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Page 100

She recovered almost at once and made an excuse to leave by
another exit.

She took a final look at the gray sleeve that was all she could
see of Peter, who had shifted a bit, and stumbled out into the
crowd, walking along with her lip trembling under her veil, and
with the slow and steady ache at her heart that she had thought
she had stilled for good.

It had never occurred to Harmony that Peter loved her. He had
proposed to her twice, but that had been in each case to solve a
difficulty for her. And once he had taken her in his arms, but
that was different. Even then he had not said he loved her--had
not even known it, to be exact. Nor had Harmony realized what
Peter meant to her until she had put him out of her life.

The sight of the familiar gray coat, the scrap of conversation,
so enlightening as to poor Peter's quest, that Peter was growing
thin and white, made her almost reel. She had been too occupied
with her own position to realize Peter's. With the glimpse of him
came a great longing for the house on the Siebensternstrasse, for
Jimmy's arms about her neck, for the salon with the lamp lighted
and the sleet beating harmlessly against the casement windows,
for the little kitchen with the brick stove, for Peter.

Doubts of the wisdom of her course assailed her. But to go back
meant, at the best, adding to Peter's burden of Jimmy and Marie,
meant the old situation again, too, for Marie most certainly did
not add to the respectability of the establishment. And other
doubts assailed her. What if Jimmy were not so well, should die,
as was possible, and she had not let his mother see him!

Monia Reiff was very busy that day. Harmony did not leave the
workroom until eight o'clock. During all that time, while her
slim fingers worked over fragile laces and soft chiffons, she was
seeing Jimmy as she had seen him last, with the flower fairies on
his pillow, and Peter, keeping watch over the crowd in the
Karntnerstrasse, looking with his steady eyes for her.

No part of the city was safe for a young girl after night, she
knew; the sixteenth district was no better than the rest, rather
worse in places. But the longing to see the house on the
Siebensternstrasse grew on her, became from an ache a sharp and
insistent pain. She must go, must see once again the comfortable
glow of Peter's lamp, the flicker that was the fire.

She ate no supper. She was too tired to eat, and there was the
pain. She put on her wraps and crept down the whitewashed
staircase.

The paved courtyard below was to be crossed and it was poorly
lighted. She achieved the street, however, without molestation.
To the street-car was only a block, but during that block she was
accosted twice. She was white and frightened when she reached the
car.

The Siebensternstrasse at last. The street was always dark; the
delicatessen shop was closed, but in the wild-game store next a
light was burning low, and a flame flickered before the little
shrine over the money drawer. The gameseller was a religious man.

The old stucco house dominated the neighborhood. From the time
she left the car Harmony saw it, its long flat roof black against
the dark sky, its rows of unlighted windows, its long wall broken
in the center by the gate. Now from across the street its whole
facade lay before her. Peter's lamp was not lighted, but there
was a glow of soft firelight from the salon windows. The light
was not regular--it disappeared at regular intervals, was blotted
out. Harmony knew what that meant. Some one beyond range of where
she stood was pacing the floor, back and forward, back and
forward. When he was worried or anxious Peter always paced the
door.

She did not know how long she stood there. One of the soft rains
was falling, or more accurately, condensing. The saturated air
was hardly cold. She stood on the pavement unmolested, while the
glow died lower and lower, until at last it was impossible to
trace the pacing figure. No one came to any of the windows. The
little lamp before the shrine in the wild-game shop burned itself
out; the Portier across the way came to the door, glanced up at
the sky and went in. Harmony heard the rattle of the chain as it
was stretched across the door inside.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Sun 28th Dec 2025, 7:12

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart