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Page 118

CHAPTER XXVII

Peter was going back to America and still he had not told Harmony
he loved her. It was necessary that he go back. His money had
about given out, and there was no way to get more save by earning
it. The drain of Jimmy's illness, the inevitable expense of the
small grave and the tiny stone Peter had insisted on buying, had
made retreat his only course. True, Le Grande had wished to
defray all expenses, but Peter was inexorable. No money earned as
the dancer earned hers should purchase peaceful rest for the
loved little body. And after seeing Peter's eyes the dancer had
not insisted.

A week had seen many changes. Marie was gone. After a conference
between Stewart and Peter that had been decided on. Stewart
raised the money somehow, and Peter saw her off, palpitant and
eager, with the pin he had sent her to Semmering at her throat.
She kissed Peter on the cheek in the station, rather to his
embarrassment. From the lowered window, as the train pulled out,
she waved a moist handkerchief.

"I shall be very good," she promised him. The last words he heard
above the grinding of the train were her cheery: "To America!"

Peter was living alone in the Street of Seven Stars, getting food
where he might happen to be, buying a little now and then from
the delicatessen shop across the street. For Harmony had gone
back to the house in the Wollbadgasse. She had stayed until all
was over and until Marie's small preparations for departure were
over. Then, while Peter was at the station, she slipped away
again. But this time she left her address. She wrote:--

"You will come to visit me, dear Peter, because I was so lonely
before and that is unnecessary now. But you must know that I
cannot stay in the Siebensternstrasse. We have each our own fight
to make, and you have been trying to fight for us all, for Marie,
for dear little Jimmy, for me. You must get back to work now; you
have lost so much time. And I am managing well. The Frau
Professor is back and will take an evening lesson, and soon I
shall have more money from Fraulein Reiff. You can see how things
are looking up for me. In a few months I shall be able to renew
my music lessons. And then, Peter,--the career!

"HARMONY."

Her address was beneath.

Peter had suffered much. He was thinner, grayer, and as he stood
with the letter in his hand he felt that Harmony was right. He
could offer her nothing but his shabby self, his problematic
future. Perhaps, surely, everything would have been settled,
without reason, had he only once taken the girl in his arms, told
her she was the breath of life itself to him. But adversity,
while it had roused his fighting spirit in everything else, had
sapped his confidence.

He had found the letter on his dressing-table, and he found
himself confronting his image over it, a tall, stooping figure, a
tired, lined face, a coat that bore the impress of many days with
a sick child's head against its breast.

So it was over. She had come back and gone again, and this time
he must let her go. Who was he to detain her? She would carry
herself on to success, he felt; she had youth, hope, beauty and
ability. And she had proved the thing he had not dared to
believe, that she could take care of herself in the old city.
Only--to go away and leave her there!

McLean would remain. No doubt he already had Harmony's address in
the Wollbadgasse. Peter was not subtle, no psychologist, but he
had seen during the last few days how the boy watched Harmony's
every word, every gesture. And, perhaps, when loneliness and hard
work began to tell on her, McLean's devotion would win its
reward. McLean's devotion, with all that it meant, the lessons
again, community of taste, their common youth! Peter felt old,
very tired.

Nevertheless he went that night to the Wollbadgasse. He sent his
gray suit to the Portier's wife to be pressed, and getting out
his surgical case, as he had once before in the Pension Schwarz,
he sewed a button on his overcoat, using the curved needle and
the catgut and working with surgeon's precision. Then, still
working very carefully, he trimmed the edges of graying hair over
his ears, trimmed his cuffs, trimmed his best silk tie, now
almost hopeless. He blacked his shoes, and the suit not coming,
he donned his dressing-gown and went into Jimmy's room to feed
the mice. Peter stood a moment beside the smooth white bed with
his face working. The wooden sentry still stood on the bedside
table.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 29th Dec 2025, 20:35

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart