The Street of Seven Stars Part 41

"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 pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.d, 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, sought 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 d.a.m.ned 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 succ.u.mbs 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 pa.s.sing judgment on you. G.o.d 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 Wollbadga.s.se. 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 bra.s.s 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 b.u.t.terflies.

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.