secretary as she went in. The master was out of humor.

Should he, the teacher of the great Koert, be kept waiting for a chit

of a girl--only, of course, he said “das Kindchen” or some other German

equivalent for chit--and then have her come into the sacred presence

breathless, and salute him between gasps as the Frau Professor

Bergmeister?

Being excited and now confused by her error, and being also rather

tremulous with three flights of stairs at top speed, Harmony dropped

her bow. In point of heinousness this classes with dropping one's infant

child from an upper window, or sitting on the wrong side of a carriage

when with a lady.

The master, thus thrice outraged, rose slowly and glared at Harmony.

Then with a lordly gesture to her to follow he stalked to the outer

room, and picking up the envelope with the fifty Kronen held it out to

her without a word.

Harmony's world came crashing about her ears. She stared stupidly at the

envelope in her hand, at the master's retreating back.

Two girl students waiting their turn, envelopes in hand, giggled

together. Harmony saw them and flushed scarlet. But the lady secretary

touched her arm.

“It does not matter, Fraulein. He does so sometimes. Always he is sorry.

You will come for your next lesson, not so? and all will be well. You

are his well-beloved pupil. To-night he will not eat for grief that he

has hurt you.”

The ring of sincerity in the shabby secretary's voice was unmistakable.

Her tense throat relaxed. She looked across at the two students who

had laughed. They were not laughing now. Something of fellowship and

understanding passed between them in the glance. After all, it was in

the day's work--would come to one of them next, perhaps. And they had

much in common--the struggle, their faith, the everlasting loneliness,

the little white envelopes, each with its fifty Kronen.

Vaguely comforted, but with the light gone out of her day of days,

Harmony went down the three long flights and out into the brightness of

the winter day.

On the Ring she almost ran into Peter. He was striding toward her,

giving a definite impression of being bound for some particular

destination and of being behind time. That this was not the case was

shown by the celerity with which, when he saw Harmony, he turned about

and walked with her.

“I had an hour or two,” he explained, “and I thought I'd walk. But

walking is a social habit, like drinking. I hate to walk alone. How

about the Frau Professor?”

“She has taken me on. I'm very happy. But, Dr. Byrne--”

“You called me Peter last night.”

“That was different. You had just proposed to me.”

“Oh, if that's all that's necessary--” He stopped in the center of the

busy Ring with every evident intention of proposing again.

“Please, Peter!”

“Aha! Victory! Well, what about the Frau Professor Bergmeister?”

“She asks so many questions about America; and I cannot answer them.”

“For instance?”

“Well, taxes now. She's very much interested in taxes.”

“Never owned anything taxable except a dog--and that wasn't a tax

anyhow; it was a license. Can't you switch her on to medicine or

surgery, where I'd be of some use?”

“She says to-morrow we'll talk of the tariff and customs duties.”

“Well, I've got something to say on that.” He pulled from his overcoat

pocket a largish bundle--Peter always bulged with packages--and held

it out for her to see. “Tell the Frau Professor Bergmeister with my

compliments,” he said, “that because some idiot at home sent me five

pounds of tobacco, hearing from afar my groans over the tobacco here,

I have passed from mere financial stress to destitution. The Austrian

customs have taken from me to-day the equivalent of ten dollars in duty.

I offered them the tobacco on bended knee, but they scorned it.”

“Really, Peter?”

“Really.”

Under this lightness Harmony sensed the real anxiety. Ten dollars was

fifty Kronen, and fifty Kronen was a great deal of money. She reached

over and patted his arm.

“You'll make it up in some way. Can't you cut off some little

extravagance?”

“I might cut down on my tailor bills.” He looked down at himself

whimsically. “Or on ties. I'm positively reckless about ties!”

They walked on in silence. A detachment of soldiery, busy with that

eternal military activity that seems to get nowhere, passed on a

dog-trot. Peter looked at them critically.

“Bosnians,” he observed. “Raw, half-fed troops from Bosnia, nine out

of ten of them tubercular. It's a rotten game, this military play of

Europe. How's Jimmy?”

“We left him very happy with your letter.”

Peter flushed. “I expect it was pretty poor stuff,” he apologized. “I've

never seen the Alps except from a train window, and as for a chamois--”

“He says his father will surely send him the horns.”

Peter groaned.

“Of course!” he said. “Why, in Heaven's name, didn't I make it an eagle?

One can always buy a feather or two. But horns? He really liked the

letter?”

“He adored it. He went to sleep almost at once with it in his hands.”

Peter glowed. The small irritation of the custom-house forgotten, he

talked of Jimmy; of what had been done and might still be done, if only

there were money; and from Jimmy he talked boy. He had had a boys' club

at home during his short experience in general practice. Boys were his

hobby.

“Scum of the earth, most of them,” he said, his plain face glowing.

“Dirty little beggars off the street. At first they stole my tobacco;

and one of them pawned a medical book or two! Then they got to playing

the game right. By Jove, Harmony, I wish you could have seen them!

Used to line 'em up and make 'em spell, and the two best spellers were

allowed to fight it out with gloves--my own method, and it worked.

Spell! They'd spell their heads off to get a chance at the gloves. Gee,

how I hated to give them up!”

This was a new Peter, a boyish individual Harmony had never met before.

For the first time it struck her that Peter was young. He had always

seemed rather old, solid and dependable, the fault of his elder brother

attitude to her, no doubt. She was suddenly rather shy, a bit aloof.

Peter felt the change and thought she was bored. He talked of other

things.

A surprise was waiting for them in the cold lower hallway of the Pension

Schwarz. A trunk was there, locked and roped, and on the trunk, in

ulster and hat, sat Dr. Gates. Olga, looking rather frightened, was

coming down with a traveling-bag. She put down the bag and scuttled up

the staircase like a scared rabbit. The little doctor was grim. She eyed

Peter and Harmony with an impersonal hostility, referable to her humor.

“I've been waiting for you two,” she flung at them. “I've had a terrific

row upstairs and I'm going. That woman's a devil!”

It had been a bad day for Harmony, and this new development, after

everything else, assumed the proportions of a crisis. She had clung,

at first out of sheer loneliness and recently out of affection, to the

sharp little doctor with her mannish affectations, her soft and womanly

heart.

“Sit down, child.” Anna Gates moved over on the trunk. “You are fagged

out. Peter, will you stop looking murderous and listen to me? How much

did it cost the three of us to live in this abode of virtue?”

It was simple addition. The total was rather appalling.

“I thought so. Now this is my plan. It may not be conventional, but it

will be respectable enough to satisfy anybody. And it will be cheaper,

I'm sure of that: We are all going out to the hunting-lodge of Maria

Theresa, and Harmony shall keep house for us!”

CHAPTER IX

It was the middle of November when Anna Gates, sitting on her trunk in

the cold entrance hall on the Hirschengasse, flung the conversational

bomb that left empty three rooms in the Pension Schwarz.

Mid-December found Harmony back and fully established in the lodge of

Maria Theresa on the Street of Seven Stars--back, but with a difference.

True, the gate still swung back and forward on rusty hinges, obedient to

every whim of the December gales; but the casement windows in the salon

no longer creaked or admitted drafts, thanks to Peter and a roll of

rubber weather-casing. The grand piano, which had been Scatchy's rented

extravagance, had gone never to return, and in its corner stood a

battered but still usable upright. Under the great chandelier sat a

table with an oil lamp, and evening and morning the white-tiled stove

gleamed warm with fire. On the table by the lamp were the combined

medical books of Peter and Anna Gates, and an ash-tray which also they

used in common.

Shabby still, of course, bare, almost denuded, the salon of Maria

Theresa. But at night, with the lamp lighted and the little door of the

stove open, and perhaps, when the dishes from supper had been washed,

with Harmony playing softly, it took resolution on Peter's part to

put on his overcoat and face a lecture on the resection of a rib or a

discussion of the function of the pituitary body.

The new arrangement had proved itself in more ways than one not only

greater in comfort, but in economy. Food was amazingly cheap. Coal,

which had cost ninety Hellers a bucket at the Pension Schwarz, they

bought in quantity and could afford to use lavishly. Oil for the lamp

was a trifle. They dined on venison now and then, when the shop across

boasted a deer from the mountains. They had other game occasionally,

when Peter, carrying home a mysterious package, would make them guess

what it might contain. Always on such occasions Harmony guessed rabbits.

She knew how to cook rabbits, and some of the other game worried her.

For Harmony was the cook. It had taken many arguments and much coaxing

to make Peter see it that way. In vain Harmony argued the extravagance

of Rosa, now married to the soldier from Salzburg with one lung, or the

tendency of the delicatessen seller to weigh short if one did not watch

him. Peter was firm.

It was Dr. Gates, after all, who found the solution.

“Don't be too obstinate, Peter,” she admonished him. “The child needs

occupation; she can't practice all day. You and I can keep up the

financial end well enough, reduced as it is. Let her keep house to her

heart's content. That can be her contribution to the general fund.”

And that eventually was the way it settled itself, not without demur

from Harmony, who feared her part was too small, and who irritated Anna

almost to a frenzy by cleaning the apartment from end to end to make

certain of her usefulness.

A curious little household surely, one that made the wife of the Portier

shake her head, and speak much beneath her breath with the wife of

the brushmaker about the Americans having queer ways and not as the

Austrians.

The short month had seen a change in all of them. Peter showed it least

of all, perhaps. Men feel physical discomfort less keenly than women,

and Peter had been only subconsciously wretched. He had gained a pound

or two in flesh, perhaps, and he was unmistakably tidier. Anna Gates was

growing round and rosy, and Harmony had trimmed her a hat. But the real

change was in Harmony herself.

The girl had become a woman. Who knows the curious psychology by which

such changes come--not in a month or a year; but in an hour, a breath.

One moment Harmony was a shy, tender young creature, all emotion,

quivering at a word, aloof at a glance, prone to occasional

introspection and mysterious daydreams; the next she was a young woman,

tender but not shyly so, incredibly poised, almost formidably dignified

on occasion, but with little girlish lapses into frolic and high

spirits.

The transition moment with Harmony came about in this wise: They had

been settled for three weeks. The odor of stewing cabbages at the

Pension Schwarz had retired into the oblivion of lost scents, to be

recalled, along with its accompanying memory of discomfort, with every

odor of stewing cabbages for years to come. At the hospital Jimmy had

had a bad week again. It had been an anxious time for all of them. In

vain the sentry had stopped outside the third window and smiled and

nodded through it; in vain--when the street was deserted and there

was none to notice--he went through a bit of the manual of arms on the

pavement outside, ending by setting his gun down with a martial and

ringing clang.

In vain had Peter exhausted himself in literary efforts, climbing

unheard-of peaks, taking walking-tours through such a Switzerland as

never was, shooting animals of various sorts, but all hornless, as he

carefully emphasized.

And now Jimmy was better again. He was propped up in bed, and with the

aid of Nurse Elisabet he had cut out a paper sentry and set it in the

barred window. The real sentry had been very much astonished; he had

almost fallen over backward. On recovering he went entirely through the

manual of arms, and was almost seen by an Oberst-lieutenant. It was all

most exciting.

Harmony had been to see Jimmy on the day in question. She had taken

him some gelatin, not without apprehension, it being her first essay in

jelly and Jimmy being frank with the candor of childhood. The jelly had

been a great success.

It was when she was about to go that Jimmy broached a matter very near

his heart.

“The horns haven't come, have they?” he asked wistfully.

“No, not yet.”

“Do you think he got my letter about them?”

“He answered it, didn't he?”

Jimmy drew a long breath. “It's very funny. He's mostly so quick. If I

had the horns, Sister Elisabet would tie them there at the foot of the

bed. And I could pretend I was hunting.”

Harmony had a great piece of luck that day. As she went home she saw

hanging in front of the wild-game shop next to the delicatessen store

a fresh deer, and this time it was a stag. Like the others it hung head

down, and as it swayed on its hook its great antlers tapped against the

shop door as if mutely begging admission.

She could not buy the antlers. In vain she pleaded, explained, implored.

Harmony enlisted the Portier, and took him across with her. The

wild-game seller was obdurate. He would sell the deer entire, or he

would mount head and antlers for his wife's cousin in Galicia as a

Christmas gift.

Harmony went back to the lodge and climbed the stairs. She was

profoundly depressed. Even the discovery that Peter had come home early

and was building a fire in the kitchen brought only a fleeting smile.

Anna was not yet home.

Peter built the fire. The winter dusk was falling and Harmony made a

movement to light the candles. Peter stopped her.

“Can't we have the firelight for a little while? You are always

beautiful, but--you are lovely in the firelight, Harmony.”

“That is because you like me. We always think our friends are

beautiful.”

“I am fond of Anna, but I have never thought her beautiful.”

The kitchen was small. Harmony, rolling up her sleeves by the table,

and Peter before the stove were very close together. The dusk was fast

fading into darkness; to this tiny room at the back of the old house few

street sounds penetrated. Round them, shutting them off together from

the world of shops with lighted windows, rumbling busses and hurrying

humanity, lay the old lodge with its dingy gardens, its whitewashed

halls, its dark and twisting staircases.

Peter had been very careful. He had cultivated a comradely manner with

the girl that had kept her entirely at her ease with him. But it had

been growing increasingly hard. He was only human after all. And he was

very comfortable. Love, healthy human love, thrives on physical ease.

Indigestion is a greater foe to it than poverty. Great love songs are

written, not by poets starving in hall bedrooms, with insistent hunger

gnawing and undermining all that is of the spirit, but by full-fed

gentlemen who sing out of an overflowing of content and wide fellowship,

and who write, no doubt, just after dinner. Love, being a hunger, does

not thrive on hunger.

Thus Peter. He had never found women essential, being occupied in the

struggle for other essentials. Women had had little part in his busy

life. Once or twice he had seen visions, dreamed dreams, to waken

himself savagely to the fact that not for many years could he afford the

luxury of tender eyes looking up into his, of soft arms about his neck.

So he had kept away from women with almost ferocious determination. And

now!

He drew a chair before the stove and sat down. Standing or sitting, he

was much too large for the kitchen. He sat in the chair, with his hands

hanging, fingers interlaced between his knees.

The firelight glowed over his strong, rather irregular features.

Harmony, knife poised over the evening's potatoes, looked at him.

“I think you are sad to-night, Peter.”

“Depressed a bit. That's all.”

“It isn't money again?”

It was generally money with any of the three, and only the week before

Peter had found an error in his bank balance which meant that he was a

hundred Kronen or so poorer than he had thought. This discovery had been

very upsetting.

“Not more than usual. Don't mind me. I'll probably end in a roaring bad

temper and smash something. My moody spells often break up that way!”

Harmony put down the paring-knife, and going over to where he sat rested

a hand on his shoulder. Peter drew away from it.

“I have hurt you in some way?”

“Of course not.”

“Could--could you talk about whatever it is? That helps sometimes.”

“You wouldn't understand.”

“You haven't quarreled with Anna?” Harmony asked, real concern in her

voice.

“No. Good Lord, Harmony, don't ask me what's wrong! I don't know

myself.”

He got up almost violently and set the little chair back against the

wall. Hurt and astonished, Harmony went back to the table. The kitchen

was entirely dark, save for the firelight, which gleamed on the bare

floor and the red legs of the table. She was fumbling with a match and

the candle when she realized that Peter was just behind her, very close.

“Dearest,” he said huskily. The next moment he had caught her to him,

was kissing her lips, her hair.

Harmony's heart beat wildly. There was no use struggling against him.

The gates of his self-control were down: all his loneliness, his starved

senses rushed forth in tardy assertion.

After a moment Peter kissed her eyelids very gently and let her go.

Harmony was trembling, but with shock and alarm only. The storm that had

torn him root and branch from his firm ground of self-restraint left

her only shaken. He was still very close to her; she could hear him

breathing. He did not attempt to speak. With every atom of strength that

was left in him he was fighting a mad desire to take her in his arms

again and keep her there.

That was the moment when Harmony became a woman.

She lighted the candle with the match she still held. Then she turned

and faced him.

“That sort of thing is not for you and me, Peter,” she said quietly.

“Why not?”

“There isn't any question about it.”

He was still reckless, even argumentative; the crying need of her still

obsessed him. “Why not? Why should I not take you in my arms? If

there is a moment of happiness to be had in this grind of work and

loneliness--”

“It has not made me happy.”

Perhaps nothing else she could have said would have been so effectual.

Love demands reciprocation; he could read no passion in her voice. He

knew then that he had left her unstirred. He dropped his outstretched

arms.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it.”

“I would rather not talk about it, please.”

The banging of a door far off told them that Anna Gates had arrived and

was taking off her galoshes in the entry. Peter drew a long breath, and,

after his habit, shook himself.

“Very well, we'll not talk of it. But, for Heaven's sake, Harmony, don't

avoid me. I'm not a cad. I'll let you alone.”

There was only time for a glance of understanding between them, of

promise from Peter, of acceptance from the girl. When Anna Gates entered

the kitchen she found Harmony peeling potatoes and Peter filling up an

already overfed stove.

That night, during that darkest hour before the dawn when the thrifty

city fathers of the old town had shut off the street lights because two

hours later the sun would rise and furnish light that cost the taxpayers

nothing, the Portier's wife awakened.

The room was very silent, too silent. On those rare occasions when the

Portier's wife awakened in the night and heard the twin clocks of the

Votivkirche strike three, and listened, perhaps, while the delicatessen

seller ambled home from the Schubert Society, singing beerily as he

ambled, she was wont to hear from the bed beside hers the rhythmic

respiration that told her how safe from Schubert Societies and such like

evils was her lord. There was no sound at all.

The Portier's wife raised herself on her elbow and reached over. Owing

to the width of the table that stood between the beds and to a sweeping

that day which had left the beds far apart she met nothing but empty

air. Words had small effect on the Portier, who slept fathoms deep in

unconsciousness. Also she did not wish to get up--the floor was cold

and a wind blowing. Could she not hear it and the creaking of the deer

across the street, as it swung on its hook?

The wife of the Portier was a person of resource. She took the iron

candlestick from the table and flung it into the darkness at the

Portier's pillow. No startled yell followed.

Suspicion thus confirmed, the Portier's wife forgot the cold floor and

the wind, and barefoot felt her way into the hall.

Suspicion was doubly confirmed. The chain was off the door; it even

stood open an inch or two.

Armed with a second candlestick she stationed herself inside the door

and waited. The stone floor was icy, but the fury of a woman scorned

kept her warm. The Votivkirche struck one, two, three quarters of an

hour. The candlestick in her hand changed from iron to ice, from ice

to red-hot fire. Still the Portier had not come back and the door chain

swung in the wind.

At four o'clock she retired to the bedroom again. Indignation had

changed to fear, coupled with sneezing. Surely even the Schubert

Society--What was that?

From the Portier's bed was coming a rhythmic respiration!

She roused him, standing over him with the iron candlestick, now

lighted, and gazing at him with eyes in which alarm struggled with

suspicion.

“Thou hast been out of thy bed!”

“But no!”

“An hour since the bed was empty.”

“Thou dreamest.”

“The chain is off the door.”

“Let it remain so and sleep. What have we to steal or the Americans

above? Sleep and keep peace.”

He yawned and was instantly asleep again. The Portier's wife crawled

into her bed and warmed her aching feet under the crimson feather

comfort. But her soul was shaken.

The Devil had been known to come at night and take innocent ones out to

do his evil. The innocent ones knew it not, but it might be told by the

soles of the feet, which were always soiled.

At dawn the Portier's wife cautiously uncovered the soles of her

sleeping lord's feet, and fell back gasping. They were quite black, as

of one who had tramped in garden mould.

Early the next morning Harmony, after a restless night, opened the door

from the salon of Maria Theresa into the hall and set out a pitcher for

the milk.

On the floor, just outside, lay the antlers from the deer across the

street. Tied to them was a bit of paper, and on it was written the one

word, “Still!”

CHAPTER X

In looking back after a catastrophe it is easy to trace the steps by

which the inevitable advanced. Destiny marches, not by great leaps but

with a thousand small and painful steps, and here and there it leaves

its mark, a footprint on a naked soul. We trace a life by its scars, as

a tree by its rings.

Anna Gates was not the best possible companion for Harmony, and this

with every allowance for her real kindliness, her genuine affection for

the girl. Life had destroyed her illusions, and it was of illusions

that Harmony's veil had been woven. To Anna Gates, worn with a thousand

sleepless nights, a thousand thankless days, withered before her time

with the struggling routine of medical practice, sapped with endless

calls for sympathy and aid, existence ceased to be spiritual and became

physiological.

Life and birth and death had lost their mysteries. The veil was rent.

To fit this existence of hers she had built herself a curious creed,

a philosophy of individualism, from behind which she flung strange

bombshells of theories, shafts of distorted moralities, personal

liberties, irresponsibilities, a supreme scorn for modern law and the

prophets. Nature, she claimed, was her law and her prophet.

In her hard-working, virginal life her theories had wrought no mischief.

Temptation had been lacking to exploit them, and even in the event of

the opportunity it was doubtful whether she would have had the strength

of her convictions. Men love theories, but seldom have the courage of

them, and Anna Gates was largely masculine. Women, being literal, are

apt to absorb dangerous doctrine and put it to the test. When it is

false doctrine they discover it too late.

Harmony was now a woman.

Anna would have cut off her hand sooner than have brought the girl to

harm; but she loved to generalize. It amused her to see Harmony's eyes

widen with horror at one of her radical beliefs. Nothing pleased

her more than to pit her individualism against the girl's rigid and

conventional morality, and down her by some apparently unanswerable

argument.

On the day after the incident in the kitchen such an argument took

place--hardly an argument, for Harmony knew nothing of mental fencing.

Anna had taken a heavy cold, and remained at home. Harmony had been

practicing, and at the end she played a little winter song by some

modern composer. It breathed all the purity of a white winter's day; it

was as chaste as ice and as cold; and yet throughout was the thought of

green things hiding beneath the snow and the hope of spring.

Harmony, having finished, voiced some such feeling. She was rather

ashamed of her thought.

“It seems that way to me,” she finished apologetically. “It sounds

rather silly. I always think I can tell the sort of person who composes

certain things.”

“And this gentleman who writes of winter?”

“I think he is very reserved. And that he has never loved any one.”

“Indeed!”

“When there is any love in music, any heart, one always feels it,

exactly as in books--the difference between a love story and--and--”

“--a dictionary!”

“You always laugh,” Harmony complained

“That's better than weeping. When I think of the rotten way things go in

this world I want to weep always.”

“I don't find it a bad world. Of course there are bad people, but there

are good ones.”

“Where? Peter and you and I, I suppose.”

“There are plenty of good men.”

“What do you call a good man?”

Harmony hesitated, then went on bravely:--

“Honorable men.”

Anna smiled. “My dear child,” she said, “you substitute the code of a

gentleman for the Mosaic Law. Of course your good man is a monogamist?”

Harmony nodded, puzzled eyes on Anna.

“Then there are no 'good' people in the polygamous countries, I suppose!

When there were twelve women to every man, a man took a dozen wives.

To-day in our part of the globe there is one woman--and a fifth

over--for every man. Each man gets one woman, and for every five couples

there is a derelict like myself, mateless.”

Anna's amazing frankness about herself often confused Harmony. Her

resentment at her single condition, because it left her childless,

brought forth theories that shocked and alarmed the girl. In the

atmosphere in which Harmony had been reared single women were always

presumed to be thus by choice and to regard with certain tolerance those

weaker sisters who had married. Anna, on the contrary, was frankly

a derelict, frankly regretted her maiden condition and railed with

bitterness against her enforced childlessness. The near approach of

Christmas had for years found her morose and resentful. There are, here

and there, such women, essentially mothers but not necessarily wives,

their sole passion that of maternity.

Anna, argumentative and reckless, talked on. She tore away, in her

resentment, every theory of existence the girl had ever known, and

offered her instead an incredible liberty in the name of the freedom of

the individual. Harmony found all her foundations of living shaken, and

though refusing to accept Anna's theories, found her faith in her own

weakened. She sat back, pale and silent, listening, while Anna built up

out of her discontent a new heaven and a new earth, with liberty written

high in its firmament.

When her reckless mood had passed Anna was regretful enough at the

girl's stricken face.

“I'm a fool!” she said contritely. “If Peter had been here he'd have

throttled me. I deserve it. I'm a theorist, pure and simple, and

theorists are the anarchists of society. There's only one comfort about

us--we never live up to our convictions. Now forget all this rot I've

been talking.”

Peter brought up the mail that afternoon, a Christmas card or two for

Anna, depressingly early, and a letter from the Big Soprano for Harmony

from New York. The Big Soprano was very glad to be back and spent two

pages over her chances for concert work.

“... I could have done as well had I stayed at home. If I had had the

money they wanted, to go to Geneva and sing 'Brunnhilde,' it would have

helped a lot. I could have said I'd sung in opera in Europe and at least

have had a hearing at the Met. But I didn't, and I'm back at the church

again and glad to get my old salary. If it's at all possible, stay until

the master has presented you in a concert. He's quite right, you haven't

a chance unless he does. And now I'll quit grumbling.

“Scatchy met her Henry at the dock and looked quite lovely, flushed with

excitement and having been up since dawn curling her hair. He was rather

a disappointment--small and blond, with light blue eyes, and almost

dapper. But oh, my dear, I wouldn't care how pale a man's eyes were if

he looked at me the way Henry looked at her.

“They asked me to luncheon with them, but I knew they wanted to be alone

together, and so I ate a bite or two, all I could swallow for the lump

in my throat, by myself. I was homesick enough in old Wien, but I am

just as homesick now that I am here, for we are really homesick only for

people, not places. And no one really cared whether I came back or not.”

Peter had been miserable all day, not with regret for the day before,

but with fear. What if Harmony should decide that the situation was

unpleasant and decide to leave? What if a reckless impulse, recklessly

carried out, were to break up an arrangement that had made a green oasis

of happiness and content for all of them in the desert of their common

despair?

If he had only let her go and apologized! But no, he had had to argue,

to justify himself, to make an idiot of himself generally. He almost

groaned aloud as he opened the gate end crossed the wintry garden.

He need not have feared. Harmony had taken him entirely at his word.

“I am not a beast. I'll let you alone,” he had said. She had had a bad

night, as nights go. She had gone through the painful introspection

which, in a thoroughly good girl, always follows such an outburst as

Peter's. Had she said or done anything to make him think--Surely she had

not! Had she been wrong about Peter after all? Surely not again.

While the Portier's wife, waked, as may happen, by an unaccustomed

silence, was standing guard in the hall below, iron candlestick in

hand, Harmony, having read the Litany through in the not particularly

religious hope of getting to sleep, was dreaming placidly. It was Peter

who tossed and turned almost all night. Truly there had been little

sleep that night in the old hunting-lodge of Maria Theresa.

Peter, still not quite at ease, that evening kept out of the kitchen

while supper was preparing. Anna, radical theories forgotten and wearing

a knitted shawl against drafts, was making a salad, and Harmony, all

anxiety and flushed with heat, was broiling a steak.

Steak was an extravagance, to be cooked with clear hot coals and prayer.

“Peter,” she called, “you may set the table. And try to lay the cloth

straight.”

Peter, exiled in the salon, came joyously. Obviously the wretched

business of yesterday was forgiven. He came to the door, pipe in mouth.

“Suppose I refuse?” he questioned. “You--you haven't been very friendly

with me to-day, Harry.”

“I?”

“Don't quarrel, you children,” cried Anna, beating eggs vigorously.

“Harmony is always friendly, too friendly. The Portier loves her.”

“I'm sure I said good-evening to you.”

“You usually say, 'Good-evening, Peter.'”

“And I did not?”

“You did not.”

“Then--Good-evening, Peter.”

“Thank you.”

His steady eyes met hers. In them there was a renewal of his yesterday's

promise, abasement, regret. Harmony met him with forgiveness and

restoration.

“Sometimes,” said Peter humbly, “when I am in very great favor, you say,

'Good-evening, Peter, dear.'”

“Good-evening, Peter, dear,” said Harmony.

CHAPTER XI

The affairs of young Stewart and Marie Jedlicka were not moving

smoothly. Having rented their apartment to the Boyers, and through

Marie's frugality and the extra month's wages at Christmas, which was

Marie's annual perquisite, being temporarily in funds the sky seemed

clear enough, and Walter Stewart started on his holiday with a

comfortable sense of financial security.

Mrs. Boyer, shown over the flat by Stewart during Marie's temporary

exile in the apartment across the hall, was captivated by the comfort of

the little suite and by its order. Her housewifely mind, restless with

long inactivity in a pension, seized on the bright pans of Marie's

kitchen and the promise of the brick-and-sheetiron stove. She

disapproved of Stewart, having heard strange stories of him, but there

was nothing bacchanal or suspicious about this orderly establishment.

Mrs. Boyer was a placid, motherly looking woman, torn from her church

and her card club, her grown children, her household gods of thirty

years' accumulation, that “Frank” might catch up with his profession.

She had explained it rather tremulously at home.

“Father wants to go,” she said. “You children are big enough now to be

left. He's always wanted to do it, but we couldn't go while you were

little.”

“But, mother!” expostulated the oldest girl. “When you are so afraid of

the ocean! And a year!”

“What is to be will be,” she had replied. “If I'm going to be drowned

I'll be drowned, whether it's in the sea or in a bathtub. And I'll not

let father go alone.”

Fatalism being their mother's last argument and always final, the

children gave up. They let her go. More, they prepared for her so

elaborate a wardrobe that the poor soul had had no excuse to purchase

anything abroad. She had gone through Paris looking straight ahead lest

her eyes lead her into the temptation of the shops. In Vienna she wore

her home-town outfit with determination, vaguely conscious that the

women about her had more style, were different. She priced unsuitable

garments wistfully, and went home to her trunks full of best materials

that would never wear out. The children, knowing her, had bought the

best.

To this couple, then, Stewart had rented his apartment. It is hard to

say by what psychology he found their respectability so satisfactory. It

was as though his own status gained by it. He had much the same feeling

about the order and decency with which Marie managed the apartment, as

if irregularity were thus regularized.

Marie had met him once for a walk along the Graben. She had worn an

experimental touch of rouge under a veil, and fine lines were drawn

under her blue eyes, darkening them. She had looked very pretty, rather

frightened. Stewart had sent her home and had sulked for an entire

evening.

So curious a thing is the mind masculine, such an order of disorder, so

conventional its defiance of convention. Stewart breaking the law and

trying to keep the letter!

On the day they left for Semmering Marie was up at dawn. There was

much to do. The house must be left clean and shining. There must be no

feminine gewgaws to reveal to the Frau Doktor that it was not a purely

masculine establishment. At the last moment, so late that it sent her

heart into her mouth, she happened on the box of rouge hidden from

Stewart's watchful eyes. She gave it to the milk girl.

Finally she folded her meager wardrobe and placed it in the Herr

Doktor's American trunk: a marvel, that trunk, so firm, so heavy,

bound with iron. And with her own clothing she packed Stewart's, the

dress-suit he had worn once to the Embassy, a hat that folded, strange

American shoes, and books--always books. The Herr Doktor would study

at Semmering. When all was in readiness and Stewart was taking a final

survey, Marie ran downstairs and summoned a cab. It did not occur to her

to ask him to do it. Marie's small life was one of service, and besides

there was an element in their relationship that no one but Marie

suspected, and that she hid even from herself. She was very much in

love with this indifferent American, this captious temporary god of her

domestic altar. Such a contingency had never occurred to Stewart; but

Peter, smoking gravely in the little apartment, had more than once

caught a look in Marie's eyes as she turned them on the other man, and

had surmised it. It made him uncomfortable.

When the train was well under way, however, and he found no disturbing

element among the three others in the compartment, Stewart relaxed.

Semmering was a favorite resort with the American colony, but not until

later in the winter. In December there were rains in the mountains, and

low-lying clouds that invested some of the chalets in constant fog.

It was not until the middle of January that the little mountain train

became crowded with tourists, knickerbockered men with knapsacks, and

jaunty feathers in their soft hats, boys carrying ski, women with Alpine

cloaks and iron-pointed sticks.

Marie was childishly happy. It was the first real vacation of her life,

and more than that she was going to Semmering, in the very shadow of the

Raxalpe, the beloved mountain of the Viennese.

Marie had seen the Rax all her life, as it towered thirty miles or

so away above the plain. On peaceful Sundays, having climbed the cog

railroad, she had seen its white head turn rosy in the setting sun, and

once when a German tourist from Munich had handed her his fieldglass she

had even made out some of the crosses that showed where travelers had

met their deaths. Now she would be very close. If the weather were good,

she might even say a prayer in the chapel on its crest for the souls of

those who had died. It was of a marvel, truly; so far may one go when

one has money and leisure.

The small single-trucked railway carriages bumped and rattled up the

mountain sides, always rising, always winding. There were moments when

the track held to the cliffs only by gigantic fingers of steel, while

far below were peaceful valleys and pink-and-blue houses and churches

with gilded spires. There were vistas of snow-peak and avalanche shed,

and always there were tunnels. Marie, so wise in some things, was a

child in others; she slid close to Stewart in the darkness and touched

him for comfort.

“It is so dark,” she apologized, “and it frightens me, the mountain

heart. In your America, have you so great mountains?”

Stewart patted her hand, a patronizing touch that sent her blood racing.

“Much larger,” he said magnificently. “I haven't seen a hill in Europe

I'd exchange for the Rockies. And when we cross the mountains there we

use railway coaches. These toy railroads are a joke. At home we'd use

'em as street-cars.”

“Really! I should like to see America.”

“So should I.”

The conversation was taking a dangerous trend. Mention of America was

apt to put the Herr Doktor in a bad humor or to depress him, which was

even worse. Marie, her hand still on his arm and not repulsed, became

silent.

At a small way station the three Germans in the compartment left the

train. Stewart, lowering a window, bought from a boy on the platform

beer and sausages and a bag of pretzels. As the train resumed its

clanking progress they ate luncheon, drinking the beer from the bottles

and slicing the sausage with a penknife. It was a joyous trip, a

red-letter day in the girl's rather sordid if not uneventful life. The

Herr Doktor was pleased with her. He liked her hat, and when she

flushed with pleasure demanded proof that she was not rouged. Proof was

forthcoming. She rubbed her cheeks vigorously with a handkerchief and

produced in triumph its unreddened purity.

“Thou suspicious one!” she pouted. “I must take off the skin to assure

thee! When the Herr Doktor says no rouge, I use none.”

“You're a good child.” He stooped over and kissed one scarlet cheek and

then being very comfortable and the beer having made him drowsy, he put

his head in her lap and slept.

When he awakened they were still higher. The snow-peak towered above

and the valleys were dizzying! Semmering was getting near. They were

frequently in darkness; and between the tunnels were long lines of

granite avalanche sheds. The little passage of the car was full of

tourists looking down.

“We are very close, I am sure,” an American girl was saying just outside

the doorway. “See, isn't that the Kurhaus? There, it is lost again.”

The tourists in the passage were Americans and the girl who had spoken

was young and attractive. Stewart noticed them for the first time and

moved to a more decorous distance from Marie.

Marie Jedlicka took her cue and lapsed into silence, but her thoughts

were busy. Perhaps this girl was going to Semmering also and the Herr

Doktor would meet her. But that was foolish! There were other resorts

besides Semmering, and in the little villa to which they went there

would be no Americans. It was childish to worry about a girl whose back

and profile only she had seen. Also profiles were deceptive; there was

the matter of the ears. Marie's ears were small and set close to her

head. If the American Fraulein's ears stuck out or her face were only

short and wide! But no. The American Fraulein turned and glanced once

swiftly into the compartment. She was quite lovely.

Stewart thought so, too. He got up with a great show of stretching and

yawning and lounged into the passage. He did not speak to the girl;

Marie noted that with some comfort. But shortly after she saw him

conversing easily with a male member of the party. Her heart sank again.

Life was moving very fast for Marie Jedlicka that afternoon on the

train.

Stewart was duly presented to the party of Americans and offered his own

cards, bowing from the waist and clicking his heels together, a German

custom he had picked up. The girl was impressed; Marie saw that. When

they drew into the station at Semmering Stewart helped the American

party off first and then came back for Marie. Less keen eyes than

the little Austrian's would have seen his nervous anxiety to escape

attention, once they were out of the train and moving toward the gate

of the station. He stopped to light a cigarette, he put down the

hand-luggage and picked it up again, as though it weighed heavily,

whereas it was both small and light. He loitered through the gate and

paused to exchange a word with the gateman.

The result was, of course, that the Americans were in a sleigh and well

up the mountainside before Stewart and Marie were seated side by side in

a straw-lined sledge, their luggage about them, a robe over their knees,

and a noisy driver high above them on the driving-seat. Stewart spoke to

her then, the first time for half an hour.

Marie found some comfort. The villas at Semmering were scattered wide

over the mountain breast, set in dense clumps of evergreens, hidden

from the roads and from each other by trees and shrubbery separated by

valleys. One might live in one part of Semmering for a month and never

suspect the existence of other parts, or wander over steep roads and

paths for days and never pass twice over the same one. The Herr Doktor

might not see the American girl again--and if he did! Did he not see

American girls wherever he went?

The sleigh climbed on. It seemed they would never stop climbing. Below

in the valley twilight already reigned, a twilight of blue shadows, of

cows with bells wandering home over frosty fields, of houses with dark

faces that opened an eye of lamplight as one looked.

Across the valley and far above--Marie pointed without words. Her small

heart was very full. Greater than she had ever dreamed it, steeper, more

beautiful, more deadly, and crowned with its sunset hue of rose was the

Rax. Even Stewart lost his look of irritation as he gazed with her. He

reached over and covered both her hands with his large one under the

robe.

The sleigh climbed steadily. Marie Jedlicka, in a sort of ecstasy,

leaned back and watched the mountain; its crown faded from rose to gold,

from gold to purple with a thread of black. There was a shadow on the

side that looked like a cross. Marie stopped the sleigh at a wayside

shrine, and getting out knelt to say a prayer for the travelers who had

died on the Rax. They had taken a room at a small villa where board was

cheap, and where the guests were usually Germans of the thriftier

sort from Bavaria. Both the season and the modest character of the

establishment promised them quiet and seclusion.

To Marie the house seemed the epitome of elegance, even luxury. It clung

to a steep hillside. Their room, on the third floor, looked out from the

back of the building over the valley, which fell away almost sheer from

beneath their windows. A tiny balcony outside, with access to it by a

door from the bedroom, looked far down on the tops of tall pines. It

made Marie dizzy.

She was cheerful again and busy. The American trunk was to be unpacked

and the Herr Doktor's things put away, his shoes in rows, as he liked

them, and his shaving materials laid out on the washstand. Then there

was a new dress to put on, that she might do him credit at supper.

Stewart's bad humor had returned. He complained of the room and the

draft under the balcony door; the light was wrong for shaving. But the

truth came out at last and found Marie not unprepared.

“The fact is,” he said, “I'm not going to eat with you to-night, dear.

I'm going to the hotel.”

“With the Americans?”

“Yes. I know a chap who went to college with the brother--with the young

man you saw.”

Marie glanced down at her gala toilet. Then she began slowly to take

off the dress, reaching behind her for a hook he had just fastened and

fighting back tears as she struggled with it.

“Now, remember, Marie, I will have no sulking.”

“I am not sulking.”

“Why should you change your clothes?”

“Because the dress was for you. If you are not here I do not wish to

wear it.”

Stewart went out in a bad humor, which left him before he had walked for

five minutes in the clear mountain air. At the hotel he found the party

waiting for him, the women in evening gowns. The girl, whose name was

Anita, was bewitching in pale green.

That was a memorable night for Walter Stewart, with his own kind once

more--a perfect dinner, brisk and clever conversation, enlivened by a

bit of sweet champagne, an hour or two on the terrace afterward with the

women in furs, and stars making a jeweled crown for the Rax.

He entirely forgot Marie until he returned to the villa and opening the

door of the room found her missing.

She had not gone far. At the sound of his steps she moved on the balcony

and came in slowly. She was pale and pinched with cold, but she was wise

with the wisdom of her kind. She smiled.

“Didst thou have a fine evening?”

“Wonderful!”

“I am sorry if I was unpleasant. I was tired, now I am rested.”

“Good, little Marie!”

CHAPTER XII

The card in the American Doctors' Club brought a response finally.

It was just in time. Harmony's funds were low, and the Frau Professor

Bergmeister had gone to St. Moritz for the winter. She regretted the

English lessons, but there were always English at St. Moritz and it cost

nothing to talk with them. Before she left she made Harmony a present.

“For Christmas,” she explained. It was a glass pin-tray, decorated

beneath with labels from the Herr Professor's cigars and in the center a

picture of the Emperor.

The response came in this wise. Harmony struggling home against an east

wind and holding the pin-tray and her violin case, opened the old

garden gate by the simple expedient of leaning against it. It flew back

violently, almost overthrowing a stout woman in process of egress down

the walk. The stout woman was Mrs. Boyer, clad as usual in the best

broadcloth and wearing her old sable cape, made over according to her

oldest daughter's ideas into a staid stole and muff. The muff lay on the

path now and Mrs. Boyer was gasping for breath.

“I'm so sorry!” Harmony exclaimed. “It was stupid of me; but the

wind--Is this your muff?”

Mrs. Boyer took the muff coldly. From its depths she proceeded to

extract a handkerchief and with the handkerchief she brushed down the

broadcloth. Harmony stood apologetically by. It is explanatory of Mrs.

Boyer's face, attitude, and costume that the girl addressed her in

English.

“I backed in,” she explained. “So few people come, and no Americans.”

Mrs. Boyer, having finished her brushing and responded to this humble

apology in her own tongue, condescended to look at Harmony.

“It really is no matter,” she said, still coolly but with indications of

thawing. “I am only glad it did not strike my nose. I dare say it would

have, but I was looking up to see if it were going to snow.” Here she

saw the violin case and became almost affable.

“There was a card in the Doctors' Club, and I called--” She hesitated.

“I am Miss Wells. The card is mine.”

“One of the women here has a small boy who wishes to take violin lessons

and I offered to come. The mother is very busy.”

“I see. Will you come in? I can make you a cup of tea and we can talk

about it.”

Mrs. Boyer was very willing, although she had doubts about the tea.

She had had no good tea since she had left England, and was inclined to

suspect all of it.

They went in together, Harmony chatting gayly as she ran ahead,

explaining this bit of the old staircase, that walled-up door, here

an ancient bit of furniture not considered worthy of salvage, there

a closed and locked room, home of ghosts and legends. To Harmony this

elderly woman, climbing slowly behind her, was a bit of home. There

had been many such in her life; women no longer young, friends of her

mother's who were friends of hers; women to whom she had been wont to

pay the courtesy of a potted hyacinth at Easter or a wreath at Christmas

or a bit of custard during an illness. She had missed them all cruelly,

as she had missed many things--her mother, her church, her small

gayeties. She had thought at first that Frau Professor Bergmeister

might allay her longing for these comfortable, middle-aged, placid-eyed

friends of hers. But the Frau Professor Bergmeister had proved to be a

frivolous and garrulous old woman, who substituted ease for comfort,

and who burned a candle on the name-day of her first husband while her

second was safely out of the house.

So it was with something of excitement that Harmony led the way up the

stairs and into the salon of Maria Theresa.

Peter was there. He was sitting with his back to the door, busily

engaged in polishing the horns of the deer. Whatever scruples Harmony

had had about the horns, Peter had none whatever, save to get them

safely out of the place and to the hospital. So Peter was polishing the

horns. Harmony had not expected to find him home, and paused, rather

startled.

“Oh, I didn't know you were home.”

Peter spoke without turning.

“Try to bear up under it,” he said. “I'm home and hungry, sweetheart!”

“Peter, please!”

Peter turned at that and rose instantly. It was rather dark in the salon

and he did not immediately recognize Mrs. Boyer. But that keen-eyed

lady had known him before he turned, had taken in the domesticity of the

scene and Peter's part in it, and had drawn the swift conclusion of the

pure of heart.

“I'll come again,” she said hurriedly. “I--I must really get home. Dr.

Boyer will be there, and wondering--”

“Mrs. Boyer!” Peter knew her.

“Oh, Dr. Byrne, isn't it? How unexpected to find you here!”

“I live here.”

“So I surmised.”

“Three of us,” said Peter. “You know Anna Gates, don't you?”

“I'm afraid not. Really I--”

Peter was determined to explain. His very eagerness was almost damning.

“She and Miss Wells are keeping house here and have kindly taken me in

as a boarder. Please sit down.”

Harmony found nothing strange in the situation and was frankly puzzled

at Peter. The fact that there was anything unusual in two single women

and one unmarried man, unrelated and comparative strangers, setting up

housekeeping together had never occurred to her. Many a single woman

whom she knew at home took a gentleman into the house as a roomer, and

thereafter referred to him as “he” and spent hours airing the curtains

of smoke and even, as “he” became a member of the family, in sewing on

his buttons. There was nothing indecorous about such an arrangement;

merely a concession to economic pressure.

She made tea, taking off her jacket and gloves to do it, but bustling

about cheerfully, with her hat rather awry and her cheeks flushed with

excitement and hope. Just now, when the Frau Professor had gone, the

prospect of a music pupil meant everything. An American child, too!

Fond as Harmony was of children, the sedate and dignified youngsters who

walked the parks daily with a governess, or sat with folded hands and

fixed eyes through hours of heavy music at the opera, rather daunted

her. They were never alone, those Austrian children--always under

surveillance, always restrained, always prepared to kiss the hand of

whatever relative might be near and to take themselves of to anywhere so

it were somewhere else.

“I am so glad you are going to talk to me about an American child,” said

Harmony, bringing in the tea.

But Mrs. Boyer was not so sure she was going to talk about the American

child. She was not sure of anything, except that the household looked

most irregular, and that Peter Byrne was trying to cover a difficult

situation with much conversation. He was almost glib, was Peter. The tea

was good; that was one thing.

She sat back with her muff on her knee, having refused the concession

of putting it on a chair as savoring too much of acceptance if not

approval, and sipped her tea out of a spoon as becomes a tea-lover.

Peter, who loathed tea, lounged about the room, clearly in the way, but

fearful to leave Harmony alone with her. She was quite likely, at the

first opportunity, to read her a lesson on the conventions, if nothing

worse; to upset the delicate balance of the little household he was

guarding. So he stayed, praying for Anna to come and bear out his story,

while Harmony toyed with her spoon and waited for some mention of the

lessons. None came. Mrs. Boyer, having finished her tea, rose and put

down her cup.

“That was very refreshing,” she said. “Where shall I find the

street-car? I walked out, but it is late.”

“I'll take you to the car.” Peter picked up his old hat.

“Thank you. I am always lost in this wretched town. I give the

conductors double tips to put me down where I want to go; but how can

they when it is the wrong car?” She bowed to Harmony without shaking

hands. “Thank you for the tea. It was really good. Where do you get it?”

“There is a tea-shop a door or two from the Grand Hotel.”

“I must remember that. Thank you again. Good-bye.”

Not a word about the lessons or the American child!

“You said something about my card in the Doctors' Club--”

Something wistful in the girl's eyes caught and held Mrs. Boyer.

After all she was the mother of daughters. She held out her hand and her

voice was not so hard.

“That will have to wait until another time. I have made a social visit

and we'll not spoil it with business.”

“But--”

“I really think the boy's mother must attend to that herself. But I

shall tell her where to find you, and”--here she glanced at Peter--“all

about it.”

“Thank you,” said Harmony gratefully.

Peter had no finesse. He escorted Mrs. Boyer across the yard and through

the gate with hardly a word. With the gate closed behind them he turned

and faced her:--

“You are going away with a wrong impression, Mrs. Boyer.”

Mrs. Boyer had been thinking hard as she crossed the yard. The result

was a resolution to give Peter a piece of her mind. She drew her ample

proportions into a dignity that was almost majesty.

“Yes?”

“I--I can understand why you think as you do. It is quite without

foundation.”

“I am glad of that.” There was no conviction in her voice.

“Of course,” went on Peter, humbling himself for Harmony's sake, “I

suppose it has been rather unconventional, but Dr. Gates is not a young

woman by any means, and she takes very good care of Miss Wells. There

were reasons why this seemed the best thing to do. Miss Wells was alone

and--”

“There is a Dr. Gates?”

“Of course. If you will come back and wait she'll be along very soon.”

Mrs. Boyer was convinced and defrauded in one breath; convinced that

there might be a Dr. Gates, but equally convinced that the situation was

anomalous and certainly suspicious; defrauded in that she had lost the

anticipated pleasure of giving Peter a piece of her mind. She walked

along beside him without speaking until they reached the street-car

line. Then she turned.

“You called her--you spoke to her very affectionately, young man,” she

accused him.

Peter smiled. The car was close. Some imp of recklessness, some

perversion of humor seized him.

“My dear Mrs. Boyer,” he said, “that was in jest purely. Besides, I did

not know that you were there!”

Mrs. Boyer was a literal person without humor. It was outraged American

womanhood incarnate that got into the street-car and settled its

broadcloth of the best quality indignantly on the cane seat. It was

outraged American womanhood that flung open the door of Marie Jedlicka's

flat, and stalking into Marie Jedlicka's sitting room confronted her

husband as he read a month-old newspaper from home.

“Did you ever hear of a woman doctor named Gates?” she demanded.

Boyer was not unaccustomed to such verbal attacks. He had learned to

meet domestic broadsides with a shield of impenetrable good humor, or at

the most with a return fire of mild sarcasm.

“I never hear of a woman doctor if it can be avoided.”

“Dr. Gates--Anna Gates?”

“There are a number here. I meet them in the hospital, but I don't know

their names.”

“Where does Peter Byrne live?”

“In a pension, I believe, my dear. Are we going to have anything to eat

or do we sup of Peter Byrne?”

Mrs. Boyer made no immediate reply. She repaired to the bedroom of Marie

Jedlicka, and placed her hat, coat and furs on one of the beds with the

crocheted coverlets. It is a curious thing about rooms. There was no

change in the bedroom apparent to the eye, save that for Marie's tiny

slippers at the foot of the wardrobe there were Mrs. Boyer's substantial

house shoes. But in some indefinable way the room had changed. About it

hung an atmosphere of solid respectability, of impeccable purity that

soothed Mrs. Boyer's ruffled virtue into peace. Is it any wonder that

there is a theory to the effect that things take on the essential

qualities of people who use them, and that we are haunted by things, not

people? That when grandfather's wraith is seen in his old armchair it

is the chair that produces it, while grandfather himself serenely haunts

the shades of some vast wilderness of departed spirits?

Not that Mrs. Boyer troubled herself about such things. She was

exceedingly orthodox, even in the matter of a hereafter, where the most

orthodox are apt to stretch a point, finding no attraction whatever in

the thing they are asked to believe. Mrs. Boyer, who would have regarded

it as heterodox to substitute any other instrument for the harp of her

expectation, tied on her gingham apron before Marie Jedlicka's mirror,

and thought of Harmony and of the girls at home.

She told her husband over the supper-table and found him less shocked

than she had expected.

“It's not your affair or mine,” he said. “It's Byrne's business.”

“Think of the girl!”

“Even if you are right it's rather late, isn't it?”

“You could tell him what you think of him.”

Dr. Boyer sighed over a cup of very excellent coffee. Much living with a

representative male had never taught his wife the reserves among members

of the sex masculine.

“I might, but I don't intend to,” he said. “And if you listen to me

you'll keep the thing to yourself.”

“I'll take precious good care that the girl gets no pupils,” snapped

Mrs. Boyer. And she did with great thoroughness.

We trace a life by its scars. Destiny, marching on by a thousand painful

steps, had left its usual mark, a footprint on a naked soul. The soul

was Harmony's; the foot--was it not encased at that moment in Mrs.

Boyer's comfortable house shoes?

Anna was very late that night. Peter, having put Mrs. Boyer on her car,

went back quickly. He had come out without his overcoat, and with the

sunset a bitter wind had risen, but he was too indignant to be cold. He

ran up the staircase, hearing on all sides the creaking and banging with

which the old house resented a gale, and burst into the salon of Maria

Theresa.

Harmony was sitting sidewise in a chair by the tea-table with her face

hidden against its worn red velvet. She did not look up when he entered.

Peter went over and put a hand on her shoulder. She quivered under it

and he took it away.

“Crying?”

“A little,” very smothered. “Just dis-disappointment. Don't mind me,

Peter.”

“You mean about the pupil?”

Harmony sat up and looked at him. She still wore her hat, now more than

ever askew, and some of the dye from the velvet had stained her cheek.

She looked rather hectic, very lovely.

“Why did she change so when she saw you?”

Peter hesitated. Afterward he thought of a dozen things he might have

said, safe things. Not one came to him.

“She--she is an evil-thinking old woman, Harry,” he said gravely.

“She did not approve of the way we are living here, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“But Anna?”

“She did not believe there was an Anna. Not that it matters,” he added

hastily. “I'll make Anna go to her and explain. It's her infernal

jumping to a conclusion that makes me crazy.”

“She will talk, Peter. I am frightened.”

“I'll take Anna to-night and we'll go to Boyer's. I'll make that woman

get down on her knees to you. I'll--”

“You'll make bad very much worse,” said Harmony dejectedly. “When a

thing has to be explained it does no good to explain it.”

The salon was growing dark. Peter was very close to her again. As in the

dusky kitchen only a few days before, he felt the compelling influence

of her nearness. He wanted, as he had never wanted anything in his life

before, to take her in his arms, to hold her close and bid defiance to

evil tongues. He was afraid of himself. To gain a moment he put a chair

between them and stood, strong hands gripping its back, looking down at

her.

“There is one thing we could do.”

“What, Peter?”

“We could marry. If you cared for me even a little it--it might not be

so bad for you.”

“But I am not in love with you. I care for you, of course, but--not that

way, Peter. And I do not wish to marry.”

“Not even if I wish it very much?”

“No.”

“If you are thinking of my future--”

“I'm thinking for both of us. And although just now you think you care

a little for me, you do not care enough, Peter. You are lonely and I

am the only person you see much, so you think you want to marry me. You

don't really. You want to help me.”

Few motives are unmixed. Poor Peter, thus accused, could not deny his

altruism.

And in the face of his poverty and the little he could offer, compared

with what she must lose, he did not urge what was the compelling motive

after all, his need of her.

“It would be a rotten match for you,” he agreed. “I only thought,

perhaps--You are right, of course; you ought not to marry.”

“And what about you?”

“I ought not, of course.”

Harmony rose, smiling a little.

“Then that's settled. And for goodness' sake, Peter, stop proposing to

me every time things go wrong.” Her voice changed, grew grave and older,

much older than Peter's. “We must not marry, either of us, Peter. Anna

is right. There might be an excuse if we were very much in love: but we

are not. And loneliness is not a reason.”

“I am very lonely,” said Peter wistfully.

CHAPTER XIII

Peter took the polished horns to the hospital the next morning and

approached Jimmy with his hands behind him and an atmosphere of mystery

that enshrouded him like a cloak. Jimmy, having had a good night and

having taken the morning's medicine without argument, had been allowed

up in a roller chair. It struck Peter with a pang that the boy looked

more frail day by day, more transparent.

“I have brought you,” said Peter gravely, “the cod-liver oil.”

“I've had it!”

“Then guess.”

“Dad's letter?”

“You've just had one. Don't be a piggy.”

“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“Vegetable,” said Peter shamelessly.

“Soft or hard!”

“Soft.”

This was plainly a disappointment. A pair of horns might be vegetable;

they could hardly be soft.

“A kitten?”

“A kitten is not vegetable, James.”

“I know. A bowl of gelatin from Harry!” For by this time Harmony was his

very good friend, admitted to the Jimmy club, which consisted of Nurse

Elisabet, the Dozent with the red beard, Anna and Peter, and of course

the sentry, who did not know that he belonged.

“Gelatin, to be sure,” replied Peter, and produced the horns.

It was a joyous moment in the long low ward, with its triple row of

beds, its barred windows, its clean, uneven old floor. As if to add a

touch of completeness the sentry outside, peering in, saw the wheeled

chair with its occupant, and celebrated this advance along the road to

recovery by placing on the window-ledge a wooden replica of himself,

bayonet and all, carved from a bit of cigar box.

“Everybody is very nice to me,” said Jimmy contentedly. “When my father

comes back I shall tell him. He is very fond of people who are kind to

me. There was a woman on the ship--What is bulging your pocket, Peter?”

“My handkerchief.”

“That is not where you mostly carry your handkerchief.”

Peter was injured. He scowled ferociously at being doubted and stood

up before the wheeled chair to be searched. The ward watched joyously,

while from pocket after pocket of Peter's old gray suit came Jimmy's

salvage--two nuts, a packet of figs, a postcard that represented a stout

colonel of hussars on his back on a frozen lake, with a private soldier

waiting to go through the various salutations due his rank before

assisting him. A gala day, indeed, if one could forget the grave in the

little mountain town with only a name on the cross at its head, and if

one did not notice that the boy was thinner than ever, that his hands

soon tired of playing and lay in his lap, that Nurse Elisabet, who was

much inured to death and lived her days with tragedy, caught him to her

almost fiercely as she lifted him back from the chair into the smooth

white bed.

He fell asleep with Peter's arm under his head and the horns of the deer

beside him. On the bedside stand stood the wooden sentry, keeping

guard. As Peter drew his arm away he became aware of the Nurse Elisabet

beckoning to him from a door at the end of the ward Peter left the

sentinel on guard and tiptoed down the room. Just outside, round a

corner, was the Dozent's laboratory, and beyond the tiny closet where

he slept, where on a stand was the photograph of the lady he would marry

when he had become a professor and required no one's consent.

The Dozent was waiting for Peter. In the amiable conspiracy which

kept the boy happy he was arch-plotter. His familiarity with Austrian

intrigue had made him invaluable. He it was who had originated the idea

of making Jimmy responsible for the order of the ward, so that a burly

Trager quarreling over his daily tobacco with the nurse in charge, or

brawling over his soup with another patient, was likely to be hailed in

a thin soprano, and to stand, grinning sheepishly, while Jimmy, in

mixed English and German, restored the decorum of the ward. They were a

quarrelsome lot, the convalescents. Jimmy was so busy some days settling

disputes and awarding decisions that he slept almost all night. This was

as it should be.

The Dozent waited for Peter. His red beard twitched and his white coat,

stained from the laboratory table, looked quite villainous. He held out

a letter.

“This has come for the child,” he said in quite good English. He was

obliged to speak English. Day by day he taught in the clinics Americans

who scorned his native tongue, and who brought him the money with

which some day he would marry. He liked the English language; he liked

Americans because they learned quickly. He held out an envelope with a

black border and Peter took it.

“From Paris!” he said. “Who in the world--I suppose I'd better open it.”

“So I thought. It appears a letter of--how you say it? Ah, yes,

condolence.”

Peter opened the letter and read it. Then without a word he gave it open

to the Dozent. There was silence in the laboratory while the Dozent

read it, silence except for his canary, which was chipping at a lump of

sugar. Peter's face was very sober.

“So. A mother! You knew nothing of a mother?”

“Something from the papers I found. She left when the boy was a

baby--went on the stage, I think. He has no recollection of her, which

is a good thing. She seems to have been a bad lot.”

“She comes to take him away. That is impossible.”

“Of course it is impossible,” said Peter savagely. “She's not going

to see the child if I can help it. She left because--she's the boy's

mother, but that's the best you can say of her. This letter--Well,

you've read it.”

“She is as a stranger to him?”

“Absolutely. She will come in mourning--look at that black border--and

tell him his father is dead, and kill him. I know the type.”

The canary chipped at his sugar; the red beard of the Dozent twitched,

as does the beard of one who plots. Peter re-read the gushing letter in

his hand and thought fiercely.

“She is on her way here,” said the Dozent. “That is bad. Paris to Wien

is two days and a night. She may hourly arrive.”

“We might send him away--to another hospital.”

The Dozent shrugged his shoulders.

“Had I a home--” he said, and glanced through the door to the portrait

on the stand. “It would be possible to hide the boy, at least for a

time. In the interval the mother might be watched, and if she proved a

fit person the boy could be given to her. It is, of course, an affair of

police.”

This gave Peter pause. He had no money for fines, no time for

imprisonment, and he shared the common horror of the great jail. He read

the letter again, and tried to read into the lines Jimmy's mother,

and failed. He glanced into the ward. Still Jimmy slept. A burly

convalescent, with a saber cut from temple to ear and the general

appearance of an assassin, had stopped beside the bed and was drawing up

the blanket round the small shoulders.

“I can give orders that the woman be not admitted to-day,” said the

Dozent. “That gives us a few hours. She will go to the police, and

to-morrow she will be admitted. In the mean time--”

“In the mean time,” Peter replied, “I'll try to think of something. If I

thought she could be warned and would leave him here--”

“She will not. She will buy him garments and she will travel with him

through the Riviera and to Nice. She says Nice. She wishes to be there

for carnival, and the boy will die.”

Peter took the letter and went home. He rode, that he might read it

again in the bus. But no scrap of comfort could he get from it. It spoke

of the dead father coldly, and the father had been the boy's idol. No

good woman could have been so heartless. It offered the boy a seat in

one of the least reputable of the Paris theaters to hear his mother

sing. And in the envelope, overlooked before, Peter found a cutting

from a French newspaper, a picture of the music-hall type that made him

groan. It was indorsed “Mamma.”

Harmony had had a busy morning. First she had put her house in order,

working deftly, her pretty hair pinned up in a towel--all in order but

Peter's room. That was to have a special cleaning later. Next, still

with her hair tied up, she had spent two hours with her violin, standing

very close to the stove to save fuel and keep her fingers warm. She

played well that morning: even her own critical ears were satisfied,

and the Portier, repairing a window lock in an empty room below, was

entranced. He sat on the window sill in the biting cold and listened.

Many music students had lived in the apartment with the great salon;

there had been much music of one sort and another, but none like this.

“She tears my heart from my bosom,” muttered the Portier, sighing, and

almost swallowed a screw that he held in his teeth.

After the practicing Harmony cleaned Peter's room. She felt very tender

toward Peter that day. The hurt left by Mrs. Boyer's visit had died

away, but there remained a clear vision of Peter standing behind the

chair and offering himself humbly in marriage, so that a bad situation

might be made better. And as with a man tenderness expresses itself in

the giving of gifts, so with a woman it means giving of service. Harmony

cleaned Peter's room.

It was really rather tidy. Peter's few belongings did not spread to any

extent and years of bachelorhood had taught him the rudiments of order.

Harmony took the covers from washstand and dressing table and washed and

ironed them. She cleaned Peter's worn brushes and brought a pincushion

of her own for his one extra scarfpin. Finally she brought her own

steamer rug and folded it across the foot of the bed. There was no stove

in the room; it had been Harmony's room once, and she knew to the full

how cold it could be.

Having made all comfortable for the outer man she prepared for the

inner. She was in the kitchen, still with her hair tied up, when Anna

came home.

Anna was preoccupied. Instead of her cheery greeting she came somberly

back to the kitchen, a letter in her hand. History was making fast that

day.

“Hello, Harry,” she said. “I'm going to take a bite and hurry off. Don't

bother, I'll attend to myself.” She stuffed the letter in her belt and

got a plate from a shelf. “How pretty you look with your head tied up!

If stupid Peter saw you now he would fall in love with you.”

“Then I shall take it off. Peter must be saved!”

Anna sat down at the tiny table and drank her tea. She felt rather

better after the tea. Harmony, having taken the towel off, was busy over

the brick stove. There was nothing said for a moment. Then:--

“I am out of patience with Peter,” said Anna.

“Why?”

“Because he hasn't fallen in love with you. Where are his eyes?”

“Please, Anna!”

“It's better as it is, no doubt, for both of you. But it's superhuman of

Peter. I wonder--”

“Yes?”

“I think I'll not tell you what I wonder.”

And Harmony, rather afraid of Anna's frank speech, did not insist.

As she drank her tea and made a pretense at eating, Anna's thoughts

wandered from Peter to Harmony to the letter in her belt and back again

to Peter and Harmony. For some time she had been suspicious of Peter.

From her dozen years of advantage in age and experience she looked down

on Peter's thirty years of youth, and thought she knew something that

Peter himself did not suspect. Peter being unintrospective, Anna did his

heart-searching for him. She believed he was madly in love with Harmony

and did not himself suspect it. As she watched the girl over her teacup,

revealing herself in a thousand unposed gestures of youth and grace, a

thousand lovelinesses, something of the responsibility she and Peter had

assumed came over her. She sighed and felt for her letter.

“I've had rather bad news,” she said at last.

“From home?”

“Yes. My father--did you know I have a father?”

“You hadn't spoken of him.”

“I never do. As a father he hasn't amounted to much. But he's very ill,

and--I 've a conscience.”

Harmony turned a startled face to her.

“You are not going back to America?”

“Oh, no, not now, anyhow. If I become hag ridden with remorse and do go

I'll find some one to take my place. Don't worry.”

The lunch was a silent meal. Anna was hurrying off as Peter came in, and

there was no time to discuss Peter's new complication with her. Harmony

and Peter ate together, Harmony rather silent. Anna's unfortunate

comment about Peter had made her constrained. After the meal Peter, pipe

in mouth, carried the dishes to the kitchen, and there it was that he

gave her the letter. What Peter's slower mind had been a perceptible

time in grasping Harmony comprehended at once--and not only the

situation, but its solution.

“Don't let her have him!” she said, putting down the letter. “Bring him

here. Oh, Peter, how good we must be to him!”

And that after all was how the thing was settled. So simple, so obvious

was it that these three expatriates, these waifs and estrays, banded

together against a common poverty, a common loneliness, should share

without question whatever was theirs to divide. Peter and Anna gave

cheerfully of their substance, Harmony of her labor, that a small boy

should be saved a tragic knowledge until he was well enough to bear it,

or until, if God so willed, he might learn it himself without pain.

The friendly sentry on duty again that night proved singularly blind.

Thus it happened that, although the night was clear when the twin dials

of the Votivkirche showed nine o'clock, he did not notice a cab that

halted across the street from the hospital.

Still more strange that, although Peter passed within a dozen feet of

him, carrying a wriggling and excited figure wrapped in a blanket and

insisting on uncovering its feet, the sentry was able the next day to

say that he had observed such a person carrying a bundle, but that

it was a short stocky person, quite lame, and that the bundle was

undoubtedly clothing going to the laundry.

Perhaps--it is just possible--the sentry had his suspicions. It is

undeniable that as Jimmy in the cab on Peter's knee, with Peter's arm

close about him, looked back at the hospital, the sentry was going

through the manual of arms very solemnly under the stars and facing

toward the carriage.

CHAPTER XIV

For two days at Semmering it rained. The Raxalpe and the Schneeberg

sulked behind walls of mist. From the little balcony of the Pension

Waldheim one looked out over a sea of cloud, pierced here and there

by islands that were crags or by the tops of sunken masts that were

evergreen trees. The roads were masses of slippery mud, up which the

horses steamed and sweated. The gray cloud fog hung over everything; the

barking of a dog loomed out of it near at hand where no dog was to be

seen. Children cried and wild birds squawked; one saw them not.

During the second night a landslide occurred on the side of the mountain

with a rumble like the noise of fifty trains. In the morning, the rain

clouds lifting for a moment, Marie saw the narrow yellow line of the

slip.

Everything was saturated with moisture. It did no good to close the

heavy wooden shutters at night: in the morning the air of the room was

sticky and clothing was moist to the touch. Stewart, confined to the

house, grew irritable.

Marie watched him anxiously. She knew quite well by what slender

tenure she held her man. They had nothing in common, neither speech nor

thought. And the little Marie's love for Stewart, grown to be a part of

her, was largely maternal. She held him by mothering him, by keeping him

comfortable, not by a great reciprocal passion that might in time have

brought him to her in chains.

And now he was uncomfortable. He chafed against the confinement; he

resented the food, the weather. Even Marie's content at her unusual

leisure irked him. He accused her of purring like a cat by the fire,

and stamped out more than once, only to be driven in by the curious

thunderstorms of early Alpine winter.

On the night of the second day the weather changed. Marie, awakening

early, stepped out on to the balcony and closed the door carefully

behind her. A new world lay beneath her, a marvel of glittering

branches, of white plain far below; the snowy mane of the Raxalpe was

become a garment. And from behind the villa came the cheerful sound of

sleigh-bells, of horses' feet on crisp snow, of runners sliding easily

along frozen roads. Even the barking of the dog in the next yard had

ceased rumbling and become sharp staccato.

The balcony extended round the corner of the house. Marie, eagerly

discovering her new world, peered about, and seeing no one near ventured

so far. The road was in view, and a small girl on ski was struggling to

prevent a collision between two plump feet. Even as Marie saw her the

inevitable happened and she went headlong into a drift. A governess who

had been kneeling before a shrine by the road hastily crossed herself

and ran to the rescue.

It was a marvelous morning, a day of days. The governess and the child

went on out of vision. Marie stood still, looking at the shrine. A drift

had piled about its foot, where the governess had placed a bunch of

Alpine flowers. Down on her knees on the balcony went the little

Marie, regardless of the snow, and prayed to the shrine of the Virgin

below--for what? For forgiveness? For a better life? Not at all. She

prayed that the heels of the American girl would keep her in out of the

snow.

The prayer of the wicked availeth nothing; even the godly at times must

suffer disappointment. And when one prays of heels, who can know of

the yearning back of the praying? Marie, rising and dusting her chilled

knees, saw the party of Americans on the road, clad in stout boots

and swinging along gayly. Marie shrugged her shoulders resignedly. She

should have gone to the shrine itself; a balcony was not a holy

place. But one thing she determined--the Americans went toward the

Sonnwendstein. She would advise against the Sonnwendstein for that day.

Marie's day of days had begun wrong after all. For Stewart rose with the

Sonnwendstein in his mind, and no suggestion of Marie's that in another

day a path would be broken had any effect on him. He was eager to be

off, committed the extravagance of ordering an egg apiece for breakfast,

and finally proclaimed that if Marie feared the climb he would go alone.

Marie made many delays: she dressed slowly, and must run back to see

if the balcony door was securely closed. At a little shop where they

stopped to buy mountain sticks she must purchase postcards and send them

at once. Stewart was fairly patient: air and exercise were having their

effect.

It was eleven o'clock when, having crossed the valley, they commenced to

mount the slope of the Sonnwendstein. The climb was easy; the road wound

back and forward on itself so that one ascended with hardly an effort.

Stewart gave Marie a hand here and there, and even paused to let her

sit on a boulder and rest. The snow was not heavy; he showed her the

footprints of a party that had gone ahead, and to amuse her tried

to count the number of people. When he found it was five he grew

thoughtful. There were five in Anita's party. Thanks to Marie's delays

they met the Americans coming down. The meeting was a short one: the

party went on down, gayly talking. Marie and Stewart climbed silently.

Marie's day was spoiled; Stewart had promised to dine at the hotel.

Even the view at the tourist house did not restore Marie's fallen

spirits. What were the Vienna plain and the Styrian Alps to her, with

this impatient and frowning man beside her consulting his watch and

computing the time until he might see the American again? What was

prayer, if this were its answer?

They descended rapidly, Stewart always in the lead and setting a pace

that Marie struggled in vain to meet. To her tentative and breathless

remarks he made brief answer, and only once in all that time did he

volunteer a remark. They had reached the Hotel Erzherzog in the valley.

The hotel was still closed, and Marie, panting, sat down on an edge of

the terrace.

“We have been very foolish,” he said.

“Why?”

“Being seen together like that.”

“But why? Could you not walk with any woman?”

“It's not that,” said Stewart hastily. “I suppose once does not matter.

But we can't be seen together all the time.”

Marie turned white. The time had gone by when an incident of the sort

could have been met with scorn or with threats; things had changed

for Marie Jedlicka since the day Peter had refused to introduce her to

Harmony. Then it had been vanity; now it was life itself.

“What you mean,” she said with pale lips, “is that we must not be seen

together at all. Must I--do you wish me to remain a prisoner while

you--” she choked.

“For Heaven's sake,” he broke out brutally, “don't make a scene. There

are men cutting ice over there. Of course you are not a prisoner. You

may go where you like.”

Marie rose and picked up her muff.

Marie's sordid little tragedy played itself out in Semmering. Stewart

neglected her almost completely; he took fewer and fewer meals at the

villa. In two weeks he spent one evening with the girl, and was so

irritable that she went to bed crying. The little mountain resort was

filling up; there were more and more Americans. Christmas was drawing

near and a dozen or so American doctors came up, bringing their families

for the holidays. It was difficult to enter a shop without encountering

some of them. To add to the difficulty, the party at the hotel, finding

it crowded there, decided to go into a pension and suggested moving to

the Waldheim.

Stewart himself was wretchedly uncomfortable. Marie's tragedy was his

predicament. He disliked himself very cordially, loathing himself and

his situation with the new-born humility of the lover. For Stewart was

in love for the first time in his life. Marie knew it. She had not lived

with him for months without knowing his every thought, every mood. She

grew bitter and hard those days, sitting alone by the green stove in

the Pension Waldheim, or leaning, elbows on the rail, looking from the

balcony over the valley far below. Bitter and hard, that is, during his

absences; he had but to enter the room and her rage died, to be

replaced with yearning and little, shy, tentative advances that he only

tolerated. Wild thoughts came to Marie, especially at night, when the

stars made a crown over the Rax, and in the hotel an orchestra played,

while people dined and laughed and loved.

She grew obstinate, too. When in his desperation Stewart suggested that

they go back to Vienna she openly scoffed.

“Why?” she demanded. “That you may come back here to her, leaving me

there?”

“My dear girl,” he flung back exasperated, “this affair was not a

permanent one. You knew that at the start.”

“You have taken me away from my work. I have two months' vacation. It is

but one month.”

“Go back and let me pay--”

“No!”

In pursuance of the plan to leave the hotel the American party came to

see the Waldheim, and catastrophe almost ensued. Luckily Marie was on

the balcony when the landlady flung open the door, and announced it as

Stewart's apartment. But Stewart had a bad five minutes and took it out,

manlike, on the girl.

Stewart had another reason for not wishing to leave Semmering. Anita

was beautiful, a bit of a coquette, too; as are most pretty women. And

Stewart was not alone in his devotion. A member of the party, a New

Yorker named Adam, was much in love with the girl and indifferent who

knew it. Stewart detested him.

In his despair Stewart wrote to Peter Byrne. It was characteristic of

Peter that, however indifferent people might be in prosperity, they

always turned to him in trouble. Stewart's letter concluded:--

“I have made out a poor case for myself; but I'm in a hole, as you can

see. I would like to chuck everything here and sail for home with these

people who go in January. But, confound it, Byrne, what am I to do with

Marie? And that brings me to what I 've been wanting to say all along,

and haven't had the courage to. Marie likes you and you rather liked

her, didn't you? You could talk her into reason if anybody could. Now

that you know how things are, can't you come up over Sunday? It's asking

a lot, and I know it; but things are pretty bad.”

Peter received the letter on the morning of the day before Christmas. He

read it several times and, recalling the look he had seen more than once

in Marie Jedlicka's eyes, he knew that things were very bad, indeed.

But Peter was a man of family in those days, and Christmas is a family

festival not to be lightly ignored. He wired to Stewart that he would

come up as soon as possible after Christmas. Then, because of the look

in Marie's eyes and because he feared for her a sad Christmas, full of

heartaches and God knows what loneliness, he bought her a most hideous

brooch, which he thought admirable in every way and highly ornamental

and which he could not afford at all. This he mailed, with a cheery

greeting, and feeling happier and much poorer made his way homeward.

CHAPTER XV

Christmas-Eve in the saloon of Maria Theresa! Christmas-Eve, with the

great chandelier recklessly ablaze and a pig's head with cranberry eyes

for supper! Christmas-Eve, with a two-foot tree gleaming with candles on

the stand, and beside the stand, in a huge chair, Jimmy!

It had been a busy day for Harmony. In the morning there had been

shopping and marketing, and such a temptation to be reckless, with the

shops full of ecstasies and the old flower women fairly overburdened.

There had been anxieties, too, such as the pig's head, which must be

done a certain way, and Jimmy, who must be left with the Portier's wife

as nurse while all of them went to the hospital. The house revolved

around Jimmy now, Jimmy, who seemed the better for the moving, and whose

mother as yet had failed to materialize.

In the afternoon Harmony played at the hospital. Peter took her as the

early twilight was falling in through the gate where the sentry kept

guard and so to the great courtyard. In this grim playground men

wandered about, smoking their daily allowance of tobacco and moving to

keep warm, offscourings of the barracks, derelicts of the slums, with

here and there an honest citizen lamenting a Christmas away from home.

The hospital was always pathetic to Harmony; on this Christmas-Eve she

found it harrowing. Its very size shocked her, that there should be so

much suffering, so much that was appalling, frightful, insupportable.

Peter felt her quiver under his hand. A hospital in festivity is very

affecting. It smiles through its tears. And in every assemblage there

are sharply defined lines of difference. There are those who are going

home soon, God willing; there are those who will go home some time after

long days and longer nights. And there are those who will never go home

and who know it. And because of this the ones who are never going home

are most festively clad, as if, by way of compensation, the nurses

mean to give them all future Christmasses in one. They receive an

extra orange, or a pair of gloves, perhaps,--and they are not the less

grateful because they understand. And when everything is over they lay

away in the bedside stand the gloves they will never wear, and divide

the extra orange with a less fortunate one who is almost recovered.

Their last Christmas is past.

“How beautiful the tree was!” they say. Or, “Did you hear how the

children sang? So little, to sing like that! It made me think--of

angels.”

Peter led Harmony across the courtyard, through many twisting corridors,

and up and down more twisting staircases to the room where she was to

play. There were many Christmas trees in the hospital that afternoon;

no one hall could have held the thousands of patients, the doctors, the

nurses. Sometimes a single ward had its own tree, its own entertainment.

Occasionally two or three joined forces, preempted a lecture-room, and

wheeled or hobbled or carried in their convalescents. In such case an

imposing audience was the result.

Into such a room Peter led Harmony. It was an amphitheater, the seats

rising in tiers, half circle above half circle, to the dusk of the

roof. In the pit stood the tree, candle-lighted. There was no other

illumination in the room. The semi-darkness, the blazing tree, the

rows of hopeful, hoping, hopeless, rising above, white faces over white

gowns, the soft rustle of expectancy, the silence when the Dozent with

the red beard stepped out and began to read an address--all caught

Harmony by the throat. Peter, keenly alive to everything she did, felt

rather than heard her soft sob.

Peter saw the hospital anew that dark afternoon, saw it through

Harmony's eyes. Layer after layer his professional callus fell away,

leaving him quick again. He had lived so long close to the heart of

humanity that he had reduced its throbbing to beats that might be

counted. Now, once more, Peter was back in the early days, when a heart

was not a pump, but a thing that ached or thrilled or struggled, that

loved or hated or yearned.

The orchestra, insisting on sadly sentimental music, was fast turning

festivity into gloom. It played Handel's “Largo”; it threw its whole

soul into the assurance that the world, after all, was only a poor

place, that Heaven was a better. It preached resignation with every deep

vibration of the cello. Harmony fidgeted.

“How terrible!” she whispered. “To turn their Christmas-Eve into

mourning! Stop them!”

“Stop a German orchestra?”

“They are crying, some of them. Oh, Peter!”

The music came to an end at last. Tears were dried. Followed

recitations, gifts, a speech of thanks from Nurse Elisabet for the

patients. Then--Harmony.

Harmony never remembered afterward what she had played. It was joyous,

she knew, for the whole atmosphere changed. Laughter came; even the

candles burned more cheerfully. When she had finished, a student in a

white coat asked her to play a German Volkspiel, and roared it out to

her accompaniment with much vigor and humor. The audience joined in, at

first timidly, then lustily.

Harmony stood alone by the tree, violin poised, smiling at the applause.

Her eyes, running along the dim amphitheater, sought Peter's, and

finding them dwelt there a moment. Then she began to play softly and as

softly the others sang.

“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,”--they sang, with upturned eyes.

“Alles schlaeft, einsam wacht...”

Visions came to Peter that afternoon in the darkness, visions in

which his poverty was forgotten or mattered not at all. Visions of a

Christmas-Eve in a home that he had earned, of a tree, of a girl-woman,

of a still and holy night, of a child.

“Nur das traute, hoch heilige Paar Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar Schlaf'

in himmlischer Ruh', Schlaf' in himmlischer Ruh',” they sang.

There was real festivity at the old lodge of Maria Theresa that night.

Jimmy had taken his full place in the household. The best room, which

had been Anna's, had been given up to him. Here, carefully tended, with

a fire all day in the stove, Jimmy reigned from the bed. To him Harmony

brought her small puzzles and together they solved them.

“Shall it be a steak to-night?” thus Harmony humbly. “Or chops?”

“With tomato sauce?”

“If Peter allows, yes.”

Much thinking on Jimmy's part, and then:--

“Fish,” he would decide. “Fish with egg dressing.”

They would argue for a time, and compromise on fish.

The boy was better. Peter shook his head over any permanent improvement,

but Anna fiercely seized each crumb of hope. Many and bitter were the

battles she and Peter fought at night over his treatment, frightful the

litter of authorities Harmony put straight every morning.

The extra expense was not much, but it told. Peter's carefully

calculated expenditures felt the strain. He gave up a course in X-ray on

which he had set his heart and cut off his hour in the coffee-house as

a luxury. There was no hardship about the latter renunciation. Life for

Peter was spelling itself very much in terms of Harmony and Jimmy those

days. He resented anything that took him from them.

There were anxieties of a different sort also. Anna's father was

failing. He had written her a feeble, half-senile appeal to let bygones

be bygones and come back to see him before he died. Anna was Peter's

great prop. What would he do should she decide to go home? He had built

his house on the sand, indeed.

So far the threatened danger of a mother to Jimmy had not materialized.

Peter was puzzled, but satisfied. He still wrote letters of marvelous

adventure; Jimmy still watched for them, listened breathless, treasured

them under his pillow. But he spoke less of his father. The open page of

his childish mind was being written over with new impressions. “Dad” was

already a memory; Peter and Harmony and Anna were realities. Sometimes

he called Peter “Dad.” At those times Peter caught the boy to him in an

agony of tenderness.

And as the little apartment revolved round Jimmy, so was this

Christmas-Eve given up to him. All day he had stayed in bed for the

privilege of an extra hour propped up among pillows in the salon. All

day he had strung little red berries that looked like cranberries for

the tree, or fastened threads to the tiny cakes that were for trimming

only, and sternly forbidden to eat.

A marvelous day that for Jimmy. Late in the afternoon the Portier, with

a collar on, had mounted the stairs and sheepishly presented him with a

pair of white mice in a wooden cage. Jimmy was thrilled. The cage was

on his knees all evening, and one of the mice was clearly ill of a cake

with pink icing. The Portier's gift was a stealthy one, while his wife

was having coffee with her cousin, the brushmaker. But the spirit Of

Christmas does strange things. That very evening, while the Portier was

roistering in a beer hall preparatory to the midnight mass, came the

Portier's wife, puffing from the stairs, and brought a puzzle book that

only the initiated could open, and when one succeeded at last there was

a picture of the Christ-Child within.

Young McLean came to call that evening--came to call and remained to

worship. It was the first time since Mrs. Boyer that a visitor had

come. McLean, interested with everything and palpably not shocked, was

a comforting caller. He seemed to Harmony, who had had bad moments since

the day of Mrs. Boyer's visit, to put the hallmark of respectability on

the household, to restore it to something it had lost or had never had.

She was quite unconscious of McLean's admiration. She and Anna put Jimmy

to bed. The tree candles were burned out; Peter was extinguishing

the dying remnants when Harmony came back. McLean was at the piano,

thrumming softly. Peter, turning round suddenly, surprised an expression

on the younger man's face that startled him.

For that one night Harmony had laid aside her mourning, and wore white,

soft white, tucked in at the neck, short-sleeved, trailing. Peter had

never seen her in white before.

It was Peter's way to sit back and listen: his steady eyes were always

alert, good-humored, but he talked very little. That night he was

unusually silent. He sat in the shadow away from the lamp and watched

the two at the piano: McLean playing a bit of this or that, the girl

bending over a string of her violin. Anna came in and sat down near him.

“The boy is quite fascinated,” she whispered. “Watch his eyes!”

“He is a nice boy.” This from Peter, as if he argued with himself.

“As men go!” This was a challenge Peter was usually quick to accept.

That night he only smiled. “It would be a good thing for her: his people

are wealthy.”

Money, always money! Peter ground his teeth over his pipestem. Eminently

it would be a good thing for Harmony, this nice boy in his well-made

evening clothes, who spoke Harmony's own language of music, who was

almost speechless over her playing, and who looked up at her with eyes

in which admiration was not unmixed with adoration.

Peter was restless. As the music went on he tiptoed out of the room and

took to pacing up and down the little corridor. Each time as he passed

the door he tried not to glance in; each time he paused involuntarily.

Jealousy had her will of him that night, jealousy, when he had never

acknowledged even to himself how much the girl was to him.

Jimmy was restless. Usually Harmony's music put him to sleep; but that

night he lay awake, even after Peter had closed all the doors. Peter

came in and sat with him in the dark, going over now and then to cover

him, or to give him a drink, or to pick up the cage of mice which Jimmy

insisted on having beside him and which constantly slipped off on to the

floor. After a time Peter lighted the night-light, a bit of wick on a

cork floating in a saucer of lard oil, and set it on the bedside table.

Then round it he arranged Jimmy's treasures, the deer antlers, the cage

of mice, the box, the wooden sentry. The boy fell asleep. Peter sat in

the room, his dead pipe in his teeth, and thought of many things.

It was very late when young McLean left. The two had played until they

stopped for very weariness. Anna had yawned herself off to bed. From

Jimmy's room Peter could hear the soft hum of their voices.

“You have been awfully good to me,” McLean said as he finally rose to

go. “I--I want you to know that I'll never forget this evening, never.”

“It has been splendid, hasn't it? Since little Scatchy left there has

been no one for the piano. I have been lonely sometimes for some one to

talk music to.”

Lonely! Poor Peter!

“Then you will let me come back?”

“Will I, indeed! I--I'll be grateful.”

“How soon would be proper? I dare say to-morrow you'll be

busy--Christmas and all that.”

“Do you mean you would like to come to-morrow?”

“If old Peter wouldn't be fussed. He might think--”

“Peter always wants every one to be happy. So if you really care--”

“And I'll not bore you?”

“Rather not!”

“How--about what time?”

“In the afternoon would be pleasant, I think. And then Jimmy can listen.

He loves music.”

McLean, having found his fur-lined coat, got into it as slowly as

possible. Then he missed a glove, and it must be searched for in all

the dark corners of the salon until found in his pocket. Even then he

hesitated, lingered, loath to break up this little world of two.

“You play wonderfully,” he said.

“So do you.”

“If only something comes of it! It's curious, isn't it, when you think

of it? You and I meeting here in the center of Europe and both of us

working our heads off for something that may never pan out.”

There was something reminiscent about that to Harmony. It was not until

after young McLean had gone that she recalled. It was almost word for

word what Peter had said to her in the coffee-house the night they met.

She thought it very curious, the coincidence, and pondered it, being

ignorant of the fact that it is always a matter for wonder when the

man meets the woman, no matter where. Nothing is less curious, more

inevitable, more amazing. “You and I,” forsooth, said Peter!

“You and I,” cried young McLean!

CHAPTER XVI

Quite suddenly Peter's house, built on the sand, collapsed. The shock

came on Christmas-Day, after young McLean, now frankly infatuated, had

been driven home by Peter.

Peter did it after his own fashion. Harmony, with unflagging enthusiasm,

was looking tired. Suggestions to this effect rolled off McLean's back

like rain off a roof. Finally Peter gathered up the fur-lined coat, the

velours hat, gloves, and stick, and placed them on the piano in front of

the younger man.

“I'm sorry you must go,” said Peter calmly, “but, as you say, Miss Wells

is tired and there is supper to be eaten. Don't let me hurry you.”

The Portier was at the door as McLean, laughing and protesting, went

out. He brought a cablegram for Anna. Peter took it to her door and

waited uneasily while she read it.

It was an urgent summons home; the old father was very low. He was

calling for her, and a few days or week' would see the end. There were

things that must be looked after. The need of her was imperative.

With the death the old man's pension would cease and Anna was the

bread-winner.

Anna held the paper out to Peter and sat down. Her nervous strength

seemed to have deserted her. All at once she was a stricken, elderly

woman, with hope wiped out of her face and something nearer resentment

than grief in its place.

“It has come, Peter,” she said dully. “I always knew it couldn't last.

They've always hung about my neck, and now--”

“Do you think you must go? Isn't there some way? If things are so bad

you could hardly get there in time, and--you must think of yourself a

little, Anna.”

“I am not thinking of anything else. Peter, I'm an uncommonly selfish

woman, but I--”

Quite without warning she burst out crying, unlovely, audible weeping

that shook her narrow shoulders. Harmony heard the sound and joined

them. After a look at Anna she sat down beside her and put a white

arm over her shoulders. She did not try to speak. Anna's noisy grief

subsided as suddenly as it came. She patted Harmony's hand in mute

acknowledgment and dried her eyes.

“I'm not grieving, child,” she said; “I'm only realizing what a selfish

old maid I am. I'm crying because I'm a disappointment to myself. Harry,

I'm going back to America.”

And that, after hours of discussion, was where they ended. Anna must go

at once. Peter must keep the apartment, having Jimmy to look after and

to hide. What was a frightful dilemma to him and to Harmony Anna took

rather lightly.

“You'll find some one else to take my place,” she said. “If I had a day

I could find a dozen.”

“And in the interval?” Harmony asked, without looking at Peter.

“The interval! Tut! Peter is your brother, to all intents and purposes.

And if you are thinking of scandal-mongers, who will know?”

Having determined to go, no arguments moved Anna, nor could either of

the two think of anything to urge beyond a situation she refused to

see, or rather a situation she refused to acknowledge. She was not as

comfortable as she pretended. During all that long night, while snow

sifted down into the ugly yard and made it beautiful, while Jimmy slept

and the white mice played, while Harmony tossed and tried to sleep and

Peter sat in his cold room and smoked his pipe, Anna packed her untidy

belongings and added a name now and then to a list that was meant

for Peter, a list of possible substitutes for herself in the little

household.

She left early the next morning, a grim little person who bent over the

sleeping boy hungrily, and insisted on carrying her own bag down the

stairs. Harmony did not go to the station, but stayed at home, pale and

silent, hovering around against Jimmy's awakening and struggling against

a feeling of panic. Not that she feared Peter or herself. But she

was conventional; shielded girls are accustomed to lean for a certain

support on the proprieties, as bridgeplayers depend on rules.

Peter came back to breakfast, but ate little. Harmony did not even sit

down, but drank her cup of coffee standing, looking down at the snow

below. Jimmy still slept.

“Won't you sit down?” said Peter.

“I'm not hungry, thank you.”

“You can sit down without eating.”

Peter was nervous. To cover his uneasiness he was distinctly gruff. He

pulled a chair out for her and she sat down. Now that they were face

to face the tension was lessened. Peter laid Anna's list on the table

between them and bent over it toward her.

“You are hurting me very much, Harry,” he said. “Do you know why?”

“I? I am only sorry about Anna. I miss her. I--I was fond of her.”

“So was I. But that isn't it, Harry. It's something else.”

“I'm uncomfortable, Peter.”

“So am I. I'm sorry you don't trust me. For that's it.”

“Not at all. But, Peter, what will people say?”

“A great deal, if they know. Who is to know? How many people know about

us? A handful, at the most, McLean and Mrs. Boyer and one or two others.

Of course I can go away until we get some one to take Anna's place, but

you'd be here alone at night, and if the youngster had an attack--”

“Oh, no, don't leave him!”

“It's holiday time. There are no clinics until next week. If you'll put

up with me--”

“Put up with you, when it is your apartment I use, your food I eat!” She

almost choked. “Peter, I must talk about money.”

“I'm coming to that. Don't you suppose you more than earn everything?

Doesn't it humiliate me hourly to see you working here?”

“Peter! Would you rob me of my last vestige of self-respect?”

This being unanswerable, Peter fell back on his major premise.

“If you'll put up with me for a day or so I'll take this list of Anna's

and hunt up some body. Just describe the person you desire and I'll find

her.” He assumed a certainty he was far from feeling, but it reassured

the girl. “A woman, of course?”

“Of course. And not young.”

“'Not young,'” wrote Peter. “Fat?”

Harmony recalled Mrs. Boyer's ample figure and shook her head.

“Not too stout. And agreeable. That's most important.”

“'Agreeable,'” wrote Peter. “Although Anna was hardly agreeable, in the

strict sense of the word, was she?”

“She was interesting, and--and human.”

“'Human!'” wrote Peter. “Wanted, a woman, not young, not too stout,

agreeable and human. Shall I advertise?”

The strain was quite gone by that time. Harmony was smiling. Jimmy,

waking, called for food, and the morning of the first day was under way.

Peter was well content that morning, in spite of an undercurrent of

uneasiness. Before this Anna had shared his proprietorship with him. Now

the little household was his. His vicarious domesticity pleased him. He

strutted about, taking a new view of his domain; he tightened a doorknob

and fastened a noisy window. He inspected the coal-supply and grumbled

over its quality. He filled the copper kettle on the stove, carried

in the water for Jimmy's morning bath, cleaned the mouse cage. He even

insisted on peeling the little German potatoes, until Harmony cried

aloud at his wastefulness and took the knife from him.

And afterward, while Harmony in the sickroom read aloud and Jimmy put

the wooden sentry into the cage to keep order, he got out his books and

tried to study. But he did little work. His book lay on his knee, his

pipe died beside him. The strangeness of the situation came over him,

sitting there, and left him rather frightened. He tried to see it

from the viewpoint of an outsider, and found himself incredulous and

doubting. McLean would resent the situation. Even the Portier was a

person to reckon with. The skepticism of the American colony was a thing

to fear and avoid.

And over all hung the incessant worry about money; he could just manage

alone. He could not, by any method he knew of, stretch his resources

to cover a separate arrangement for himself. But he had undertaken to

shield a girl-woman and a child, and shield them he would and could.

Brave thoughts were Peter's that snowy morning in the great salon of

Maria Theresa, with the cat of the Portier purring before the fire;

brave thoughts, cool reason, with Harmony practicing scales very softly

while Jimmy slept, and with Anna speeding through a white world, to the

accompaniment of bitter meditation.

Peter had meant to go to Semmering that day, but even the urgency of

Marie's need faded before his own situation. He wired Stewart that he

would come as soon as he could, and immediately after lunch departed for

the club, Anna's list in his pocket, Harmony's requirements in mind. He

paused at Jimmy's door on his way out.

“What shall it be to-day?” he inquired. “A postcard or a crayon?”

“I wish I could have a dog.”

“We'll have a dog when you are better and can take him walking. Wait

until spring, son.”

“Some more mice?”

“You will have them--but not to-day.”

“What holiday comes next?”

“New Year's Day. Suppose I bring you a New Year's card.”

“That's right,” agreed Jimmy. “One I can send to Dad. Do you think he

will come back this year?” wistfully.

Peter dropped on his baggy knees beside the bed and drew the little

wasted figure to him.

“I think you'll surely see him this year, old man,” he said huskily.

Peter walked to the Doctors' Club. On the way he happened on little

Georgiev, the Bulgarian, and they went on together. Peter managed to

make out that Georgiev was studying English, and that he desired to know

the state of health and the abode of the Fraulein Wells. Peter evaded

the latter by the simple expedient of pretending not to understand. The

little Bulgarian watched him earnestly, his smouldering eyes not without

suspicion. There had been much talk in the Pension Schwarz about the

departure together of the three Americans. The Jew from Galicia still

raved over Harmony's beauty.

Georgiev rather hoped, by staying by Peter, to be led toward his star.

But Peter left him at the Doctors' Club, still amiable, but absolutely

obtuse to the question nearest the little spy's heart.

The club was almost deserted. The holidays had taken many of the members

out of town. Other men were taking advantage of the vacation to see the

city, or to make acquaintance again with families they had hardly seen

during the busy weeks before Christmas. The room at the top of the

stairs where the wives of the members were apt to meet for chocolate and

to exchange the addresses of dressmakers was empty; in the reading room

he found McLean. Although not a member, McLean was a sort of honorary

habitue, being allowed the privilege of the club in exchange for a

dependable willingness to play at entertainments of all sorts.

It was in Peter's mind to enlist McLean's assistance in his

difficulties. McLean knew a good many people. He was popular,

goodlooking, and in a colony where, unlike London and Paris, the great

majority were people of moderate means, he was conspicuously well

off. But he was also much younger than Peter and intolerant with the

insolence of youth. Peter was thinking hard as he took off his overcoat

and ordered beer.

The boy was in love with Harmony already; Peter had seen that, as he

saw many things. How far his love might carry him, Peter had no idea. It

seemed to him, as he sat across the reading-table and studied him over

his magazine, that McLean would resent bitterly the girl's position, and

that when he learned it a crisis might be precipitated.

One of three things might happen: He might bend all his energies to

second Peter's effort to fill Anna's place, to find the right person; he

might suggest taking Anna's place himself, and insist that his presence

in the apartment would be as justifiable as Peter's; or he might do at

once the thing Peter felt he would do eventually, cut the knot of

the difficulty by asking Harmony to marry him. Peter, greeting him

pleasantly, decided not to tell him anything, to keep him away if

possible until the thing was straightened out, and to wait for an hour

at the club in the hope that a solution might stroll in for chocolate

and gossip.

In any event explanation to McLean would have required justification.

Peter disliked the idea. He could humble himself, if necessary, to a

woman; he could admit his asininity in assuming the responsibility of

Jimmy, for instance, and any woman worthy of the name, or worthy of

living in the house with Harmony, would understand. But McLean was

young, intolerant. He was more than that, though Peter, concealing from

himself just what Harmony meant to him, would not have admitted a rival

for what he had never claimed. But a rival the boy was. Peter, calmly

reading a magazine and drinking his Munich beer, was in the grip of the

fiercest jealousy. He turned pages automatically, to recall nothing of

what he had read.

McLean, sitting across from him, watched him surreptitiously. Big Peter,

aggressively masculine, heavy of shoulder, direct of speech and eye, was

to him the embodiment of all that a woman should desire in a man. He,

too, was jealous, but humbly so. Unlike Peter he knew his situation, was

young enough to glory in it. Shameless love is always young; with years

comes discretion, perhaps loss of confidence. The Crusaders were youths,

pursuing an idea to the ends of the earth and flaunting a lady's

guerdon from spear or saddle-bow. The older men among them tucked the

handkerchief or bit of a gauntleted glove under jerkin and armor near

the heart, and flung to the air the guerdon of some light o' love.

McLean would have shouted Harmony's name from the housetops. Peter did

not acknowledge even to himself that he was in love with her.

It occurred to McLean after a time that Peter being in the club, and

Harmony being in all probability at home, it might be possible to see

her alone for a few minutes. He had not intended to go back to the house

in the Siebensternstrasse so soon after being peremptorily put out; he

had come to the club with the intention of clinching his resolution with

a game of cribbage. But fate was playing into his hands. There was no

cribbage player round, and Peter himself sat across deeply immersed in a

magazine. McLean rose, not stealthily, but without unnecessary noise.

So far so good. Peter turned a page and went on reading. McLean

sauntered to a window, hands in pockets. He even whistled a trifle,

under his breath, to prove how very casual were his intentions. Still

whistling, he moved toward the door. Peter turned another page, which

was curiously soon to have read two columns of small type without

illustrations.

Once out in the hall McLean's movements gained aim and precision. He got

his coat, hat and stick, flung the first over his arm and the second on

his head, and--

“Going out?” asked Peter calmly.

“Yes, nothing to do here. I've read all the infernal old magazines until

I'm sick of them.” Indignant, too, from his tone.

“Walking?”

“Yes.”

“Mind if I go with you?”

“Not at all.”

Peter, taking down his old overcoat from its hook, turned and caught the

boy's eye. It was a swift exchange of glances, but illuminating--Peter's

whimsical, but with a sort of grim determination; McLean's sheepish, but

equally determined.

“Rotten afternoon,” said McLean as they started for the stairs. “Half

rain, half snow. Streets are ankle-deep.”

“I'm not particularly keen about walking, but--I don't care for this

tomb alone.”

Nothing was further from McLean's mind than a walk with Peter that

afternoon. He hesitated halfway down the upper flight.

“You don't care for cribbage, do you?”

“Don't know anything about it. How about pinochle?”

They had both stopped, equally determined, equally hesitating.

“Pinochle it is,” acquiesced McLean. “I was only going because there was

nothing to do.”

Things went very well for Peter that afternoon--up to a certain point.

He beat McLean unmercifully, playing with cold deliberation. McLean

wearied, fidgeted, railed at his luck. Peter played on grimly.

The club filled up toward the coffee-hour. Two or three women, wives of

members, a young girl to whom McLean had been rather attentive before

he met Harmony and who bridled at the abstracted bow he gave her. And,

finally, when hope in Peter was dead, one of the women on Anna's list.

Peter, laying down pairs and marking up score, went over Harmony's

requirements. Dr. Jennings seemed to fit them all, a woman, not young,

not too stout, agreeable and human. She was a large, almost bovinely

placid person, not at all reminiscent of Anna. She was neat where Anna

had been disorderly, well dressed and breezy against Anna's dowdiness

and sharpness. Peter, having totaled the score, rose and looked down at

McLean.

“You're a nice lad,” he said, smiling. “Sometime I shall teach you the

game.”

“How about a lesson to-night in Seven-Star Street?”

“To-night? Why, I'm sorry. We have an engagement for to-night.”

The “we” was deliberate and cruel. McLean writhed. Also the statement

was false, but the boy was spared that knowledge for the moment.

Things went well. Dr. Jennings was badly off for quarters. She would

make a change if she could better herself. Peter drew her off to a

corner and stated his case. She listened attentively, albeit not without

disapproval.

She frankly discredited the altruism of Peter's motives when he told

her about Harmony. But as the recital went on she found herself rather

touched. The story of Jimmy appealed to her. She scolded and lauded

Peter in one breath, and what was more to the point, she promised to

visit the house in the Siebensternstrasse the next day.

“So Anna Gates has gone home!” she reflected. “When?”

“This morning.”

“Then the girl is there alone?”

“Yes. She is very young and inexperienced, and the boy--it's

myocarditis. She's afraid to be left with him.”

“Is she quite alone?”

“Absolutely, and without funds, except enough for her lessons. Our

arrangement was that she should keep the house going; that was her

share.”

Dr. Jennings was impressed. It was impossible to talk to Peter and not

believe him. Women trusted Peter always.

“You've been very foolish, Dr. Byrne,” she said as she rose; “but you've

been disinterested enough to offset that and to put some of us to shame.

To-morrow at three, if it suits you. You said the Siebensternstrasse?”

Peter went home exultant.

CHAPTER XVII

Christmas-Day had had a softening effect on Mrs. Boyer. It had opened

badly. It was the first Christmas she had spent away from her children,

and there had been little of the holiday spirit in her attitude as she

prepared the Christmas breakfast. After that, however, things happened.

In the first place, under her plate she had found a frivolous chain and

pendant which she had admired. And when her eyes filled up, as they did

whenever she was emotionally moved, the doctor had come round the table

and put both his arms about her.

“Too young for you? Not a bit!” he said heartily. “You're better-looking

then you ever were, Jennie; and if you weren't you're the only woman for

me, anyhow. Don't you think I realize what this exile means to you and

that you're doing it for me?”

“I--I don't mind it.”

“Yes, you do. To-night we'll go out and make a night of it, shall we?

Supper at the Grand, the theater, and then the Tabarin, eh?”

She loosened herself from his arms.

“What shall I wear? Those horrible things the children bought me--”

“Throw 'em away.”

“They're not worn at all.”

“Throw them out. Get rid of the things the children got you. Go out

to-morrow and buy something you like--not that I don't like you in

anything or without--”

“Frank!”

“Be happy, that's the thing. It's the first Christmas without the

family, and I miss them too. But we're together, dear. That's the big

thing. Merry Christmas.”

An auspicious opening, that, to Christmas-Day. And they had carried

out the program as outlined. Mrs. Boyer had enjoyed it, albeit a bit

horrified at the Christmas gayety at the Tabarin.

The next morning, however, she awakened with a keen reaction. Her head

ached. She had a sense of taint over her. She was virtue rampant

again, as on the day she had first visited the old lodge in the

Siebensternstrasse.

It is hardly astonishing that by association of ideas Harmony came

into her mind again, a brand that might even yet be snatched from the

burning. She had been a bit hasty before, she admitted to herself. There

was a woman doctor named Gates, although her address at the club was

given as Pension Schwarz. She determined to do her shopping early and

then to visit the house in the Siebensternstrasse. She was not a hard

woman, for all her inflexible morality, and more than once she had

had an uneasy memory of Harmony's bewildered, almost stricken face

the afternoon of her visit. She had been a watchful mother over a not

particularly handsome family of daughters. This lovely young girl needed

mothering and she had refused it. She would go back, and if she found

she had been wrong and the girl was deserving and honest, she would see

what could be done.

The day was wretched. The snow had turned to rain. Mrs. Boyer, shopping,

dragged wet skirts and damp feet from store to store. She found nothing

that she cared for after all. The garments that looked chic in the

windows or on manikins in the shops, were absurd on her. Her insistent

bosom bulged, straight lines became curves or tortuous zigzags, plackets

gaped, collars choked her or shocked her by their absence. In the mirror

of Marie Jedlicka, clad in familiar garments that had accommodated

themselves to the idiosyncrasies of her figure, Mrs. Boyer was a plump,

rather comely matron. Here before the plate glass of the modiste, under

the glare of a hundred lights, side by side with a slim Austrian girl

who looked like a willow wand, Mrs. Boyer was grotesque, ridiculous,

monstrous. She shuddered. She almost wept.

It was bad preparation for a visit to the Siebensternstrasse. Mrs.

Boyer, finding her vanity gone, convinced that she was an absurdity

physically, fell back for comfort on her soul. She had been a good wife

and mother; she was chaste, righteous. God had been cruel to her in the

flesh, but He had given her the spirit.

“Madame wishes not the gown? It is beautiful--see the embroidery! And

the neck may be filled with chiffon.”

“Young woman,” she said grimly, “I see the embroidery; and the neck

may be filled with chiffon, but not for me! And when you have had five

children, you will not buy clothes like that either.”

All the kindliness was gone from the visit to the Siebensternstrasse;

only the determination remained. Wounded to the heart of her

self-esteem, her pride in tatters, she took her way to the old lodge and

climbed the stairs.

She found a condition of mild excitement. Jimmy had slept long after his

bath. Harmony practiced, cut up a chicken for broth, aired blankets for

the chair into which Peter on his return was to lift the boy.

She was called to inspect the mouse-cage, which, according to Jimmy, had

strawberries in it.

“Far back,” he explained. “There in the cotton, Harry.”

But it was not strawberries. Harmony opened the cage and very tenderly

took out the cotton nest. Eight tiny pink baby mice, clean washed by the

mother, lay curled in a heap.

It was a stupendous moment. The joy of vicarious parentage was Jimmy's.

He named them all immediately and demanded food for them. On Harmony's

delicate explanation that this was unnecessary, life took on a new

meaning for Jimmy. He watched the mother lest she slight one. His

responsibility weighed on him. Also his inquiring mind was very busy.

“But how did they get there?” he demanded.

“God sent them, just as he sends babies of all sorts.”

“Did he send me?”

“Of course.”

“That's a good one on you, Harry. My father found me in a hollow tree.”

“But don't you think God had something to do with it?”

Jimmy pondered this.

“I suppose,” he reflected, “God sent Daddy to find me so that I would be

his little boy. You never happened to see any babies when you were out

walking, did you, Harry?”

“Not in stumps--but I probably wasn't looking.”

Jimmy eyed her with sympathy.

“You may some day. Would you like to have one?”

“Very much,” said Harmony, and flushed delightfully.

Jimmy was disposed to press the matter, to urge immediate maternity on

her.

“You could lay it here on the bed,” he offered, “and I'd watch it. When

they yell you let 'em suck your finger. I knew a woman once that had a

baby and she did that. And it could watch Isabella.” Isabella was the

mother mouse. “And when I'm better I could take it walking.”

“That,” said Harmony gravely, “is mighty fine of you, Jimmy boy. I--I'll

think about it.” She never denied Jimmy anything, so now she temporized.

“I'll ask Peter.”

Harmony had a half-hysterical moment; then:

“Wouldn't it be better,” she asked, “to keep anything of that sort a

secret? And to surprise Peter?”

The boy loved a secret. He played with it in lieu of other occupation.

His uncertain future was sown thick with secrets that would never flower

into reality. Thus Peter had shamelessly promised him a visit to the

circus when he was able to go, Harmony not to be told until the tickets

were bought. Anna had similarly promised to send him from America a

pitcher's glove and a baseball bat. To this list of futurities he now

added Harmony's baby.

Harmony brought in her violin and played softly to him, not to disturb

the sleeping mice. She sang, too, a verse that the Big Soprano had been

fond of and that Jimmy loved. Not much of a voice was Harmony's, but

sweet and low and very true, as became her violinist's ear.

“Ah, well! For us all some sweet hope lies

Deeply buried from human eyes,”

she sang, her clear eyes luminous.

“And in the hereafter, angels may

Roll the stone from its grave away!”

Mrs. Boyer mounted the stairs. She was in a very bad humor. She had

snagged her skirt on a nail in the old gate, and although that very

morning she had detested the suit, her round of shopping had again

endeared it to her. She told the Portier in English what she thought

of him, and climbed ponderously, pausing at each landing to examine the

damage.

Harmony, having sung Jimmy to sleep, was in the throes of an experiment.

She was trying to smoke.

A very human young person was Harmony, apt to be exceedingly wretched

if her hat were of last year's fashion, anxious to be inconspicuous by

doing what every one else was doing, conventional as are the very young,

fearful of being an exception.

And nearly every one was smoking. Many of the young women whom she met

at the master's house had yellowed fingers and smoked in the anteroom;

the Big Soprano had smoked; Anna and Scatchy had smoked; in the

coffee-houses milliners' apprentices produced little silver mouth-pieces

to prevent soiling their pretty lips and smoked endlessly. Even Peter

had admitted that it was not a vice, but only a comfortable bad habit.

And Anna had left a handful of cigarettes.

Harmony was not smoking; she was experimenting. Peter and Anna had

smoked together and it had looked comradely. Perhaps, without reasoning

it out, Harmony was experimenting toward the end of establishing her

relations with Peter still further on friendly and comradely grounds.

Two men might smoke together; a man and a woman might smoke together

as friends. According to Harmony's ideas, a girl paring potatoes might

inspire sentiment, but smoking a cigarette--never!

She did not like it. She thought, standing before her little mirror,

that she looked fast, after all. She tried pursing her lips together,

as she had seen Anna do, and blowing out the smoke in a thin line. She

smoked very hard, so that she stood in the center of a gray nimbus. She

hated it, but she persisted. Perhaps it grew on one; perhaps, also,

if she walked about it would choke her less. She practiced holding the

thing between her first and second fingers, and found that easier than

smoking. Then she went to the salon where there was more air, and tried

exhaling through her nose. It made her sneeze.

On the sneeze came Mrs. Boyer's ring. Harmony thought very fast. It

might be the bread or the milk, but again--She flung the cigarette into

the stove, shut the door, and answered the bell.

Mrs. Boyer's greeting was colder than she had intended. It put Harmony

on the defensive at once, made her uncomfortable. Like all the innocent

falsely accused she looked guiltier than the guiltiest. Under Mrs.

Boyer's searching eyes the enormity of her situation overwhelmed her.

And over all, through salon and passage, hung the damning odor of the

cigarette. Harmony, leading the way in, was a sheep before her shearer.

“I'm calling on all of you,” said Mrs. Boyer, sniping. “I meant to bring

Dr. Boyer's cards for every one, including Dr. Byrne.”

“I'm sorry. Dr. Byrne is out.”

“And Dr. Gates?”

“She--she is away.”

Mrs. Boyer raised her eyebrows and ostentatiously changed the subject,

requesting a needle and thread to draw the rent together. It had been in

Harmony's mind to explain the situation, to show Jimmy to Mrs. Boyer,

to throw herself on the older woman's sympathy, to ask advice. But

the visitor's attitude made this difficult. To add to her discomfort,

through the grating in the stove door was coming a thin thread of smoke.

It was, after all, Mrs. Boyer who broached the subject again. She had

had a cup of tea, and Harmony, sitting on a stool, had mended the rent

so that it could hardly be seen. Mrs. Boyer, softened by the tea and by

the proximity of Harmony's lovely head bent over her task, grew slightly

more expansive.

“I ought to tell you something, Miss Wells,” she said. “You remember my

other visit?”

“Perfectly.” Harmony bent still lower.

“I did you an injustice at that time. I've been sorry ever since. I

thought that there was no Dr. Gates. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to

deny it. People do things in this wicked city that they wouldn't do at

home. I confess I misjudged Peter Byrne. You can give him my apologies,

since he won't see me.”

“But he isn't here or of course he'd see you.”

“Then,” demanded Mrs. Boyer grimly, “if Peter Byrne is not here, who has

been smoking cigarettes in this room? There is one still burning in that

stove!”

Harmony's hand was forced. She was white as she cut the brown-silk

thread and rose to her feet.

“I think,” she said, “that I'd better go back a few weeks, Mrs. Boyer,

and tell you a story, if you have time to listen.”

“If it is disagreeable--”

“Not at all. It is about Peter Byrne and myself, and--some others. It

is really about Peter. Mrs. Boyer, will you come very quietly across the

hall?”

Mrs. Boyer, expecting Heaven knows what, rose with celerity. Harmony

led the way to Jimmy's door and opened it. He was still asleep, a wasted

small figure on the narrow bed. Beside him the mice frolicked in their

cage, the sentry kept guard over Peter's shameless letters from the

Tyrol, the strawberry babies wriggled in their cotton.

“We are not going to have him very long,” said Harmony softly. “Peter is

making him happy for a little while.”

Back in the salon of Maria Theresa she told the whole story. Mrs. Boyer

found it very affecting. Harmony sat beside her on a stool and she kept

her hand on the girl's shoulder. When the narrative reached Anna's

going away, however, she took it away. From that point on she sat

uncompromisingly rigid and listened.

“Then you mean to say,” she exploded when Harmony had finished, “that

you intend to stay on here, just the two of you?”

“And Jimmy.”

“Bah! What has the child to do with it?”

“We will find some one to take Anna's place.”

“I doubt it. And until you do?”

“There is nothing wicked in what we are doing. Don't you see, Mrs.

Boyer, I can't leave the boy.”

“Since Peter is so altruistic, let him hire a nurse.”

Bad as things were, Harmony smiled.

“A nurse!” she said. “Why, do you realize that he is keeping three

people now on what is starvation for one?”

“Then he's a fool!” Mrs. Boyer rose in majesty. “I'm not going to leave

you here.”

“I'm sorry. You must see--”

“I see nothing but a girl deliberately putting herself in a compromising

portion and worse.”

“Mrs. Boyer!”

“Get your things on. I guess Dr. Boyer and I can look after you until we

can send you home.”

“I am not going home--yet,” said poor Harmony, biting her lip to steady

it.

Back and forth waged the battle, Mrs. Boyer assailing, Harmony offering

little defense but standing firm on her refusal to go as long as Peter

would let her remain.

“It means so much to me,” she ventured, goaded. “And I earn my lodging

and board. I work hard and--I make him comfortable. It costs him very

little and I give him something in exchange. All men are not alike. If

the sort you have known are--are different--”

This was unfortunate. Mrs. Boyer stiffened. She ceased offensive

tactics, and retired grimly into the dignity of her high calling of

virtuous wife and mother. She washed her hands of Harmony and Peter. She

tied on her veil with shaking hands, and prepared to leave Harmony to

her fate.

“Give me your mother's address,” she demanded.

“Certainly not.”

“You absolutely refuse to save yourself?”

“From what? From Peter? There are many worse people than Peter to save

myself from, Mrs. Boyer--uncharitable people, and--and cruel people.”

Mrs. Boyer shrugged her plump shoulders.

“Meaning me!” she retorted. “My dear child, people are always cruel who

try to save us from ourselves.”

Unluckily for Harmony, one of Anna's specious arguments must pop into

her head at that instant and demand expression.

“People are living their own lives these days, Mrs. Boyer; old standards

have gone. It is what one's conscience condemns that is wrong, isn't

it? Not merely breaking laws that were made to fit the average, not the

exception.”

Anna! Anna!

Mrs. Boyer flung up her hands.

“You are impossible!” she snapped. “After all, I believe it is Peter who

needs protection! I shall speak to him.”

She started down the staircase, but turned for a parting volley.

“And just a word of advice: Perhaps the old standards have gone. But if

you really expect to find a respectable woman to chaperon YOU, keep your

views to yourself.”

Harmony, a bruised and wounded thing, crept into Jimmy's room and sank

on her knees beside the bed. One small hand lay on the coverlet; she

dared not touch it for fear of waking him--but she laid her cheek close

to it for comfort. When Peter came in, much later, he found the boy wide

awake and Harmony asleep, a crumpled heap beside the bed.

“I think she's been crying,” Jimmy whispered. “She's been sobbing in her

sleep. And strike a match, Peter; there may be more mice.”

CHAPTER XVIII

Mrs. Boyer, bursting with indignation, went to the Doctors' Club. It was

typical of the way things were going with Peter that Dr. Boyer was not

there, and that the only woman in the clubrooms should be Dr. Jennings.

Young McLean was in the reading room, eating his heart out with jealousy

of Peter, vacillating between the desire to see Harmony that night and

fear lest Peter forbid him the house permanently if he made the attempt.

He had found a picture of the Fraulein Engel, from the opera, in a

magazine, and was sitting with it open before him. Very deeply and

really in love was McLean that afternoon, and the Fraulein Engel and

Harmony were not unlike. The double doors between the reading room and

the reception room adjoining were open. McLean, lost in a rosy future in

which he and Harmony sat together for indefinite periods, with no Peter

to scowl over his books at them, a future in which life was one long

piano-violin duo, with the candles in the chandelier going out one by

one, leaving them at last alone in scented darkness together--McLean

heard nothing until the mention of the Siebensternstrasse roused him.

After that he listened. He heard that Dr. Jennings was contemplating

taking Anna's place at the lodge, and he comprehended after a moment

that Anna was already gone. Even then the significance of the situation

was a little time in dawning on him. When it did, however, he rose with

a stifled oath.

Mrs. Boyer was speaking.

“It is exactly as I tell you,” she was saying. “If Peter Byrne is trying

to protect her reputation he is late doing it. Personally I have been

there twice. I never saw Anna Gates. And she is registered here at the

club as living in the Pension Schwarz. Whatever the facts may be, one

thing remains, she is not there now.”

McLean waited to hear no more. He was beside himself with rage. He found

a “comfortable” at the curb. The driver was asleep inside the carriage.

McLean dragged him out by the shoulder and shouted an address to him.

The cab bumped along over the rough streets to an accompaniment of

protests from its frantic passenger.

The boy was white-lipped with wrath and fear. Peter's silence that

afternoon as to the state of affairs loomed large and significant. He

had thought once or twice that Peter was in love with Harmony; he knew

it now in the clearer vision of the moment. He recalled things that

maddened him: the dozen intimacies of the little menage, the caress

in Peter's voice when he spoke to the girl, Peter's steady eyes in the

semi-gloom of the salon while Harmony played.

At a corner they must pause for the inevitable regiment. McLean cursed,

bending out to see how long the delay would be. Peter had been gone for

half an hour, perhaps, but Peter would walk. If he could only see the

girl first, talk to her, tell her what she would be doing by remaining--

He was there at last, flinging across the courtyard like a madman. Peter

was already there; his footprints were fresh in the slush of the path.

The house door was closed but not locked. McLean ran up the stairs. It

was barely twilight outside, but the staircase well was dark. At the

upper landing he was compelled to fumble for the bell.

Peter admitted him. The corridor was unlighted, but from the salon came

a glow of lamplight. McLean, out of breath and furious, faced Peter.

“I want to see Harmony,” he said without preface.

Peter eyed him. He knew what had happened, had expected it when the bell

rang, had anticipated it when Harmony told him of Mrs. Boyer's visit. In

the second between the peal of the bell and his opening the door he had

decided what to do.

“Come in.”

McLean stepped inside. He was smaller than Peter, not so much shorter as

slenderer. Even Peter winced before the look in his eyes.

“Where is she?”

“In the kitchen, I think. Come into the salon.”

McLean flung off his coat. Peter closed the door behind him and stood

just inside. He had his pipe as usual. “I came to see her, not you,

Byrne.”

“So I gather. I'll let you see her, of course, but don't you want to see

me first?”

“I want to take her away from here.”

“Why? Are you better able to care for her than I am?”

McLean stood rigid. He had thrust his clenched hands into his pockets.

“You're a scoundrel, Byrne,” he said steadily. “Why didn't you tell me

this this afternoon?”

“Because I knew if I did you'd do just what you are doing.”

“Are you going to keep her here?”

Peter changed color at the thrust, but he kept himself in hand.

“I'm not keeping her here,” he said patiently. “I'm doing the best I can

under the circumstances.”

“Then your best is pretty bad.”

“Perhaps. If you would try to remember the circumstances, McLean,--that

the girl has no place else to go, practically no money, and that I--”

“I remember one circumstance, that you are living here alone with her

and that you're crazy in love with her.”

“That has nothing to do with you. As long as I treat her--”

“Bah!”

“Will you be good enough to let me finish what I am trying to say? She's

safe with me. When I say that I mean it. She will not go away from

here with you or with any one else if I can prevent it. And if you care

enough about her to try to keep her happy you'll not let her know you

have been here. I've got a woman coming to take Anna's place. That ought

to satisfy you.”

“Dr. Jennings?”

“Yes.”

“She'll not come. Mrs. Boyer has been talking to her. Inside of an hour

the whole club will have it--every American in Vienna will know about it

in a day or so. I tell you, Byrne, you're doing an awful thing.”

Peter drew a long breath. He had had his bad half-hour before McLean

came; had had to stand by, wordless, and see Harmony trying to smile,

see her dragging about, languid and white, see her tragic attempts

to greet him on the old familiar footing. Through it all he had been

sustained by the thought that a day or two days would see the old

footing reestablished, another woman in the house, life again worth the

living and Harmony smiling up frankly into his eyes. Now this hope had

departed.

“You can't keep me from seeing her, you know,” McLean persisted. “I've

got to put this thing to her. She's got to choose.”

“What alternative have you to suggest?”

“I'd marry her if she'd have me.”

After all Peter had expected that. And, if she cared for the boy

wouldn't that be best for her? What had he to offer against that? He

couldn't marry. He could only offer her shelter, against everything

else. Even then he did not dislike McLean. He was a man, every slender

inch of him, this boy musician. Peter's heart sank, but he put down his

pipe and turned to the door.

“I'll call her,” he said. “But, since this concerns me very vitally, I

should like to be here while you put the thing to her. After that if you

like--”

He called Harmony. She had given Jimmy his supper and was carrying out a

tray that seemed hardly touched.

“He won't eat to-night,” she said miserably. “Peter, if he stops eating,

what can we do? He is so weak!”

Peter, took the tray from her gently.

“Harry dear,” he said, “I want you to come into the salon. Some one

wishes to speak to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes. Harry, do you remember that evening in the kitchen when--Do you

recall what I promised?”

“Yes, Peter.”

“You are sure you know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“That's all right, then. McLean wants to see you.”

She hesitated, looking up at him.

“McLean? You look so grave, Peter. What is it?”

“He will tell you. Nothing alarming.”

Peter gave McLean a minute alone after all, while he carried the tray

to the kitchen. He had no desire to play watchdog over the girl, he told

himself savagely; only to keep himself straight with her and to save

her from McLean's impetuosity. He even waited in the kitchen to fill and

light his pipe.

McLean had worked himself into a very fair passion. He was intense,

almost theatrical, as he stood with folded arms waiting for Harmony. So

entirely did the girl fill his existence that he forgot, or did not care

to remember, how short a time he had known her. As Harmony she dominated

his life and his thoughts; as Harmony he addressed her when, rather

startled, she entered the salon and stood just inside the closed door.

“Peter said you wanted to speak to me.”

McLean groaned. “Peter!” he said. “It is always Peter. Look here,

Harmony, you cannot stay here.”

“It is only for a few hours. To-morrow some one is coming. And, anyhow,

Peter is going to Semmering. We know it is unusual, but what can we do?”

“Unusual! It's--it's damnable. It's the appearance of the thing, don't

you see that?”

“I think it is rather silly to talk of appearance when there is no one

to care. And how can I leave? Jimmy needs me all the time--”

“That's another idiocy of Peter's. What does he mean by putting you in

this position?”

“I am one of Peter's idiocies.”

Peter entered on that. He took in the situation with a glance, and

Harmony turned to him; but if she had expected Peter to support her, she

was disappointed. Whatever decision she was to make must be her own,

in Peter's troubled mind. He crossed the room and stood at one of the

windows, looking out, a passive participant in the scene.

The day had been a trying one for Harmony. What she chose to consider

Peter's defection was a fresh stab. She glanced from McLean, flushed and

excited, to Peter's impassive back. Then she sat down, rather limp, and

threw out her hands helplessly.

“What am I to do?” she demanded. “Every one comes with cruel things to

say, but no one tells me what to do.”

Peter turned away from the window.

“You can leave here,” ventured McLean. “That's the first thing. After

that--”

“Yes, and after that, what?”

McLean glanced at Peter. Then he took a step toward the girl.

“You could marry me, Harmony,” he said unsteadily. “I hadn't expected

to tell you so soon, or before a third person.” He faltered before

Harmony's eyes, full of bewilderment. “I'd be very happy if you--if you

could see it that way. I care a great deal, you see.”

It seemed hours to Peter before she made any reply, and that her voice

came from miles away.

“Is it really as bad as that?” she asked. “Have I made such a mess of

things that some one, either you or Peter, must marry me to straighten

things out? I don't want to marry any one. Do I have to?”

“Certainly you don't have to,” said Peter. There was relief in his

voice, relief and also something of exultation. “McLean, you mean well,

but marriage isn't the solution. We were getting along all right until

our friends stepped in. Let Mrs. Boyer howl all over the colony; there

will be one sensible woman somewhere to come and be comfortable here

with us. In the interval we'll manage, unless Harmony is afraid. In that

case--”

“Afraid of what?”

The two men exchanged glances, McLean helpless, Peter triumphant.

“I do not care what Mrs. Boyer says, at least not much. And I am not

afraid of anything else at all.”

McLean picked up his overcoat.

“At least,” he appealed to Peter, “you'll come over to my place?”

“No!” said Peter.

McLean made a final appeal to Harmony.

“If this gets out,” he said, “you are going to regret it all your life.”

“I shall have nothing to regret,” she retorted proudly.

Had Peter not been there McLean would have made a better case, would

have pleaded with her, would have made less of a situation that roused

her resentment and more of his love for her. He was very hard hit, very

young. He was almost hysterical with rage and helplessness; he wanted

to slap her, to take her in his arms. He writhed under the restraint of

Peter's steady eyes.

He got to the door and turned, furious.

“Then it's up to you,” he flung at Peter. “You're old enough to know

better; she isn't. And don't look so damned superior. You're human, like

the rest of us. And if any harm comes to her--”

Here unexpectedly Peter held out his hand, and after a sheepish moment

McLean took it.

“Good-night, old man,” said Peter. “And--don't be an ass.”

As was Peter's way, the words meant little, the tone much. McLean knew

what in his heart he had known all along--that the girl was safe enough;

that all that was to fear was the gossip of scandal-lovers. He took

Peter's hand, and then going to Harmony stood before her very erect.

“I suppose I've said too much; I always do,” he said contritely. “But

you know the reason. Don't forget the reason, will you?”

“I am only sorry.”

He bent over and kissed her hand lingeringly. It was a tragic moment for

him, poor lad! He turned and went blindly out the door and down the dark

stone staircase. It was rather anticlimax, after all that, to have Peter

discover he had gone without his hat and toss it down to him a flight

below.

All the frankness had gone out of the relationship between Harmony and

Peter. They made painful efforts at ease, talked during the meal of

careful abstractions, such as Jimmy, and Peter's proposed trip to

Semmering, avoided each other's eyes, ate little or nothing. Once when

Harmony passed Peter his coffee-cup their fingers touched, and between

them they dropped the cup. Harmony was flushed and pallid by turns,

Peter wretched and silent.

Out of the darkness came one ray of light. Stewart had wired from

Semmering, urging Peter to come. He would be away for two days. In two

days much might happen; Dr. Jennings might come or some one else. In two

days some of the restraint would have worn off. Things would never be

the same, but they would be forty-eight hours better.

Peter spent the early part of the evening with Jimmy, reading aloud to

him. After the child had dropped to sleep he packed a valise for the

next day's journey and counted out into an envelope half of the money he

had with him. This he labeled “Household Expenses” and set it up on

his table, leaning against his collar-box. There was no sign of Harmony

about. The salon was dark except for the study lamp turned down.

Peter was restless. He put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn slippers

and wandered about. The Portier had brought coal to the landing; Peter

carried it in. He inspected the medicine bottles on Jimmy's stand

and wrote full directions for every emergency he could imagine. Then,

finding it still only nine o'clock, he turned up the lamp in the salon

and wrote an exciting letter from Jimmy's father, in which a lost lamb,

wandering on the mountain-side, had been picked up by an avalanche and

carried down into the fold and the arms of the shepherd. And because

he stood so in loco parentis, and because it seemed so inevitable that

before long Jimmy would be in the arms of the Shepherd, and, of course,

because it had been a trying day all through, Peter's lips were none too

steady as he folded up the letter.

The fire was dead in the stove; Peter put out the salon lamp and closed

the shutters. In the warm darkness he put out his hand to feel his way

through the room. It touched a little sweater coat of Harmony's, hanging

over the back of a chair. Peter picked it up in a very passion of

tenderness and held it to him.

“Little girl!” he choked. “My little girl! God help me!”

He was rather ashamed, considerably startled. It alarmed him to find

that the mere unexpected touch of a familiar garment could rouse such a

storm in him. It made him pause. He put down the coat and pulled himself

up sharply. McLean was right; he was only human stuff, very poor human

stuff. He put the little coat down hastily, only to lift it again gently

to his lips.

“Good-night, dear,” he whispered. “Goodnight, Harmony.”

Frau Schwarz had had two visitors between the hours of coffee and

supper that day. The reason of their call proved to be neither rooms nor

pension. They came to make inquiries.

The Frau Schwarz made this out at last, and sat down on the edge of

the bed in the room that had once been Peter's and that still lacked an

occupant.

Mrs. Boyer had no German; Dr. Jennings very little and that chiefly

medical. There is, however, a sort of code that answers instead of

language frequently, when two or three women of later middle life

are gathered together, a code born of mutual understanding, mutual

disillusion, mutual distrust, a language of outspread hands, raised

eyebrows, portentous shakings of the head. Frau Schwarz, on the edge of

Peter's tub-shaped bed, needed no English to convey the fact that Peter

was a bad lot. Not that she resorted only to the sign language.

“The women were also wicked,” she said. “Of a man what does one expect?

But of a woman! And the younger one looked--Herr Gott! She had the eyes

of a saint! The little Georgiev was mad for her. When the three of them

left, disgraced, as one may say, he came to me, he threatened me. The

Herr Schwarz, God rest his soul, was a violent man, but never spoke he

so to me!”

“She says,” interpreted Dr. Jennings, “that they were a bad lot--that

the younger one made eyes at the Herr Schwarz!”

Mrs. Boyer drew her ancient sables about her and put a tremulous hand on

the other woman's arm.

“What an escape for you!” she said. “If you had gone there to live and

then found the establishment--queer!”

From the kitchen of the pension, Olga was listening, an ear to the door.

Behind her, also listening, but less advantageously, was Katrina.

“American ladies!” said Olga. “Two, old and fat.”

“More hot water!” growled Katrina. “Why do not the Americans stay in

their own country, where the water, I have learned, comes hot from the

earth.”

Olga, bending forward, opened the door a crack wider.

“Sh! They do not come for rooms. They inquire for the Herr Doktor Byrne

and the others!”

“No!”

“Of a certainty.”

“Then let me to the door!”

“A moment. She tells them everything and more. She says--how she is

wicked, Katrina! She says the Fraulein Harmony was not good, that she

sent them all away. Here, take the door!”

Thus it happened that Dr. Jennings and Mrs. Boyer, having shaken off the

dust of a pension that had once harbored three malefactors, and having

retired Peter and Anna and Harmony into the limbo of things best

forgotten or ignored, found themselves, at the corner, confronted by a

slovenly girl in heelless slippers and wearing a knitted shawl over her

head. “The Frau Schwarz is wrong,” cried Olga passionately in Vienna

dialect. “They were good, all of them!”

“What in the world--”

“And, please, tell me where lives the Fraulein Harmony. The Herr

Georgiev eats not nor sleeps that he cannot find her.”

Dr. Jennings was puzzled.

“She wishes to know where the girl lives,” she interpreted to Mrs.

Boyer. “A man wishes to know.”

“Naturally!” said Mrs. Boyer. “Well, don't tell her.”

Olga gathered from the tone rather than the words that she was not to

be told. She burst into a despairing appeal in which the Herr Georgiev,

Peter, a necktie Peter had forgotten, open windows, and hot water were

inextricably confused. Dr. Jennings listened, then waved her back with a

gesture.

“She says,” she interpreted as they walked on, “that Dr. Peter--by which

I suppose she means Dr. Byrne--has left a necktie, and that she'll be in

hot water if she does not return it.”

Mrs. Boyer sniffed.

“In love with him, probably, like the others!” she said.

CHAPTER XIX

Peter went to Semmering the next morning, tiptoeing out very early and

without breakfast. He went in to cover Jimmy, lying diagonally across

his small bed amid a riot of tossed blankets. The communicating door

into Harmony's room was open. Peter kept his eyes carefully from it,

but his ears were less under control. He could hear her soft breathing.

There were days coming when Peter would stand where he stood then and

listen, and find only silence.

He tore himself away at last, closing the outer door carefully behind

him and lighting a match to find his way down the staircase. The Portier

was not awake. Peter had to rouse him, and to stand by while he donned

the trousers which he deemed necessary to the dignity of his position

before he opened the street door.

Reluctant as he had been to go, the change was good for Peter. The dawn

grew rosy, promised sunshine, fulfilled its promise. The hurrying crowds

at the depot interested him: he enjoyed his coffee, taken from a bare

table in the station. The horizontal morning sunlight, shining in

through marvelously clean windows, warmed the marble of the floor, made

black shadows beside the heaps of hand luggage everywhere, turned into

gold the hair of a toddling baby venturing on a tour of discovery. The

same morning light, alas! revealed to Peter a break across the toe of

one of his shoes. Peter sighed, then smiled. The baby was catching at

the bits of dust that floated in the sunshine.

Suddenly a great wave of happiness overwhelmed Peter. It was a passing

thing, born of nothing, but for the instant that it lasted Peter was a

king. Everything was well. The world was his oyster. Life was his,

to make it what he would--youth and hope and joy. Under the beatific

influence he expanded, grew, almost shone. Youth and hope and joy--that

cometh in the morning.

The ecstasy passed away, but without reaction. Peter no longer shone;

he still glowed. He picked up the golden-haired baby and hugged it. He

hunted out a beggar he had passed and gave him five Hellers. He helped a

suspicious old lady with an oilcloth-covered bundle; he called the guard

on the train “son” and forced a grin out of that dignitary.

Peter traveled third-class, which was quite comfortable, and no bother

about “Nicht Rauchen” signs. His unreasonable cheerfulness persisted as

far as Gloggnitz. There, with the increasing ruggedness of the scenery

and his first view of the Raxalpe, came recollection of the urgency of

Stewart's last message, of Marie Jedlicka, of the sordid little tragedy

that awaited him at the end of his journey.

Peter sobered. Life was rather a mess, after all, he reflected. Love

was a blessing, but it was also a curse. After that he sat back in

his corner and let the mountain scenery take care of itself, while he

recalled the look he had surprised once or twice in Marie's eyes when

she looked at Stewart. It was sad, pitiful. Marie was a clever little

thing. If only she'd had a chance!--Why wasn't he rich enough to help

the ones who needed help. Marie could start again in America, with no

one the wiser, and make her way.

“Smart as the devil, these Austrian girls!” Peter reflected. “Poor

little guttersnipe!”

The weather was beautiful. The sleet of the previous day in Vienna had

been a deep snowfall on the mountains. The Schwarza was frozen, the

castle of Liechtenstein was gray against a white world. A little

pilgrimage church far below seemed snowed in against the faithful. The

third-class compartment filled with noisy skiing parties. The old woman

opened her oilcloth bundle, and taking a cat out of a box inside fed it

a sausage.

Up and up, past the Weinzettelwand and the Station Breitenstein, across

the highest viaduct, the Kalte Rinne, and so at last to Semmering.

The glow had died at last for Peter. He did not like his errand, was

very vague, indeed, as to just what that errand might be. He was stiff

and rather cold. Also he thought the cat might stifle in the oilcloth,

but the old woman too clearly distrusted him to make it possible

to interfere. Anyhow, he did not know the German for either cat or

oilcloth.

He had wired Stewart; but the latter was not at the station. This made

him vaguely uneasy, he hardly knew why. He did not know Stewart well

enough to know whether he was punctilious in such matters or not: as a

matter of fact he hardly knew him at all. It was because he had appealed

to him that Peter was there, it being only necessary to Peter to be

needed, and he was anywhere.

The Pension Waldheim was well up the mountains. He shouldered his valise

and started up--first long flights of steps through the pines, then a

steep road. Peter climbed easily. Here and there he met groups coming

down, men that he thought probably American, pretty women in “tams” and

sweaters. He watched for Marie, but there was no sign of her.

He was half an hour, perhaps, in reaching the Waldheim. As he turned

in at the gate he noticed a sledge, with a dozen people following it,

coming toward him. It was a singularly silent party. Peter, with his

hand on the door-knocker, watched its approach with some curiosity.

It stopped, and the men who had been following closed up round it.

Even then Peter did not understand. He did not understand until he

saw Stewart, limp and unconscious, lifted out of the straw and carried

toward him.

Suicide may be moral cowardice; but it requires physical bravery.

And Marie was not brave. The balcony had attracted her: it opened

possibilities of escape, of unceasing regret and repentance for Stewart,

of publicity that would mean an end to the situation. But every inch of

her soul was craven at the thought. She crept out often and looked down,

and as often drew back, shuddering. To fall down, down on to the tree

tops, to be dropped from branch to branch, a broken thing, and perhaps

even not yet dead--that was the unthinkable thing, to live for a time

and suffer!

Stewart was not ignorant of all that went on in her mind. She had

threatened him with the balcony, just as, earlier in the winter, it had

been a window-ledge with which she had frightened him. But there was

this difference, whereas before he had drawn her back from the window

and clapped her into sanity, now he let her alone. At the end of one of

their quarrels she had flung out on to the balcony, and then had watched

him through the opening in the shutter. He had lighted a cigarette!

Stewart spent every daylight hour at the hotel, or walking over the

mountain roads, seldom alone with Anita, but always near her. He left

Marie sulking or sewing, as the case might be. He returned in the

evening to find her still sulking, still sewing.

But Marie did not sulk all day, or sew. She too was out, never far from

Stewart, always watching. Many times she escaped discovery only by a

miracle, as when she stooped behind an oxcart, pretending to tie her

shoe, or once when they all met face to face, and although she lowered

her veil Stewart must have known her instantly had he not been so intent

on helping Anita over a slippery gutter.

She planned a dozen forms of revenge and found them impossible of

execution. Stewart himself was frightfully unhappy. For the first

time in his life he was really in love, with all the humility of the

condition. There were days when he would not touch Anita's hand, when

he hardly spoke, when the girl herself would have been outraged at

his conduct had she not now and then caught him watching her, seen the

wretchedness in his eyes.

The form of Marie's revenge was unpremeditated, after all. The light

mountain snow was augmented by a storm; roads were ploughed through

early in the morning, leaving great banks on either side. Sleigh-bells

were everywhere. Coasting parties made the steep roads a menace to

the pedestrian; every up-climbing sleigh carried behind it a string of

sleds, going back to the starting-point.

Below the hotel was the Serpentine Coast, a long and dangerous course,

full of high-banked curves, of sudden descents, of long straightaway

dashes through the woodland. Two miles, perhaps three, it wound its

tortuous way down the mountain. Up by the highroad to the crest again,

only a mile or less. Thus it happened that the track was always clear,

except for speeding sleds. No coasters, dragging sleds back up the

slide, interfered.

The track was crowded. Every minute a sled set out, sped down the

straightaway, dipped, turned, disappeared. A dozen would be lined up,

waiting for the interval and the signal. And here, watching from the

porch of the church, in the very shadow of the saints, Marie found her

revenge.

Stewart had given her a little wrist watch. Stewart and Anita

were twelfth in line. By the watch, then, twelve minutes down the

mountain-side, straight down through the trees to a curve that Marie

knew well, a bad curve, only to be taken by running well up on the

snowbank. Beyond the snowbank there was a drop, fifteen feet, perhaps

more, into the yard of a Russian villa. Stewart and Anita were twelfth;

a man in a green stocking-cap was eleventh. The hillside was steep.

Marie negotiated it by running from tree to tree, catching herself,

steadying for a second, then down again. Once she fell and rolled a

little distance. There was no time to think; perhaps had she thought she

would have weakened. She had no real courage, only desperation.

As she reached the track the man in the green stocking-cap was in

sight. A minute and a half she had then, not more. She looked about her

hastily. A stone might serve her purpose, almost anything that would

throw the sled out of its course. She saw a tree branch just above the

track and dragged at it frantically. Some one was shouting at her from

an upper window of the Russian villa. She did not hear. Stewart and

Anita had made the curve above and were coming down at frantic speed.

Marie stood, her back to the oncoming rush of the sled, swaying

slightly. When she could hear the singing of the runners she stooped and

slid the tree branch out against the track.

She had acted almost by instinct, but with devilish skill. The sled

swung to one side up the snowbank, and launched itself into the air.

Marie heard the thud and the silence that followed it. Then she turned

and scuttled like a hunted thing up the mountain side.

Peter put in a bad day. Marie was not about, could not be located.

Stewart, suffering from concussion, lay insensible all day and all of

the night. Peter could find no fracture, but felt it wise to get another

opinion. In the afternoon he sent for a doctor from the Kurhaus and

learned for the first time that Anita had also been hurt--a broken arm.

“Not serious,” said the Kurhaus man. “She is brave, very brave, the

young woman. I believe they are engaged?” Peter said he did not know and

thought very hard. Where was Marie? Not gone surely. Here about him lay

all her belongings, even her purse.

Toward evening Stewart showed some improvement. He was not conscious,

but he swallowed better and began to toss about. Peter, who had had a

long day and very little sleep the night before, began to look jaded. He

would have sent for a nurse from the Kurhaus, but he doubted Stewart's

ability to stand any extra financial strain, and Peter could not help

any.

The time for supper passed, and no Marie.

The landlady sent up a tray to Peter, stewed meat and potatoes, a

salad, coffee. Peter sat in a corner with his back to Stewart and ate

ravenously. He had had nothing since the morning's coffee. After that he

sat down again by the bed to watch. There was little to do but watch.

The meal had made him drowsy. He thought of his pipe. Perhaps if he got

some fresh air and a smoke! He remembered the balcony.

It was there on the balcony that he found Marie, a cowering thing that

pushed his hands away when he would have caught her and broke into

passionate crying.

“I cannot! I cannot!”

“Cannot what?” demanded Peter gently, watching her. So near was the

balcony rail!

“Throw myself over. I've tried, Peter. I cannot!”

“I should think not!” said Peter sternly. “Just now when we need you,

too! Come in and don't be a foolish child.”

But Marie would not go in. She held back, clinging tight to Peter's big

hand, moaning out in the dialect of the people that always confused him

her story of the day, of what she had done, of watching Stewart brought

back, of stealing into the house and through an adjacent room to the

balcony, of her desperation and her cowardice.

She was numb with cold, exhaustion, and hunger, quite childish,

helpless. Peter stood out on the balcony with his arm round her, while

the night wind beat about them, and pondered what was best to do. He

thought she might come in and care for Stewart, at least, until he was

conscious. He could get her some supper.

“How can I?” she asked. “I was seen. They are searching for me now. Oh,

Peter! Peter!”

“Who is searching for you? Who saw you?”

“The people in the Russian villa.”

“Did they see your face?”

“I wore a veil. I think not.”

“Then come in and change your clothes. There is a train down at

midnight. You can take it.”

“I have no money.”

This raised a delicate question. Marie absolutely refused to take

Stewart's money. She had almost none of her own. And there were other

complications--where was she to go? The family of the injured girl did

not suspect her since they did not know of her existence. She might get

away without trouble. But after that, what?

Peter pondered this on the balcony, while Marie in the bedroom was

changing her clothing, soaked with a day in the snow. He came to the

inevitable decision, the decision he knew at the beginning that he was

going to make.

“If I could only put it up to Harmony first!” he reflected. “But she

will understand when I tell her. She always understands.”

Standing there on the little balcony, with tragedy the thickness of

a pine board beyond him, Peter experienced a bit of the glow of the

morning, as of one who stumbling along in a dark place puts a hand on a

friend.

He went into the room. Stewart was lying very still and breathing

easily. On her knees beside the bed knelt Marie. At Peter's step she

rose and faced him.

“I am leaving him, Peter, for always.”

“Good!” said Peter heartily. “Better for you and better for him.”

Marie drew a long breath. “The night train,” she said listlessly, “is an

express. I had forgotten. It is double fare.”

“What of that, little sister?” said Peter. “What is a double fare when

it means life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? And there will be

happiness, little sister.”

He put his hand in his pocket.

CHAPTER XX

The Portier was almost happy that morning. For one thing, he had won

honorable mention at the Schubert Society the night before; for another,

that night the Engel was to sing Mignon, and the Portier had spent his

Christmas tips for a ticket. All day long he had been poring over the

score.

“'Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bluhen?'” he sang with feeling

while he polished the floors. He polished them with his feet, wearing

felt boots for the purpose, and executing in the doing a sort of

ungainly dance--a sprinkle of wax, right foot forward and back, left

foot forward and back, both feet forward and back in a sort of double

shuffle; more wax, more vigorous polishing, more singing, with longer

pauses for breath. “'Knowest thou the land where the lemon trees

bloom?'” he bellowed--sprinkle of wax, right foot, left foot, any foot

at all. Now and then he took the score from his pocket and pored over

it, humming the air, raising his eyebrows over the high notes, dropping

his chin to the low ones. It was a wonderful morning. Between greetings

to neighbors he sang--a bit of talk, a bit of song.

“'Kennst du das Land'--Good-morning, sir--the old Rax wears a crown. It

will snow soon. 'Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen'--Ah, madam the milk

Frau, and are the cows frozen up to-day like the pump? No? Marvelous!

Dost thou know that to-night is Mignon at the Opera, and that the Engel

sings? 'Kennst du das Land'--”

At eleven came Rosa with her husband, the soldier from Salzburg with one

lung. He was having a holiday from his sentry duty at the hospital,

and the one lung seemed to be a libel, for while the women had coffee

together and a bit of mackerel he sang a very fair bass to the Portier's

tenor. Together they pored over the score, and even on their way to the

beer hall hummed together such bits as they recalled.

On one point they differed. The score was old and soiled with much

thumbing. At one point, destroyed long since, the sentry sang A sharp:

the Portier insisted on A natural. They argued together over three

Steins of beer; the waiter, referred to, decided for A flat. It was a

serious matter to have one's teeth set, as one may say, for a natural

and then to be shocked with an unexpected half-tone up or down! It

destroyed the illusion; it disappointed; it hurt.

The sentry stuck to the sharp--it was sung so at the Salzburg opera.

The Portier snapped his thumb at the Salzburg opera. Things were looking

serious; they walked back to the locale in silence. The sentry coughed.

Possibly there was something, after all, in the one-lung rumor.

It was then that the Portier remembered Harmony. She would know; perhaps

she had the score.

Harmony was having a bad morning. She had slept little until dawn, and

Peter's stealthy closing of the outer door had wakened her by its very

caution. After that there had been no more sleep. She had sat up in bed

with her chin in her hands and thought.

In the pitiless dawn, with no Peter to restore her to cheerfulness,

things looked black, indeed. To what had she fallen, that first one man

and then another must propose marriage to her to save her. To save her

from what? From what people thought, or--each from the other?

Were men so evil that they never trusted each other? McLean had frankly

distrusted Peter, had said so. Or could it be that there was something

about her, something light and frivolous? She had been frivolous. She

always laughed at Peter's foolishnesses. Perhaps that was it. That

was it. They were afraid for her. She had thrown herself on Peter's

hands--almost into his arms. She had made this situation.

She must get away, of course. If only she had some one to care for Jimmy

until Peter returned! But there was no one. The Portier's wife was fond

of Jimmy, but not skillful. And suppose he were to wake in the night and

call for her and she would not come. She cried a little over this. After

a time she pattered across the room in her bare feet and got from a

bureau drawer the money she had left. There was not half enough to take

her home. She could write; the little mother might get some for her, but

at infinite cost, infinite humiliation. That would have to be a final,

desperate resort.

She felt a little more cheerful when she had had a cup of coffee. Jimmy

wakened about that time, and she went through the details of his morning

toilet with all the brightness she could assume--bath blankets, warm

bath, toenails, finger-nails, fresh nightgown, fresh sheets, and--final

touch of all--a real barber's part straight from crown to brow. After

that ten minutes under extra comforters while the room aired.

She hung over the boy that morning in an agony of tenderness--he was so

little, so frail, and she must leave him. Only one thing sustained her.

The boy loved her, but it was Peter he idolized. When he had Peter he

needed nothing else. In some curious process of his childish mind Peter

and Daddy mingled in inextricable confusion. More than once he had

recalled events in the roving life he and his father had led.

“You remember that, don't you?” he would say.

“Certainly I remember,” Peter would reply heartily.

“That evening on the steamer when I ate so many raisins.”

“Of course. And were ill.”

“Not ill--not that time. But you said I'd make a good pudding! You

remember that, don't you?”

And Peter would recall it all.

Peter would be left. That was the girl's comfort.

She made a beginning at gathering her things together that morning,

while the boy dozed and the white mice scurried about the little cage.

She could not take her trunk, or Peter would trace it. She would have

to carry her belongings, a few at a time, to wherever she found a room.

Then when Peter came back she could slip away and he would never find

her.

At noon came the Portier and the sentry, now no longer friends, and rang

the doorbell. Harmony was rather startled. McLean and Mrs. Boyer had

been her only callers, and she did not wish to see either of them. But

after a second ring she gathered her courage in her hands and opened the

door.

She turned pale when she saw the sentry in his belted blue-gray tunic

and high cap. She thought, of course, that Jimmy had been traced and

that now he would be taken away. If the sentry knew her, however, he

kept his face impassive and merely touched his cap. The Portier stated

their errand. Harmony's face cleared. She even smiled as the Portier

extended to her the thumbed score with its missing corner. What,

after all, does it matter which was right--whether it was A sharp or A

natural? What really matters is that Harmony, having settled the dispute

and clinched the decision by running over the score for a page or two,

turned to find the Portier, ecstatic eyes upturned, hands folded on

paunch, enjoying a delirium of pleasure, and the sentry nowhere in

sight.

He was discovered a moment later in the doorway of Jimmy's room, where,

taciturn as ever, severe, martial, he stood at attention, shoulders

back, arms at his sides, thumbs in. In this position he was making, with

amazing rapidity, a series of hideous grimaces for the benefit of the

little boy in the bed: marvelous faces they were, in which nose, mouth,

and eyes seemed interchangeable, where features played leapfrog with

one another. When all was over--perhaps when his repertoire was

exhausted--the sentry returned his nose to the center of his face,

replaced eyes and mouth, and wiped the ensemble with a blue cotton

handkerchief. Then, still in silence, he saluted and withdrew, leaving

the youngster enraptured, staring at the doorway.

Harmony had decided the approximate location of her room. In the

higher part of the city, in the sixteenth district, there were many

unpretentious buildings. She had hunted board there and she knew. It

was far from the Stadt, far from the fashionable part of town, a

neighborhood of small shops, of frank indigence. There surely she could

find a room, and perhaps in one of the small stores what she failed to

secure in the larger, a position.

Rosa having taken her soldier away, Harmony secured the Portier's wife

to sit with Jimmy and spent two hours that afternoon looking about for

a room. She succeeded finally in finding one, a small and wretchedly

furnished bedroom, part of the suite of a cheap dressmaker. The approach

was forbidding enough. One entered a cavelike, cobble-paved court

under the building, filled with wagons, feeding horses, quarrelsome and

swearing teamsters. From the side a stone staircase took off and led,

twisting from one landing cave to another, to the upper floor.

Here lived the dressmaker, amid the constant whirring of

sewing-machines, the Babel of workpeople. Harmony, seeking not a

home but a hiding-place, took the room at once. She was asked for no

reference. In a sort of agony lest this haven fail her she paid for a

week in advance. The wooden bed, the cracked mirror over the table, even

the pigeons outside on the windowsill were hers for a week.

The dressmaker was friendly, almost garrulous.

“I will have it cleaned,” she explained. “I have been so busy: the

masquerade season is on. The Fraulein is American, is she not?”

“Yes.”

“One knows the Americans. They are chic, not like the English. I have

some American customers.”

Harmony started. The dressmaker was shrewd. Many people hid in the

sixteenth district. She hastened to reassure the girl.

“They will not disturb you. And just now I have but one, a dancer. I

shall have the room cleaned. Good-bye, Fraulein.”

So far, good. She had a refuge now, one spot that the venom of scandal

could not poison, where she could study and work--work hard, although

there could be no more lessons--one spot where Peter would not have to

protect her, where Peter, indeed, would never find her. This thought,

which should have brought comfort, brought only new misery. Peace seemed

dearly bought all at once; shabby, wholesome, hearty Peter, with his

rough hair and quiet voice, his bulging pockets and steady eyes--she was

leaving Peter forever, exchanging his companionship for that of a row

of pigeons on a window-sill. He would find some one, of course; but who

would know that he liked toast made hard and plenty of butter, or to

leave his bed-clothing loose at the foot, Peter being very long and apt

to lop over? The lopping over brought a tear or two. A very teary and

tragic young heroine, this Harmony, prone to go about for the last day

or two with a damp little handkerchief tucked in her sleeve.

She felt her way down the staircase and into the cave below. Fate hangs

by a very slender thread sometimes. If a wagon had not lumbered by as

she reached the lowest step, so that she must wait and thus had time

to lower her veil, she would have been recognized at once by the little

Georgiev, waiting to ascend. But the wagon was there, Harmony lowered

her veil, the little Georgiev, passing a veiled young woman in the

gloom, went up the staircase with even pulses and calm and judicial

bearing, up to the tiny room a floor or two below Harmony's, where he

wrote reports to the Minister of War and mixed them with sonnets--to

Harmony.

Harmony went back to the Siebensternstrasse, having accomplished what

she had set out to do and being very wretched in consequence. Because

she was leaving the boy so soon she strove to atone for her coming

defection by making it a gala evening. The child was very happy. She

tucked him up in the salon, lighted all the candles, served him the

daintiest of suppers there. She brought in the mice and tied tiny bows

on their necks; she played checkers with him while the supper dishes

waited, and went down to defeat in three hilarious games; and last of

all she played to him, joyous music at first, then slower, drowsier

airs, until his heavy head dropped on his shoulder and she gathered him

up in tender arms and carried him to bed.

It was dawn when Marie arrived. Harmony was sleeping soundly when the

bell rang. Her first thought was that Peter had come back--but Peter

carried a key. The bell rang again, and she slipped on the old kimono

and went to the door.

“Is it Peter?” she called, hand on knob.

“I come from Peter. I have a letter,” in German.

“Who is it?”

“You do not know me--Marie Jedlicka. Please let me come in.”

Bewildered, Harmony opened the door, and like a gray ghost Marie slipped

by her and into the hall.

There was a gaslight burning very low; Harmony turned it up and faced

her visitor. She recognized her at once--the girl Dr. Stewart had been

with in the coffee-house.

“Something has happened to Peter!”

“No. He is well. He sent this to the Fraulein Wells.”

“I am the Fraulein Wells.”

Marie held out the letter and staggered. Harmony put her in a chair; she

was bewildered, almost frightened. Crisis of some sort was written on

Marie's face. Harmony felt very young, very incapable. The other girl

refused coffee, would not even go into the salon until Peter's letter

had been read. She was a fugitive, a criminal; the Austrian law is

severe to those that harbor criminals. Let Harmony read:--

“DEAR HARRY,--Will you forgive me for this and spread the wings of your

splendid charity over this poor child? Perhaps I am doing wrong in

sending her to you, but just now it is all I can think of. If she wants

to talk let her talk. It will probably help her. Also feed her, will

you? And if she cannot sleep, give her one of the blue powders I fixed

for Jimmy. I'll be back later to-day if I can make it.

“PETER”

Harmony glanced up from the letter. Marie sat drooping in her chair. Her

eyes were sunken in her head. She had recognized her at once, but any

surprise she may have felt at finding Harmony in Peter's apartment was

sunk in a general apathy, a compound of nervous reaction and fatigue.

During the long hours in the express she had worn herself out with

fright and remorse: there was nothing left now but exhaustion.

Harmony was bewildered, but obedient. She went back to the cold kitchen

and lighted a fire. She made Marie as comfortable as she could in the

salon, and then went into her room to dress. There she read the letter

again, and wondered if Peter had gone through life like this, picking up

waifs and strays and shouldering their burdens for them. Decidedly, life

with Peter was full of surprises.

She remembered, as she hurried into her clothes; the boys' club back

in America and the spelling-matches. Decidedly, also, Peter was an

occupation, a state of mind, a career. No musician, hoping for a career

of her own, could possibly marry Peter.

That was a curious morning in the old lodge of Maria Theresa, while

Stewart in the Pension Waldheim struggled back to consciousness, while

Peter sat beside him and figured on an old envelope the problem of

dividing among four enough money to support one, while McLean ate his

heart out in wretchedness in his hotel.

Marie told her story over the early breakfast, sitting with her thin

elbows on the table, her pointed chin in her palms.

“And now I am sorry,” she finished. “It has done no good. If it had only

killed her but she was not much hurt. I saw her rise and bend over him.”

Harmony was silent. She had no stock of aphorisms for the situation, no

worldly knowledge, only pity.

“Did Peter say he would recover?”

“Yes. They will both recover and go to America. And he will marry her.”

Perhaps Harmony would have been less comfortable, Marie less frank, had

Marie realized that this establishment of Peter's was not on the same

basis as Stewart's had been, or had Harmony divined her thought.

The presence of the boy was discovered by his waking. Marie was taken

in and presented. She looked stupefied. Certainly the Americans were a

marvelous people--to have taken into their house and their hearts this

strange child--if he were strange. Marie's suspicious little slum mind

was not certain.

In the safety and comfort of the little apartment the Viennese expanded,

cheered. She devoted herself to the boy, telling him strange folk tales,

singing snatches of songs for him. The youngster took a liking to her at

once. It seemed to Harmony, going about her morning routine, that Marie

was her solution and Peter's.

During the afternoon she took a package to the branch post-office and

mailed it by parcel-post to the Wollbadgasse. On the way she met Mrs.

Boyer face to face. That lady looked severely ahead, and Harmony passed

her with her chin well up and the eyes of a wounded animal.

McLean sent a great box of flowers that day. She put them, for lack of a

vase, in a pitcher beside Jimmy's bed.

At dusk a telegram came to say that Stewart was better and that Peter

was on his way down to Vienna. He would arrive at eight. Time was

very short now--seconds flashed by, minutes galloped. Harmony stewed

a chicken for supper, and creamed the breast for Jimmy. She fixed the

table, flowers in the center, the best cloth, Peter's favorite cheese.

Six o'clock, six-thirty, seven; Marie was telling Jimmy a fairy tale and

making the fairies out of rosebuds. The studylamp was lighted, the stove

glowing, Peter's slippers were out, his old smoking-coat, his pipe.

A quarter past seven. Peter would be near Vienna now and hungry. If he

could only eat his supper before he learned--but that was impossible.

He would come in, as he always did, and slam the outer door, and open it

again to close it gently, as he always did, and then he would look for

her, going from room to room until he found her--only to-night he would

not find her.

She did not say good-bye to Jimmy. She stood in the doorway and said a

little prayer for him. Marie had made the flower fairies on needles, and

they stood about his head on the pillow--pink and yellow and white elves

with fluffy skirts. Then, very silently, she put on her hat and jacket

and closed the outer door behind her. In the courtyard she turned and

looked up. The great chandelier in the salon was not lighted, but from

the casement windows shone out the comfortable glow of Peter's lamp.

CHAPTER XXI

Peter had had many things to think over during the ride down the

mountains. He had the third-class compartment to himself, and sat in a

corner, soft hat over his eyes. Life had never been particularly simple

to Peter--his own life, yes; a matter of three meals a day--he had had

fewer--a roof, clothing. But other lives had always touched him closely,

and at the contact points Peter glowed, fused, amalgamated. Thus he had

been many people--good, indifferent, bad, but all needy. Thus, also,

Peter had committed vicarious crimes, suffered vicarious illnesses,

starved, died, loved--vicariously.

And now, after years of living for others, Peter was living at last for

himself--and suffering.

Not that he understood exactly what ailed him. He thought he was tired,

which was true enough, having had little sleep for two or three

nights. Also he explained to himself that he was smoking too much, and

resolutely--lighted another cigarette.

Two things had revealed Peter's condition to himself: McLean had said:

“You are crazy in love with her.” McLean's statement, lacking subtlety,

had had a certain quality of directness. Even then Peter, utterly

miserable, had refused to capitulate, when to capitulate would have

meant the surrender of the house in the Siebensternstrasse. And the

absence from Harmony had shown him just where he stood.

He was in love, crazy in love. Every fiber of his long body glowed with

it, ached with it. And every atom of his reason told him what mad folly

it was, this love. Even if Harmony cared--and at the mere thought his

heart pounded--what madness for her, what idiocy for him! To ask her to

accept the half of--nothing, to give up a career to share his struggle

for one, to ask her to bury her splendid talent and her beauty under a

bushel that he might wave aloft his feeble light!

And there was no way out, no royal road to fortune by the route he had

chosen; nothing but grinding work, with a result problematical and years

ahead. There were even no legacies to expect, he thought whimsically.

Peter had known a chap once, struggling along in gynecology, who had

had a fortune left him by a G. P., which being interpreted is Grateful

Patient. Peter's patients had a way of living, and when they did drop

out, as happened now and then, had also a way of leaving Peter an unpaid

bill in token of appreciation; Peter had even occasionally helped to

bury them, by way, he defended himself, of covering up his mistakes.

Peter, sitting back in his corner, allowed the wonderful scenery to slip

by unnoticed. He put Harmony the Desirable out of his mind, and took

to calculating on a scrap of paper what could be done for Harmony the

Musician. He could hold out for three months, he calculated, and still

have enough to send Harmony home and to get home himself on a slow boat.

The Canadian lines were cheap. If Jimmy lived perhaps he could take him

along: if not--

He would have to put six months' work in the next three. That was not so

hard. He had got along before with less sleep, and thrived on it. Also

there must be no more idle evenings, with Jimmy in the salon propped in

a chair and Harmony playing, the room dark save for the glow from the

stove and for the one candle at Harmony's elbow.

All roads lead to Rome. Peter's thoughts, having traveled in a circle,

were back again to Harmony the Desirable--Harmony playing in the

firelight, Harmony Hushed over the brick stove, Harmony paring potatoes

that night in the kitchen when he--Harmony! Harmony!

Stewart knew all about the accident and its cause. Peter had surmised as

much when the injured man failed to ask for Marie.

He tested him finally by bringing Marie's name into the conversation.

Stewart ignored it, accepted her absence, refused to be drawn.

That was at first. During the day, however, as he gained strength, he

grew restless and uneasy. As the time approached for Peter to leave, he

was clearly struggling with himself. The landlady had agreed to care

for him and was bustling about the room. During one of her absences he

turned to Peter.

“I suppose Marie hasn't been round?”

“She came back last night.”

“Did she tell you?”

“Yes, poor child.”

“She's a devil!” Stewart said, and lay silent. Then: “I saw her shoot

that thing out in front of us, but there was no time--Where is she now?”

“Marie? I sent her to Vienna.”

Stewart fell back, relieved, not even curious.

“Thank Heaven for that!” he said. “I don't want to see her again. I'd do

something I'd be sorry for. The kindest thing to say for her is that she

was not sane.”

“No,” said Peter gravely, “she was hardly sane.”

Stewart caught his steady gaze and glanced away. For him Marie's little

tragedy had been written and erased. He would forget it magnanimously.

He had divided what he had with her, and she had repaid him by

attempting his life. And not only his life, but Anita's. Peter followed

his line of reasoning easily.

“It's quite a frequent complication, Stewart,” he said, “but every man

to whom it happens regards himself more or less as a victim. She fell in

love with you, that's all. Her conduct is contrary to the ethics of the

game, but she's been playing poor cards all along.”

“Where is she?”

“That doesn't matter, does it?”

Stewart had lain back and closed his eyes. No, it didn't matter. A sense

of great relief overwhelmed him. Marie was gone, frightened into hiding.

It was as if a band that had been about him was suddenly loosed: he

breathed deep, he threw out his arms and laughed from sheer reaction.

Then, catching Peter's not particularly approving eyes, he colored.

“Good Lord, Peter!” he said, “you don't know what I've gone through with

that little devil. And now she's gone!” He glanced round the disordered

room, where bandages and medicines crowded toilet articles on the

dressing-table, where one of Marie's small slippers still lay where it

had fallen under the foot of the bed, where her rosary still hung over

the corner of the table. “Ring for the maid, Peter, will you! I've got

to get this junk out of here. Some of Anita's people may come.”

During that afternoon ride, while the train clump-clumped down the

mountains, Peter thought of all this. Some of Marie's “junk” was in his

bag; her rosary lay in his breastpocket, along with the pin he had sent

her at Christmas. Peter happened on it, still in its box, which looked

as if it had been cried over. He had brought it with him. He admired it

very much, and it had cost money he could ill afford to spend.

It was late when the train drew into the station. Peter, encumbered with

Marie's luggage and his own, lowered his window and added his voice

to the chorus of plaintive calls: “Portier! Portier!” they shouted.

“Portier!” bawled Peter.

He was obliged to resort to the extravagance of a taxicab. Possibly

a fiacre would have done as well, but it cost almost as much and was

slower. Moments counted now: a second was an hour, an hour a decade. For

he was on his way to Harmony. Extravagance became recklessness. As soon

die for a sheep as a lamb! He stopped the taxicab and bought a bunch of

violets, stopped again and bought lilies of the valley to combine with

the violets, went out of his way to the American grocery and bought a

jar of preserved fruit.

By that time he was laden. The jar of preserves hung in one shabby

pocket, Marie's rosary dangled from another; the violets were buttoned

under his overcoat against the cold.

At the very last he held the taxi an extra moment and darted into the

delicatessen shop across the Siebensternstrasse. From there, standing

inside the doorway, he could see the lights in the salon across the way,

the glow of his lamp, the flicker that was the fire. Peter whistled,

stamped his cold feet, quite neglected--in spite of repeated warnings

from Harmony--to watch the Herr Schenkenkaufer weigh the cheese,

accepted without a glance a ten-Kronen piece with a hole in it.

“And how is the child to-day?” asked the Herr Schenkenkaufer, covering

the defective gold piece with conversation.

“I do not know; I have been away,” said Peter. He almost sang it.

“All is well or I would have heard. Wilhelm the Portier was but just now

here.”

“All well, of course,” sang Peter, eyes on the comfortable Floor of

his lamp, the flicker that was the fire. “Auf wiedersehen, Herr

Schenkenkaufer.”

“Auf wiedersehen, Herr Doktor.”

Violets, lilies-of-the-valley, cheese, rosary, luggage--thus Peter

climbed the stairs. The Portier wished to assist him, but Peter

declined. The Portier was noisy. There was to be a moment when Peter,

having admitted himself with extreme caution, would present himself

without so much as a creak to betray him, would stand in a doorway until

some one, Harmony perhaps--ah, Peter!--would turn and see him. She had a

way of putting one slender hand over her heart when she was startled.

Peter put down the jar of preserved peaches outside. It was to be a

second surprise. Also he put down the flowers; they were to be brought

in last of all. One surprise after another is a cumulative happiness.

Peter did not wish to swallow all his cake in one bite.

For once he did not slam the outer door, although he very nearly did,

and only caught it at the cost of a bruised finger. Inside he listened.

There was no clatter of dishes, no scurrying back and forth from table

to stove in the final excitement of dishing up. There was, however,

a highly agreeable odor of stewing chicken, a crisp smell of baking

biscuit.

In the darkened hall Peter had to pause to steady himself. For he had

a sudden mad impulse to shout Harmony's name, to hold out his arms, to

call her to him there in the warm darkness, and when she had come, to

catch her to him, to tell his love in one long embrace, his arms about

her, his rough cheek against her soft one. No wonder he grew somewhat

dizzy and had to pull himself together.

The silence rather surprised him, until he recalled that Harmony was

probably sewing in the salon, as she did sometimes when dinner was ready

to serve. The boy was asleep, no doubt. He stole along on tiptoe, hardly

breathing, to the first doorway, which was Jimmy's.

Jimmy was asleep. Round him were the pink and yellow and white flower

fairies with violet heads. Peter saw them and smiled. Then, his eyes

growing accustomed to the light, he saw Marie, face down on the floor,

her head on her arms. Still as she was, Peter knew she was not sleeping,

only fighting her battle over again and losing.

Some of the joyousness of his return fled from Peter, never to come

back. The two silent figures were too close to tragedy. Peter, with a

long breath, stole past the door and on to the salon. No Harmony there,

but the great room was warm and cheery. The table was drawn near the

stove and laid for Abendessen. The white porcelain coffee-pot had

boiled and extinguished itself, according to its method, and now gently

steamed.

On to the kitchen. Much odor of food here, two candles lighted

but burning low, a small platter with money on it, quite a little

money--almost all he had left Harmony when he went away.

Peter was dazed at first. Even when Marie, hastily summoned, had

discovered that Harmony's clothing was gone, when a search of the rooms

revealed the absence of her violin and her music, when at last the fact

stared them, incontestable, in the face, Peter refused to accept it. He

sat for a half-hour or even more by the fire in the salon, obstinately

refusing to believe she was gone, keeping the supper warm against her

return. He did not think or reason, he sat and waited, saying nothing,

hardly moving, save when a gust of wind slammed the garden gate. Then he

was all alive, sat erect, ears straining for her hand on the knob of the

outer door.

The numbness of the shock passed at last, to be succeeded by alarm.

During all the time that followed, that condition persisted, fright,

almost terror. Harmony alone in the city, helpless, dependent,

poverty-stricken. Harmony seeking employment under conditions Peter knew

too well. But with his alarm came rage.

Marie had never seen Peter angry. She shrank from this gaunt and

gray-faced man who raved up and down the salon, questioning the

frightened Portier, swearing fierce oaths, bringing accusation after

accusation against some unnamed woman to whom he applied epithets that

Marie's English luckily did not comprehend. Not a particularly heroic

figure was Peter that night: a frantic, disheveled individual, before

whom the Portier cowered, who struggled back to sanity through a berserk

haze and was liable to swift relapses into fury again.

To this succeeded at last the mental condition that was to be Peter's

for many days, hopelessness and alarm and a grim determination to keep

on searching.

There were no clues. The Portier made inquiries of all the cabstands in

the neighborhood. Harmony had not taken a cab. The delicatessen seller

had seen her go out that afternoon with a bundle and return without it.

She had been gone only an hour or so. That gave Peter a ray of hope that

she might have found a haven in the neighborhood--until he recalled the

parcel-post.

One possibility he clung to: Mrs. Boyer had made the mischief, but she

had also offered the girl a home. She might be at the Boyers'. Peter,

flinging on a hat and without his overcoat, went to the Boyers'. Time

was valuable, and he had wasted an hour, two hours, in useless rage. So

he took a taxicab, and being by this time utterly reckless of cost let

it stand while he interviewed the Boyers.

Boyer himself, partially undressed, opened the door to his ring. Peter

was past explanation or ceremonial.

“Is Harmony here?” he demanded.

“Harmony?”

“Harmony Wells. She's disappeared, missing.”

“Come in,” said Boyer, alive to the strain in Peter's voice. “I don't

know, I haven't heard anything. I'll ask Mrs. Boyer.”

During the interval it took for a whispered colloquy in the bedroom, and

for Mrs. Boyer to don her flannel wrapper, Peter suffered the tortures

of the damned. Whatever Mrs. Boyer had meant to say by way of protest at

the intrusion on the sacred privacy of eleven o'clock and bedtime died

in her throat. Her plump and terraced chin shook with agitation, perhaps

with guilt. Peter, however, had got himself in hand. He told a quiet

story; Boyer listened; Mrs. Boyer, clutching her wrapper about her

unstayed figure, listened.

“I thought,” finished Peter, “that since you had offered her a

refuge--from me--she might have come here.”

“I offered her a refuge--before I had been to the Pension Schwarz.”

“Ah!” said Peter slowly. “And what about the Pension Schwarz?”

“Need you ask? I learned that you were all put out there. I am obliged

to say, Dr. Byrne, that under the circumstances had the girl come here I

could hardly--Frank, I will speak!--I could hardly have taken her in.”

Peter went white and ducked as from a physical blow, stumbling out

into the hall again. There he thought of something to say in reply,

repudiation, thought better of it, started down the stairs.

Boyer followed him helplessly. At the street door, however, he put his

hand on Peter's shoulder. “You know, old man, I don't believe that.

These women--”

“I know,” said Peter simply. “Thank you. Good-night.”

CHAPTER XXII

Harmony's only thought had been flight, from Peter, from McLean, 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 barracklike houses, or peered, red-eyed, from

every alleyway.

And into this city of contrasts--of gray women of the night hugging

gratings for warmth and accosting passers-by with loathsome gestures, of

smug civilians hiding sensuous mouths under great mustaches, of dapper

soldiers to whom the young girl unattended was potential prey, into

this night city of terror, this day city of frightful contrasts, ermine

rubbing elbows with frost-nipped flesh, destitution sauntering along

the fashionable Prater 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 Scatchy and the

Big Soprano in the station who fled to her refuge on the upper floor of

the house in the Wollbadgasse. This was a hunted 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 Ronacher. 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 window-sill, 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 Reiff, slept late after her evening

out. Harmony, collapsing with hunger and faintness, 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 Schwarz, Boyers', the master's.

The breakfast brought back her strength and the morning air gave her

confidence. The district, too, was less formidable than the neighborhood

of the Karntnerstrasse 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 at 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 clerks with tiny mustaches.

She got addresses, followed them up, more consultations, more addresses,

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 a Konditorei, 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

Wollbadgasse 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 gasjet dared over his head, and she recognized the

short heavy figure and ardent eyes of Georgiev. 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 Georgiev

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 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 window-sill. 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

Georgiev in the room below, translating into cipher 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.” Georgiev, hands

behind his head and eyes upturned, was back in the Pension 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 Stadt 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 Monia Reiff, finding Harmony being

pressed for work, offered the girl a situation. The wage was small, but

she could live on it.

The inevitable was that she met Georgiev 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 hat and ran down to the shop near by.

It was on the return that she met Georgiev coming down. The afternoon

was dark and the staircase unlighted. In the gloom one face was as

another. Georgiev, listening intently, hearing footsteps, drew back

into the embrasure of a window and waited. His swarthy face was tense,

expectant. As the steps drew near, were light 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.

“Fraulein!”

“Herr Georgiev!”

The little Bulgarian was profoundly stirred. His fervid eyes gleamed.

He struggled against the barrier of language, broke out in passionate

Bulgar, switched to German punctuated 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, Herr Georgiev.”

“No?”

Harmony colored.

“I am--am hiding,” she explained. “Something very uncomfortable happened

and I came here. Please don't say you have seen me.”

Georgiev 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, I may 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

Georgiev.”

She held out her hand, and the little Bulgarian bent over it and kissed

it reverently. The Herr Georgiev's father was a nobleman in his own

country, and all the little spy's training had been to make of a girl

in Harmony's situation lawful prey. But in the spy's glowing heart there

was nothing for Harmony to fear. She knew it. He stood, hat in hand,

while she went up the staircase. Then:--

“Fraulein!” anxiously.

“Yes?”

“Was there below at the entrance a tall man in a green velours 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 velours hat below, but the little spy had an

uneasy feeling that eyes watched him, nevertheless. Life was growing

complicated for the Herr Georgiev.

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

work-room, that Monia Reiff's business lay almost altogether among the

demi-monde. The sewing-girls, of Marie's type many of them, found in

the customers 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 Lillian Le Grande. She was dancing at

one of the variety theaters.

Harmony was working on a costume for the Le Grande woman--a gold brocade

slashed to the knee at one side and with a fragment of bodice made of

gilt tissue. On the day after her encounter with Georgiev 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 Fraulein Le

Grande 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 dressmaker's amused eyes.

“Thou art very lovely, very chic,” said Monia. The dress added to

rather than relieved Harmony's discomfiture. She donned it in one of the

fitting-rooms, made by the simple expedient of curtaining 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 worshiped 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 rounded bosom was revealed. Then she drew the curtain aside

and stood smiling.

Le Grande paid the picture the tribute of a second's 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 am a bad color. I did not sleep last night.”

“Still no news, Fraulein?”

“None. He has disappeared utterly. That isn't so bad, is it? I could use

more rouge.”

“It is 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--I'd 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 had lapsed into English. Harmony, behind her curtain,

had clutched at her heart. Jimmy's mother!

CHAPTER XXIII

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 colored 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 haircloth

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 the 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 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.

McLean 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; McLean 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.

McLean 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 McLean 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's 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. McLean

had sent him a note by messenger early in the morning, to the effect

that a young girl answering Harmony's description had been seen in the

park at Schonbrunn and traced to an apartment near by.

Harmony had liked Schonbrunn, and it seemed possible. They had gone out

together, McLean optimistic, Peter afraid to hope. And it had been as he

feared--a pretty little violin student, indeed, who had been washing her

hair, and only opened the door an inch or two.

McLean made a lame apology, Peter too sick with disappointment to speak.

Then back to the city again.

He had taken to making a daily round, to the master's, to the Frau

Professor Bergmeister's, along the Graben and the Karntnerstrasse,

ending up at the Doctors' Club in the faint hope of a letter. Wrath

still smouldered 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 abasement. 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 gunboat

would sail up the right arm of the Danube and bombard the Pension

Schwarz.

Schonbrunn having failed them, McLean and, Peter went back to the city

in the street-car, neither one saying much. Even McLean'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 ultrafashionable

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 McLean 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. McLean 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 to-day. I'm having a couple of men in to see him to-night.

He doesn'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

like this all day and be up all night, you know. And Marie has him most

of the day.” McLean, 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 McLean, 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 let me 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 Elisabet. 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--”

“That's settled, then,” said McLean. “Nurse Elisabet, 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.

Marie is 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 McLean could do, but he made a mental reservation to

see Marie that night and slip her a little money. Peter need never know,

would never notice.

At a cross-street the car stopped, and the little Bulgarian, Georgiev,

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 a rest on Peter.

It was Georgiev'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,

recalled Peter outside the door of Harmony's room in the Pension

Schwarz--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 Demel's was thronged with pretty women eating American ices, with

military men drinking tea and nibbling Austrian pastry, the hour when

the flower women along the Stephansplatz 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 inaction was

intolerable.

And so, on that afternoon, he made his slow progress along the

Karntnerstrasse, 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 a

brilliant light shone on each face that passed.

Inside the clerks had noticed him. Two of them standing together by the

desk spoke of him: “He is there again, the gray man!”

“Ah, so! But, yes, there is his back!”

“Poor one, it is the Fraulein Engel he waits to see, perhaps.”

“More likely Le 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, Fraulein.”

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 Le 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 poor Peter's quest, that Peter was growing thin and

white, made her almost reel. 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 sleet 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 Reiff 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 Karntnerstrasse, 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 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 street-car

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 gameseller was a religious man.

The old stucco house dominated the neighborhood. From the time she left

the car Harmony saw it, its long flat roof black against the dark sky,

its rows of unlighted windows, its long wall broken in the center by

the gate. Now from across the street its whole facade 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. Some

one beyond range of where she stood was pacing the floor, back and

forward, back and forward. When he was worried or anxious Peter always

paced the door.

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 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 the memory of a dark looming house without cheer was

unthinkable. The gate was never locked. If she but 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 a habit of leaving various articles on her

window-sill 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 window-sill a jar of milk. And voices--some one 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 wont 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 Votivkirche 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 rabbits stirred uneasily in the hutch; a passing gust shook the

great tree overhead and sent down a sharp shower on to 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.”

CHAPTER XXIV

Walter Stewart 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.

Stewart, 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.”

Stewart's brows contracted.

“Damnation! Then the hotel has it, of course!”

“Probably.”

Stewart 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, Stewart. 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, Stewart, 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 Stewart's mind for several days.

It was the one thing Peter said that did stick. And before Stewart had

recovered enough to be up and about he had made up his mind to tell

Anita. In his mind he 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's 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

traveling. In the reassembling of the party she went to the Kurhaus in

the valley below the pension with one of the women who wished to take

the baths.

It was to the Kurhaus, then, that Stewart made his first excursion after

the accident. He went to dinner. Part of the chaperon'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. Stewart 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 swathed in white furs and leaning back in her steamer

chair.

Below lay the terrace of the Kurhaus, 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 Stewart. 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 women ever mistakes; the next moment he would

glance away, his face would harden. They were miles apart. And perhaps

the situation had piqued the girl. Certainly it had lost nothing for her

by its unusualness.

To-night there was a difference in the man. His eyes met hers 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 Stewart 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. Stewart, 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

credulity 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! The 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 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 to 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.

Stewart 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 cannon. And here, where a less-poised woman would have broken into

speech, Anita took the refuge of her kind and was silent. Stewart

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 had 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 any thing 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 was 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 other 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, an

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 set 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 are 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 Semmering the next day, against the protests of the doctor

and the pleadings of the chaperon. She did not see Stewart again. But

before she left, with the luggage gone and the fiacre 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 Kurhaus.

Having promised to see Marie, Stewart proceeded to carry out his promise

in his direct fashion. He left Semmering 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