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Page 33

The bathrobe was finished. Out of the little doctor's chaos of
pink flannel Harmony had brought order. The result, masculine and
complete even to its tassels and cord of pink yarn, was ready to
be presented. It was with mingled emotions that Anna Gates
wrapped it up and gave it to Harmony the next morning.

"He hasn't been so well the last day or two," she said. "He
doesn't sleep much--that's the worst of those heart conditions.
Sometimes, while I've been working on this thing, I've
wondered--Well, we're making a fight anyhow. And better take the
letter, too, Harry. I might forget and make lecture notes on it,
and if I spoil that envelope--"

Harmony had arranged to carry the bathrobe to the hospital,
meeting the doctor there after her early clinic. She knew Jimmy's
little story quite well. Anna Gates had told it to her in detail.

"Just one of the tragedies of the world, my dear," she had
finished. "You think you have a tragedy, but you have youth and
hope; I think I have my own little tragedy, because I have to go
through the rest of life alone, when taken in time I'd have been
a good wife and mother. Still I have my work. But this little
chap, brought over here by a father who hoped to see him cured,
and spent all he had to bring him here, and then--died. It gets
me by the throat."

"And the boy does not know?" Harmony had asked, her eyes wide.

"No, thanks to Peter. He thinks his father is still in the
mountains. When we heard about it Peter went up and saw that he
was buried. It took about all the money there was. He wrote home
about it, too, to the place they came from. There has never been
any reply. Then ever since Peter has written these letters. Jimmy
lives for them."

Peter! It was always Peter. Peter did this. Peter said that.
Peter thought thus. A very large part of Harmony's life was Peter
in those days.

She was thinking of him as she waited at the gate of the hospital
for Anna Gates, thinking of his shabby gray suit and unkempt
hair, of his letter that she carried to Jimmy Conroy, of his
quixotic proposal of the night before. Of the proposal, most of
all--it was so eminently characteristic of Peter, from the
conception of the plan to its execution. Harmony's thought of
Peter was very tender that morning as she stood in the arched
gateway out of reach of the wind from the Schneeberg. The
tenderness and the bright color brought by the wind made her very
beautiful. Little Marie, waiting across the Alserstrasse for a
bus, and stamping from one foot to the other to keep warm,
recognized and admired her. After all, the American women were
chic, she decided, although some of the doctors had wives of a
dowdiness--Himmel! And she could copy the Fraulein's hat for two
Kronen and a bit of ribbon she possessed.

The presentation of the bathrobe was a success. Six nurses and a
Dozent with a red beard stood about and watched Jimmy put into
it, and the Dozent, who had been engaged for five years and could
not marry because the hospital board forbade it, made a speech
for Jimmy in awe-inspiring German, ending up with a poem that was
intended to be funny, but that made the nurses cry. From which it
will be seen that Jimmy was a great favorite.

During the ceremony, for such it was, the Germans loving a
ceremony, Jimmy kept his eyes on the letter in Anna Gates's hand
and waited. That the letter had come was enough. He lay back in
anticipatory joy, and let himself be talked over, and bathrobed,
and his hair parted Austrian fashion and turned up over a finger,
which is very Austrian indeed. He liked Harmony. The girl caught
his eyes on her more than once. He interrupted the speech once to
ask her just what part of the robe she had made, and whether she
had made the tassel. When she admitted the tassel, his admiration
became mixed with respect.

It was a bright day, for a marvel. Sunlight came through the
barred window behind Jimmy's bed, and brought into dazzling
radiance the pink bathrobe, and Harmony's eyes, and fat Nurse
Elisabet's white apron. It lay on the bedspread in great squares,
outlined by the shadows of the window bars. Now and then the
sentry, pacing outside, would advance as far as Jimmy's window,
and a warlike silhouette of military cap and the upper end of a
carbine would appear on the coverlet. These events, however, were
rare, the sentry preferring the shelter of the gateway and the
odor of boiling onions from the lodge just inside.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 22nd Dec 2025, 2:55

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart