The Street of Seven Stars, Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  Harmony found the little hoard under her pillow that night when, havingseen Scatch and the Big Soprano off at the station, she had come backalone to the apartment on the Siebensternstrasse. The trunks weregone now. Only the concerto score still lay on the piano, where littleScatchett, mentally on the dock at New York with Henry's arms about her,had forgotten it. The candles in the great chandelier had died in tearsof paraffin that spattered the floor beneath. One or two of the socketswere still smoking, and the sharp odor of burning wickends filled theroom.

  Harmony had come through the garden quickly. She had had an uneasy senseof being followed, and the garden, with its moaning trees and slamminggate and the great dark house in the background, was a forbidding placeat best. She had rung the bell and had stood, her back against the door,eyes and ears strained in the darkness. She had fancied that a figurehad stopped outside the gate and stood looking in, but the next momentthe gate had swung to and the Portier was fumbling at the lock behindher.

  The Portier had put on his trousers over his night garments, and hismustache bandage gave him a sinister expression, rather augmentedwhen he smiled at her. The Portier liked Harmony in spite of the earlymorning practicing; she looked like a singer at the opera for whom hecherished a hidden attachment. The singer had never seen him, but it wasfor her he wore the mustache bandage. Perhaps some day--hopefully! Onemust be ready!

  The Portier gave Harmony a tiny candle and Harmony held out his tip, thefive Hellers of custom. But the Portier was keen, and Rosa was a nieceof his wife and talked more than she should. He refused the tip with agesture.

  "Bitte, Fraulein!" he said through the bandage. "It is for me a pleasureto admit you. And perhaps if the Fraulein is cold, a basin of soup."

  The Portier was not pleasant to the eye. His nightshirt was open overhis hairy chest and his feet were bare to the stone floor. But toHarmony that lonely night he was beautiful. She tried to speak and couldnot but she held out her hand in impulsive gratitude, and the Portier inhis best manner bent over and kissed it. As she reached the curve of thestone staircase, carrying her tiny candle, the Portier was following herwith his eyes. She was very like the girl of the opera.

  The clang of the door below and the rattle of the chain were comfortingto Harmony's ears. From the safety of the darkened salon she peered outinto the garden again, but no skulking figure detached itself from theshadows, and the gate remained, for a marvel, closed.

  It was when--having picked up her violin in a very passion ofloneliness, only to put it down when she found that the familiar soundsechoed and reechoed sadly through the silent rooms--it was when she wasready for bed that she found the money under her pillow, and a scrawlfrom Scatchy, a breathless, apologetic scrawl, little Scatchett havingadored her from afar, as the plain adore the beautiful, the mediocre thegifted:--

  DEAREST HARRY [here a large blot, Scatchy being addicted to blots]: I amhonestly frightened when I think what we are doing. But, oh, my dear, ifyou could know how pleased we are with ourselves you'd not deny us thispleasure. Harry, you have it--the real thing, you know, whatever itis--and I haven't. None of the rest of us had. And you must stay. To gonow, just when lessons would mean everything--well, you must not thinkof it. We have scads to take us home, more than we need, both of us, orat least--well, I'm lying, and you know it. But we have enough, by beingcareful, and we want you to have this. It isn't much, but it may help.Ten Kronen of it I found to-night under my bed, and it may be yoursanyhow.

  "Sadie [Sadie was the Big Soprano] keeps saying awful things about ourleaving you here, and she has rather terrified me. You are so beautiful,Harry,--although you never let us tell you so. And Sadie says you havea soul and I haven't, and that souls are deadly things to have. I feelto-night that in urging you to stay I am taking the burden of your soulon me! Do be careful, Harry. If any one you do not know speaks to youcall a policeman. And be sure you get into a respectable pension. Thereare queer ones.

  "Sadie and I think that if you can get along on what you get fromhome--you said your mother would get insurance, didn't you?--and willkeep this as a sort of fund to take you home if anything should gowrong--. But perhaps we are needlessly worried. In any case, of courseit's a loan, and you can preserve that magnificent independence of yoursby sending it back when you get to work to make your fortune. And if youare doubtful at all, just remember that hopeful little mother of yourswho sent you over to get what she had never been able to have forherself, and who planned this for you from the time you were a kiddy andshe named you Harmony.

  "I'm not saying good-bye. I can't.

  "SCATCH."

  That night, while the Portier and his wife slept under their crimsonfeather beds and the crystals of the chandelier in the salon shook inthe draft as if the old Austrian court still danced beneath, Harmonyfought her battle. And a battle it was. Scatchy and the Big Soprano hadnot known everything. There had been no insurance on her father's life;the little mother was penniless. A married sister would care for her,but what then? Harmony had enough remaining of her letter of credit totake her home, and she had--the hoard under the pillow. To go back andteach the violin; or to stay and finish under the master, be presented,as he had promised her, at a special concert in Vienna, with all theprestige at home that that would mean, and its resulting possibility offame and fortune--which?

  She decided to stay. There might be a concert or so, and she couldteach English. The Viennese were crazy about English. Some of the storesadvertised "English Spoken." That would be something to fall back on, aclerkship during the day.

  Toward dawn she discovered that she was very cold, and she went into theBig Soprano's deserted and disordered room. The tile stove was warm andcomfortable, but on the toilet table there lay a disreputable comb withmost of the teeth gone. Harmony kissed this unromantic object! Whichreveals the fact that, genius or not, she was only a young and ratherfrightened girl, and that every atom of her ached with loneliness.

  She did not sleep at all, but sat curled up on the bed with her feetunder her and thought things out. At dawn the Portier, crawling outinto the cold from under his feathers, opened the door into the halland listened. She was playing, not practicing, and the music was thebarcarolle from the "Tales" of Hoffmann. Standing in the doorway inhis night attire, his chest open to the frigid morning air, his faceupraised to the floor above, he hummed the melody in a throaty tenor.

  When the music had died away he went in and closed the door sheepishly.His wife stood over the stove, a stick of firewood in her hand. She eyedhim.

  "So! It is the American Fraulein now!"

  "I did but hum a little. She drags out my heart with her music." Hefumbled with his mustache bandage, which was knotted behind, keeping oneeye on his wife, whose morning pleasure it was to untie it for him.

  "She leaves to-day," she announced, ignoring the knot.

  "Why? She is alone. Rosa says--"

  "She leaves to-day!"

  The knot was hopeless now, double-tied and pulled to smooth compactness.The Portier jerked at it.

  "No Fraulein stays here alone. It is not respectable. And what saw Ilast night, after she entered and you stood moon-gazing up the stairafter her! A man in the gateway!"

  The Portier was angry. He snarled something through the bandage, whichhad slipped down over his mouth, and picked up a great knife.

  "She will stay if she so desire," he muttered furiously, and, raisingthe knife, he cut the knotted string. His mustache, faintly gray andsweetly up-curled, stood revealed.

  "She will stay!" he repeated. "And when you see men at the gate, let meknow. She is an angel!"

  "And she looks like the angel at the opera, hein?"

  This was a crushing blow. The Portier wilted. Such things come fromtelling one's cousin, who keeps a brushshop, what is in one's heart.Yesterday his wife had needed a brush, and to-day--Himmel, the girl mustgo!

  Harmony knew also that she must go. The apartment was large andexpensive; Rosa ate much and wasted
more. She must find somewhere a tinyroom with board, a humble little room but with a stove. It is follyto practice with stiffened fingers. A room where her playing would notannoy people, that was important.

  She paid Rosa off that morning out of money left for that purpose. Rosawept. She said she would stay with the Fraulein for her keep, because itwas not the custom for young ladies to be alone in the city--young girlsof the people, of course; but beautiful young ladies, no!

  Harmony gave her an extra krone or two out of sheer gratitude, but shecould not keep her. And at noon, having packed her trunk, she went downto interview the Portier and his wife, who were agents under the ownerfor the old house.

  The Portier, entirely subdued, was sweeping out the hallway. He lookedpast the girl, not at her, and observed impassively that the lease wasup and it was her privilege to go. In the daylight she was not so likethe angel, and after all she could only play the violin. The angel hada voice, such a voice! And besides, there was an eye at the crack of thedoor.

  The bit of cheer of the night before was gone; it was with a heavy heartthat Harmony started on her quest for cheaper quarters.

  Winter, which had threatened for a month, had come at last. Thecobblestones glittered with ice and the small puddles in the gutterswere frozen. Across the street a spotted deer, shot in the mountains theday before and hanging from a hook before a wild-game shop, was frozenquite stiff. It was a pretty creature. The girl turned her eyes away. Ayoung man, buying cheese and tinned fish in the shop, watched after her.

  "That's an American girl, isn't it?" he asked in American-German.

  The shopkeeper was voluble. Also Rosa had bought much from him, and Rosatalked. When the American left the shop he knew everything of Harmonythat Rosa knew except her name. Rosa called her "The Beautiful One."Also he was short one krone four beliers in his change, which is readilydone when a customer is plainly thinking of a "beautiful one."

  Harmony searched all day for the little room with board and a stove andno objection to practicing. There were plenty--but the rates! Thewillow plume looked prosperous, and she had a way of making the plainestgarments appear costly. Landladies looked at the plume and the suit andheard the soft swish of silk beneath, which marks only self-respect inthe American woman but is extravagance in Europe, and added to theirregular terms until poor Harmony's heart almost stood still. And thenat last toward evening she happened on a gloomy little pension near thecorner of the Alserstrasse, and it being dark and the plume not showing,and the landlady missing the rustle owing to cotton in her ears forearache, Harmony found terms that she could meet for a time.

  A mean little room enough, but with a stove. The bed sagged in thecenter, and the toilet table had a mirror that made one eye appearhigher than the other and twisted one's nose. But there was an odorof stewing cabbage in the air. Also, alas, there was the odor of manyprevious stewed cabbages, and of dusty carpets and stale tobacco.Harmony had had no lunch; she turned rather faint.

  She arranged to come at once, and got out into the comparative purityof the staircase atmosphere and felt her way down. She reeled once ortwice. At the bottom of the dark stairs she stood for a moment with hereyes closed, to the dismay of a young man who had just come in with acheese and some tinned fish under his arm.

  He put down his packages on the stone floor and caught her arm.

  "Not ill, are you?" he asked in English, and then remembering. "Bist dukrank?" He colored violently at that, recalling too late the familiarityof the "du."

  Harmony smiled faintly.

  "Only tired," she said in English. "And the odor of cabbage--".

  Her color had come back and she freed herself from his supporting hand.He whistled softly. He had recognized her.

  "Cabbage, of course!" he said. "The pension upstairs is full of it.I live there, and I've eaten so much of it I could be served up withpork."

  "I am going to live there. Is it as bad as that?"

  He waved a hand toward the parcels on the floor.

  "So bad," he observed, "that I keep body and soul together by buyingstrong and odorous food at the delicatessens--odorous, because onlyrugged flavors rise above the atmosphere up there. Cheese is the onlything that really knocks out the cabbage, and once or twice even cheesehas retired defeated."

  "But I don't like cheese." In sheer relief from the loneliness of theday her spirits were rising.

  "Then coffee! But not there. Coffee at the coffee-house on the corner. Isay--" He hesitated.

  "Yes?"

  "Would you--don't you think a cup of coffee would set you up a bit?"

  "It sounds attractive,"--uncertainly.

  "Coffee with whipped cream and some little cakes?"

  Harmony hesitated. In the gloom of the hall she could hardly seethis brisk young American--young, she knew by his voice, tall by hissilhouette, strong by the way he had caught her. She could not see hisface, but she liked his voice.

  "Do you mean--with you?"

  "I'm a doctor. I am going to fill my own prescription."

  That sounded reassuring. Doctors were not as other men; they werelegitimate friends in need.

  "I am sure it is not proper, but--"

  "Proper! Of course it is. I shall send you a bill for professionalservices. Besides, won't we be formally introduced to-night by thelandlady? Come now--to the coffee-house and the Paris edition of the'Herald'!" But the next moment he paused and ran his hand over his chin."I'm pretty disreputable," he explained. "I have been in a clinic allday, and, hang it all, I'm not shaved."

  "What difference does that make?"

  "My dear young lady," he explained gravely, picking up the cheese andthe tinned fish, "it makes a difference in me that I wish you to realizebefore you see me in a strong light."

  He rapped at the Portier's door, with the intention of leaving hisparcels there, but receiving no reply tucked them under his arm. Amoment later Harmony was in the open air, rather dazed, a bit excited,and lovely with the color the adventure brought into her face. Hercompanion walked beside her, tall, slightly stooped. She essayed afugitive little side-glance up at him, and meeting his eyes hastilyaverted hers.

  They passed a policeman, and suddenly there flashed into the girl's mindlittle Scatchett's letter.

  "Do be careful, Harry. If any one you do not know speaks to you, call apoliceman."