The Street of Seven Stars Part 5

"But surely not with mustard?"

"Ach, ja--englisch mustard."

Stewart and Boyer had gone on ahead. Marie laid a detaining hand on Byrne's arm.

"I was very angry with you to-day."

"With me?"

Like the others who occasionally gathered in Stewart's unconventional menage, Byrne had adopted Stewart's custom of addressing Marie in English, while she replied in her own tongue.

"Ja. I wished but to see nearer the American Fraulein's hat, and you--She is rich, so?"

"I really don't know. I think not."

"And good?"

"Yes, of course."

Marie was small; she stood, her head back, her eyes narrowed, looking up at Byrne. There was nothing evil in her face, it was not even hard.

Rather, there was a sort of weariness, as of age and experience. She had put on a white dress, cut out at the neck, and above her collarbones were small, cuplike hollows. She was very thin.

"I was sad to-night," she said plaintively. "I wished to jump out the window."

Byrne was startled, but the girl was smiling at the recollection.

"And I made you feel like that?"

"Not you--the other Fraulein. I was dirt to her. I--" She stopped tragically, then sniffled.

"The sausages!" she cried, and gathering up her skirts ran toward the kitchen. Byrne went on into the sitting-room.

Stewart was a single man spending two years in post-graduate work in Germany and Austria, not so much because the Germans and Austrians could teach what could not be taught at home, but because of the wealth of clinical material. The great European hospitals, filled to overflowing, offered unlimited choice of cases. The contempt for human life of overpopulated cities, coupled with the extreme poverty and helplessness of the ma.s.ses, combined to form that tragic part of the world which dies that others may live.

Stewart, like Byrne, was doing surgery, and the very lack of fineness which Byrne felt in the man promised something in his work, a sort of ruthlessness, a singleness of purpose, good or bad, an overwhelming egotism that in his profession might only be a necessary self-reliance.

His singleness of purpose had, at the beginning of his residence in Vienna, devoted itself to making him comfortable. With the narrow means at his control he had the choice of two alternatives: To live, as Byrne was living, in a third-cla.s.s pension, stewing in summer, freezing in winter, starving always; or the alternative he had chosen.

The Stewart apartment had only three rooms, but it possessed that luxury of luxuries, a bath. It was not a bath in the usual sense of water on tap, and shining nickel plate, but a bath for all that, where with premeditation and forethought one might bathe. The room had once been a fuel and store room, but now boasted a tin tub and a stove with a reservoir on top, where water might be heated to the boiling point, at the same time bringing up the atmosphere to a point where the tin tub sizzled if one touched it.

Behind the bathroom a tiny kitchen with a brick stove; next, a bedroom; the whole incredibly neat. Along one side of the wall a clothespress, which the combined wardrobes of two did not fill. And beyond that again, opening through an arch with a dingy chenille curtain, the sitting-room, now in chaotic disorder.

Byrne went directly to the sitting-room. There were four men already there: Stewart and Boyer, a pathology man named Wallace Hunter, doing research work at the general hospital, and a young piano student from Tennessee named MacLean. The cards had been already dealt, and Byrne stood by waiting for the hand to be played.

The game was a small one, as befitted the means of the majority. It was a regular Sat.u.r.day night affair, as much a custom as the beer that sat in Steins on the floor beside each man, or as Marie's boiled Wiener sausages.

The blue chips represented a Krone, the white ones five h.e.l.lers.

MacLean, who was hardly more than a boy, was winning, drawing in chips with quick gestures of his long pianist's fingers.

Byrne sat down and picked up his cards. Stewart was staying out, and so, after a glance, did he. The other three drew cards and fell to betting.

Stewart leaned back and filled his long pipe, and after a second's hesitation Byrne turned to him.

"I don't know just what to say, Stewart," he began in an undertone. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt Marie, but--"

"Oh, that's all right." Stewart drew at his pipe and bent forward to watch the game with an air of ending the discussion.

"Not at all. I did hurt her and I want to explain. Marie has been kind to me, and I like her. You know that."

"Don't be an a.s.s!" Stewart turned on him sharply. "Marie is a little fool, that's all. I didn't know it was an American girl."

Byrne played in bad luck. His mind was not on the cards. He stayed out of the last hand, and with a cigarette wandered about the room. He glanced into the tidy bedroom and beyond, to where Marie hovered over the stove.

She turned and saw him.

"Come," she called. "Watch the supper for me while I go down for more beer."

"But no," he replied, imitating her tone. "Watch the supper for me while I go down for more beer."

"I love thee," she called merrily. "Tell the Herr Doktor I love thee.

And here is the pitcher."

When he returned the supper was already laid in the little kitchen. The cards were put away, and young MacLean and Wallace Hunter were replacing the cover and the lamp on the card-table. Stewart was orating from a pinnacle of proprietorship.

"Exactly," he was saying, in reply to something gone before; "I used to come here Sat.u.r.day nights--used to come early and take a bath.

Worthington had rented it furnished for a song. Used to sit in a corner and envy Worthington his bathtub, and that lamp there, and decent food, and a bed that didn't suffer from necrosis in the center. Then when he was called home I took it."

"Girl and all, wasn't it?"

"Girl and all. Old Worth said she was straight, and, by Jove, she is. He came back last fall on his wedding trip--he married a wealthy girl and came to see us. I was out, but Marie was here. There was the deuce to pay."

He lowered his voice. The men had gathered about him in a group.

"Jealous, eh?" from Hunter.

"Jealous? No! He tried to kiss her and she hit him--said he didn't respect her!"

"It's a curious code of honor," said Boyer thoughtfully. And indeed to none but Stewart did it seem amusing. This little girl of the streets, driven by G.o.d knows what necessity to make her own code and, having made it, living up to it with every fiber of her.

"Bitte zum speisen!" called Marie gayly from her brick stove, and the men trooped out to the kitchen.

The supper was spread on the table, with the pitcher of beer in the center. There were Swiss cheese and cold ham and rolls, and above all sausages and mustard. Peter drank a great deal of beer, as did the others, and sang German songs with a frightful accent and much vigor and sentiment, as also did the others.

Then he went back to the cold room in the Pension Schwarz, and told himself he was a fool to live alone when one could live like a prince for the same sum properly laid out. He dropped into the hollow center of his bed, where his big figure fitted as comfortably as though it lay in a washtub, and before his eyes there came a vision of Stewart's flat and the slippers by the fire--which was eminently human.

However, a moment later he yawned, and said aloud, with considerable vigor, that he'd be d.a.m.ned if he would--which was eminently Peter Byrne.

Almost immediately, with the bed coverings, augmented by his overcoat, drawn snug to his chin, and the better necktie swinging from the gasjet in the air from the opened window, Peter was asleep. For four hours he had entirely forgotten Harmony.