The Street of Seven Stars Part 9

"Ja, Herr Professor."

Whereupon the lady secretary put a red-ink cross before Harmony's name.

There were many such crosses on the ledger.

CHAPTER VII

For three days Byrne hardly saw Harmony. He was off early in the morning, hurried back to the midday meal and was gone again the moment it was over. He had lectures in the evenings, too, and although he lingered for an hour or so after supper it was to find Harmony taken possession of by the little Bulgarian, seized with a sudden thirst for things American.

On the evening of the second day he had left Harmony, enmeshed and helpless in a tangle of language, trying to explain to the little Bulgarian the reason American women wished to vote. Byrne flung down the stairs and out into the street, almost colliding with Stewart.

They walked on together, Stewart with the comfortably rolling gait of the man who has just dined well, Byrne with his heavy, rather solid tread. The two men were not congenial, and the frequent intervals without speech between them were rather for lack of understanding than for that completeness of it which often fathers long silences. Byrne was the first to speak after their greeting.

"Marie all right?"

"Fine. Said if I saw you to ask you to supper some night this week."

"Thanks. Does it matter which night?"

"Any but Thursday. We're hearing 'La Boheme.'"

"Say Friday, then."

Byrne's tone lacked enthusiasm, but Stewart in his after-dinner mood failed to notice it.

"Have you thought any more about our conversation of the other night?"

"What was that?"

Stewart poked him playfully in the ribs.

"Wake up, Byrne!" he said. "You remember well enough. Neither the Days nor any one else is going to have the benefit of your a.s.sistance if you go on living the way you have been. I was at Schwarz's. It is the double drain there that tells on one--eating little and being eaten much. Those old walls are full of vermin. Why don't you take our apartment?"

"Yours?"

"Yes, for a couple of months. I'm through with Schleich and Breidau can't take me for two months. It's Marie's off season and we're going to Semmering for the winter sports. We're ahead enough to take a holiday.

And if you want the flat for the same amount you are spending now, or less, you can have it, and--a home, old man."

Byrne was irritated, the more so that he realized that the offer tempted him. To his resentment was added a contempt of himself.

"Thanks," he said. "I think not."

"Oh, all right." Stewart was rather offended. "I can't do more than give you a chance."

They separated shortly after and Byrne went on alone. The snow of Sunday had turned to a fine rain which had lasted all of Monday and Tuesday.

The sidewalks were slimy; wagons slid in the ooze of the streets; and the smoke from the little stoves in the street-cars followed them in depressing horizontal clouds. Cabmen sat and smoked in the interior of musty cabs. The women hod-carriers on a new building steamed like horses as they worked.

Byrne walked along, his head thrust down into his up-turned collar; moisture gathered on his face like dew, condensed rather than precipitated. And as he walked there came before him a vision of the little flat on the Hochga.s.se, with the lamp on the table, and the general air of warmth and cheer, and a figure presiding over the brick stove in the kitchen. Byrne shook himself like a great dog and turned in at the gate of the hospital. He was thoroughly ashamed of himself.

That week was full of disappointments for Harmony. Wherever she turned she faced a wall of indifference or, what was worse, an interest that frightened her. Like a bird in a cage she beat helplessly against barriers of language, of strange customs, of stolidity that were not far from absolute cruelty.

She held to her determination, however, at first with hope, then, as the pension in advance and the lessons at fifty Kronen--also in advance,--went on, recklessly. She played marvelously those days, crying out through her violin the despair she had sealed her lips against. On Thursday, playing for the master, she turned to find him flourishing his handkerchief, and went home in a sort of daze, incredulous that she could have moved him to tears.

