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Page 9

A mean little room enough, but with a stove. The bed sagged in
the center, and the toilet table had a mirror that made one eye
appear higher than the other and twisted one's nose. But there
was an odor of stewing cabbage in the air. Also, alas, there was
the odor of many previous stewed cabbages, and of dusty carpets
and stale tobacco. Harmony had had no lunch; she turned rather
faint.

She arranged to come at once, and got out into the comparative
purity of the staircase atmosphere and felt her way down. She
reeled once or twice. At the bottom of the dark stairs she stood
for a moment with her eyes closed, to the dismay of a young man
who had just come in with a cheese and some tinned fish under his
arm.

He put down his packages on the stone floor and caught her arm.

"Not ill, are you?" he asked in English, and then remembering.
"Bist du krank?" He colored violently at that, recalling too late
the familiarity of the "du."

Harmony smiled faintly.

"Only tired," she said in English. "And the odor of cabbage--".

Her color had come back and she freed herself from his supporting
hand. He whistled softly. He had recognized her.

"Cabbage, of course!" he said. "The pension upstairs is full of
it. I live there, and I've eaten so much of it I could be served
up with pork."

"I am going to live there. Is it as bad as that?"

He waved a hand toward the parcels on the floor.

"So bad," he observed, "that I keep body and soul together by
buying strong and odorous food at the delicatessens--odorous,
because only rugged flavors rise above the atmosphere up there.
Cheese is the only thing that really knocks out the cabbage, and
once or twice even cheese has retired defeated."

"But I don't like cheese." In sheer relief from the loneliness of
the day her spirits were rising.

"Then coffee! But not there. Coffee at the coffee-house on the
corner. I say--" He hesitated.

"Yes?"

"Would you--don't you think a cup of coffee would set you up a
bit?"

"It sounds attractive,"--uncertainly.

"Coffee with whipped cream and some little cakes?"

Harmony hesitated. In the gloom of the hall she could hardly see
this brisk young American--young, she knew by his voice, tall by
his silhouette, strong by the way he had caught her. She could
not see his face, but she liked his voice.

"Do you mean--with you?"

"I'm a doctor. I am going to fill my own prescription."

That sounded reassuring. Doctors were not as other men; they were
legitimate friends in need.

"I am sure it is not proper, but--"

"Proper! Of course it is. I shall send you a bill for
professional services. Besides, won't we be formally introduced
to-night by the landlady? Come now--to the coffee-house and the
Paris edition of the 'Herald'!" But the next moment he paused and
ran his hand over his chin. "I'm pretty disreputable," he
explained. "I have been in a clinic all day, and, hang it all,
I'm not shaved."

"What difference does that make?"

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 15th Dec 2025, 22:40

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart