The Street of Seven Stars Part 45

Peter was going back to America and still he had not told Harmony he loved her. It was necessary that he go back. His money had about given out, and there was no way to get more save by earning it. The drain of Jimmy's illness, the inevitable expense of the small grave and the tiny stone Peter had insisted on buying, had made retreat his only course.

True, Le Grande had wished to defray all expenses, but Peter was inexorable. No money earned as the dancer earned hers should purchase peaceful rest for the loved little body. And after seeing Peter's eyes the dancer had not insisted.

A week had seen many changes. Marie was gone. After a conference between Stewart and Peter that had been decided on. Stewart raised the money somehow, and Peter saw her off, palpitant and eager, with the pin he had sent her to Semmering at her throat. She kissed Peter on the cheek in the station, rather to his embarra.s.sment. From the lowered window, as the train pulled out, she waved a moist handkerchief.

"I shall be very good," she promised him. The last words he heard above the grinding of the train were her cheery: "To America!"

Peter was living alone in the Street of Seven Stars, getting food where he might happen to be, buying a little now and then from the delicatessen shop across the street. For Harmony had gone back to the house in the Wollbadga.s.se. She had stayed until all was over and until Marie's small preparations for departure were over. Then, while Peter was at the station, she slipped away again. But this time she left her address. She wrote:--

"You will come to visit me, dear Peter, because I was so lonely before and that is unnecessary now. But you must know that I cannot stay in the Siebensternstra.s.se. We have each our own fight to make, and you have been trying to fight for us all, for Marie, for dear little Jimmy, for me. You must get back to work now; you have lost so much time. And I am managing well. The Frau Professor is back and will take an evening lesson, and soon I shall have more money from Fraulein Reiff. You can see how things are looking up for me. In a few months I shall be able to renew my music lessons. And then, Peter,--the career!

"HARMONY."

Her address was beneath.

Peter had suffered much. He was thinner, grayer, and as he stood with the letter in his hand he felt that Harmony was right. He could offer her nothing but his shabby self, his problematic future. Perhaps, surely, everything would have been settled, without reason, had he only once taken the girl in his arms, told her she was the breath of life itself to him. But adversity, while it had roused his fighting spirit in everything else, had sapped his confidence.

He had found the letter on his dressing-table, and he found himself confronting his image over it, a tall, stooping figure, a tired, lined face, a coat that bore the impress of many days with a sick child's head against its breast.

So it was over. She had come back and gone again, and this time he must let her go. Who was he to detain her? She would carry herself on to success, he felt; she had youth, hope, beauty and ability. And she had proved the thing he had not dared to believe, that she could take care of herself in the old city. Only--to go away and leave her there!

McLean would remain. No doubt he already had Harmony's address in the Wollbadga.s.se. Peter was not subtle, no psychologist, but he had seen during the last few days how the boy watched Harmony's every word, every gesture. And, perhaps, when loneliness and hard work began to tell on her, McLean's devotion would win its reward. McLean's devotion, with all that it meant, the lessons again, community of taste, their common youth! Peter felt old, very tired.

Nevertheless he went that night to the Wollbadga.s.se. He sent his gray suit to the Portier's wife to be pressed, and getting out his surgical case, as he had once before in the Pension Schwarz, he sewed a b.u.t.ton on his overcoat, using the curved needle and the catgut and working with surgeon's precision. Then, still working very carefully, he trimmed the edges of graying hair over his ears, trimmed his cuffs, trimmed his best silk tie, now almost hopeless. He blacked his shoes, and the suit not coming, he donned his dressing-gown and went into Jimmy's room to feed the mice. Peter stood a moment beside the smooth white bed with his face working. The wooden sentry still stood on the bedside table.

It was in Peter's mind to take the mice to Harmony, confess his defeat and approaching retreat, and ask her to care for them. Then he decided against this palpable appeal for sympathy, elected to go empty-handed and discover merely how comfortable she was or was not. When the time came he would slip out of her life, sending her a letter and leaving McLean on guard.

Harmony was at home. Peter climbed the dark staircase--where Harmony had met the little Georgiev, and where he had gone down to his death--climbed steadily, but without his usual elasticity. The place appalled him--its gloom, its dinginess, its somber quiet. In the daylight, with the pigeons on the sills and the morning sunlight printing the cross of the church steeple on the whitewashed wall, it was peaceful, cloisterlike, with landings that were crypts. But at night it was almost terrifying, that staircase.

Harmony was playing. Peter heard her when he reached the upper landing, playing a sad little strain that gripped his heart. He waited outside before ringing, heard her begin something determinedly cheerful, falter, cease altogether. Peter rang.

Harmony herself admitted him. Perhaps--oh, certainly she had expected him! It would be Peter, of course, to come and see how she was getting on, how she was housed. She held out her hand and Peter took it. Still no words, only a half smile from her and no smile at all from Peter, but his heart in his eyes.

"I hoped you would come, Peter. We may have the reception room."

"You knew I would come," said Peter. "The reception room?"

"Where customers wait." She still carried her violin, and slipped back to her room to put it away. Peter had a glimpse of its poverty and its meagerness. He drew a long breath.

Monia was at the opera, and the Hungarian sat in the kitchen knitting a stocking. The reception room was warm from the day's fire, and in order.

All the pins and sc.r.a.ps of the day had been swept up, and the portieres that made fitting-rooms of the corners were pushed back. Peter saw only a big room with empty corners, and that at a glance. His eyes were Harmony's.

He sat down awkwardly on a stiff chair, Harmony on a velvet settee. They were suddenly two strangers meeting for the first time. In the squalor of the Pension Schwarz, in the comfortable intimacies of the Street of Seven Stars, they had been easy, unconstrained. Now suddenly Peter was tongue-tied. Only one thing in him clamored for utterance, and that he sternly silenced.

"I--I could not stay there, Peter. You understood?"

"No. Of course, I understood."

"You were not angry?"

"Why should I be angry? You came, like an angel of light, when I needed you. Only, of course,--"

"Yes?"

"I'll not say that, I think."

"Please say it, Peter!"

Peter writhed; looked everywhere but at her.

"Please, Peter. You said I always came when you needed me, only--"

"Only--I always need you!" Peter, Peter!

"Not always, I think. Of course, when one is in trouble one needs a woman; but--"

"Well, of course--but--I'm generally in trouble, Harry dear."

Frightfully ashamed of himself by that time was Peter, ashamed of his weakness. He sought to give a casual air to the speech by stooping for a neglected pin on the carpet. By the time he had stuck it in his lapel he had saved his mental forces from the rout of Harmony's eyes.

His next speech he made to the center table, and missed a most delectable look in the aforesaid eyes.

"I didn't come to be silly," he said to the table. "I hate people who whine, and I've got into a d.a.m.nable habit of being sorry for myself!

It's to laugh, isn't it, a great, hulking carca.s.s like me, to be--"

"Peter," said Harmony softly, "aren't you going to look at me?"

"I'm afraid."

"That's cowardice. And I've fixed my hair a new way. Do you like it?"

"Splendid," said Peter to the center table.

"You didn't look!"

The rout of Harmony's eyes was supplemented by the rout of Harmony's hair. Peter, goaded, got up and walked about. Harmony was half exasperated; she would have boxed Peter's ears with a tender hand had she dared.

His hands thrust savagely in his pockets, Peter turned and faced her at last.

"First of all," he said, "I am going back to America, Harmony. I've got all I can get here, all I came for--" He stopped, seeing her face.

"Well, of course, that's not true, I haven't. But I'm going back, anyhow. You needn't look so stricken: I haven't lost my chance. I'll come back sometime again and finish, when I've earned enough to do it."

"You will never come back, Peter. You have spent all your money on others, and now you are going back just where you were, and--you are leaving me here alone!"

"You are alone, anyhow," said Peter, "making your own way and getting along. And McLean will be here."

"Are you turning me over to him?"

No reply. Peter was pacing the floor.