The Street of Seven Stars

  CHAPTER V

  The peace of a gray Sunday morning hung like a cloud over the littlePension Schwarz. In the kitchen the elderly maid, with a shawl over hershoulders and stiffened fingers, made the fire, while in the dining-roomthe little chambermaid cut butter and divided it sparingly among a dozenbreakfast 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 twobutter pats. The mistress yet slept, but in the kitchen Katrina had akeen eye for butter--and a hard heart.

  Katrina came to the door.

  "The hot water is ready," she announced. "And the coffee also. Hast thoubeen to mass?"

  "Ja."

  "That is a lie." This quite on general principle, it being one of thecook's small tyrannies to exact religious observance from her underling,and one of Olga's Sunday morning's indulgences to oversleep and avoidthe mass. Olga took the accusation meekly and without reply, beingoccupied at that moment in standing between Katrina and the extra patsof butter.

  "For the lie," said Katrina calmly, "thou shalt have no butter thismorning. 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. "TheAmericans use much water. God knows it cannot be healthy!"

  Olga filled her pitcher from the great copper kettle and stood with itpoised in her thin young arms.

  "The new Fraulein is very beautiful," she continued aloud. "Thinkestthou it is the hot water?"

  "Is an egg more beautiful for being boiled?" demanded Katrina. "Go, andbe less foolish. See, it is not the Herr Doktor who rings, but the newAmerican."

  Olga carried her pitcher to Harmony's door, and being bidden, entered.The room was frigid and Harmony, at the window in her nightgown, wasclosing the outer casement. The inner still swung open. Olga, having putdown 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 andillnesses! 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, shakingher head.

  "They are strange, the Americans!" she said to latrine. "And if to belovely one must bathe daily, and sleep with open windows--"

  Harmony had slept soundly after all. Her pique at Byrne had passedwith the reading of his note, and the sensation of his protection andnearness had been almost physical. In the virginal little apartment inthe lodge of Maria Theresa the only masculine presence had been thatof the Portier, carrying up coals at ninety Hellers a bucket, or of theaccompanist who each alternate day had played for the Big Soprano topractice. And they had felt no deprivation, except for those occasionaltimes when Scatchy developed a reckless wish to see the interior of adancing-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 ordisputed the bill at the delicatessen shop, Harmony had thrown herselfon the protection of this shabby big American whom she had met butonce, and, having done so, slept like a baby. Not, of course, thatshe realized her dependence. She had felt very old and experienced andexceedingly courageous as she put out her light the night before andtook a flying leap into the bed. She was still old and experienced, if atrifle less courageous, that Sunday morning.

  Promptly in ten minutes Olga brought the breakfast, two rolls, two patsof butter--shades of the sleeping mistress and Katrina the thrifty--anda 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. Willyou walk with me this afternoon? I would come in person to ask you, butam spending the morning in my bathrobe, while my one remaining Americansuit 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 toldHarmony that the pension was fully awake, she got out her violin.The idea of work obsessed her. To-morrow there would be the hunt forsomething to do to supplement her resources, this afternoon she hadrashly 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 outsideher door and listened, rapt, his eyes closed. Peter Byrne, listeningwhile he sorted lecture memoranda at his little table in bathrobe andslippers, absently filed the little note with the others--where he cameacross it months later--next to a lecture on McBurney's Point, and spenta sad hour or so over it. Over all the sordid little pension, with itsodors of food and stale air, its spotted napery and dusty artificialflowers, the music hovered, and made for the time all things lovely.

  In her room across from Harmony's, Anna Gates was sewing, or preparingto sew. Her hair in a knob, her sleeves rolled up, the room in violentdisorder, she was bending over the bed, cutting savagely at a roll ofpink flannel. Because she was working with curved surgeon's scissors,borrowed from Peter, the cut edges were strangely scalloped. Her methodas well as her tools was unique. Clearly she was intent on a bodygarment, 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 tocut again, jaw tight set, small veins on her forehead swelling, a smallreplica of Peter Byrne sewing a button on his coat.

  After a time it became clear to her that her method was wrong. Sherolled up the flannel viciously and flung it into a corner, andproceeded to her Sunday morning occupation of putting away the garmentsshe had worn during the week, a vast and motley collection.

  On the irritability of her mood Harmony's music had a late but certaineffect. She made a toilet, a trifle less casual than usual, seeing thatshe put on her stays, and rather sheepishly picked up the bundle fromthe corner. She hunted about for a thimble, being certain she hadbrought 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. Iwant to sew, and my room is such a mess!"

  Harmony threw the door wide. "You will make me very happy, if only mypracticing does not disturb you."

  Dr. Gates came in and closed the door.

  "I'll probably be the disturbing element," she said. "I'm a noisysewer."

  Harmony's immaculate room and radiant person put her in good humorimmediately. She borrowed a thimble--not because she cared whethershe had one or not, but because she knew a thimble was a part of thegame--and settled herself in a corner, her ragged pieces in her lap. Foran hour she plodded along and Harmony played. Then the girl put down herbow and turned to the corner. The little doctor was jerking at a knot inher thread.

  "It's in the most damnable knot!" she said, and Harmony was suddenlyaware 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 foolabout music."

  "Perhaps, if you hate to sew--"

  "I hate a good many things, my dear, when you play like that. I hatebeing over here in this place, and I hate fleas and German cooking andclinics, and I hate being forty years old and as poor as a church-mouseand as ugly as sin, and I hate never having had any children!"

  Harmony was very uncomfortable and just a little shocked. But the nextmoment Dr. Gates had wiped her eyes with a scrap of the flannel and wassmiling up through her glasses.

  "The plain truth really is that I have indi
gestion. I dare say I'mreally weeping in anticipation over the Sunday dinner! The food's badand I can't afford to live anywhere else. I'd take a room and do my owncooking, but what time have I?" She spread out the pieces of flannel onher 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 fromthem 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, delicatelyflushed, repeated the name, clung to it conversationally, using littleadroitnesses to bring the talk back to him. All roads of talk led toPeter--Peter's future, Peter's poverty, Peter's refusing to have hishair cut, Peter's encounter with a major of the guards, and the duelPeter almost fought. It developed that Peter, as the challenged, had hadthe choice of weapons, and had chosen fists, and that the major had beencarried away. Dr. Gates grew rather weary of Peter at last and fell backon the pink flannel. She confided to Harmony that the various pieces,united, were to make a dressing-gown for a little American boy at thehospital. "Although," she commented, "it looks more like a chair cover."

  Harmony offered to help her, and got out a sewing-box that was linedwith a piece of her mother's wedding dress. And as she straightened thecrooked edges she told the doctor about the wedding dress, and about themother who had called her Harmony because of the hope in her heart.And soon, by dint of skillful listening, which is always better thanquestioning, 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 anycomparison in destitution!"

  Harmony stiffened a trifle.

  "Of course I do not mean money," she said. "There are such things asencouragement, and--and friendliness."

  "One cannot eat encouragement," retorted Dr. Gates sagely. "Andfriendliness between you and any man--bah! Even Peter is only human, mydear."

  "I am sure he is very good."

  "So he is. He is very poor. But you are very attractive. There, I'm askeptic about men, but you can trust Peter. Only don't fall in love withhim. It will be years before he can marry. And don't let him fall inlove with you. He probably will."

  Whereupon Dr. Gates taking herself and her pink flannel off to preparefor lunch, Harmony sent a formal note to Peter Byrne, regretting thata headache kept her from taking the afternoon walk as she had promised.Also, to avoid meeting him, she did without dinner, and spent theafternoon crying herself into a headache that was real enough.

  Anna Gates was no fool. While she made her few preparations for dinnershe repented bitterly what she had said to Harmony. It is difficult forthe sophistry of forty to remember and cherish the innocence of twenty.For illusions it is apt to substitute facts, the material for thespiritual, the body against the soul. Dr. Gates, from her school ofgeneral 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 besttie, and was looking distinguished and just now rather stern.

  "To whom?"

  "To the young Wells person. Frankly, Peter, I dare say at this momentshe thinks you are everything you shouldn't be, because I said you wereonly human. Why it should be evil to be human, or human to be evil--"

  "I cannot imagine," said Peter slowly, "the reason for any conversationabout me."

  "Nor I, when I look back. We seemed to talk about other things, but italways ended with you. Perhaps you were our one subject in common. Thenshe irritated me by her calm confidence. The world was good, everybodywas 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 mischiefis done."

  Dr. Gates looked up at him.

  "I'm in love with you myself, Peter!" she said gratefully. "Perhaps itis the tie. Did you ever eat such a meal?"