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Page 41

The Portier's wife raised herself on her elbow and reached over.
Owing to the width of the table that stood between the beds and
to a sweeping that day which had left the beds far apart she met
nothing but empty air. Words had small effect on the Portier, who
slept fathoms deep in unconsciousness. Also she did not wish to
get up--the floor was cold and a wind blowing. Could she not hear
it and the creaking of the deer across the street, as it swung on
its hook?

The wife of the Portier was a person of resource. She took the
iron candlestick from the table and flung it into the darkness at
the Portier's pillow. No startled yell followed.

Suspicion thus confirmed, the Portier's wife forgot the cold
floor and the wind, and barefoot felt her way into the hall.

Suspicion was doubly confirmed. The chain was off the door; it
even stood open an inch or two.

Armed with a second candlestick she stationed herself inside the
door and waited. The stone floor was icy, but the fury of a woman
scorned kept her warm. The Votivkirche struck one, two, three
quarters of an hour. The candlestick in her hand changed from
iron to ice, from ice to red-hot fire. Still the Portier had not
come back and the door chain swung in the wind.

At four o'clock she retired to the bedroom again. Indignation had
changed to fear, coupled with sneezing. Surely even the Schubert
Society--What was that?

From the Portier's bed was coming a rhythmic respiration!

She roused him, standing over him with the iron candlestick, now
lighted, and gazing at him with eyes in which alarm struggled
with suspicion.

"Thou hast been out of thy bed!"

"But no!"

"An hour since the bed was empty."

"Thou dreamest."

"The chain is off the door."

"Let it remain so and sleep. What have we to steal or the
Americans above? Sleep and keep peace."

He yawned and was instantly asleep again. The Portier's wife
crawled into her bed and warmed her aching feet under the crimson
feather comfort. But her soul was shaken.

The Devil had been known to come at night and take innocent ones
out to do his evil. The innocent ones knew it not, but it might
be told by the soles of the feet, which were always soiled.

At dawn the Portier's wife cautiously uncovered the soles of her
sleeping lord's feet, and fell back gasping. They were quite
black, as of one who had tramped in garden mould.

Early the next morning Harmony, after a restless night, opened
the door from the salon of Maria Theresa into the hall and set
out a pitcher for the milk.

On the floor, just outside, lay the antlers from the deer across
the street. Tied to them was a bit of paper, and on it was
written the one word, "Still!"

CHAPTER X

In looking back after a catastrophe it is easy to trace the steps
by which the inevitable advanced. Destiny marches, not by great
leaps but with a thousand small and painful steps, and here and
there it leaves its mark, a footprint on a naked soul. We trace a
life by its scars, as a tree by its rings.

Anna Gates was not the best possible companion for Harmony, and
this with every allowance for her real kindliness, her genuine
affection for the girl. Life had destroyed her illusions, and it
was of illusions that Harmony's veil had been woven. To Anna
Gates, worn with a thousand sleepless nights, a thousand
thankless days, withered before her time with the struggling
routine of medical practice, sapped with endless calls for
sympathy and aid, existence ceased to be spiritual and became
physiological.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 22nd Dec 2025, 19:42

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart