books.jibble.org

Page 7

"Sadie [Sadie was the Big Soprano] keeps saying awful things
about our leaving you here, and she has rather terrified me. You
are so beautiful, Harry,--although you never let us tell you so.
And Sadie says you have a soul and I haven't, and that souls are
deadly things to have. I feel to-night that in urging you to stay
I am taking the burden of your soul on me! Do be careful, Harry.
If any one you do not know speaks to you call a policeman. And be
sure you get into a respectable pension. There are queer ones.

"Sadie and I think that if you can get along on what you get from
home--you said your mother would get insurance, didn't you?--and
will keep this as a sort of fund to take you home if anything
should go wrong--. But perhaps we are needlessly worried. In any
case, of course it's a loan, and you can preserve that
magnificent independence of yours by sending it back when you get
to work to make your fortune. And if you are doubtful at all,
just remember that hopeful little mother of yours who sent you
over to get what she had never been able to have for herself, and
who planned this for you from the time you were a kiddy and she
named you Harmony.

"I'm not saying good-bye. I can't.

SCATCH."

That night, while the Portier and his wife slept under their
crimson feather beds and the crystals of the chandelier in the
salon shook in the draft as if the old Austrian court still
danced beneath, Harmony fought her battle. And a battle it was.
Scatchy and the Big Soprano had not known everything. There had
been no insurance on her father's life; the little mother was
penniless. A married sister would care for her, but what then?
Harmony had enough remaining of her letter of credit to take her
home, and she had--the hoard under the pillow. To go back and
teach the violin; or to stay and finish under the master, be
presented, as he had promised her, at a special concert in
Vienna, with all the prestige at home that that would mean, and
its resulting possibility of fame and fortune--which?

She decided to stay. There might be a concert or so, and she
could teach English. The Viennese were crazy about English. Some
of the stores advertised "English Spoken." That would be
something to fall back on, a clerkship during the day.

Toward dawn she discovered that she was very cold, and she went
into the Big Soprano's deserted and disordered room. The tile
stove was warm and comfortable, but on the toilet table there lay
a disreputable comb with most of the teeth gone. Harmony kissed
this unromantic object! Which reveals the fact that, genius or
not, she was only a young and rather frightened girl, and that
every atom of her ached with loneliness.

She did not sleep at all, but sat curled up on the bed with her
feet under her and thought things out. At dawn the Portier,
crawling out into the cold from under his feathers, opened the
door into the hall and listened. She was playing, not practicing,
and the music was the barcarolle from the "Tales" of Hoffmann.
Standing in the doorway in his night attire, his chest open to
the frigid morning air, his face upraised to the floor above, he
hummed the melody in a throaty tenor.

When the music had died away he went in and closed the door
sheepishly. His wife stood over the stove, a stick of firewood in
her hand. She eyed him.

"So! It is the American Fraulein now!"

"I did but hum a little. She drags out my heart with her music."
He fumbled with his mustache bandage, which was knotted behind,
keeping one eye on his wife, whose morning pleasure it was to
untie it for him.

"She leaves to-day," she announced, ignoring the knot.

"Why? She is alone. Rosa says--"

"She leaves to-day!"

The knot was hopeless now, double-tied and pulled to smooth
compactness. The Portier jerked at it.

Previous Page | Next Page

Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 8th Sep 2025, 16:30

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart