The Street of Seven Stars

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER X

  In looking back after a catastrophe it is easy to trace the steps bywhich the inevitable advanced. Destiny marches, not by great leaps butwith a thousand small and painful steps, and here and there it leavesits mark, a footprint on a naked soul. We trace a life by its scars, asa tree by its rings.

  Anna Gates was not the best possible companion for Harmony, and thiswith every allowance for her real kindliness, her genuine affection forthe girl. Life had destroyed her illusions, and it was of illusionsthat Harmony's veil had been woven. To Anna Gates, worn with a thousandsleepless nights, a thousand thankless days, withered before her timewith the struggling routine of medical practice, sapped with endlesscalls for sympathy and aid, existence ceased to be spiritual and becamephysiological.

  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 strangebombshells of theories, shafts of distorted moralities, personalliberties, irresponsibilities, a supreme scorn for modern law and theprophets. 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 ofthe opportunity it was doubtful whether she would have had the strengthof her convictions. Men love theories, but seldom have the courage ofthem, and Anna Gates was largely masculine. Women, being literal, areapt to absorb dangerous doctrine and put it to the test. When it isfalse doctrine they discover it too late.

  Harmony was now a woman.

  Anna would have cut off her hand sooner than have brought the girl toharm; but she loved to generalize. It amused her to see Harmony's eyeswiden with horror at one of her radical beliefs. Nothing pleasedher more than to pit her individualism against the girl's rigid andconventional morality, and down her by some apparently unanswerableargument.

  On the day after the incident in the kitchen such an argument tookplace--hardly an argument, for Harmony knew nothing of mental fencing.Anna had taken a heavy cold, and remained at home. Harmony had beenpracticing, and at the end she played a little winter song by somemodern composer. It breathed all the purity of a white winter's day; itwas as chaste as ice and as cold; and yet throughout was the thought ofgreen things hiding beneath the snow and the hope of spring.

  Harmony, having finished, voiced some such feeling. She was ratherashamed of her thought.

  "It seems that way to me," she finished apologetically. "It soundsrather silly. I always think I can tell the sort of person who composescertain 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 inthis world I want to weep always."

  "I don't find it a bad world. Of course there are bad people, but thereare 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 agentleman 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 fifthover--for every man. Each man gets one woman, and for every five couplesthere is a derelict like myself, mateless."

  Anna's amazing frankness about herself often confused Harmony. Herresentment at her single condition, because it left her childless,brought forth theories that shocked and alarmed the girl. In theatmosphere in which Harmony had been reared single women were alwayspresumed to be thus by choice and to regard with certain tolerance thoseweaker sisters who had married. Anna, on the contrary, was franklya derelict, frankly regretted her maiden condition and railed withbitterness against her enforced childlessness. The near approach ofChristmas had for years found her morose and resentful. There are, hereand 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 herresentment, every theory of existence the girl had ever known, andoffered her instead an incredible liberty in the name of the freedom ofthe individual. Harmony found all her foundations of living shaken, andthough refusing to accept Anna's theories, found her faith in her ownweakened. She sat back, pale and silent, listening, while Anna built upout of her discontent a new heaven and a new earth, with liberty writtenhigh in its firmament.

  When her reckless mood had passed Anna was regretful enough at thegirl's stricken face.

  "I'm a fool!" she said contritely. "If Peter had been here he'd havethrottled me. I deserve it. I'm a theorist, pure and simple, andtheorists are the anarchists of society. There's only one comfort aboutus--we never live up to our convictions. Now forget all this rot I'vebeen talking."

  Peter brought up the mail that afternoon, a Christmas card or two forAnna, depressingly early, and a letter from the Big Soprano for Harmonyfrom New York. The Big Soprano was very glad to be back and spent twopages over her chances for concert work.

  "... I could have done as well had I stayed at home. If I had had themoney they wanted, to go to Geneva and sing 'Brunnhilde,' it would havehelped a lot. I could have said I'd sung in opera in Europe and at leasthave had a hearing at the Met. But I didn't, and I'm back at the churchagain and glad to get my old salary. If it's at all possible, stay untilthe master has presented you in a concert. He's quite right, you haven'ta chance unless he does. And now I'll quit grumbling.

  "Scatchy met her Henry at the dock and looked quite lovely, flushed withexcitement and having been up since dawn curling her hair. He was rathera disappointment--small and blond, with light blue eyes, and almostdapper. But oh, my dear, I wouldn't care how pale a man's eyes were ifhe looked at me the way Henry looked at her.

  "They asked me to luncheon with them, but I knew they wanted to be alonetogether, and so I ate a bite or two, all I could swallow for the lumpin my throat, by myself. I was homesick enough in old Wien, but I amjust as homesick now that I am here, for we are really homesick only forpeople, 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 wasunpleasant and decide to leave? What if a reckless impulse, recklesslycarried out, were to break up an arrangement that had made a green oasisof happiness and content for all of them in the desert of their commondespair?

  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 almostgroaned 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 badnight, as nights go. She had gone through the painful introspectionwhich, in a thoroughly good girl, always follows such an outburst asPeter's. Had she said or done anything to make him think--Surely she hadnot! Had she been wrong about Peter after all? Surely not again.

  While the Portier's wife, waked, as may happen, by an unaccustomedsilence, was standing guard in the hall below, iron candlestick inhand, Harmony, having read the Litany through in the not particularlyreligious hope of getting to sleep, was dreaming placidly. It was Peterwho tossed and turned almost all night. Truly there had been littlesleep that night
in the old hunting-lodge of Maria Theresa.

  Peter, still not quite at ease, that evening kept out of the kitchenwhile supper was preparing. Anna, radical theories forgotten and wearinga knitted shawl against drafts, was making a salad, and Harmony, allanxiety 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 clothstraight."

  Peter, exiled in the salon, came joyously. Obviously the wretchedbusiness of yesterday was forgiven. He came to the door, pipe in mouth.

  "Suppose I refuse?" he questioned. "You--you haven't been very friendlywith 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'spromise, abasement, regret. Harmony met him with forgiveness andrestoration.

  "Sometimes," said Peter humbly, "when I am in very great favor, you say,'Good-evening, Peter, dear.'"

  "Good-evening, Peter, dear," said Harmony.