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Page 86

He was discovered a moment later in the doorway of Jimmy's room,
where, taciturn as ever, severe, martial, he stood at attention,
shoulders back, arms at his sides, thumbs in. In this position he
was making, with amazing rapidity, a series of hideous grimaces
for the benefit of the little boy in the bed: marvelous faces
they were, in which nose, mouth, and eyes seemed interchangeable,
where features played leapfrog with one another. When all was
over--perhaps when his repertoire was exhausted--the sentry
returned his nose to the center of his face, replaced eyes and
mouth, and wiped the ensemble with a blue cotton handkerchief.
Then, still in silence, he saluted and withdrew, leaving the
youngster enraptured, staring at the doorway.

Harmony had decided the approximate location of her room. In the
higher part of the city, in the sixteenth district, there were
many unpretentious buildings. She had hunted board there and she
knew. It was far from the Stadt, far from the fashionable part of
town, a neighborhood of small shops, of frank indigence. There
surely she could find a room, and perhaps in one of the small
stores what she failed to secure in the larger, a position.

Rosa having taken her soldier away, Harmony secured the Portier's
wife to sit with Jimmy and spent two hours that afternoon looking
about for a room. She succeeded finally in finding one, a small
and wretchedly furnished bedroom, part of the suite of a cheap
dressmaker. The approach was forbidding enough. One entered a
cavelike, cobble-paved court under the building, filled with
wagons, feeding horses, quarrelsome and swearing teamsters. From
the side a stone staircase took off and led, twisting from one
landing cave to another, to the upper floor.

Here lived the dressmaker, amid the constant whirring of
sewing-machines, the Babel of workpeople. Harmony, seeking not a
home but a hiding-place, took the room at once. She was asked for
no reference. In a sort of agony lest this haven fail her she
paid for a week in advance. The wooden bed, the cracked mirror
over the table, even the pigeons outside on the windowsill were
hers for a week.

The dressmaker was friendly, almost garrulous.

"I will have it cleaned," she explained. "I have been so busy:
the masquerade season is on. The Fraulein is American, is she
not?"

"Yes."

"One knows the Americans. They are chic, not like the English. I
have some American customers."

Harmony started. The dressmaker was shrewd. Many people hid in
the sixteenth district. She hastened to reassure the girl.

"They will not disturb you. And just now I have but one, a
dancer. I shall have the room cleaned. Good-bye, Fraulein."

So far, good. She had a refuge now, one spot that the venom of
scandal could not poison, where she could study and work--work
hard, although there could be no more lessons--one spot where
Peter would not have to protect her, where Peter, indeed, would
never find her. This thought, which should have brought comfort,
brought only new misery. Peace seemed dearly bought all at once;
shabby, wholesome, hearty Peter, with his rough hair and quiet
voice, his bulging pockets and steady eyes--she was leaving Peter
forever, exchanging his companionship for that of a row of
pigeons on a window-sill. He would find some one, of course; but
who would know that he liked toast made hard and plenty of
butter, or to leave his bed-clothing loose at the foot, Peter
being very long and apt to lop over? The lopping over brought a
tear or two. A very teary and tragic young heroine, this Harmony,
prone to go about for the last day or two with a damp little
handkerchief tucked in her sleeve.

She felt her way down the staircase and into the cave below. Fate
hangs by a very slender thread sometimes. If a wagon had not
lumbered by as she reached the lowest step, so that she must wait
and thus had time to lower her veil, she would have been
recognized at once by the little Georgiev, waiting to ascend. But
the wagon was there, Harmony lowered her veil, the little
Georgiev, passing a veiled young woman in the gloom, went up the
staircase with even pulses and calm and judicial bearing, up to
the tiny room a floor or two below Harmony's, where he wrote
reports to the Minister of War and mixed them with sonnets--to
Harmony.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 26th Dec 2025, 23:57

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart