The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  She did not know how long she stood there. One of the soft rains was falling, or more accurately, condensing. The saturated air was hardly cold. She stood on the pavement unmolested, while the glow died lower and lower, until at last it was impossible to trace the pacing figure. No one came to any of the windows. The little lamp before the shrine in the wild-game shop burned itself out; the Portier across the way came to the door, glanced up at the sky and went in. Harmony heard the rattle of the chain as it was stretched across the door inside.

  Not all the windows of the suite opened on the street. Jimmy's windows—and Peter's—opened toward the back of the house, where in a brick-paved courtyard the wife of the Portier hung her washing, and where the Portier himself kept a hutch of rabbits. A wild and reckless desire to see at least the light from the child's room possessed Harmony. Even the light would be something; to go like this, to carry with her only the memory of a dark looming house without cheer was unthinkable. The gate was never locked. If she but went into the garden and round by the spruce tree to the back of the house, it would be something.

  She knew the garden quite well. Even the darkness had no horror for her. Little Scatchy had had a habit of leaving various articles on her window-sill and of instigating searches for them at untimely hours of night. Once they had found her hairbrush in the rabbit hutch! So Harmony, ashamed but unalarmed, made her way by the big spruce to the corner of the old lodge and thus to the courtyard.

  Ah, this was better! Lights all along the apartment floor and moving shadows; on Jimmy's window-sill a jar of milk. And voices—some one was singing.

  Peter was singing, droning softly, as one who puts a drowsy child to sleep. Slower and slower, softer and softer, over and over, the little song Harmony had been wont to sing:—

  "Ah well! For us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from human eyes. And in the—hereafter—angels may

  Roll—the—stone—from—its—grave—away."

  Slower and slower, softer and softer, until it died away altogether. Peter, in his old dressing-gown, came to the window and turned down the gaslight beside it to a blue point. Harmony did not breathe. For a minute, two minutes, he stood there looking out. Far off the twin clocks of the Votivkirche struck the hour. All about lay the lights of the old city, so very old, so wise, so cunning, so cold.

  Peter stood looking out, as he had each night since Harmony went away. Each night he sang the boy to sleep, turned down the light and stood by the window. And each night he whispered to the city that sheltered Harmony somewhere, what he had whispered to the little sweater coat the night before he went away:—

  "Good-night, dear. Good-night, Harmony."

  The rabbits stirred uneasily in the hutch; a passing gust shook the great tree overhead and sent down a sharp shower on to the bricks below. Peter struck a match and lit his pipe; the flickering light illuminated his face, his rough hair, his steady eyes.

  "Good-night, Peter," whispered Harmony. "Good-night, dear."

  CHAPTER XXIV

  Walter Stewart had made an uncomplicated recovery, helped along by relief at the turn events had taken. In a few days he was going about again, weak naturally, rather handsomer than before because a little less florid. But the week's confinement had given him an opportunity to think over many things. Peter had set him thinking, on the day when he had packed up the last of Marie's small belongings and sent them down to Vienna.

  Stewart, lying in bed, had watched him. "Just how much talk do you suppose this has made, Byrne?" he asked.

  "Haven't an idea. Some probably. The people in the Russian villa saw it, you know."

  Stewart's brows contracted.

  "Damnation! Then the hotel has it, of course!"

  "Probably."

  Stewart groaned. Peter closed Marie's American trunk of which she had been so proud, and coming over looked down at the injured man.

  "Don't you think you'd better tell the girl all about it?"

  "No," doggedly.

  "I know, of course, it wouldn't be easy, but—you can't get away with it, Stewart. That's one way of looking at it. There's another."

  "What's that?"

  "Starting with a clean slate. If she's the sort you want to marry, and not a prude, she'll understand, not at first, but after she gets used to it."

  "She wouldn't understand in a thousand years."

  "Then you'd better not marry her. You know, Stewart, I have an idea that women imagine a good many pretty rotten things about us, anyhow. A sensible girl would rather know the truth and be done with it. What a man has done with his life before a girl—the right girl—comes into it isn't a personal injury to her, since she wasn't a part of his life then. You know what I mean. But she has a right to know it before she chooses."

  "How many would choose under those circumstances?" he jibed.

  Peter smiled. "Quite a few," he said cheerfully. "It's a wrong system, of course; but we can get a little truth out of it."

  "You can't get away with it" stuck in Stewart's mind for several days. It was the one thing Peter said that did stick. And before Stewart had recovered enough to be up and about he had made up his mind to tell Anita. In his mind he made quite a case for himself; he argued the affair against his conscience and came out victorious.

  Anita's party had broken up. The winter sports did not compare, they complained, with St. Moritz. They disliked German cooking. Into the bargain the weather was not good; the night's snows turned soft by midday; and the crowds that began to throng the hotels were solid citizens, not the fashionables of the Riviera. Anita's arm forbade her traveling. In the reassembling of the party she went to the Kurhaus in the valley below the pension with one of the women who wished to take the baths.

  It was to the Kurhaus, then, that Stewart made his first excursion after the accident. He went to dinner. Part of the chaperon's treatment called for an early retiring hour, which was highly as he had wished it and rather unnerving after all. A man may decide that a dose of poison is the remedy for all his troubles, but he does not approach his hour with any hilarity. Stewart was a stupid dinner guest, ate very little, and looked haggard beyond belief when the hour came for the older woman to leave.

  He did not lack courage however. It was his great asset, physical and mental rather than moral, but courage nevertheless. The evening was quiet, and they elected to sit on the balcony outside Anita's sitting room, the girl swathed in white furs and leaning back in her steamer chair.

  Below lay the terrace of the Kurhaus, edged with evergreen trees. Beyond and far below that was the mountain village, a few scattered houses along a frozen stream. The townspeople retired early; light after light was extinguished, until only one in the priest's house remained. A train crept out of one tunnel and into another, like a glowing worm crawling from burrow to burrow.

  The girl felt a change in Stewart. During the weeks he had known her there had been a curious restraint in his manner to her. There were times when an avowal seemed to tremble on his lips, when his eyes looked into hers with the look no women ever mistakes; the next moment he would glance away, his face would harden. They were miles apart. And perhaps the situation had piqued the girl. Certainly it had lost nothing for her by its unusualness.

  To-night there was a difference in the man. His eyes met hers squarely, without evasion, but with a new quality, a searching, perhaps, for something in her to give him courage. The girl had character, more than ordinary decision. It was what Stewart admired in her most, and the thing, of course, that the little Marie had lacked. Moreover, Anita, barely twenty, was a woman, not a young girl. Her knowledge of the world, not so deep as Marie's, was more comprehensive. Where Marie would have been merciful, Anita would be just, unless she cared for him. In that case she might be less than just, or more.

  Anita in daylight was a pretty young woman, rather incisive of speech, very intelligent, having a wit without malice, charming to look at, keenly alive. Anita in the dusk of the balcony, waiting to hear she knew not what, wa
s a judicial white goddess, formidably still, frightfully potential. Stewart, who had embraced many women, did not dare a finger on her arm.

  He had decided on a way to tell the girl the story—a preamble about his upbringing, which had been indifferent, his struggle to get to Vienna, his loneliness there, all leading with inevitable steps to Marie. From that, if she did not utterly shrink from him, to his love for her.

  It was his big hour, that hour on the balcony. He was reaching, through love, heights of honesty he had never scaled before. But as a matter of fact he reversed utterly his order of procedure. The situation got him, this first evening absolutely alone with her. That and her nearness, and the pathos of her bandaged, useless arm. Still he had not touched her.

  The thing he was trying to do was more difficult for that. General credulity to the contrary, men do not often make spoken love first. How many men propose marriage to their women across the drawing-room or from chair to chair? Absurd! The eyes speak first, then the arms, the lips last. The woman is in his arms before he tells his love. It is by her response that he gauges his chances and speaks of marriage. Actually the thing is already settled; tardy speech only follows on swift instinct. Stewart, wooing as men woo, would have taken the girl's hand, gained an encouragement from it, ventured to kiss it, perhaps, and finding no rebuff would then and there have crushed her to him; What need of words? They would follow in due time, not to make a situation but to clarify it.

  But he could not woo as men woo. The barrier of his own weakness stood between them and must be painfully taken down.

  "I'm afraid this is stupid for you," said Anita out of the silence. "Would you like to go to the music-room?"

  "God forbid. I was thinking."

  "Of what?" Encouragement this, surely.

  "I was thinking how you had come into my life, and stirred it up."

  "Really? I?"

  "You know that."

  "How did I stir it up?"

  "That's hardly the way I meant to put it. You've changed everything for me. I care for you—a very great deal."

  He was still carefully in hand, his voice steady. And still he did not touch her. Other men had made love to her, but never in this fashion, or was he making love?

  "I'm very glad you like me."

  "Like you!" Almost out of hand that time. The thrill in his voice was unmistakable. "It's much more than that, Anita, so much more that I'm going to try to do a hideously hard thing. Will you help a little?"

  "Yes, if I can." She was stirred, too, and rather frightened.

  Stewart drew his chair nearer to her and sat forward, his face set and dogged.

  "Have you any idea how you were hurt? Or why?"

  "No. There's a certain proportion of accidents that occur at all these places, isn't there?"

  "This was not an accident."

  "No?"

  "The branch of a tree was thrown out in front of the sled to send us over the bank. It was murder, if intention is crime."

  After a brief silence—

  "Somebody who wished to kill you, or me?"

  "Both of us, I believe. It was done by a woman—a girl, Anita. A girl I had been living with."

  A brutal way to tell her, no doubt, but admirably courageous. For he was quivering with dread when he said it—the courage of the man who faces a cannon. And here, where a less-poised woman would have broken into speech, Anita took the refuge of her kind and was silent. Stewart watched her as best he could in the darkness, trying to gather further courage to go on. He could not see her face, but her fingers, touching the edge of the chair, quivered.

  "May I tell you the rest?"

  "I don't think I want to hear it."

  "Are you going to condemn me unheard?"

  "There isn't anything you can say against the fact?"

  But there was much to say, and sitting there in the darkness he made his plea. He made no attempt to put his case. He told what had happened simply; he told of his loneliness and discomfort. And he emphasized the lack of sentiment that prompted the arrangement.

  Anita spoke then for the first time: "And when you tried to terminate it she attempted to kill you!"

  "I was acting the beast. I brought her up here, and then neglected her for you."

  "Then it was hardly only a business arrangement for her."

  "It was at first. I never dreamed of any thing else. I swear that, Anita. But lately, in the last month or two, she—I suppose I should have seen that she—"

  "That she had fallen in love with you. How old is she?"

  "Nineteen."

  A sudden memory came to Anita, of a slim young girl, who had watched her with wide, almost childish eyes.

  "Then it was she who was in the compartment with you on the train coming up?"

  "Yes."

  "Where is she now?"

  "In Vienna. I have not heard from her. Byrne, the chap who came up to see me after the—after the accident, sent her away. I think he's looking after her. I haven't heard from him."

  "Why did you tell me all this?"

  "Because I love you, Anita. I want you to marry me."

  "What! After that?"

  "That, or something similar, is in many men's lives. They don't tell it, that's the difference. I 'm not taking any credit for telling you this. I'm ashamed to the bottom of my soul, and when I look at your bandaged arm I'm suicidal. Peter Byrne urged me to tell you. He said I couldn't get away with it; some time or other it would come out. Then he said something else. He said you'd probably understand, and that if you married me it was better to start with a clean slate."

  No love, no passion in the interview now. A clear statement of fact, an offer—his past against hers, his future with hers. Her hand was steady now. The light in the priest's house had been extinguished. The chill of the mountain night penetrated Anita's white furs; and set her—or was it the chill?—to shivering.

  "If I had not told you, would you have married me?"

  "I think so. I'll be honest, too. Yes."

  "I am the same man you would have married. Only—more honest."

  "I cannot argue about it. I am tired and cold."

  Stewart glanced across the valley to where the cluster of villas hugged the mountain-side There was a light in his room; outside was the little balcony where Marie had leaned against the railing and looked down, down. Some of the arrogance of his new virtue left the man. He was suddenly humbled. For the first time he realized a part of what Marie had endured in that small room where the light burned.

  "Poor little Marie!" he said softly.

  The involuntary exclamation did more for him than any plea he could have made. Anita rose and held out her hand.

  "Go and see her," she said quietly. "You owe her that. We'll be leaving here in a day or so and I'll not see you again. But you've been honest, and I will be honest, too. I—I cared a great deal, too."

  "And this has killed it?"

  "I hardly comprehend it yet. I shall have to have time to think."

  "But if you are going away—I'm afraid to leave you. You'll think this thing over, alone, and all the rules of life you've been taught will come—"

  "Please, I must think. I will write you, I promise."

  He caught her hand and crushed it between both of his.

  "I suppose you would rather I did not kiss you?" humbly.

  "I do not want you to kiss me."

  He released her hand and stood looking down at her in the darkness. If he could only have crushed her to him, made her feel the security of his love, of his sheltering arms! But the barrier of his own building was between them. His voice was husky.

  "I want you to try to remember, past what I have told you, to the thing that concerns us both—I love you. I never loved the other woman. I never pretended I loved her. And there will be nothing more like that."

  "I shall try to remember."

  Anita left Semmering the next day, against the protests of the doctor and the pleadings of the chaperon. She did not see S
tewart again. But before she left, with the luggage gone and the fiacre at the door, she went out on the terrace, and looked across to the Villa Waldheim, rising from among its clustering trees. Although it was too far to be certain, she thought she saw the figure of a man on the little balcony standing with folded arms, gazing across the valley to the Kurhaus.

  Having promised to see Marie, Stewart proceeded to carry out his promise in his direct fashion. He left Semmering the evening of the following day, for Vienna. The strain of the confession was over, but he was a victim of sickening dread. To one thing only he dared to pin his hopes. Anita had said she cared, cared a great deal. And, after all, what else mattered? The story had been a jolt, he told himself. Girls were full of queer ideas of right and wrong, bless them! But she cared. She cared!

  He arrived in Vienna at nine o'clock that night. The imminence of his interview with Marie hung over him like a cloud. He ate a hurried supper, and calling up the Doctors' Club by telephone found Peter's address in the Siebensternstrasse. He had no idea, of course, that Marie was there. He wanted to see Peter to learn where Marie had taken refuge, and incidentally to get from Peter a fresh supply of moral courage for the interview. For he needed courage. In vain on the journey down had he clothed himself in armor of wrath against the girl; the very compartment in the train provoked softened memories of her. Here they had bought a luncheon, there Marie had first seen the Rax. Again at this station she had curled up and put her head on his shoulder for a nap. Ah, but again, at this part of the journey he had first seen Anita!

  He took a car to the Siebensternstrasse. His idea of Peter's manner of living those days was exceedingly vague. He had respected Peter's reticence, after the manner of men with each other. Peter had once mentioned a boy he was looking after, in excuse for leaving so soon after the accident. That was all.