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Page 21

Promptly in ten minutes Olga brought the breakfast, two rolls,
two pats of butter--shades of the sleeping mistress and Katrina
the thrifty--and a cup of coffee. On the tray was a bit of paper
torn from a notebook:--

"Part of the prescription is an occasional walk in good company.
Will you walk with me this afternoon? I would come in person to
ask you, but am spending the morning in my bathrobe, while my one
remaining American suit is being pressed.

"P. B."

Harmony got the ink and her pen from her trunk and wrote below:--

"You are very kind to me. Yes, indeed.

"H. W."

When frequent slamming of doors and steps along the passageway
told Harmony that the pension was fully awake, she got out her
violin. The idea of work obsessed her. To-morrow there would be
the hunt for something to do to supplement her resources, this
afternoon she had rashly promised to walk. The morning, then,
must be given up to work. But after all she did little.

For an hour, perhaps, she practiced. The little Bulgarian paused
outside her door and listened, rapt, his eyes closed. Peter
Byrne, listening while he sorted lecture memoranda at his little
table in bathrobe and slippers, absently filed the little note
with the others--where he came across it months later--next to a
lecture on McBurney's Point, and spent a sad hour or so over it.
Over all the sordid little pension, with its odors of food and
stale air, its spotted napery and dusty artificial flowers, the
music hovered, and made for the time all things lovely.

In her room across from Harmony's, Anna Gates was sewing, or
preparing to sew. Her hair in a knob, her sleeves rolled up, the
room in violent disorder, she was bending over the bed, cutting
savagely at a roll of pink flannel. Because she was working with
curved surgeon's scissors, borrowed from Peter, the cut edges
were strangely scalloped. Her method as well as her tools was
unique. Clearly she was intent on a body garment, for now and
then she picked up the flannel and held it to her. Having thus,
as one may say, got the line of the thing, she proceeded to cut
again, jaw tight set, small veins on her forehead swelling, a
small replica of Peter Byrne sewing a button on his coat.

After a time it became clear to her that her method was wrong.
She rolled up the flannel viciously and flung it into a corner,
and proceeded to her Sunday morning occupation of putting away
the garments she had worn during the week, a vast and motley
collection.

On the irritability of her mood Harmony's music had a late but
certain effect. She made a toilet, a trifle less casual than
usual, seeing that she put on her stays, and rather sheepishly
picked up the bundle from the corner. She hunted about for a
thimble, being certain she had brought one from home a year
before, but failed to find it. And finally, bundle under her arm
and smiling, she knocked at Harmony's door.

"Would you mind letting me sit with you?" she asked. "I'll not
stir. I want to sew, and my room is such a mess!"

Harmony threw the door wide. "You will make me very happy, if
only my practicing does not disturb you."

Dr. Gates came in and closed the door.

"I'll probably be the disturbing element," she said. "I'm a noisy
sewer."

Harmony's immaculate room and radiant person put her in good
humor immediately. She borrowed a thimble--not because she cared
whether she had one or not, but because she knew a thimble was a
part of the game--and settled herself in a corner, her ragged
pieces in her lap. For an hour she plodded along and Harmony
played. Then the girl put down her bow and turned to the corner.
The little doctor was jerking at a knot in her thread.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Sun 21st Dec 2025, 4:10

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart