The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  The house on the Siebensternstrasse loomed large and unlighted. The street was dark, and it was only after a search that Stewart found the gate. Even then he lost the path, and found himself among a group of trees, to touch the lowest branches of any of which resulted in a shower of raindrops. To add to his discomfort some one was walking in the garden, coming toward him with light, almost stealthy steps.

  Stewart by his tree stood still, waiting. The steps approached, were very close, were beside him. So intense was the darkness that even then all he saw was a blacker shadow, and that was visible only because it moved. Then a hand touched his arm, stopped as if paralyzed, drew back slowly, fearfully.

  "Good Heavens!" said poor Harmony faintly.

  "Please don't be alarmed. I have lost the path." Stewart's voice was almost equally nervous. "Is it to the right or the left?"

  It was a moment before Harmony had breath to speak. Then:—

  "To the right a dozen paces or so."

  "Thank you. Perhaps I can help you to find it."

  "I know it quite well. Please don't bother."

  The whole situation was so unexpected that only then did it dawn on Stewart that this blacker shadow was a countrywoman speaking God's own language. Together, Harmony a foot or so in advance, they made the path.

  "The house is there. Ring hard, the bell is out of order."

  "Are you not coming in?"

  "No. I—I do not live here."

  She must have gone just after that. Stewart, glancing at the dark facade of the house, turned round to find her gone, and a moment later heard the closing of the gate. He was bewildered. What sort of curious place was this, a great looming house that concealed in its garden a fugitive American girl who came and went like a shadow, leaving only the memory of a sweet voice strained with fright?

  Stewart was full of his encounter as he took the candle the Portier gave him and followed the gentleman's gruff directions up the staircase. Peter admitted him, looking a trifle uneasy, as well he might with Marie in the salon.

  Stewart was too preoccupied to notice Peter's expression. He shook the rain off his hat, smiling.

  "How are you?" asked Peter dutifully.

  "Pretty good, except for a headache when I'm tired. What sort of a place have you got here anyhow, Byrne?"

  "Old hunting-lodge of Maria Theresa," replied Peter, still preoccupied with Marie and what was coming. "Rather interesting old place."

  "Rather," commented Stewart, "with goddesses in the garden and all the usual stunts."

  "Goddesses?"

  "Ran into one just now among the trees. 'A woman I forswore, but thou being a goddess I forswore not thee.' English-speaking goddess, by George!"

  Peter was staring at him incredulously; now he bent forward and grasped his arm in fingers of steel.

  "For Heaven's sake, Stewart, tell me what you mean! Who was in the garden?"

  Stewart was amused and interested. It was not for him to belittle a situation of his own making, an incident of his own telling.

  "I lost my way in your garden, wandered among the trees, broke through a hedgerow or two, struck a match and consulted the compass—"

  Peter's fingers closed.

  "Quick," he said.

  Stewart's manner lost its jauntiness.

  "There was a girl there," he said shortly. "Couldn't see her. She spoke English. Said she didn't live here, and broke for the gate the minute I got to the path."

  "You didn't see her?"

  "No. Nice voice, though. Young."

  The next moment he was alone. Peter in his dressing-gown was running down the staircase to the lower floor, was shouting to the Portier to unlock the door, was a madman in everything but purpose. The Portier let him out and returned to the bedroom.

  "The boy above is worse," he said briefly. "A strange doctor has just come, and but now the Herr Doktor Byrne runs to the drug store."

  The Portier's wife shrugged her shoulders even while tears filled her eyes.

  "What can one expect?" she demanded. "The good Herr Gott has forbidden theft and Rosa says the boy was stolen. Also the druggist has gone to visit his wife's mother."

  "Perhaps I may be of service; I shall go up."

  "And see for a moment that hussy of the streets! Remain here. I shall go."

  Slowly and ponderously she climbed the stairs.

  Stewart, left alone, wandered along the dim corridor. He found Peter's excitement rather amusing. So this was where Peter lived, an old house, isolated in a garden where rambled young women with soft voices. Hello, a youngster asleep! The boy, no doubt.

  He wandered on toward the lighted door of the salon and Marie. The place was warm and comfortable, but over it all hung the indescribable odor of drugs that meant illness. He remembered that the boy was frail.

  Marie turned as he stopped in the salon doorway, and then rose, white-faced. Across the wide spaces of the room they eyed each other. Marie's crisis had come. Like all crises it was bigger than speech. It was after a distinct pause that she spoke.

  "Hast thou brought the police?"

  Curiously human, curiously masculine at least was Stewart's mental condition at that moment. He had never loved the girl; it was with tremendous relief he had put her out of his life. And yet—

  "So it's old Peter now, is it?"

  "No, no, not that, Walter. He has given me shelter, that is all. I swear it. I look after the boy."

  "Who else is here?"

  "No one else; but—"

  "Tell that rot to some one who does not know you."

  "It is true. He never even looks at me. I am wicked, but I do not lie." There was a catch of hope in her voice. Marie knew men somewhat, but she still cherished the feminine belief that jealousy is love, whereas it is only injured pride. She took a step toward him. "Walter, I am sorry. Do you hate me?" She had dropped the familiar "thou."

  Stewart crossed the room until only Peter's table and lamp stood between them.

  "I didn't mean to be brutal," he said, rather largely, entirely conscious of his own magnanimity. "It was pretty bad up there and I know it. I don't hate you, of course. That's hardly possible after—everything."

  "You—would take me back?"

  "No. It's over, Marie. I wanted to know where you were, that's all; to see that you were comfortable and not frightened. You're a silly child to think of the police."

  Marie put a hand to her throat.

  "It is the American, of course."

  "Yes."

  She staggered a trifle, recovered, threw up her head. "Then I wish I had killed her!"

  No man ever violently resents the passionate hate of one woman for her rival in his affections. Stewart, finding the situation in hand and Marie only feebly formidable, was rather amused and flattered by the honest fury in her voice. The mouse was under his paw; he would play a bit. "You'll get over feeling that way, kid. You don't really love me."

  "You were my God, that is all."

  "Will you let me help you—money, I mean?"

  "Keep it for her."

  "Peter will be here in a minute." He bent over the table and eyed her with his old, half-bullying, half-playful manner. "Come round here and kiss me for old times."

  "No!"

  "Come."

  She stood stubbornly still, and Stewart, still smiling, took a step or two toward her. Then he stopped, ceased smiling, drew himself up.

  "You are quite right and I'm a rotter." Marie's English did not comprehend "rotter," but she knew the tone. "Listen, Marie, I've told the other girl, and there's a chance for me, anyhow. Some day she may marry me. She asked me to see you."

  "I do not wish her pity."

  "You are wasting your life here. You cannot marry, you say, without a dot. There is a chance in America for a clever girl. You are clever, little Marie. The first money I can spare I'll send you—if you'll take it. It's all I can do."

  This was a new Stewart, a man she had never known. Marie recoiled from him, eyed him nervously, s
ought in her childish mind for an explanation. When at last she understood that he was sincere, she broke down. Stewart, playing a new part and raw in it, found the situation irritating. But Marie's tears were not entirely bitter. Back of them her busy young mind was weaving a new warp of life, with all of America for its loom. Hope that had died lived again. Before her already lay that great country where women might labor and live by the fruit of their labor, where her tawdry past would be buried in the center of distant Europe. New life beckoned to the little Marie that night in the old salon of Maria Theresa, beckoned to her as it called to Stewart, opportunity to one, love and work to the other. To America!

  "I will go," she said at last simply. "And I will not trouble you there."

  "Good!" Stewart held out his hand and Marie took it. With a quick gesture she held it to her cheek, dropped it.

  Peter came back half an hour later, downcast but not hopeless. He had not found Harmony, but life was not all gray. She was well, still in Vienna, and—she had come back! She had cared then enough to come back. To-morrow he would commence again, would comb the city fine, and when he had found her he would bring her back, the wanderer, to a marvelous welcome.

  He found Stewart gone, and Marie feverishly overhauling her few belongings by the salon lamp. She turned to him a face still stained with tears but radiant with hope.

  "Peter," she said gravely, "I must prepare my outfit. I go to America."

  "With Stewart?"

  "Alone, Peter, to work, to be very good, to be something. I am very happy, although—Peter, may I kiss you?"

  "Certainly," said Peter, and took her caress gravely, patting her thin shoulder. His thoughts were in the garden with Harmony, who had cared enough to come back.

  "Life," said Peter soberly, "life is just one damned thing after another, isn't it?"

  But Marie was anxiously examining the hem of a skirt.

  The letter from Anita reached Stewart the following morning. She said:—

  "I have been thinking things over, Walter, and I am going to hurt you very much—but not, believe me, without hurting myself. Perhaps my uppermost thought just now is that I am disappointing you, that I am not so big as you thought I would be. For now, in this final letter, I can tell you how much I cared. Oh, my dear, I did care!

  "But I will not marry you. And when this reaches you I shall have gone very quietly out of your life. I find that such philosophy as I have does not support me to-night, that all my little rules of life are inadequate. Individual liberty was one—but there is no liberty of the individual. Life—other lives—press too closely. You, living your life as seemed best and easiest, and carrying down with you into shipwreck the little Marie and—myself!

  "For, face to face with the fact, I cannot accept it, Walter. It is not only a question of my past against yours. It is of steady revolt and loathing of the whole thing; not the flash of protest before one succumbs to the inevitable, but a deep-seated hatred that is a part of me and that would never forget.

  "You say that you are the same man I would have married, only more honest for concealing nothing. But—and forgive me this, it insists on coming up in my mind—were you honest, really? You told me, and it took courage, but wasn't it partly fear? What motive is unmixed? Honesty—and fear, Walter. You were preparing against a contingency, although you may not admit this to yourself.

  "I am not passing judgment on you. God forbid that I should! I am only trying to show you what is in my mind, and that this break is final. The revolt is in myself, against something sordid and horrible which I will not take into my life. And for that reason time will make no difference.

  "I am not a child, and I am not unreasonable. But I ask a great deal of this life of mine that stretches ahead, Walter—home and children, the love of a good man, the fulfillment of my ideals. And you ask me to start with a handicap. I cannot do it. I know you are resentful, but—I know that you understand.

  "ANITA."

  CHAPTER XXV

  The little Georgiev was in trouble those days. The Balkan engine was threatening to explode, but continued to gather steam, with Bulgaria sitting on the safety-valve. Austria was mobilizing troops, and there were long conferences in the Burg between the Emperor and various bearded gentlemen, while the military prayed in the churches for war.

  The little Georgiev hardly ate or slept. Much hammering went on all day in the small room below Harmony's on the Wollbadgasse. At night, when the man in the green velours hat took a little sleep, mysterious packages were carried down the whitewashed staircase and loaded into wagons waiting below. Once on her window-sill Harmony found among the pigeons a carrier pigeon with a brass tube fastened to its leg.

  On the morning after Harmony's flight from the garden in the Street of Seven Stars, she received a visit from Georgiev. She had put in a sleepless night, full of heart-searching. She charged herself with cowardice in running away from Peter and Jimmy when they needed her, and in going back like a thief the night before. The conviction that the boy was not so well brought with it additional introspection—her sacrifice seemed useless, almost childish. She had fled because two men thought it necessary, in order to save her reputation, to marry her; and she did not wish to marry. Marriage was fatal to the career she had promised herself, had been promised. But this career, for which she had given up everything else—would she find it in the workroom of a dressmaker?

  Ah, but there was more to it than that. Suppose—how her cheeks burned when she thought of it!—suppose she had taken Peter at his word and married him? What about Peter's career? Was there any way by which Peter's poverty for one would be comfort for two? Was there any reason why Peter, with his splendid ability, should settle down to the hack-work of general practice, the very slough out of which he had so painfully climbed?

  Either of two things—go back to Peter, but not to marry him, or stay where she was. How she longed to go back only Harmony knew. There in the little room, with only the pigeons to see, she held out her arms longingly. "Peter!" she said. "Peter, dear!"

  She decided, of course, to stay where she was, a burden to no one. The instinct of the young girl to preserve her good name at any cost outweighed the vision of Peter at the window, haggard and tired, looking out. It was Harmony's chance, perhaps, to do a big thing; to prove herself bigger than her fears, stronger than convention. But she was young, bewildered, afraid. And there was this element, stronger than any of the others—Peter had never told her he loved her. To go back, throwing herself again on his mercy, was unthinkable. On his love—that was different. But what if he did not love her? He had been good to her; but then Peter was good to every one.

  There was something else. If the boy was worse what about his mother? Whatever she was or had been, she was his mother. Suppose he were to die and his mother not see him? Harmony's sense of fairness rebelled. In the small community at home mother was sacred, her claims insistent.

  It was very early, hardly more than dawn. The pigeons cooed on the sill; over the ridge of the church roof, across, a luminous strip foretold the sun. An oxcart, laden with vegetables for the market, lumbered along the streets. Puzzled and unhappy, Harmony rose and lighted her fire, drew on her slippers and the faded silk kimono with the pink butterflies.

  In the next room the dressmaker still slept, dreaming early morning dreams of lazy apprentices, overdue bills, complaining customers.

  Harmony moved lightly not to disturb her. She set her room in order, fed the pigeons,—it was then she saw the carrier with its message,—made her morning coffee by setting the tiny pot inside the stove. And all the time, moving quietly through her morning routine, she was there in that upper room in body only.

  In soul she was again in the courtyard back of the old lodge, in the Street of Seven Stars, with the rabbits stirring in the hutch, and Peter, with rapt eyes, gazing out over the city. Bed, toilet-table, coffee-pot, Peter; pigeons, rolls, Peter; sunrise over the church roof, and Peter again. Always Peter!

  Monia Reiff was
stirring in the next room. Harmony could hear her, muttering and putting coal on the stove and calling to the Hungarian maid for breakfast. Harmony dressed hastily. It was one of her new duties to prepare the workroom for the day. The luminous streak above the church was rose now, time for the day to begin.

  She was not certain at once that some one had knocked at the door, so faint was the sound.

  She hesitated, listened. The knob turned slightly. Harmony, expecting Monia, called "Come in."

  It was the little Georgiev, very apologetic, rather gray of face. He stood in the doorway with his finger on his lips, one ear toward the stairway. It was very silent. Monia was drinking her coffee in bed, whither she had retired for warmth.

  "Pardon!" said the Bulgarian in a whisper. "I listened until I heard you moving about. Ah, Fraulein, that I must disturb you!"

  "Something has happened!" exclaimed Harmony, thinking of Peter, of course.

  "Not yet. I fear it is about to happen. Fraulein, do me the honor to open your window. My pigeon comes now to you to be fed, and I fear—on the sill, Fraulein."

  Harmony opened the window. The wild pigeons scattered at once, but the carrier, flying out a foot or two, came back promptly and set about its breakfast.

  "Will he let me catch him?"

  "Pardon, Fraulein, If I may enter—"

  "Come in, of course."

  Evidently the defection of the carrier had been serious. A handful of grain on a wrong window-sill, and kingdoms overthrown! Georgiev caught the pigeon and drew the message from the tube. Even Harmony grasped the seriousness of the situation. The little Bulgarian's face, from gray became livid; tiny beads of cold sweat came out on his forehead.

  "What have I done?" cried Harmony. "Oh, what have I done? If I had known about the pigeon—"

  Georgiev recovered himself.

  "The Fraulein can do nothing wrong," he said. "It is a matter of an hour's delay, that is all. It may not be too late."