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Page 79

Peter spent the early part of the evening with Jimmy, reading
aloud to him. After the child had dropped to sleep he packed a
valise for the next day's journey and counted out into an
envelope half of the money he had with him. This he labeled
"Household Expenses" and set it up on his table, leaning against
his collar-box. There was no sign of Harmony about. The salon was
dark except for the study lamp turned down.

Peter was restless. He put on his shabby dressing-gown and worn
slippers and wandered about. The Portier had brought coal to the
landing; Peter carried it in. He inspected the medicine bottles
on Jimmy's stand and wrote full directions for every emergency he
could imagine. Then, finding it still only nine o'clock, he
turned up the lamp in the salon and wrote an exciting letter from
Jimmy's father, in which a lost lamb, wandering on the
mountain-side, had been picked up by an avalanche and carried
down into the fold and the arms of the shepherd. And because he
stood so in loco parentis, and because it seemed so inevitable
that before long Jimmy would be in the arms of the Shepherd, and,
of course, because it had been a trying day all through, Peter's
lips were none too steady as he folded up the letter.

The fire was dead in the stove; Peter put out the salon lamp and
closed the shutters. In the warm darkness he put out his hand to
feel his way through the room. It touched a little sweater coat
of Harmony's, hanging over the back of a chair. Peter picked it
up in a very passion of tenderness and held it to him.

"Little girl!" he choked. "My little girl! God help me!"

He was rather ashamed, considerably startled. It alarmed him to
find that the mere unexpected touch of a familiar garment could
rouse such a storm in him. It made him pause. He put down the
coat and pulled himself up sharply. McLean was right; he was only
human stuff, very poor human stuff. He put the little coat down
hastily, only to lift it again gently to his lips.

"Good-night, dear," he whispered. "Goodnight, Harmony."

Frau Schwarz had had two visitors between the hours of coffee and
supper that day. The reason of their call proved to be neither
rooms nor pension. They came to make inquiries.

The Frau Schwarz made this out at last, and sat down on the edge
of the bed in the room that had once been Peter's and that still
lacked an occupant.

Mrs. Boyer had no German; Dr. Jennings very little and that
chiefly medical. There is, however, a sort of code that answers
instead of language frequently, when two or three women of later
middle life are gathered together, a code born of mutual
understanding, mutual disillusion, mutual distrust, a language of
outspread hands, raised eyebrows, portentous shakings of the
head. Frau Schwarz, on the edge of Peter's tub-shaped bed, needed
no English to convey the fact that Peter was a bad lot. Not that
she resorted only to the sign language.

"The women were also wicked," she said. "Of a man what does one
expect? But of a woman! And the younger one looked--Herr Gott!
She had the eyes of a saint! The little Georgiev was mad for her.
When the three of them left, disgraced, as one may say, he came
to me, he threatened me. The Herr Schwarz, God rest his soul, was
a violent man, but never spoke he so to me!"

"She says," interpreted Dr. Jennings, "that they were a bad
lot--that the younger one made eyes at the Herr Schwarz!"

Mrs. Boyer drew her ancient sables about her and put a tremulous
hand on the other woman's arm.

"What an escape for you!" she said. "If you had gone there to
live and then found the establishment--queer!"

From the kitchen of the pension, Olga was listening, an ear to
the door. Behind her, also listening, but less advantageously,
was Katrina.

"American ladies!" said Olga. "Two, old and fat."

"More hot water!" growled Katrina. "Why do not the Americans stay
in their own country, where the water, I have learned, comes hot
from the earth."

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 26th Dec 2025, 8:48

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart