books.jibble.org

Page 18

"The sausages!" she cried, and gathering up her skirts ran toward
the kitchen. Byrne went on into the sitting-room.

Stewart was a single man spending two years in post-graduate work
in Germany and Austria, not so much because the Germans and
Austrians could teach what could not be taught at home, but
because of the wealth of clinical material. The great European
hospitals, filled to overflowing, offered unlimited choice of
cases. The contempt for human life of overpopulated cities,
coupled with the extreme poverty and helplessness of the masses,
combined to form that tragic part of the world which dies that
others may live.

Stewart, like Byrne, was doing surgery, and the very lack of
fineness which Byrne felt in the man promised something in his
work, a sort of ruthlessness, a singleness of purpose, good or
bad, an overwhelming egotism that in his profession might only be
a necessary self-reliance.

His singleness of purpose had, at the beginning of his residence
in Vienna, devoted itself to making him comfortable. With the
narrow means at his control he had the choice of two
alternatives: To live, as Byrne was living, in a third-class
pension, stewing in summer, freezing in winter, starving always;
or the alternative he had chosen.

The Stewart apartment had only three rooms, but it possessed that
luxury of luxuries, a bath. It was not a bath in the usual sense
of water on tap, and shining nickel plate, but a bath for all
that, where with premeditation and forethought one might bathe.
The room had once been a fuel and store room, but now boasted a
tin tub and a stove with a reservoir on top, where water might be
heated to the boiling point, at the same time bringing up the
atmosphere to a point where the tin tub sizzled if one touched
it.

Behind the bathroom a tiny kitchen with a brick stove; next, a
bedroom; the whole incredibly neat. Along one side of the wall a
clothespress, which the combined wardrobes of two did not fill.
And beyond that again, opening through an arch with a dingy
chenille curtain, the sitting-room, now in chaotic disorder.

Byrne went directly to the sitting-room. There were four men
already there: Stewart and Boyer, a pathology man named Wallace
Hunter, doing research work at the general hospital, and a young
piano student from Tennessee named MacLean. The cards had been
already dealt, and Byrne stood by waiting for the hand to be
played.

The game was a small one, as befitted the means of the majority.
It was a regular Saturday night affair, as much a custom as the
beer that sat in Steins on the floor beside each man, or as
Marie's boiled Wiener sausages.

The blue chips represented a Krone, the white ones five Hellers.
MacLean, who was hardly more than a boy, was winning, drawing in
chips with quick gestures of his long pianist's fingers.

Byrne sat down and picked up his cards. Stewart was staying out,
and so, after a glance, did he. The other three drew cards and
fell to betting. Stewart leaned back and filled his long pipe,
and after a second's hesitation Byrne turned to him.

"I don't know just what to say, Stewart," he began in an
undertone. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt Marie, but--"

"Oh, that's all right." Stewart drew at his pipe and bent forward
to watch the game with an air of ending the discussion.

"Not at all. I did hurt her and I want to explain. Marie has been
kind to me, and I like her. You know that."

"Don't be an ass!" Stewart turned on him sharply. "Marie is a
little fool, that's all. I didn't know it was an American girl."

Byrne played in bad luck. His mind was not on the cards. He
stayed out of the last hand, and with a cigarette wandered about
the room. He glanced into the tidy bedroom and beyond, to where
Marie hovered over the stove.

Previous Page | Next Page

Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Sat 20th Dec 2025, 10:46

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart