CHAPTER IX
It was the middle of November when Anna Gates, sitting on her trunk inthe cold entrance hall on the Hirschengasse, flung the conversationalbomb that left empty three rooms in the Pension Schwarz.
Mid-December found Harmony back and fully established in the lodge ofMaria Theresa on the Street of Seven Stars--back, but with a difference.True, the gate still swung back and forward on rusty hinges, obedient toevery whim of the December gales; but the casement windows in the salonno longer creaked or admitted drafts, thanks to Peter and a roll ofrubber weather-casing. The grand piano, which had been Scatchy's rentedextravagance, had gone never to return, and in its corner stood abattered but still usable upright. Under the great chandelier sat atable with an oil lamp, and evening and morning the white-tiled stovegleamed warm with fire. On the table by the lamp were the combinedmedical books of Peter and Anna Gates, and an ash-tray which also theyused in common.
Shabby still, of course, bare, almost denuded, the salon of MariaTheresa. But at night, with the lamp lighted and the little door of thestove open, and perhaps, when the dishes from supper had been washed,with Harmony playing softly, it took resolution on Peter's part toput on his overcoat and face a lecture on the resection of a rib or adiscussion of the function of the pituitary body.
The new arrangement had proved itself in more ways than one not onlygreater in comfort, but in economy. Food was amazingly cheap. Coal,which had cost ninety Hellers a bucket at the Pension Schwarz, theybought in quantity and could afford to use lavishly. Oil for the lampwas a trifle. They dined on venison now and then, when the shop acrossboasted a deer from the mountains. They had other game occasionally,when Peter, carrying home a mysterious package, would make them guesswhat 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 coaxingto make Peter see it that way. In vain Harmony argued the extravaganceof Rosa, now married to the soldier from Salzburg with one lung, or thetendency of the delicatessen seller to weigh short if one did not watchhim. Peter was firm.
It was Dr. Gates, after all, who found the solution.
"Don't be too obstinate, Peter," she admonished him. "The child needsoccupation; she can't practice all day. You and I can keep up thefinancial end well enough, reduced as it is. Let her keep house to herheart's content. That can be her contribution to the general fund."
And that eventually was the way it settled itself, not without demurfrom Harmony, who feared her part was too small, and who irritated Annaalmost to a frenzy by cleaning the apartment from end to end to makecertain of her usefulness.
A curious little household surely, one that made the wife of the Portiershake her head, and speak much beneath her breath with the wife ofthe brushmaker about the Americans having queer ways and not as theAustrians.
The short month had seen a change in all of them. Peter showed it leastof all, perhaps. Men feel physical discomfort less keenly than women,and Peter had been only subconsciously wretched. He had gained a poundor two in flesh, perhaps, and he was unmistakably tidier. Anna Gates wasgrowing round and rosy, and Harmony had trimmed her a hat. But the realchange was in Harmony herself.
The girl had become a woman. Who knows the curious psychology by whichsuch 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 occasionalintrospection and mysterious daydreams; the next she was a young woman,tender but not shyly so, incredibly poised, almost formidably dignifiedon occasion, but with little girlish lapses into frolic and highspirits.
The transition moment with Harmony came about in this wise: They hadbeen settled for three weeks. The odor of stewing cabbages at thePension Schwarz had retired into the oblivion of lost scents, to berecalled, along with its accompanying memory of discomfort, with everyodor of stewing cabbages for years to come. At the hospital Jimmy hadhad a bad week again. It had been an anxious time for all of them. Invain the sentry had stopped outside the third window and smiled andnodded through it; in vain--when the street was deserted and therewas none to notice--he went through a bit of the manual of arms on thepavement outside, ending by setting his gun down with a martial andringing clang.
In vain had Peter exhausted himself in literary efforts, climbingunheard-of peaks, taking walking-tours through such a Switzerland asnever was, shooting animals of various sorts, but all hornless, as hecarefully emphasized.
And now Jimmy was better again. He was propped up in bed, and with theaid of Nurse Elisabet he had cut out a paper sentry and set it in thebarred window. The real sentry had been very much astonished; he hadalmost fallen over backward. On recovering he went entirely through themanual of arms, and was almost seen by an Oberst-lieutenant. It was allmost exciting.
Harmony had been to see Jimmy on the day in question. She had takenhim some gelatin, not without apprehension, it being her first essay injelly and Jimmy being frank with the candor of childhood. The jelly hadbeen a great success.
It was when she was about to go that Jimmy broached a matter very nearhis 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 Ihad the horns, Sister Elisabet would tie them there at the foot of thebed. And I could pretend I was hunting."
Harmony had a great piece of luck that day. As she went home she sawhanging in front of the wild-game shop next to the delicatessen storea fresh deer, and this time it was a stag. Like the others it hung headdown, and as it swayed on its hook its great antlers tapped against theshop 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. Thewild-game seller was obdurate. He would sell the deer entire, or hewould mount head and antlers for his wife's cousin in Galicia as aChristmas gift.
Harmony went back to the lodge and climbed the stairs. She wasprofoundly depressed. Even the discovery that Peter had come home earlyand 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 amovement to light the candles. Peter stopped her.
"Can't we have the firelight for a little while? You are alwaysbeautiful, but--you are lovely in the firelight, Harmony."
"That is because you like me. We always think our friends arebeautiful."
"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 fastfading into darkness; to this tiny room at the back of the old house fewstreet sounds penetrated. Round them, shutting them off together fromthe world of shops with lighted windows, rumbling busses and hurryinghumanity, lay the old lodge with its dingy gardens, its whitewashedhalls, its dark and twisting staircases.
Peter had been very careful. He had cultivated a comradely manner withthe girl that had kept her entirely at her ease with him. But it hadbeen growing increasingly hard. He was only human after all. And he wasvery comfortable. Love, healthy human love, thrives on physical ease.Indigestion is a greater foe to it than poverty. Great love songs arewritten, not by poets starving in hall bedrooms, with insistent hungergnawing and undermining all that is of the spirit, but by full-fedgentlemen who sing out of an overflowing of content and wide fellowship,and who write, no doubt, just after dinner. Love, being a hunger, doesnot thrive on hunger.
Thus Peter. He had never found women essential, being occupied in thestruggle for other essentials. Women had had little part in his busylife. Once or twice he had seen visions, dreamed dreams, to wakenhimself savagely to the fact t
hat not for many years could he afford theluxury of tender eyes looking up into his, of soft arms about his neck.So he had kept away from women with almost ferocious determination. Andnow!
He drew a chair before the stove and sat down. Standing or sitting, hewas much too large for the kitchen. He sat in the chair, with his handshanging, 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 beforePeter had found an error in his bank balance which meant that he was ahundred Kronen or so poorer than he had thought. This discovery had beenvery upsetting.
"Not more than usual. Don't mind me. I'll probably end in a roaring badtemper and smash something. My moody spells often break up that way!"
Harmony put down the paring-knife, and going over to where he sat resteda 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 hervoice.
"No. Good Lord, Harmony, don't ask me what's wrong! I don't knowmyself."
He got up almost violently and set the little chair back against thewall. Hurt and astonished, Harmony went back to the table. The kitchenwas entirely dark, save for the firelight, which gleamed on the barefloor and the red legs of the table. She was fumbling with a match andthe 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 starvedsenses 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 hadtorn him root and branch from his firm ground of self-restraint lefther only shaken. He was still very close to her; she could hear himbreathing. He did not attempt to speak. With every atom of strength thatwas left in him he was fighting a mad desire to take her in his armsagain 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 turnedand 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 stillobsessed him. "Why not? Why should I not take you in my arms? Ifthere is a moment of happiness to be had in this grind of work andloneliness--"
"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. Heknew then that he had left her unstirred. He dropped his outstretchedarms.
"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 andwas 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'tavoid me. I'm not a cad. I'll let you alone."
There was only time for a glance of understanding between them, ofpromise from Peter, of acceptance from the girl. When Anna Gates enteredthe kitchen she found Harmony peeling potatoes and Peter filling up analready overfed stove.
That night, during that darkest hour before the dawn when the thriftycity fathers of the old town had shut off the street lights because twohours later the sun would rise and furnish light that cost the taxpayersnothing, the Portier's wife awakened.
The room was very silent, too silent. On those rare occasions when thePortier's wife awakened in the night and heard the twin clocks of theVotivkirche strike three, and listened, perhaps, while the delicatessenseller ambled home from the Schubert Society, singing beerily as heambled, she was wont to hear from the bed beside hers the rhythmicrespiration that told her how safe from Schubert Societies and such likeevils was her lord. There was no sound at all.
The Portier's wife raised herself on her elbow and reached over. Owingto the width of the table that stood between the beds and to a sweepingthat day which had left the beds far apart she met nothing but emptyair. Words had small effect on the Portier, who slept fathoms deep inunconsciousness. Also she did not wish to get up--the floor was coldand a wind blowing. Could she not hear it and the creaking of the deeracross the street, as it swung on its hook?
The wife of the Portier was a person of resource. She took the ironcandlestick from the table and flung it into the darkness at thePortier's pillow. No startled yell followed.
Suspicion thus confirmed, the Portier's wife forgot the cold floor andthe wind, and barefoot felt her way into the hall.
Suspicion was doubly confirmed. The chain was off the door; it evenstood open an inch or two.
Armed with a second candlestick she stationed herself inside the doorand waited. The stone floor was icy, but the fury of a woman scornedkept her warm. The Votivkirche struck one, two, three quarters of anhour. The candlestick in her hand changed from iron to ice, from iceto red-hot fire. Still the Portier had not come back and the door chainswung in the wind.
At four o'clock she retired to the bedroom again. Indignation hadchanged to fear, coupled with sneezing. Surely even the SchubertSociety--What was that?
From the Portier's bed was coming a rhythmic respiration!
She roused him, standing over him with the iron candlestick, nowlighted, and gazing at him with eyes in which alarm struggled withsuspicion.
"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 Americansabove? Sleep and keep peace."
He yawned and was instantly asleep again. The Portier's wife crawledinto her bed and warmed her aching feet under the crimson feathercomfort. But her soul was shaken.
The Devil had been known to come at night and take innocent ones out todo his evil. The innocent ones knew it not, but it might be told by thesoles of the feet, which were always soiled.
At dawn the Portier's wife cautiously uncovered the soles of hersleeping lord's feet, and fell back gasping. They were quite black, asof one who had tramped in garden mould.
Early the next morning Harmony, after a restless night, opened the doorfrom the salon of Maria Theresa into the hall and set out a pitcher forthe milk.
On the floor, just outside, lay the antlers from the deer across thestreet. Tied to them was a bit of paper, and on it was written the oneword, "Still!"
The Street of Seven Stars Page 9