The little Bulgarian was frankly her slave now. He had given up the coffee-houses that he might spend that hour near her, on the chance of seeing her or, failing that, of hearing her play. At night in the Cafe Hungaria he sat for hours at a time, his elbows on the table, a bottle of native wine before him, and dreamed of her. He was very fat, the little Georgiev, very swarthy, very pathetic. The Balkan kettle was simmering in those days, and he had been set to watch the fire. But instead he had kindled a flame of his own, and was feeding it with stray words, odd glances, a bit of music, the curve of a woman's hair behind her ears. For reports he wrote verses in modern Greek, and through one of those inadvertences which make tragedy, the Minister of War down in troubled Bulgaria once received between the pages of a report in cipher on the fortifications of the Danube a verse in fervid hexameter that made even that grim official smile.

Harmony was quite unconscious. She went on her way methodically: so many hours of work, so many lessons at fifty Kronen, so many afternoons searching for something to do, making rounds of shops where her English might be valuable.

And after a few weeks Peter Byrne found time to help. After one experience, when Harmony left a shop with flaming face and tears in her eyes, he had thought it best to go with her. The first interview, under Peter's grim eyes, was a failure. The shopkeeper was obviously suspicious of Peter. After that, whenever he could escape from clinics, Peter went along, but stayed outside, smoking his eternal cigarette, and keeping a watchful eye on things inside the shop.

Only once was he needed. At that time, suspecting that all was not well, from the girl's eyes and the leer on the shopkeeper's face, he had opened the door in time to hear enough. He had lifted the proprietor bodily and flung him with a crash into a gla.s.s showcase of ornaments for the hair. Then, entirely cheerful and happy, and unmolested by the frightened clerks, he led Harmony outside and in a sort of atavistic triumph bought her a bunch of valley lilies.

Nevertheless, in his sane moments, Peter knew that things were very bad, indeed. He was still not in love with the girl. He a.n.a.lyzed his own feeling very carefully, and that was his conclusion. Nevertheless he did a quixotic thing--which was Peter, of course, all over.

He took supper with Stewart and Marie on Friday, and the idea came to him there. Hardly came to him, being Marie's originally. The little flat was cozy and bright. Marie, having straightened her kitchen, brought in a waist she was making and sat sewing while the two men talked. Their conversation was technical, a new extirpation of the thyroid gland, a recent nephrectomy.

In her curious way Marie liked Peter and respected him. She struggled with the technicalities of their talk as she sewed, finding here and there a comprehensive bit. At those times she sat, needle poised, intelligent eyes on the speakers, until she lost herself again in the mazes of their English.

At ten o'clock she rose and put away her sewing. Peter saw her get the stone pitcher and knew she was on her way for the evening beer. He took advantage of her absence to broach the matter of Harmony.

"She's up against it, as a matter of fact," he finished. "It ought to be easy enough for her to find something, but it isn't."

"I hardly saw her that day in the coffee-house; but she's rather handsome, isn't she?"

"That's one of the difficulties. Yes."

Stewart smoked and reflected. "No friends here at all?"

"None. There were three girls at first. Two have gone home."

"Could she teach violin?"

"I should think so."

"Aren't there any kids in the American colony who want lessons? There's usually some sort of infant prodigy ready to play at any entertainments of the Doctors' Club."

"They don't want an American teacher, I fancy; but I suppose I could put a card up in the club rooms. d.a.m.n it all!" cried Peter with a burst of honest resentment, "why do I have to be poor?"

"If you were rolling in gold you could hardly offer her money, could you?"

Peter had not thought of that before. It was the only comfort he found in his poverty. Marie had brought in the beer and was carefully filling the mugs. "Why do you not marry her?" she asked unexpectedly. "Then you could take this flat. We are going to Semmering for the winter sports. I would show her about the stove."

"Marry her, of course!" said Peter gravely. "Just pick her up and carry her to church! The trifling fact that she does not wish to marry me need have nothing to do with it."

"Ah, but does she not wish it?" demanded Marie. "Are you so certain, stupid big one? Do not women always love you?"

Ridiculous as the thought was, Peter pondered it as he went back to the Pension Schwarz. About himself he was absurdly modest, almost humble. It had never occurred to him that women might care for him for himself.

In his struggling life there had been little time for women. But about himself as the solution of a problem--that was different.