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Page 61

"How beautiful the tree was!" they say. Or, "Did you hear how the
children sang? So little, to sing like that! It made me think--of
angels."

Peter led Harmony across the courtyard, through many twisting
corridors, and up and down more twisting staircases to the room
where she was to play. There were many Christmas trees in the
hospital that afternoon; no one hall could have held the
thousands of patients, the doctors, the nurses. Sometimes a
single ward had its own tree, its own entertainment. Occasionally
two or three joined forces, preempted a lecture-room, and wheeled
or hobbled or carried in their convalescents. In such case an
imposing audience was the result.

Into such a room Peter led Harmony. It was an amphitheater, the
seats rising in tiers, half circle above half circle, to the dusk
of the roof. In the pit stood the tree, candle-lighted. There was
no other illumination in the room. The semi-darkness, the blazing
tree, the rows of hopeful, hoping, hopeless, rising above, white
faces over white gowns, the soft rustle of expectancy, the
silence when the Dozent with the red beard stepped out and began
to read an address--all caught Harmony by the throat. Peter,
keenly alive to everything she did, felt rather than heard her
soft sob.

Peter saw the hospital anew that dark afternoon, saw it through
Harmony's eyes. Layer after layer his professional callus fell
away, leaving him quick again. He had lived so long close to the
heart of humanity that he had reduced its throbbing to beats that
might be counted. Now, once more, Peter was back in the early
days, when a heart was not a pump, but a thing that ached or
thrilled or struggled, that loved or hated or yearned.

The orchestra, insisting on sadly sentimental music, was fast
turning festivity into gloom. It played Handel's "Largo"; it
threw its whole soul into the assurance that the world, after
all, was only a poor place, that Heaven was a better. It preached
resignation with every deep vibration of the cello. Harmony
fidgeted.

"How terrible!" she whispered. "To turn their Christmas-Eve into
mourning! Stop them!"

"Stop a German orchestra?"

"They are crying, some of them. Oh, Peter!"

The music came to an end at last. Tears were dried. Followed
recitations, gifts, a speech of thanks from Nurse Elisabet for
the patients. Then--Harmony.

Harmony never remembered afterward what she had played. It was
joyous, she knew, for the whole atmosphere changed. Laughter
came; even the candles burned more cheerfully. When she had
finished, a student in a white coat asked her to play a German
Volkspiel, and roared it out to her accompaniment with much vigor
and humor. The audience joined in, at first timidly, then
lustily.

Harmony stood alone by the tree, violin poised, smiling at the
applause. Her eyes, running along the dim amphitheater, sought
Peter's, and finding them dwelt there a moment. Then she began to
play softly and as softly the others sang.

"Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,"--they sang, with upturned eyes.

"Alles schlaeft, einsam wacht..."

Visions came to Peter that afternoon in the darkness, visions in
which his poverty was forgotten or mattered not at all. Visions
of a Christmas-Eve in a home that he had earned, of a tree, of a
girl-woman, of a still and holy night, of a child.

"Nur das traute, hoch heilige Paar Holder Knabe im lockigen Haar
Schlaf' in himmlischer Ruh', Schlaf' in himmlischer Ruh'," they
sang.

There was real festivity at the old lodge of Maria Theresa that
night.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Wed 24th Dec 2025, 17:09

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart