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Page 25

"I know because she told me. She knew she had been a fool, and
she came to me. I don't know whether it makes any difference to
you or not, but--we'd started out so well, and then to have it
spoiled! My dear girl, you are beautiful and I know it. That's
all the more reason why, if you'll stand for it, you need some
one to look after you--I'll not say like a brother, because all
the ones I ever knew were darned poor brothers to their sisters,
but some one who will keep an eye on you and who isn't going to
fall in love with you."

"I didn't think you were falling in love with me; nor did I wish
you to."

"Certainly not. Besides, I--" Here Peter Byrne had another
inspiration, not so good as the first--"Besides, there is
somebody at home, you understand? That makes it all right,
doesn't it?"

"A girl at home?"

"A girl," said Peter, lying manfully.

"How very nice!" said Harmony, and put out her hand. Peter,
feeling all sorts of a cheat, took it, and got his reward in a
complete restoral of their former comradely relations. From
abstractions of church towers and street paving they went, with
the directness of the young, to themselves. Thereafter, during
that memorable walk, they talked blissful personalities,
Harmony's future, Peter's career, money--or its lack--their
ambitions, their hopes, even--and here was intimacy,
indeed!--their disappointments, their failures of courage, their
occasional loss of faith in themselves.

The first real snow of the year was falling as they turned back
toward the Pension Schwarz, a damp snow that stuck fast and
melted with a chilly cold that had in it nothing but depression.
The upper spires of the Votivkirche were hidden in a gray mist;
the trees in the park took on, against the gloom of the city
hall, a snowy luminosity. Save for an occasional pedestrian,
making his way home under an umbrella, the streets were deserted.
Byrne and Harmony had no umbrella, but the girl rejected his
offer of a taxicab.

"We should be home too quickly," she observed naively. "And we
have so much to say about me. Now I thought that perhaps by
giving English lessons in the afternoon and working all morning
at my music--"

And so on and on, square after square, with Peter listening
gravely, his head bent. And square after square it was borne in
on him what a precarious future stretched before this girl beside
him, how very slender her resources, how more than dubious the
outcome.

Poverty, which had only stimulated Peter Byrne in the past, ate
deep into his soul that night.

Epochmaking as the walk had been, seeing that it had
reestablished a friendship and made a working basis for future
comradely relations, they were back at the corner of the
Alserstrasse before ten. As they turned in at the little street,
a man, lurching somewhat, almost collided with Harmony. He was a
short, heavy-set person with a carefully curled mustache, and he
was singing, not loudly, but with all his maudlin heart in his
voice, the barcarolle from the "Tales" of Hoffmann. He saw
Harmony, and still singing planted himself in her path. When
Byrne would have pushed him aside Harmony caught his arm.

"It is only the Portier from the lodge," she said.

The Portier, having come to rest on a throaty and rather wavering
note, stood before Harmony, bowing.

"The Fraulein has gone and I am very sad," he said thickly.
"There is no more music, and Rosa has run away with a soldier
from Salzburg who has only one lung."

"But think!" Harmony said in German. "No more practicing in the
early dawn, no young ladies bringing mud into your newscrubbed
hall! It is better, is it not? All day you may rest and smoke!"

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Sun 21st Dec 2025, 12:03

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart