The Street of Seven Stars
by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Hypertext Meanings and Commentaries
from the Encyclopedia of the Self
by Mark Zimmerman

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 sear 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 hismustache 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 sideglance 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 diningtable 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 never theless 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 vith 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 onceŽand not only the situation, but its

solution.

"Don't let her have him!" she said, putting down the letter.

"Bring him here. Oh, Peter, how good we must be to him!"

And that after all was how the thing was settled. So simple, so

obvious was it that these three expatriates, these waifs and

estrays, banded together against a common poverty, a common

loneliness, should share without question whatever was theirs to

divide. Peter and Anna gave cheerfully of their substance,

Harmony of her labor, that a small boy should be saved a tragic

knowledge until he was well enough to bear it, or until, if God

so willed, he might learn it himself without pain.

The friendly sentry on duty again that night proved singularly

blind. Thus it happened that, although the night was clear when

the twin dials of the Votivkirche showed nine o'clock, he did not

notice a cab that halted across the street from the hospital.

Still more strange that, although Peter passed within a dozen

feet of him, carrying a wriggling and excited figure wrapped in a

blanket and insisting on uncovering its feet, the sentry was able

the next day to say that he had observed such a person carrying a

bundle, but that it was a short stocky person, quite lame, and

that the bundle was undoubtedly clothing going to the laundry.

Perhaps--it is just possible--the sentry had his suspicions. It

is undeniable that as Jimmy in the cab on Peter's knee, with

Peter's arm close about him, looked back at the hospital, the

sentry was going through the manual of arms very solemnly under

the stars and facing toward the carriage.

CHAPTER XIV

For two days at Semmering it rained. The Raxalpe and the

Schneeberg sulked behind walls of mist. From the little balcony

of the Pension Waldheim one looked out over a sea of cloud,

pierced here and there by islands that were crags or by the tops

of sunken masts that were evergreen trees. The roads were masses

of slippery mud, up which the horses steamed and sweated. The

gray cloud fog hung over everything; the barking of a dog loomed

out of it near at hand where no dog was to be seen. Children

cried and wild birds squawked; one saw them not.

During the second night a landslide occurred on the side of the

mountain with a rumble like the noise of fifty trains. In the

morning, the rain clouds lifting for a moment, Marie saw the

narrow yellow line of the slip.

Everything was saturated with moisture. It did no good to close

the heavy wooden shutters at night: in the morning the air of the

room was sticky and clothing was moist to the touch. Stewart,

confined to the house, grew irritable.

Marie watched him anxiously. She knew quite well by what slender

tenure she held her man. They had nothing in common, neither

speech nor thought. And the little Marie's love for Stewart,

grown to be a part of her, was largely maternal. She held him by

mothering him, by keeping him comfortable, not by a great

reciprocal passion that might in time have brought him to her in

chains.

And now he was uncomfortable. He chafed against the confinement;

he resented the food, the weather. Even Marie's content at her

unusual leisure irked him. He accused her of purring like a cat

by the fire, and stamped out more than once, only to be driven in

by the curious thunderstorms of early Alpine winter.

On the night of the second day the weather changed. Marie,

awakening early, stepped out on to the balcony and closed the

door carefully behind her. A new world lay beneath her, a marvel

of glittering branches, of white plain far below; the snowy mane

of the Raxalpe was become a garment. And from behind the villa

came the cheerful sound of sleigh-bells, of horses' feet on crisp

snow, of runners sliding easily along frozen roads. Even the

barking of the dog in the next yard had ceased rumbling and

become sharp staccato.

The balcony extended round the corner of the house. Marie,

eagerly discovering her new world, peered about, and seeing no

one near ventured so far. The road was in view, and a small girl

on ski was struggling to prevent a collision between two plump

feet. Even as Marie saw her the inevitable happened and she went

headlong into a drift. A governess who had been kneeling before a

shrine by the road hastily crossed herself and ran to the rescue.

It was a marvelous morning, a day of days. The governess and the

child went on out of vision. Marie stood still, looking at the

shrine. A drift had piled about its foot, where the governess had

placed a bunch of Alpine flowers. Down on her knees on the

balcony went the little Marie, regardless of the snow, and prayed

to the shrine of the Virgin below--for what? For forgiveness? For

a better life? Not at all. She prayed that the heels of the

American girl would keep her in out of the snow.

The prayer of the wicked availeth nothing; even the godly at

times must suffer disappointment. And when one prays of heels,

who can know of the yearning back of the praying? Marie, rising

and dusting her chilled knees, saw the party of Americans on the

road, clad in stout boots and swinging along gayly. Marie

shrugged her shoulders resignedly. She should have gone to the

shrine itself; a balcony was not a holy place. But one thing she

determined--the Americans went toward the Sonnwendstein. She

would advise against the Sonnwendstein for that day.

Marie's day of days had begun wrong after all. For Stewart rose

with the Sonnwendstein in his mind, and no suggestion of Marie's

that in another day a path would be broken had any effect on him.

He was eager to be off, committed the extravagance of ordering an

egg apiece for breakfast, and finally proclaimed that if Marie

feared the climb he would go alone.

Marie made many delays: she dressed slowly, and must run back to

see if the balcony door was securely closed. At a little shop

where they stopped to buy mountain sticks she must purchase

postcards and send them at once. Stewart was fairly patient: air

and exercise were having their effect.

It was eleven o'clock when, having crossed the valley, they

commenced to mount the slope of the Sonnwendstein. The climb was

easy; the road wound back and forward on itself so that one

ascended with hardly an effort. Stewart gave Marie a hand here

and there, and even paused to let her sit on a boulder and rest.

The snow was not heavy; he showed her the footprints of a party

that had gone ahead, and to amuse her tried to count the number

of people. When he found it was five he grew thoughtful. There

were five in Anita's party. Thanks to Marie's delays they met the

Americans coming down. The meeting was a short one: the party

went on down, gayly talking. Marie and Stewart climbed silently.

Marie's day was spoiled; Stewart had promised to dine at the

hotel.

Even the view at the tourist house did not restore Marie's fallen

spirits. What were the Vienna plain and the Styrian Alps to her,

with this impatient and frowning man beside her consulting his

watch and computing the time until he might see the American

again? What was prayer, if this were its answer?

They descended rapidly, Stewart always in the lead and setting a

pace that Marie struggled in vain to meet. To her tentative and

breathless remarks he made brief answer, and only once in all

that time did he volunteer a remark. They had reached the Hotel

Erzherzog in the valley. The hotel was still closed, and Marie,

panting, sat down on an edge of the terrace.

"We have been very foolish," he said.

"Why?"

"Being seen together like that."

"But why? Could you not walk with any woman?"

"It's not that," said Stewart hastily. "I suppose once does not

matter. But we can't be seen together all the time."

Marie turned white. The time had gone by when an incident of the

sort could have been met with scorn or with threats; things had

changed for Marie Jedlicka since the day Peter had refused to

introduce her to Harmony. Then it had been vanity; now it was

life itself.

"What you mean," she said with pale lips, "is that we must not be

seen together at all. Must I--do you wish me to remain a prisoner

while you--" she choked.

"For Heaven's sake," he broke out brutally, "don't make a scene.

There are men cutting ice over there. Of course you are not a

prisoner. You may go where you like."

Marie rose and picked up her muff.

Marie's sordid little tragedy played itself out in Semmering.

Stewart neglected her almost completely; he took fewer and fewer

meals at the villa. In two weeks he spent one evening with the

girl, and was so irritable that she went to bed crying. The

little mountain resort was filling up; there were more and more

Americans. Christmas was drawing near and a dozen or so American

doctors came up, bringing their families for the holidays. It was

difficult to enter a shop without encountering some of them. To

add to the difficulty, the party at the hotel, finding it crowded

there, decided to go into a pension and suggested moving to the

Waldheim.

Stewart himself was wretchedly uncomfortable. Marie's tragedy was

his predicament. He disliked himself very cordially, loathing

himself and his situation with the new-born humility of the

lover. For Stewart was in love for the first time in his life.

Marie knew it. She had not lived with him for months without

knowing his every thought, every mood. She grew bitter and hard

those days, sitting alone by the green stove in the Pension

Waldheim, or leaning, elbows on the rail, looking from the

balcony over the valley far below. Bitter and hard, that is,

during his absences; he had but to enter the room and her rage

died, to be replaced with yearning and little, shy, tentative

advances that he only tolerated. Wild thoughts came to Marie,

especially at night, when the stars made a crown over the Rax,

and in the hotel an orchestra played, while people dined and

laughed and loved.

She grew obstinate, too. When in his desperation Stewart

suggested that they go back to Vienna she openly scoffed.

"Why?" she demanded. "That you may come back here to her, leaving

me there?"

"My dear girl," he flung back exasperated, "this affair was not a

permanent one. You knew that at the start."

"You have taken me away from my work. I have two months'

vacation. It is but one month."

"Go back and let me pay--"

"No!"

In pursuance of the plan to leave the hotel the American party

came to see the Waldheim, and catastrophe almost ensued. Luckily

Marie was on the balcony when the landlady flung open the door,

and announced it as Stewart's apartment. But Stewart had a bad

five minutes and took it out, manlike, on the girl.

Stewart had another reason for not wishing to leave Semmering.

Anita was beautiful, a bit of a coquette, too; as are most pretty

women. And Stewart was not alone in his devotion. A member of the

party, a New Yorker named Adam, was much in love with the girl

and indifferent who knew it. Stewart detested him.

In his despair Stewart wrote to Peter Byrne. It was

characteristic of Peter that, however indifferent people might be

in prosperity,they always turned to him in trouble. Stewart's

letter concluded:--

"I have made out a poor case for myself; but I'm in a hole, as

you can see. I would like to chuck everything here and sail for

home with these people who go in January. But, confound it,

Byrne, what am I to do with Marie? And that brings me to what I

've been wanting to say all along, and haven't had the courage

to. Marie likes you and you rather liked her, didn't you? You

could talk her into reason if anybody could. Now that you know

how things are, can't you come up over Sunday? It's asking a lot,

and I know it; but things are pretty bad."

Peter received the letter on the morning of the day before

Christmas. He read it several times and, recalling the look he

had seen more than once in Marie Jedlicka's eyes, he knew that

things were very bad, indeed.

But Peter was a man of family in those days, and Christmas is a

family festival not to be lightly ignored. He wired to Stewart

that he would come up as soon as possible after Christmas. Then,

because of the look in Marie's eyes and because he feared for her

a sad Christmas, full of heartaches and God knows what

loneliness, he bought her a most hideous brooch, which he thought

admirable in every way and highly ornamental and which he could

not afford at all. This he mailed, with a cheery greeting, and

feeling happier and much poorer made his way homeward.

CHAPTER XV

Christmas-Eve in the saloon of Maria Theresa! Christmas-Eve, with

the great chandelier recklessly ablaze and a pig's head with

cranberry eyes for supper! Christmas-Eve, with a two-foot tree

gleaming with candles on the stand, and beside the stand, in a

huge chair, Jimmy!

It had been a busy day for Harmony. In the morning there had been

shopping and marketing, and such a temptation to be reckless,

with the shops full of ecstasies and the old flower women fairly

overburdened. There had been anxieties, too, such as the pig's

head, which must be done a certain way, and Jimmy, who must be

left with the Portier's wife as nurse while all of them went to

the hospital. The house revolved around Jimmy now, Jimmy, who

seemed the better for the moving, and whose mother as yet had

failed to materialize.

In the afternoon Harmony played at the hospital. Peter took her

as the early twilight was falling in through the gate where the

sentry kept guard and so to the great courtyard. In this grim

playground men wandered about, smoking their daily allowance of

tobacco and moving to keep warm, offscourings of the barracks,

derelicts of the slums, with here and there an honest citizen

lamenting a Christmas away from home. The hospital was always

pathetic to Harmony; on this Christmas-Eve she found it

harrowing. Its very size shocked her, that there should be so

much suffering, so much that was appalling, frightful,

insupportable. Peter felt her quiver under his hand. A hospital

in festivity is very affecting. It smiles through its tears. And

in every assemblage there are sharply defined lines of

difference. There are those who are going home soon, God willing;

there are those who will go home some time after long days and

longer nights. And there are those who will never go home and who

know it. And because of this the ones who are never going home

are most festively clad, as if, by way of compensation, the

nurses mean to give them all future Christmasses in one. They

receive an extra orange, or a pair of gloves, perhaps,--and they

are not the less grateful because they understand. And when

everything is over they lay away in the bedside stand the gloves

they will never wear, and divide the extra orange with a less

fortunate one who is almost recovered. Their last Christmas is

past.

"How beautiful the tree was!" they say. Or, "Did you hear how the

children sang? So little, to sing like that! It made me think--of

angels."

Peter led Harmony across the courtyard, through many twisting

corridors, and up and down more twisting staircases to the room

where she was to play. There were many Christmas trees in the

hospital that afternoon; no one hall could have held the

thousands of patients, the doctors, the nurses. Sometimes a

single ward had its own tree, its own entertainment. Occasionally

two or three joined forces, preempted a lecture-room, and wheeled

or hobbled or carried in their convalescents. In such case an

imposing audience was the result.

Into such a room Peter led Harmony. It was an amphitheater, the

seats rising in tiers, half circle above half circle, to the dusk

of the roof. In the pit stood the tree, candle-lighted. There was

no other illumination in the room. The semi-darkness, the blazing

tree, the rows of hopeful, hoping, hopeless, rising above, white

faces over white gowns, the soft rustle of expectancy, the

silence when the Dozent with the red beard stepped out and began

to read an address--all caught Harmony by the throat. Peter,

keenly alive to everything she did, felt rather than heard her

soft sob.

Peter saw the hospital anew that dark afternoon, saw it through

Harmony's eyes. Layer after layer his professional callus fell

away, leaving him quick again. He had lived so long close to the

heart of humanity that he had reduced its throbbing to beats that

might be counted. Now, once more, Peter was back in the early

days, when a heart was not a pump, but a thing that ached or

thrilled or struggled, that loved or hated or yearned.

The orchestra, insisting on sadly sentimental music, was fast

turning festivity into gloom. It played Handel's "Largo"; it

threw its whole soul into the assurance that the world, after

all, was only a poor place, that Heaven was a better. It preached

resignation with every deep vibration of the cello. Harmony

fidgeted.

"How terrible!" she whispered. "To turn their Christmas-Eve into

mourning! Stop them!"

"Stop a German orchestra?"

"They are crying, some of them. Oh, Peter!"

The music came to an end at last. Tears were dried. Followed

recitations, gifts, a speech of thanks from Nurse Elisabet for

the patients. Then--Harmony.

Harmony never remembered afterward what she had played. It was

joyous, she knew, for the whole atmosphere changed. Laughter

came; even the candles burned more cheerfully. When she had

finished, a student in a white coat asked her to play a German

Volkspiel, and roared it out to her accompaniment with much vigor

and humor. The audience joined in, at first timidly, then

lustily.

Harmony stood alone by the tree, violin poised, smiling at the

applause. Her eyes, running along the dim amphitheater, sought

Peter's, and finding them dwelt there a moment. Then she began to

play softly and as softly the others sang.

"Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,"--they sang, with upturned eyes.

"Alles schlaeft, einsam wacht..."

Visions came to Peter that afternoon in the darkness, visions in

which his poverty was forgotten or mattered not at all. Visions

of a Christmas-Eve in a home that he had earned, of a tree, of a

girl-woman, of a still and holy night, of a child.

"Nur das traute, hoch heilige Paar Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar

Schlaf' in himmlischer Ruh', Schlaf' in himmlischer Ruh'," they

sang.

There was real festivity at the old lodge of Maria Theresa that

night.

Jimmy had taken his full place in the household. The best room,

which had been Anna's, had been given up to him. Here, carefully

tended, with a fire all day in the stove, Jimmy reigned from the

bed. To him Harmony brought her small puzzles and together they

solved them.

"Shall it be a steak to-night?" thus Harmony humbly. "Or chops?"

"With tomato sauce?"

"If Peter allows, yes."

Much thinking on Jimmy's part, and then:--

"Fish," he would decide. "Fish with egg dressing."

They would argue for a time, and compromise on fish.

The boy was better. Peter shook his head over any permanent

improvement, but Anna fiercely seized each crumb of hope. Many

and bitter were the battles she and Peter fought at night over

his treatment, frightful the litter of authorities Harmony put

straight every morning.

The extra expense was not much, but it told. Peter's carefully

calculated expenditures felt the strain. He gave up a course in

X-ray on which he had set his heart and cut off his hour in the

coffee-house as a luxury. There was no hardship about the latter

renunciation. Life for Peter was spelling itself very much in

terms of Harmony and Jimmy those days. He resented anything that

took him from them.

There were anxieties of a different sort also. Anna's father was

failing. He had written her a feeble, half-senile appeal to let

bygones be bygones and come back to see him before he died. Anna

was Peter's great prop. What would he do should she decide to go

home? He had built his house on the sand, indeed.

So far the threatened danger of a mother to Jimmy had not

materialized. Peter was puzzled, but satisfied. He still wrote

letters of marvelous adventure; Jimmy still watched for them,

listened breathless, treasured them under his pillow. But he

spoke less of his father. The open page of his childish mind was

being written over with new impressions. "Dad" was already a

memory; Peter and Harmony and Anna were realities. Sometimes he

called Peter "Dad." At those times Peter caught the boy to him in

an agony of tenderness.

And as the little apartment revolved round Jimmy, so was this

Christmas-Eve given up to him. All day he had stayed in bed for

the privilege of an extra hour propped up among pillows in the

salon. All day he had strung little red berries that looked like

cranberries for the tree, or fastened threads to the tiny cakes

that were for trimming only, and sternly forbidden to eat.

A marvelous day that for Jimmy. Late in the afternoon the

Portier, with a collar on, had mounted the stairs and sheepishly

presented him with a pair of white mice in a wooden cage. Jimmy

was thrilled. The cage was on his knees all evening, and one of

the mice was clearly ill of a cake with pink icing. The Portier's

gift was a stealthy one, while his wife was having coffee with

her cousin, the brushmaker. But the spirit Of Christmas does

strange things. That very evening, while the Portier was

roistering in a beer hall preparatory to the midnight mass, came

the Portier's wife, puffing from the stairs, and brought a puzzle

book that only the initiated could open, and when one succeeded

at last there was a picture of the Christ-Child within.

Young McLean came to call that evening--came to call and remained

to worship. It was the first time since Mrs. Boyer that a visitor

had come. McLean, interested with everything and palpably not

shocked, was a comforting caller. He seemed to Harmony, who had

had bad moments since the day of Mrs. Boyer's visit, to put the

hallmark of respectability on the household, to restore it to

something it had lost or had never had.

She was quite unconscious of McLean's admiration. She and Anna

put Jimmy to bed. The tree candles were burned out; Peter was

extinguishing the dying remnants when Harmony came back. McLean

was at the piano, thrumming softly. Peter, turning round

suddenly, surprised an expression on the younger man's face that

startled him.

For that one night Harmony had laid aside her mourning, and wore

white, soft white, tucked in at the neck, short-sleeved,

trailing. Peter had never seen her in white before.

It was Peter's way to sit back and listen: his steady eyes were

always alert, good-humored, but he talked very little. That night

he was unusually silent. He sat in the shadow away from the lamp

and watched the two at the piano: McLean playing a bit of this or

that, the girl bending over a string of her violin. Anna came in

and sat down near him.

"The boy is quite fascinated," she whispered. "Watch his eyes!"

"He is a nice boy." This from Peter, as if he argued with

himself.

"As men go!" This was a challenge Peter was usually quick to

accept. That night he only smiled. "It would be a good thing for

her: his people are wealthy."

Money, always money! Peter ground his teeth over his pipestem.

Eminently it would be a good thing for Harmony, this nice boy in

his well-made evening clothes, who spoke Harmony's own language

of music, who was almost speechless over her playing, and who

looked up at her with eyes in which admiration was not unmixed

with adoration.

Peter was restless. As the music went on he tiptoed out of the

room and took to pacing up and down the little corridor. Each

time as he passed the door he tried not to glance in; each time

he paused involuntarily. Jealousy had her will of him that night,

jealousy, when he had never acknowledged even to himself how much

the girl was to him.

Jimmy was restless. Usually Harmony's music put him to sleep; but

that night he lay awake, even after Peter had closed all the

doors. Peter came in and sat with him in the dark, going over now

and then to cover him, or to give him a drink, or to pick up the

cage of mice which Jimmy insisted on having beside him and which

constantly slipped off on to the floor. After a time Peter

lighted the night-light, a bit of wick on a cork floating in a

saucer of lard oil, and set it on the bedside table. Then round

it he arranged Jimmy's treasures, the deer antlers, the cage of

mice, the box, the wooden sentry. The boy fell asleep. Peter sat

in the room, his dead pipe in his teeth, and thought of many

things.

It was very late when young McLean left. The two had played until

they stopped for very weariness. Anna had yawned herself off to

bed. From Jimmy's room Peter could hear the soft hum of their

voices.

"You have been awfully good to me," McLean said as he finally

rose to go. "I--I want you to know that I'll never forget this

evening, never."

"It has been splendid, hasn't it? Since little Scatchy left there

has been no one for the piano. I have been lonely sometimes for

some one to talk music to."

Lonely! Poor Peter!

"Then you will let me come back?"

"Will I, indeed! I--I'll be grateful."

"How soon would be proper? I dare say to-morrow you'll be

busy--Christmas and all that."

"Do you mean you would like to come to-morrow?"

"If old Peter wouldn't be fussed. He might think--"

"Peter always wants every one to be happy. So if you really

care--"

"And I'll not bore you?"

"Rather not!"

"How--about what time?"

"In the afternoon would be pleasant, I think. And then Jimmy can

listen. He loves music."

McLean, having found his fur-lined coat, got into it as slowly as

possible. Then he missed a glove, and it must be searched for in

all the dark corners of the salon until found in his pocket. Even

then he hesitated, lingered, loath to break up this little world

of two.

"You play wonderfully," he said.

"So do you."

"If only something comes of it! It's curious, isn't it, when you

think of it? You and I meeting here in the center of Europe and

both of us working our heads off for something that may never pan

out."

There was something reminiscent about that to Harmony. It was not

until after young McLean had gone that she recalled. It was

almost word for word what Peter had said to her in the

coffee-house the night they met. She thought it very curious, the

coincidence, and pondered it, being ignorant of the fact that it

is always a matter for wonder when the man meets the woman, no

matter where. Nothing is less curious, more inevitable, more

amazing. "You and I," forsooth, said Peter!

"You and I," cried young McLean!

CHAPTER XVI

Quite suddenly Peter's house, built on the sand, collapsed. The

shock came on Christmas-Day, after young McLean, now frankly

infatuated, had been driven home by Peter.

Peter did it after his own fashion. Harmony, with unflagging

enthusiasm, was looking tired. Suggestions to this effect rolled

off McLean's back like rain off a roof. Finally Peter gathered up

the fur-lined coat, the velours hat, gloves, and stick, and

placed them on the piano in front of the younger man.

"I'm sorry you must go," said Peter calmly, "but, as you say,

Miss Wells is tired and there is supper to be eaten. Don't let me

hurry you."

The Portier was at the door as McLean, laughing and protesting,

went out. He brought a cablegram for Anna. Peter took it to her

door and waited uneasily while she read it.

It was an urgent summons home; the old father was very low. He

was calling for her, and a few days or week' would see the end.

There were things that must be looked after. The need of her was

imperative. With the death the old man's pension would cease and

Anna was the bread-winner.

Anna held the paper out to Peter and sat down. Her nervous

strength seemed to have deserted her. All at once she was a

stricken, elderly woman, with hope wiped out of her face and

something nearer resentment than grief in its place.

"It has come, Peter," she said dully. "I always knew it couldn't

last. They've always hung about my neck, and now--"

"Do you think you must go? Isn't there some way? If things are so

bad you could hardly get there in time, and--you must think of

yourself a little, Anna."

"I am not thinking of anything else. Peter, I'm an uncommonly

selfish woman, but I--"

Quite without warning she burst out crying, unlovely, audible

weeping that shook her narrow shoulders. Harmony heard the sound

and joined them. After a look at Anna she sat down beside her and

put a white arm over her shoulders. She did not try to speak.

Anna's noisy grief subsided as suddenly as it came. She patted

Harmony's hand in mute acknowledgment and dried her eyes.

"I'm not grieving, child," she said; "I'm only realizing what a

selfish old maid I am. I'm crying because I'm a disappointment to

myself. Harry, I'm going back to America."

And that, after hours of discussion, was where they ended. Anna

must go at once. Peter must keep the apartment, having Jimmy to

look after and to hide. What was a frightful dilemma to him and

to Harmony Anna took rather lightly.

"You'll find some one else to take my place," she said. "If I had

a day I could find a dozen."

"And in the interval?" Harmony asked, without looking at Peter.

"The interval! Tut! Peter is your brother, to all intents and

purposes. And if you are thinking of scandal-mongers, who will

know?"

Having determined to go, no arguments moved Anna, nor could

either of the two think of anything to urge beyond a situation

she refused to see, or rather a situation she refused to

acknowledge. She was not as comfortable as she pretended. During

all that long night, while snow sifted down into the ugly yard

and made it beautiful, while Jimmy slept and the white mice

played, while Harmony tossed and tried to sleep and Peter sat in

his cold room and smoked his pipe, Anna packed her untidy

belongings and added a name now and then to a list that was meant

for Peter, a list of possible substitutes for herself in the

little household.

She left early the next morning, a grim little person who bent

over the sleeping boy hungrily, and insisted on carrying her own

bag down the stairs. Harmony did not go to the station, but

stayed at home, pale and silent, hovering around against Jimmy's

awakening and struggling against a feeling of panic. Not that she

feared Peter or herself. But she was conventional; shielded girls

are accustomed to lean for a certain support on the proprieties,

as bridgeplayers depend on rules.

Peter came back to breakfast, but ate little. Harmony did not

even sit down, but drank her cup of coffee standing, looking down

at the snow below. Jimmy still slept.

"Won't you sit down?" said Peter.

"I'm not hungry, thank you."

"You can sit down without eating."

Peter was nervous. To cover his uneasiness he was distinctly

gruff. He pulled a chair out for her and she sat down. Now that

they were face to face the tension was lessened. Peter laid

Anna's list on the table between them and bent over it toward

her.

"You are hurting me very much, Harry," he said. "Do you know

why?"

"I? I am only sorry about Anna. I miss her. I--I was fond of

her."

"So was I. But that isn't it, Harry. It's something else."

"I'm uncomfortable, Peter."

"So am I. I'm sorry you don't trust me. For that's it."

"Not at all. But, Peter, what will people say?'

"A great deal, if they know. Who is to know? How many people know

about us? A handful, at the most, McLean and Mrs. Boyer and one

or two others. Of course I can go away until we get some one to

take Anna's place, but you'd be here alone at night, and if the

youngster had an attack--"

"Oh, no, don't leave him!"

"It's holiday time. There are no clinics until next week. If

you'll put up with me--"

"Put up with you, when it is your apartment I use, your food I

eat!" She almost choked. "Peter, I must talk about money."

"I'm coming to that. Don't you suppose you more than earn

everything? Doesn't it humiliate me hourly to see you working

here?"

"Peter! Would you rob me of my last vestige of self-respect?"

This being unanswerable, Peter fell back on his major premise.

"If you'll put up with me for a day or so I'll take this list of

Anna's and hunt up some body. Just describe the person you desire

and I'll find her." He assumed a certainty he was far from

feeling, but it reassured the girl. "A woman, of course?"

"Of course. And not young."

"'Not young,'" wrote Peter. "Fat?"

Harmony recalled Mrs. Boyer's ample figure and shook her head.

"Not too stout. And agreeable. That's most important."

"'Agreeable,'" wrote Peter. "Although Anna was hardly agreeable,

in the strict sense of the word, was she?"

"She was interesting, and--and human."

"'Human!'" wrote Peter. "Wanted, a woman, not young, not too

stout, agreeable and human. Shall I advertise?"

The strain was quite gone by that time. Harmony was smiling.

Jimmy, waking, called for food, and the morning of the first day

was under way.

Peter was well content that morning, in spite of an undercurrent

of uneasiness. Before this Anna had shared his proprietorship

with him. Now the little household was his. His vicarious

domesticity pleased him. He strutted about, taking a new view of

his domain; he tightened a doorknob and fastened a noisy window.

He inspected the coal-supply and grumbled over its quality. He

filled the copper kettle on the stove, carried in the water for

Jimmy's morning bath, cleaned the mouse cage. He even insisted on

peeling the little German potatoes, until Harmony cried aloud at

his wastefulness and took the knife from him.

And afterward, while Harmony in the sickroom read aloud and Jimmy

put the wooden sentry into the cage to keep order, he got out his

books and tried to study. But he did little work. His book lay on

his knee, his pipe died beside him. The strangeness of the

situation came over him, sitting there, and left him rather

frightened. He tried to see it from the viewpoint of an outsider,

and found himself incredulous and doubting. McLean would resent

the situation. Even the Portier was a person to reckon with. The

skepticism of the American colony was a thing to fear and avoid.

And over all hung the incessant worry about money; he could just

manage alone. He could not, by any method he knew of, stretch his

resources to cover a separate arrangement for himself. But he had

undertaken to shield a girl-woman and a child, and shield them he

would and could.

Brave thoughts were Peter's that snowy morning in the great salon

of Maria Theresa, with the cat of the Portier purring before the

fire; brave thoughts, cool reason, with Harmony practicing scales

very softly while Jimmy slept, and with Anna speeding through a

white world, to the accompaniment of bitter meditation.

Peter had meant to go to Semmering that day, but even the urgency

of Marie's need faded before his own situation. He wired Stewart

that he would come as soon as he could, and immediately after

lunch departed for the club, Anna's list in his pocket, Harmony's

requirements in mind. He paused at Jimmy's door on his way out.

"What shall it be to-day?" he inquired. "A postcard or a crayon?"

"I wish I could have a dog."

"We'll have a dog when you are better and can take him walking.

Wait until spring, son."

"Some more mice?"

"You will have them--but not to-day."

"What holiday comes next?"

"New Year's Day. Suppose I bring you a New Year's card."

"That's right," agreed Jimmy. "One I can send to Dad. Do you

think he will come back this year?" wistfully.

Peter dropped on his baggy knees beside the bed and drew the

little wasted figure to him.

"I think you'll surely see him this year, old man," he said

huskily.

Peter walked to the Doctors' Club. On the way he happened on

little Georgiev, the Bulgarian, and they went on together. Peter

managed to make out that Georgiev was studying English, and that

he desired to know the state of health and the abode of the

Fraulein Wells. Peter evaded the latter by the simple expedient

of pretending not to understand. The little Bulgarian watched him

earnestly, his smouldering eyes not without suspicion. There had

been much talk in the Pension Schwarz about the departure

together of the three Americans. The Jew from Galicia still raved

over Harmony's beauty.

Georgiev rather hoped, by staying by Peter, to be led toward his

star. But Peter left him at the Doctors' Club, still amiable, but

absolutely obtuse to the question nearest the little spy's heart.

The club was almost deserted. The holidays had taken many of the

members out of town. Other men were taking advantage of the

vacation to see the city, or to make acquaintance again with

families they had hardly seen during the busy weeks before

Christmas. The room at the top of the stairs where the wives of

the members were apt to meet for chocolate and to exchange the

addresses of dressmakers was empty; in the reading room he found

McLean. Although not a member, McLean was a sort of honorary

habitue, being allowed the privilege of the club in exchange for

a dependable willingness to play at entertainments of all sorts.

It was in Peter's mind to enlist McLean's assistance in his

difficulties. McLean knew a good many people. He was popular,

goodlooking, and in a colony where, unlike London and Paris, the

great majority were people of moderate means, he was

conspicuously well off. But he was also much younger than Peter

and intolerant with the insolence of youth. Peter was thinking

hard as he took off his overcoat and ordered beer.

The boy was in love with Harmony already; Peter had seen that, as

he saw many things. How far his love might carry him, Peter had

no idea. It seemed to him, as he sat across the reading-table and

studied him over his magazine, that McLean would resent bitterly

the girl's position, and that when he learned it a crisis might

be precipitated.

One of three things might happen: He might bend all his energies

to second Peter's effort to fill Anna's place, to find the right

person; he might suggest taking Anna's place himself, and insist

that his presence in the apartment would be as justifiable as

Peter's; or he might do at once the thing Peter felt he would do

eventually, cut the knot of the difficulty by asking Harmony to

marry him. Peter, greeting him pleasantly, decided not to tell

him anything, to keep him away if possible until the thing was

straightened out, and to wait for an hour at the club in the hope

that a solution might stroll in for chocolate and gossip.

In any event explanation to McLean would have required

justification. Peter disliked the idea. He could humble himself,

if necessary, to a woman; he could admit his asininity in

assuming the responsibility of Jimmy, for instance, and any woman

worthy of the name, or worthy of living in the house with

Harmony, would understand. But McLean was young, intolerant. He

was more than that, though Peter, concealing from himself just

what Harmony meant to him, would not have admitted a rival for

what he had never claimed. But a rival the boy was. Peter, calmly

reading a magazine and drinking his Munich beer, was in the grip

of the fiercest jealousy. He turned pages automatically, to

recall nothing of what he had read.

McLean, sitting across from him, watched him surreptitiously. Big

Peter, aggressively masculine, heavy of shoulder, direct of

speech and eye, was to him the embodiment of all that a woman

should desire in a man. He, too, was jealous, but humbly so.

Unlike Peter he knew his situation, was young enough to glory in

it. Shameless love is always young; with years comes discretion,

perhaps loss of confidence. The Crusaders were youths, pursuing

an idea to the ends of the earth and flaunting a lady's guerdon

from spear or saddle-bow. The older men among them tucked the

handkerchief or bit of a gauntleted glove under jerkin and armor

near the heart, and flung to the air the guerdon of some light o'

love. McLean would have shouted Harmony's name from the

housetops. Peter did not acknowledge even to himself that he was

in love with her.

It occurred to McLean after a time that Peter being in the club,

and Harmony being in all probability at home, it might be

possible to see her alone for a few minutes. He had not intended

to go back to the house in the Siebensternstrasse so soon after

being peremptorily put out; he had come to the club with the

intention of clinching his resolution with a game of cribbage.

But fate was playing into his hands. There was no cribbage player

round, and Peter himself sat across deeply immersed in a

magazine. McLean rose, not stealthily, but without unnecessary

noise.

So far so good. Peter turned a page and went on reading. McLean

sauntered to a window, hands in pockets. He even whistled a

trifle, under his breath, to prove how very casual were his

intentions. Still whistling, he moved toward the door. Peter

turned another page, which was curiously soon to have read two

columns of small type without illustrations.

Once out in the hall McLean's movements gained aim and precision.

He got his coat, hat and stick, flung the first over his arm and

the second on his head, and--

"Going out?" asked Peter calmly.

"Yes, nothing to do here. I've read all the infernal old

magazines until I 'm sick of them." Indignant, too, from his

tone.

"Walking?"

"Yes."

"Mind if I go with you?"

"Not at all."

Peter, taking down his old overcoat from its hook, turned and

caught the boy's eye. It was a swift exchange of glances, but

illuminating--Peter's whimsical, but with a sort of grim

determination; McLean's sheepish, but equally determined.

"Rotten afternoon," said McLean as they started for the stairs.

"Half rain, half snow. Streets are ankle-deep."

"I'm not particularly keen about walking, but--I don't care for

this tomb alone."

Nothing was further from McLean's mind than a walk with Peter

that afternoon. He hesitated halfway down the upper flight.

"You don't care for cribbage, do you?"

"Don't know anything about it. How about pinochle?"

They had both stopped, equally determined, equally hesitating.

"Pinochle it is," acquiesced McLean. "I was only going because

there was nothing to do."

Things went very well for Peter that afternoon--up to a certain

point. He beat McLean unmercifully, playing with cold

deliberation. McLean wearied, fidgeted, railed at his luck. Peter

played on grimly.

The club filled up toward the coffee-hour. Two or three women,

wives of members, a young girl to whom McLean had been rather

attentive before he met Harmony and who bridled at the abstracted

bow he gave her. And, finally, when hope in Peter was dead, one

of the women on Anna's list.

Peter, laying down pairs and marking up score, went over

Harmony's requirements. Dr. Jennings seemed to fit them all, a

woman, not young, not too stout, agreeable and human. She was a

large, almost bovinely placid person, not at all reminiscent of

Anna. She was neat where Anna had been disorderly, well dressed

and breezy against Anna's dowdiness and sharpness. Peter, having

totaled the score, rose and looked down at McLean.

"You're a nice lad," he said, smiling. "Sometime I shall teach

you the game."

"How about a lesson to-night in Seven-Star Street?"

"To-night? Why, I'm sorry. We have an engagement for to-night."

The "we" was deliberate and cruel. McLean writhed. Also the

statement was false, but the boy was spared that knowledge for

the moment.

Things went well. Dr. Jennings was badly off for quarters. She

would make a change if she could better herself. Peter drew her

off to a corner and stated his case. She listened attentively,

albeit not without disapproval.

She frankly discredited the altruism of Peter's motives when he

told her about Harmony. But as the recital went on she found

herself rather touched. The story of Jimmy appealed to her. She

scolded and lauded Peter in one breath, and what was more to the

point, she promised to visit the house in the Siebensternstrasse

the next day.

"So Anna Gates has gone home!" she reflected. "When?"

"This morning."

"Then the girl is there alone?"

"Yes. She is very young and inexperienced, and the boy--it's

myocarditis. She's afraid to be left with him."

"Is she quite alone?"

"Absolutely, and without funds, except enough for her lessons.

Our arrangement was that she should keep the house going; that

was her share."

Dr. Jennings was impressed. It was impossible to talk to Peter

and not believe him. Women trusted Peter always.

"You've been very foolish, Dr. Byrne," she said as she rose; "but

you've been disinterested enough to offset that and to put some

of us to shame. To-morrow at three, if it suits you. You said the

Siebensternstrasse?"

Peter went home exultant.

CHAPTER XVII

Christmas-Day had had a softening effect on Mrs. Boyer. It had

opened badly. It was the first Christmas she had spent away from

her children, and there had been little of the holiday spirit in

her attitude as she prepared the Christmas breakfast. After that,

however, things happened.

In the first place, under her plate she had found a frivolous

chain and pendant which she had admired. And when her eyes filled

up, as they did whenever she was emotionally moved, the doctor

had come round the table and put both his arms about her.

"Too young for you? Not a bit!" he said heartily. "You're

better-looking then you ever were, Jennie; and if you weren't

you're the only woman for me, anyhow. Don't you think I realize

what this exile means to you and that you're doing it for me?"

"I--I don't mind it."

"Yes, you do. To-night we'll go out and make a night of it, shall

we? Supper at the Grand, the theater, and then the Tabarin, eh?"

She loosened herself from his arms.

"What shall I wear? Those horrible things the children bought

me--"

"Throw 'em away."

"They're not worn at all."

"Throw them out. Get rid of the things the children got you. Go

out to-morrow and buy something you like--not that I don't like

you in anything or without--"

"Frank!"

"Be happy, that's the thing. It's the first Christmas without the

family, and I miss them too. But we're together, dear. That's the

big thing. Merry Christmas."

An auspicious opening, that, to Christmas-Day. And they had

carried out the program as outlined. Mrs. Boyer had enjoyed it,

albeit a bit horrified at the Christmas gayety at the Tabarin.

The next morning, however, she awakened with a keen reaction. Her

head ached. She had a sense of taint over her. She was virtue

rampant again, as on the day she had first visited the old lodge

in the Siebensternstrasse.

It is hardly astonishing that by association of ideas Harmony

came into her mind again, a brand that might even yet be snatched

from the burning. She had been a bit hasty before, she admitted

to herself. There was a woman doctor named Gates, although her

address at the club was given as Pension Schwarz. She determined

to do her shopping early and then to visit the house in the

Siebensternstrasse. She was not a hard woman, for all her

inflexible morality, and more than once she had had an uneasy

memory of Harmony's bewildered, almost stricken face the

afternoon of her visit. She had been a watchful mother over a not

particularly handsome family of daughters. This lovely young girl

needed mothering and she had refused it. She would go back, and

if she found she had been wrong and the girl was deserving and

honest, she would see what could be done.

The day was wretched. The snow had turned to rain. Mrs. Boyer,

shopping, dragged wet skirts and damp feet from store to store.

She found nothing that she cared for after all. The garments that

looked chic in the windows or on manikins in the shops, were

absurd on her. Her insistent bosom bulged, straight lines became

curves or tortuous zigzags, plackets gaped, collars choked her or

shocked her by their absence. In the mirror of Marie Jedlicka,

clad in familiar garments that had accommodated themselves to the

idiosyncrasies of her figure, Mrs. Boyer was a plump, rather

comely matron. Here before the plate glass of the modiste, under

the glare of a hundred lights, side by side with a slim Austrian

girl who looked like a willow wand, Mrs. Boyer was grotesque,

ridiculous, monstrous. She shuddered. She almost wept.

It was bad preparation for a visit to the Siebensternstrasse.

Mrs. Boyer, finding her vanity gone, convinced that she was an

absurdity physically, fell back for comfort on her soul. She had

been a good wife and mother; she was chaste, righteous. God had

been cruel to her in the flesh, but He had given her the spirit.

"Madame wishes not the gown? It is beautiful--see the embroidery!

And the neck may be filled with chiffon."

"Young woman," she said grimly, "I see the embroidery; and the

neck may be filled with chiffon, but not for me! And when you

have had five children, you will not buy clothes like that

either."

All the kindliness was gone from the visit to the

Siebensternstrasse; only the determination remained. Wounded to

the heart of her self-esteem, her pride in tatters, she took her

way to the old lodge and climbed the stairs.

She found a condition of mild excitement. Jimmy had slept long

after his bath. Harmony practiced, cut up a chicken for broth,

aired blankets for the chair into which Peter on his return was

to lift the boy.

She was called to inspect the mouse-cage, which, according to

Jimmy, had strawberries in it.

"Far back," he explained. "There in the cotton, Harry."

But it was not strawberries. Harmony opened the cage and very

tenderly took out the cotton nest. Eight tiny pink baby mice,

clean washed by the mother, lay curled in a heap.

It was a stupendous moment. The joy of vicarious parentage was

Jimmy's. He named them all immediately and demanded food for

them. On Harmony's delicate explanation that this was

unnecessary, life took on a new meaning for Jimmy. He watched the

mother lest she slight one. His responsibility weighed on him.

Also his inquiring mind was very busy.

"But how did they get there?" he demanded.

"God sent them, just as he sends babies of all sorts."

"Did he send me?"

"Of course."

"That's a good one on you, Harry. My father found me in a hollow

tree."

"But don't you think God had something to do with it?"

Jimmy pondered this.

"I suppose," he reflected, "God sent Daddy to find me so that I

would be his little boy. You never happened to see any babies

when you were out walking, did you, Harry?"

"Not in stumps--but I probably wasn't looking."

Jimmy eyed her with sympathy.

"You may some day. Would you like to have one?"

"Very much," said Harmony, and flushed delightfully.

Jimmy was disposed to press the matter, to urge immediate

maternity on her.

"You could lay it here on the bed," he offered, "and I'd watch

it. When they yell you let 'em suck your finger. I knew a woman

once that had a baby and she did that. And it could watch

Isabella." Isabella was the mother mouse. "And when I'm better I

could take it walking."

"That," said Harmony gravely, "is mighty fine of you, Jimmy boy.

I--I'll think about it." She never denied Jimmy anything, so now

she temporized.

"I'll ask Peter."

Harmony had a half-hysterical moment; then:

"Wouldn't it be better," she asked, "to keep anything of that

sort a secret? And to surprise Peter?"

The boy loved a secret. He played with it in lieu of other

occupation. His uncertain future was sown thick with secrets that

would never flower into reality. Thus Peter had shamelessly

promised him a visit to the circus when he was able to go,

Harmony not to be told until the tickets were bought. Anna had

similarly promised to send him from America a pitcher's glove and

a baseball bat. To this list of futurities he now added Harmony's

baby.

Harmony brought in her violin and played softly to him, not to

disturb the sleeping mice. She sang, too, a verse that the Big

Soprano had been fond of and that Jimmy loved. Not much of a

voice was Harmony's, but sweet and low and very true, as became

her violinist's ear.

"Ah, well! For us all some sweet hope lies

Deeply buried from human eyes,"

she sang, her clear eyes luminous.

"And in the hereafter, angels may

Roll the stone from its grave away!"

Mrs. Boyer mounted the stairs. She was in a very bad humor. She

had snagged her skirt on a nail in the old gate, and although

that very morning she had detested the suit, her round of

shopping had again endeared it to her. She told the Portier in

English what she thought of him, and climbed ponderously, pausing

at each landing to examine the damage.

Harmony, having sung Jimmy to sleep, was in the throes of an

experiment. She was trying to smoke.

A very human young person was Harmony, apt to be exceedingly

wretched if her hat were of last year's fashion, anxious to be

inconspicuous by doing what every one else was doing,

conventional as are the very young, fearful of being an

exception.

And nearly every one was smoking. Many of the young women whom

she met at the master's house had yellowed fingers and smoked in

the anteroom; the Big Soprano had smoked; Anna and Scatchy had

smoked; in the coffee-houses milliners' apprentices produced

little silver mouth-pieces to prevent soiling their pretty lips

and smoked endlessly. Even Peter had admitted that it was not a

vice, but only a comfortable bad habit. And Anna had left a

handful of cigarettes.

Harmony was not smoking; she was experimenting. Peter and Anna

had smoked together and it had looked comradely. Perhaps, without

reasoning it out, Harmony was experimenting toward the end of

establishing her relations with Peter still further on friendly

and comradely grounds. Two men might smoke together; a man and a

woman might smoke together as friends. According to Harmony's

ideas, a girl paring potatoes might inspire sentiment, but

smoking a cigarette--never!

She did not like it. She thought, standing before her little

mirror, that she looked fast, after all. She tried pursing her

lips together, as she had seen Anna do, and blowing out the smoke

in a thin line. She smoked very hard, so that she stood in the

center of a gray nimbus. She hated it, but she persisted. Perhaps

it grew on one; perhaps, also, if she walked about it would choke

her less. She practiced holding the thing between her first and

second fingers, and found that easier than smoking. Then she went

to the salon where there was more air, and tried exhaling through

her nose. It made her sneeze.

On the sneeze came Mrs. Boyer's ring. Harmony thought very fast.

It might be the bread or the milk, but again--She flung the

cigarette into the stove, shut the door, and answered the bell.

Mrs. Boyer's greeting was colder than she had intended. It put

Harmony on the defensive at once, made her uncomfortable. Like

all the innocent falsely accused she looked guiltier than the

guiltiest. Under Mrs. Boyer's searching eyes the enormity of her

situation overwhelmed her. And over all, through salon and

passage, hung the damning odor of the cigarette. Harmany, leading

the way in, was a sheep before her shearer.

"I'm calling on all of you," said Mrs. Boyer, sniping. "I meant

to bring Dr. Boyer's cards for every one, including Dr. Byrne."

"I'm sorry. Dr. Byrne is out."

"And Dr. Gates?"

"She--she is away."

Mrs. Boyer raised her eyebrows and ostentatiously changed the

subject, requesting a needle and thread to draw the rent

together. It had been in Harmony's mind to explain the situation,

to show Jimmy to Mrs. Boyer, to throw herself on the older

woman's sympathy, to ask advice. But the visitor's attitude made

this difficult. To add to her discomfort, through the grating in

the stove door was coming a thin thread of smoke.

It was, after all, Mrs. Boyer who broached the subject again. She

had had a cup of tea, and Harmony, sitting on a stool, had mended

the rent so that it could hardly be seen. Mrs. Boyer, softened by

the tea and by the proximity of Harmony's lovely head bent over

her task, grew slightly more expansive.

"I ought to tell you something, Miss Wells," she said. "You

remember my other visit?"

"Perfectly." Harmony bent still lower.

"I did you an injustice at that time. I've been sorry ever since.

I thought that there was no Dr. Gates. I'm sorry, but I'm not

going to deny it. People do things in this wicked city that they

wouldn't do at home. I confess I misjudged Peter Byrne. You can

give him my apologies, since he won't see me."

"But he isn't here or of course he'd see you."

"Then," demanded Mrs. Boyer grimly, "if Peter Byrne is not here,

who has been smoking cigarettes in this room? There is one still

burning in that stove!"

Harmony's hand was forced. She was white as she cut the

brown-silk thread and rose to her feet.

"I think," she said, "that I'd better go back a few weeks, Mrs.

