The Street of Seven Stars Part 7

"I didn't intend it as a petticoat."

"I thought, on account of the scallops--"

"Scallops!" Dr. Gates gazed at the painfully cut pink edges and from them to Harmony. Then she laughed, peal after peal of joyous mirth.

"Scallops!" she gasped at last. "Oh, my dear, if you'd seen me cutting 'em! And with Peter Byrne's scissors!"

Now here at last they were on common ground. Harmony, delicately flushed, repeated the name, clung to it conversationally, using little adroitnesses to bring the talk back to him. All roads of talk led to Peter--Peter's future, Peter's poverty, Peter's refusing to have his hair cut, Peter's encounter with a major of the guards, and the duel Peter almost fought. It developed that Peter, as the challenged, had had the choice of weapons, and had chosen fists, and that the major had been carried away. Dr. Gates grew rather weary of Peter at last and fell back on the pink flannel. She confided to Harmony that the various pieces, united, were to make a dressing-gown for a little American boy at the hospital. "Although," she commented, "it looks more like a chair cover."

Harmony offered to help her, and got out a sewing-box that was lined with a piece of her mother's wedding dress. And as she straightened the crooked edges she told the doctor about the wedding dress, and about the mother who had called her Harmony because of the hope in her heart.

And soon, by dint of skillful listening, which is always better than questioning, the faded little woman doctor knew all the story.

She was rather aghast.

"But suppose you cannot find anything to do?"

"I must," simply.

"It's such a terrible city for a girl alone."

"I'm not really alone. I know you now."

"An impoverished spinster! Much help I shall be!"

"And there is Peter Byrne."

"Peter!" Dr. Gates sniffed. "Peter is poorer than I am, if there is any comparison in dest.i.tution!"

Harmony stiffened a trifle.

"Of course I do not mean money," she said. "There are such things as encouragement, and--and friendliness."

"One cannot eat encouragement," retorted Dr. Gates sagely. "And friendliness between you and any man--bah! Even Peter is only human, my dear."

"I am sure he is very good."

"So he is. He is very poor. But you are very attractive. There, I'm a skeptic about men, but you can trust Peter. Only don't fall in love with him. It will be years before he can marry. And don't let him fall in love with you. He probably will."

Whereupon Dr. Gates taking herself and her pink flannel off to prepare for lunch, Harmony sent a formal note to Peter Byrne, regretting that a headache kept her from taking the afternoon walk as she had promised.

Also, to avoid meeting him, she did without dinner, and spent the afternoon crying herself into a headache that was real enough.

Anna Gates was no fool. While she made her few preparations for dinner she repented bitterly what she had said to Harmony. It is difficult for the sophistry of forty to remember and cherish the innocence of twenty.

For illusions it is apt to subst.i.tute facts, the material for the spiritual, the body against the soul. Dr. Gates, from her school of general practice, had come to view life along physiological lines.

With her customary frankness she approached Peter after the meal.

"I've been making mischief, Peter. I been talking too much, as usual."

"Certainly not about me, Doctor. Out of my blameless life--"

"About you, as a representative member of your s.e.x. I'm a fool."

Peter looked serious. He had put on the newly pressed suit and his best tie, and was looking distinguished and just now rather stern.

"To whom?"

"To the young Wells person. Frankly, Peter, I dare say at this moment she thinks you are everything you shouldn't be, because I said you were only human. Why it should be evil to be human, or human to be evil--"

"I cannot imagine," said Peter slowly, "the reason for any conversation about me."

"Nor I, when I look back. We seemed to talk about other things, but it always ended with you. Perhaps you were our one subject in common. Then she irritated me by her calm confidence. The world was good, everybody was good. She would find a safe occupation and all would be well."

"So you warned her against me," said Peter grimly.

"I told her you were human and that she was attractive. Shall I make 'way with myself?"

"Cui bono?" demanded Peter, smiling in spite of himself. "The mischief is done."

Dr. Gates looked up at him.

"I'm in love with you myself, Peter!" she said gratefully. "Perhaps it is the tie. Did you ever eat such a meal?"

CHAPTER VI

A very pale and dispirited Harmony it was who bathed her eyes in cold water that evening and obeyed little Olga's "Bitte sum speisen." The chairs round the dining-table were only half occupied--a free concert had taken some, Sunday excursions others. The little Bulgarian, secretly considered to be a political spy, was never about on this one evening of the week. Rumor had it that on these evenings, secreted in an attic room far off in the sixteenth district, he wrote and sent off reports of what he had learned during the week--his gleanings from near-by tables in coffee-houses or from the indiscreet hours after midnight in the cafe, where the Austrian military was wont to gather and drink.

Into the empty chair beside Harmony Peter slid his long figure, and met a tremulous bow and silence. From the head of the table Frau Schwarz was talking volubly--as if, by mere sound, to distract attention from the scantiness of the meal. Under cover of the Babel Peter spoke to the girl. Having had his warning his tone was friendly, without a hint of the intimacy of the day before.

"Better?"

"Not entirely. Somewhat."

"I wish you had sent Olga to me for some tablets. No one needs to suffer from headache, when five grains or so of powder will help them."

"I am afraid of headache tablets."

"Not when your physician prescribes them, I hope!"

This was the right note. Harmony brightened a little. After all, what had she to do with the man himself? He had const.i.tuted himself her physician. That was all.

"The next time I shall send Olga."

"Good!" he responded heartily; and proceeded to make such a meal as he might, talking little, and nursing, by a careful indifference, her new-growing confidence.

It was when he had pushed his plate away and lighted a cigarette--according to the custom of the pension, which accorded the "Nicht Rauchen" sign the same attention that it did to the portrait of the deceased Herr Schwarz--that he turned to her again.

"I am sorry you are not able to walk. It promises a nice night."