The Street of Seven Stars

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XXIII

  Jimmy was not so well, although Harmony's flight had had nothing to dowith the relapse. He had found Marie a slavishly devoted substitute, andbesides Peter had indicated that Harmony's absence was purely temporary.But the breaking-up was inevitable. All day long the child lay in thewhite bed, apathetic but sleepless. In vain Marie made flower fairiesfor his pillow, in vain the little mice, now quite tame, playedhide-and-seek over the bed, in vain Peter paused long enough in hisfrantic search for Harmony to buy colored postcards and bring them tohim.

  He was contented enough; he did not suffer at all; and he had noapprehension of what was coming. He asked for nothing, tried obedientlyto eat, liked to have Marie in the room. But he did not beg to betaken into the salon, as he once had done. There was a sort of mentalconfusion also. He liked Marie to read his father's letters; but ashe grew weaker the occasional confusing of Peter with his dead fatherbecame a fixed idea. Peter was Daddy.

  Peter took care of him at night. He had moved into Harmony's adjacentroom and dressed there. But he had never slept in the bed. At night heput on his shabby dressing-gown and worn slippers and lay on a hairclothsofa at the foot of Jimmy's bed--lay but hardly slept, so afraid was hethat the slender thread of life might snap when it was drawn out to itsslenderest during the darkest hours before the dawn. More than once inevery night Peter rose and stood, hardly breathing, with the tiny lampin his hand, watching for the rise and fall of the boy's thin littlechest. Peter grew old these days. He turned gray over the ears anddeveloped lines about his mouth that never left him again. He felt grayand old, and sometimes bitter and hard also. The boy's condition couldnot be helped: it was inevitable, hopeless. But the thing that waseating his heart out had been unnecessary and cruel.

  Where was Harmony? When it stormed, as it did almost steadily, hewondered how she was sheltered; when the occasional sun shone he hopedit was bringing her a bit of cheer. Now and then, in the night, when thelamp burned low and gusts of wind shook the old house, fearful thoughtscame to him--the canal, with its filthy depths. Daylight brought reason,however. Harmony had been too rational, too sane for such an end.

  McLean was Peter's great support in those terrible days. He was youngand hopeful. Also he had money. Peter could not afford to grease themachinery of the police service; McLean could and did. In Berlin Harmonycould not have remained hidden for two days. In Vienna, however, itwas different. Returns were made to the department, but irregularly.An American music student was missing. There were thousands of Americanmusic students in the city: one fell over them in the coffee-houses.McLean offered a reward and followed up innumerable music students.

  The alternating hope and despair was most trying. Peter became old andhaggard; the boy grew thin and white. But there was this difference,that with Peter the strain was cumulative, hour on hour, day on day.With McLean each night found him worn and exhausted, but each followingmorning he went to work with renewed strength and energy. Perhaps, afterall, the iron had not struck so deep into his soul. With Peter it was alife-and-death matter.

  Clinics and lectures had begun again, but he had no heart for work. Thelittle household went on methodically. Marie remained; there had seemednothing else to do. She cooked Peter's food--what little he would eat;she nursed Jimmy while Peter was out on the long search; and she keptthe apartment neat. She was never intrusive, never talkative. Indeed,she seemed to have lapsed into definite silence. She deferred absolutelyto Peter, adored him, indeed, from afar. She never ate with him, inspite of his protests.

  The little apartment was very quiet. Where formerly had been music andHarmony's soft laughter, where Anna Gates had been wont to argue withPeter in loud, incisive tones, where even the prisms of the chandelierhad once vibrated in response to Harmony's violin, almost absolutesilence now reigned. Even the gate, having been repaired, no longercreaked, and the loud altercations between the Portier and his wife hadbeen silenced out of deference to the sick child.

  On the day that Harmony, in the gold dress, had discovered Jimmy'smother in the American dancer Peter had had an unusually bad day. McLeanhad sent him a note by messenger early in the morning, to the effectthat a young girl answering Harmony's description had been seen in thepark at Schonbrunn and traced to an apartment near by.

  Harmony had liked Schonbrunn, and it seemed possible. They had gone outtogether, McLean optimistic, Peter afraid to hope. And it had been as hefeared--a pretty little violin student, indeed, who had been washing herhair, and only opened the door an inch or two.

  McLean made a lame apology, Peter too sick with disappointment to speak.Then back to the city again.

  He had taken to making a daily round, to the master's, to the FrauProfessor Bergmeister's, along the Graben and the Karntnerstrasse,ending up at the Doctors' Club in the faint hope of a letter. Wrathstill smouldered deep in Peter; he would not enter a room at the clubif Mrs. Boyer sat within. He had had a long hour with Dr. Jennings,and left that cheerful person writhing in abasement. And he had helda stormy interview with the Frau Schwarz, which left her humble fora week, and exceedingly nervous, being of the impression from Peter'smanner that in the event of Harmony not turning up an American gunboatwould sail up the right arm of the Danube and bombard the PensionSchwarz.

  Schonbrunn having failed them, McLean and, Peter went back to the cityin the street-car, neither one saying much. Even McLean's elasticity wasdeserting him. His eyes, from much peering into crowds, had taken on astrained, concentrated look.

  Peter was shabbier than ever beside the other man's ultrafashionabledress. He sat, bent forward, his long arms dangling between his knees,his head down. Their common trouble had drawn the two together, or haddrawn McLean close to Peter, as if he recognized that there were degreesin grief and that Peter had received almost a death-wound. His oldrage at Peter had died. Harmony's flight had proved the situation as noamount of protestation would have done. The thing now was to find thegirl; then he and Peter would start even, and the battle to the bestman.

  They had the car almost to themselves. Peter had not spoken since he satdown. McLean was busy over a notebook, in which he jotted down from dayto day such details of their search as might be worth keeping. Now andthen he glanced at Peter as if he wished to say something, hesitated,fell to work again over the notebook. Finally he ventured.

  "How's the boy?"

  "Not so well to-day. I'm having a couple of men in to see him to-night.He doesn't sleep."

  "Do you sleep?"

  "Not much. He's on my mind, of course."

  That and other things, Peter.

  "Don't you think--wouldn't it be better to have a nurse. You can't golike this all day and be up all night, you know. And Marie has him mostof the day." McLean, of course, had known Marie before. "The boy oughtto have a nurse, I think."

  "He doesn't move without my hearing him."

  "That's an argument for me. Do you want to get sick?"

  Peter turned a white face toward McLean, a face in which exasperationstruggled with fatigue.

  "Good Lord, boy," he rasped, "don't you suppose I'd have a nurse if Icould afford it?"

  "Would you let me help? I'd like to do something. I'm a useless cub ina sick-room, but I could do that. Who's the woman he liked in thehospital?"

  "Nurse Elisabet. I don't know, Mac. There's no reason why I shouldn'tlet you help, I suppose. It hurts, of course, but--if he would behappier--"

  "That's settled, then," said McLean. "Nurse Elisabet, if she can come.And--look here, old man. I 've been trying to say this for a week andhaven't had the nerve. Let me help you out for a while. You can send itback when you get it, any time, a year or ten years. I'll not miss it."

  But Peter refused. He tempered the refusal in his kindly way.

  "I can't take anything now," he said. "But I'll remember it, and ifthings get very bad I'll come to you. It isn't costing much to live.Marie is a good manager, almost as good as--Harmony was." This withdifficulty. He found it always hard to speak of Harmony. His thr
oatseemed to close on the name.

  That was the best McLean could do, but he made a mental reservation tosee Marie that night and slip her a little money. Peter need never know,would never notice.

  At a cross-street the car stopped, and the little Bulgarian, Georgiev,got on. He inspected the car carefully before he came in from theplatform, and sat down unobtrusively in a corner. Things were not goingwell with him either. His small black eyes darted from face to facesuspiciously, until they came to a rest on Peter.

  It was Georgiev's business to read men. Quickly he put together the bitshe had gathered from Harmony on the staircase, added to them Peter'sdespondent attitude, his strained face, the abstraction which required atouch on the arm from his companion when they reached their destination,recalled Peter outside the door of Harmony's room in the PensionSchwarz--and built him a little story that was not far from the truth.

  Peter left the car without seeing him. It was the hour of the promenade,when the Ring and the larger business streets were full of people,when Demel's was thronged with pretty women eating American ices, withmilitary men drinking tea and nibbling Austrian pastry, the hour whenthe flower women along the Stephansplatz did a rousing business inroses, when sterile women burned candles before the Madonna in theCathedral, when the lottery did the record business of the day.

  It was Peter's forlorn hope that somewhere among the crowd he mighthappen on Harmony. For some reason he thought of her always as in acrowd, with people close, touching her, men staring at her, followingher. He had spent a frightful night in the Opera, scanning seat afterseat, not so much because he hoped to find her as because inaction wasintolerable.

  And so, on that afternoon, he made his slow progress along theKarntnerstrasse, halting now and then to scrutinize the crowd. He evenpeered through the doors of shops here and there, hoping while he fearedthat the girl might be seeking employment within, as she had before inthe early days of the winter.

  Because of his stature and powerful physique, and perhaps, too, becauseof the wretchedness in his eyes, people noticed him. There was one placewhere Peter lingered, where a new building was being erected, and wherebecause of the narrowness of the passage the dense crowd was thinned asit passed. He stood by choice outside a hairdresser's window, where abrilliant light shone on each face that passed.

  Inside the clerks had noticed him. Two of them standing together by thedesk spoke of him: "He is there again, the gray man!"

  "Ah, so! But, yes, there is his back!"

  "Poor one, it is the Fraulein Engel he waits to see, perhaps."

  "More likely Le Grande, the American. He is American."

  "He is Russian. Look at his size."

  "But his shoes!" triumphantly. "They are American, little one."

  The third girl had not spoken; she was wrapping in tissue a great goldenrose made for the hair. She placed it in a box carefully.

  "I think he is of the police," she said, "or a spy. There is much talkof war."

  "Foolishness! Does a police officer sigh always? Or a spy have suchsadness in his face? And he grows thin and white."

  "The rose, Fraulein."

  The clerk who had wrapped up the flower held it out to the customer.The customer, however, was not looking. She was gazing with strangeintentness at the back of a worn gray overcoat. Then with a curiousclutch at her heart she went white. Harmony, of course, Harmony come tofetch the golden rose that was to complete Le Grande's costume.

  She recovered almost at once and made an excuse to leave by anotherexit.

  She took a final look at the gray sleeve that was all she could see ofPeter, who had shifted a bit, and stumbled out into the crowd, walkingalong with her lip trembling under her veil, and with the slow andsteady ache at her heart that she had thought she had stilled for good.

  It had never occurred to Harmony that Peter loved her. He had proposedto her twice, but that had been in each case to solve a difficulty forher. And once he had taken her in his arms, but that was different. Eventhen he had not said he loved her--had not even known it, to be exact.Nor had Harmony realized what Peter meant to her until she had put himout of her life.

  The sight of the familiar gray coat, the scrap of conversation, soenlightening as to poor Peter's quest, that Peter was growing thin andwhite, made her almost reel. She had been too occupied with her ownposition to realize Peter's. With the glimpse of him came a greatlonging for the house on the Siebensternstrasse, for Jimmy's arms abouther neck, for the salon with the lamp lighted and the sleet beatingharmlessly against the casement windows, for the little kitchen with thebrick stove, for Peter.

  Doubts of the wisdom of her course assailed her. But to go back meant,at the best, adding to Peter's burden of Jimmy and Marie, meant theold situation again, too, for Marie most certainly did not add to therespectability of the establishment. And other doubts assailed her. Whatif Jimmy were not so well, should die, as was possible, and she had notlet his mother see him!

  Monia Reiff was very busy that day. Harmony did not leave the workroomuntil eight o'clock. During all that time, while her slim fingers workedover fragile laces and soft chiffons, she was seeing Jimmy as she hadseen him last, with the flower fairies on his pillow, and Peter, keepingwatch over the crowd in the Karntnerstrasse, looking with his steadyeyes for her.

  No part of the city was safe for a young girl after night, she knew; thesixteenth district was no better than the rest, rather worse in places.But the longing to see the house on the Siebensternstrasse grew on her,became from an ache a sharp and insistent pain. She must go, must seeonce again the comfortable glow of Peter's lamp, the flicker that wasthe fire.

  She ate no supper. She was too tired to eat, and there was the pain. Sheput on her wraps and crept down the whitewashed staircase.

  The paved courtyard below was to be crossed and it was poorly lighted.She achieved the street, however, without molestation. To the street-carwas only a block, but during that block she was accosted twice. She waswhite and frightened when she reached the car.

  The Siebensternstrasse at last. The street was always dark; thedelicatessen shop was closed, but in the wild-game store next a lightwas burning low, and a flame flickered before the little shrine over themoney drawer. The gameseller was a religious man.

  The old stucco house dominated the neighborhood. From the time she leftthe car Harmony saw it, its long flat roof black against the dark sky,its rows of unlighted windows, its long wall broken in the center bythe gate. Now from across the street its whole facade lay before her.Peter's lamp was not lighted, but there was a glow of soft firelightfrom the salon windows. The light was not regular--it disappeared atregular intervals, was blotted out. Harmony knew what that meant. Someone beyond range of where she stood was pacing the floor, back andforward, back and forward. When he was worried or anxious Peter alwayspaced the door.

  She did not know how long she stood there. One of the soft rains wasfalling, or more accurately, condensing. The saturated air was hardlycold. She stood on the pavement unmolested, while the glow died lowerand 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 inthe wild-game shop burned itself out; the Portier across the way came tothe door, glanced up at the sky and went in. Harmony heard the rattle ofthe chain as it was stretched across the door inside.

  Not all the windows of the suite opened on the street. Jimmy'swindows--and Peter's--opened toward the back of the house, where ina brick-paved courtyard the wife of the Portier hung her washing, andwhere the Portier himself kept a hutch of rabbits. A wild and recklessdesire to see at least the light from the child's room possessedHarmony. Even the light would be something; to go like this, to carrywith her only the memory of a dark looming house without cheer wasunthinkable. The gate was never locked. If she but went into the gardenand round by the spruce tree to the back of the house, it would besomething.

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

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

  Peter was singing, droning softly, as one who puts a drowsy child tosleep. Slower and slower, softer and softer, over and over, the littlesong Harmony had been wont to sing:--

  "Ah well! For us all some sweet hope lies Deeply buried from humaneyes. 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 downthe gaslight beside it to a blue point. Harmony did not breathe. For aminute, two minutes, he stood there looking out. Far off the twin clocksof the Votivkirche struck the hour. All about lay the lights of the oldcity, 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 stoodby the window. And each night he whispered to the city that shelteredHarmony somewhere, what he had whispered to the little sweater coat thenight before he went away:--

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

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

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