Boyer, and tell you a story, if you have time to listen."

"If it is disagreeable--"

"Not at all. It is about Peter Byrne and myself, and--some

others. It is really about Peter. Mrs. Boyer, will you come very

quietly across the hall?"

Mrs. Boyer, expecting Heaven knows what, rose with celerity.

Harmony led the way to Jimmy's door and opened it. He was still

asleep, a wasted small figure on the narrow bed. Beside him the

mice frolicked in their cage, the sentry kept guard over Peter's

shameless letters from the Tyrol, the strawberry babies wriggled

in their cotton.

"We are not going to have him very long," said Harmony softly.

"Peter is making him happy for a little while."

Back in the salon of Maria Theresa she told the whole story. Mrs.

Boyer found it very affecting. Harmony sat beside her on a stool

and she kept her hand on the girl's shoulder. When the narrative

reached Anna's going away, however, she took it away. From that

point on she sat uncompromisingly rigid and listened.

"Then you mean to say," she exploded when Harmony had finished,

"that you intend to stay on here, just the two of you?"

"And Jimmy."

"Bah! What has the child to do with it?"

"We will find some one to take Anna's place."

"I doubt it. And until you do?"

"There is nothing wicked in what we are doing. Don't you see,

Mrs. Boyer, I can't leave the boy."

"Since Peter is so altruistic, let him hire a nurse."

Bad as things were, Harmony smiled.

"A nurse!" she said. "Why, do you realize that he is keeping

three people now on what is starvation for one?"

"Then he's a fool!" Mrs. Boyer rose in majesty. "I'm not going to

leave you here."

"I'm sorry. You must see--"

"I see nothing but a girl deliberately putting herself in a

compromising portion and worse."

"Mrs. Boyer!"

"Get your things on. I guess Dr. Boyer and I can look after you

until we can send you home."

"I am not going home--yet," said poor Harmony, biting her lip to

steady it.

Back and forth waged the battle, Mrs. Boyer assailing, Harmony

offering little defense but standing firm on her refusal to go as

long as Peter would let her remain.

"It means so much to me," she ventured, goaded. "And I earn my

lodging and board. I work hard and--I make him comfortable. It

costs him very little and I give him something in exchange. All

men are not alike. If the sort you have known are--are

different--"

This was unfortunate. Mrs. Boyer stiffened. She ceased offensive

tactics, and retired grimly into the dignity of her high calling

of virtuous wife and mother. She washed her hands of Harmony and

Peter. She tied on her veil with shaking hands, and prepared to

leave Harmony to her fate.

"Give me your mother's address," she demanded.

"Certainly not."

"You absolutely refuse to save yourself?"

"From what? From Peter? There are many worse people than Peter to

save myself from, Mrs. Boyer--uncharitable people, and--and cruel

people."

Mrs. Boyer shrugged her plump shoulders.

"Meaning me!" she retorted. "My dear child, people are always

cruel who try to save us from ourselves."

Unluckily for Harmony, one of Anna's specious arguments must pop

into her head at that instant and demand expression.

"People are living their own lives these days, Mrs. Boyer; old

standards have gone. It is what one's conscience condemns that is

wrong, isn't it? Not merely breaking laws that were made to fit

the average, not the exception."

Anna! Anna!

Mrs. Boyer flung up her hands.

"You are impossible!" she snapped. "After all, I believe it is

Peter who needs protection! I shall speak to him."

She started down the staircase, but turned for a parting volley.

"And just a word of advice: Perhaps the old standards have gone.

But if you really expect to find a respectable woman to chaperon

YOU, keep your views to yourself."

Harmony, a bruised and wounded thing, crept into Jimmy's room and

sank on her knees beside the bed. One small hand lay on the

coverlet; she dared not touch it for fear of waking him--but she

laid her cheek close to it for comfort. When Peter came in, much

later, he found the boy wide awake and Harmony asleep, a crumpled

heap beside the bed.

"I think she's been crying," Jimmy whispered. "She's been sobbing

in her sleep. And strike a match, Peter; there may be more mice."

CHAPTER XVIII

Mrs. Boyer, bursting with indignation, went to the Doctors' Club.

It was typical of the way things were going with Peter that Dr.

Boyer was not there, and that the only woman in the clubrooms

should be Dr. Jennings. Young McLean was in the reading room,

eating his heart out with jealousy of Peter, vacillating between

the desire to see Harmony that night and fear lest Peter forbid

him the house permanently if he made the attempt. He had found a

picture of the Fraulein Engel, from the opera, in a magazine, and

was sitting with it open before him. Very deeply and really in

love was McLean that afternoon, and the Fraulein Engel and

Harmony were not unlike. The double doors between the reading

room and the reception room adjoining were open. McLean, lost in

a rosy future in which he and Harmony sat together for indefinite

periods, with no Peter to scowl over his books at them, a future

in which life was one long piano-violin duo, with the candles in

the chandelier going out one by one, leaving them at last alone

in scented darkness together--McLean heard nothing until the

mention of the Siebensternstrasse roused him.

After that he listened. He heard that Dr. Jennings was

contemplating taking Anna's place at the lodge, and he

comprehended after a moment that Anna was already gone. Even then

the significance of the situation was a little time in dawning on

him. When it did, however, he rose with a stifled oath.

Mrs. Boyer was speaking.

"It is exactly as I tell you," she was saying. "If Peter Byrne is

trying to protect her reputation he is late doing it. Personally

I have been there twice. I never saw Anna Gates. And she is

registered here at the club as living in the Pension Schwarz.

Whatever the facts may be, one thing remains, she is not there

now."

McLean waited to hear no more. He was beside himself with rage.

He found a "comfortable" at the curb. The driver was asleep

inside the carriage. McLean dragged him out by the shoulder and

shouted an address to him. The cab bumped along over the rough

streets to an accompaniment of protests from its frantic

passenger.

The boy was white-lipped with wrath and fear. Peter's silence

that afternoon as to the state of affairs loomed large and

significant. He had thought once or twice that Peter was in love

with Harmony; he knew it now in the clearer vision of the moment.

He recalled things that maddened him: the dozen intimacies of the

little menage, the caress in Peter's voice when he spoke to the

girl, Peter's steady eyes in the semi-gloom of the salon while

Harmony played.

At a corner they must pause for the inevitable regiment. McLean

cursed, bending out to see how long the delay would be. Peter had

been gone for half an hour, perhaps, but Peter would walk. If he

could only see the girl first, talk to her, tell her what she

would be doing by remaining--

He was there at last, flinging across the courtyard like a

madman. Peter was already there; his footprints were fresh in the

slush of the path. The house door was closed but not locked.

McLean ran up the stairs. It was barely twilight outside, but the

staircase well was dark. At the upper landing he was compelled to

fumble for the bell.

Peter admitted him. The corridor was unlighted, but from the

salon came a glow of lamplight. McLean, out of breath and

furious, faced Peter.

"I want to see Harmony," he said without preface.

Peter eyed him. He knew what had happened, had expected it when

the bell rang, had anticipated it when Harmony told him of Mrs.

Boyer's visit. In the second between the peal of the bell and his

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 tray 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 Harmany, 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 1 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