books.jibble.org

Page 39

She could not buy the antlers. In vain she pleaded, explained,
implored. Harmony enlisted the Portier, and took him across with
her. The wild-game seller was obdurate. He would sell the deer
entire, or he would mount head and antlers for his wife's cousin
in Galicia as a Christmas gift.

Harmony went back to the lodge and climbed the stairs. She was
profoundly depressed. Even the discovery that Peter had come home
early and was building a fire in the kitchen brought only a
fleeting smile. Anna was not yet home.

Peter built the fire. The winter dusk was falling and Harmony
made a movement to light the candles. Peter stopped her.

"Can't we have the firelight for a little while? You are always
beautiful, but--you are lovely in the firelight, Harmony."

"That is because you like me. We always think our friends are
beautiful."

"I am fond of Anna, but I have never thought her beautiful."

The kitchen was small. Harmony, rolling up her sleeves by the
table, and Peter before the stove were very close together. The
dusk was fast fading into darkness; to this tiny room at the back
of the old house few street sounds penetrated. Round them,
shutting them off together from the world of shops with lighted
windows, rumbling busses and hurrying humanity, lay the old lodge
with its dingy gardens, its whitewashed halls, its dark and
twisting staircases.

Peter had been very careful. He had cultivated a comradely manner
with the girl that had kept her entirely at her ease with him.
But it had been growing increasingly hard. He was only human
after all. And he was very comfortable. Love, healthy human love,
thrives on physical ease. Indigestion is a greater foe to it than
poverty. Great love songs are written, not by poets starving in
hall bedrooms, with insistent hunger gnawing and undermining all
that is of the spirit, but by full-fed gentlemen who sing out of
an overflowing of content and wide fellowship, and who write, no
doubt, just after dinner. Love, being a hunger, does not thrive
on hunger.

Thus Peter. He had never found women essential, being occupied in
the struggle for other essentials. Women had had little part in
his busy life. Once or twice he had seen visions, dreamed dreams,
to waken himself savagely to the fact that not for many years
could he afford the luxury of tender eyes looking up into his, of
soft arms about his neck. So he had kept away from women with
almost ferocious determination. And now!

He drew a chair before the stove and sat down. Standing or
sitting, he was much too large for the kitchen. He sat in the
chair, with his hands hanging, fingers interlaced between his
knees.

The firelight glowed over his strong, rather irregular features.
Harmony, knife poised over the evening's potatoes, looked at him.

"I think you are sad to-night, Peter."

"Depressed a bit. That's all."

"It isn't money again?"

It was generally money with any of the three, and only the week
before Peter had found an error in his bank balance which meant
that he was a hundred Kronen or so poorer than he had thought.
This discovery had been very upsetting.

"Not more than usual. Don't mind me. I'll probably end in a
roaring bad temper and smash something. My moody spells often
break up that way!"

Harmony put down the paring-knife, and going over to where he sat
rested a hand on his shoulder. Peter drew away from it.

"I have hurt you in some way?"

"Of course not."

Previous Page | Next Page

Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 22nd Dec 2025, 15:35

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart