The Street of Seven Stars Read online

  CHAPTER IV

  The supper that evening was even unusually bad. Frau Schwarz, muchcrimped and clad in frayed black satin, presided at the head of the longtable. There were few, almost no Americans, the Americans flocking togood food at reckless prices in more fashionable pensions; to the FrauGallitzenstein's, for instance, in the Kochgasse, where there was tobe had real beefsteak, where turkeys were served at Thanksgiving andChristmas, and where, were one so minded, one might revel in whippedcream.

  The Pension Schwarz, however, was not without adornment. In the centerof the table was a large bunch of red cotton roses with wire stems andgreen paper leaves, and over the side-table, with its luxury of compotein tall glass dishes and its wealth of small hard cakes, there hunga framed motto which said, "Nicht Rauchen," "No Smoking,"--and whichlooked suspiciously as if it had once adorned a compartment of arailroad train.

  Peter Byrne was early in the dining-room. He had made, for him, acareful toilet, which consisted of a shave and clean linen. But he hadgone further: He had discovered, for the first time in the three monthsof its defection, a button missing from his coat, and had set about toreplace it. He had cut a button from another coat, by the easy methodof amputating it with a surgical bistoury, and had sewed it in its newposition with a curved surgical needle and a few inches of sterilizedcatgut. The operation was slow and painful, and accomplished only withthe aid of two cigarettes and an artery clip. When it was over he tiedthe ends in a surgeon's knot underneath and stood back to consider theresult. It seemed neat enough, but conspicuous. After a moment or two oftroubled thought he blacked the white catgut with a dot of ink and wenton his way rejoicing.

  Peter Byrne was entirely untroubled as to the wisdom of the course hehad laid out for himself. He followed no consecutive line of thought ashe dressed. When he was not smoking he was whistling, and when he wasdoing neither, and the needle proved refractory in his cold fingers,he was swearing to himself. For there was no fire in the room. Thematerials for a fire were there, and a white tile stove, as cozy as anobelisk in a cemetery, stood in the corner. But fires are expensive,and hardly necessary when one sleeps with all one's windows open--onewindow, to be exact, the room being very small--and spends most of theday in a warm and comfortable shambles called a hospital.

  To tell the truth he was not thinking of Harmony at all, exceptsubconsciously, as instance the button. He was going over, step bystep, the technic of an operation he had seen that afternoon, weighing,considering, even criticizing. His conclusion, reached as he brushedback his hair and put away his sewing implements, was somewhat to theeffect that he could have done a better piece of work with his eyesshut and his hands tied behind his back; and that if it were not for thewealth of material to work on he'd pack up and go home. Which broughthim back to Harmony and his new responsibility. He took off the necktiehe had absently put on and hunted out a better one.

  He was late at supper--an offense that brought a scowl from the headof the table, a scowl that he met with a cheerful smile. Harmony wasalready in her place. Seated between a little Bulgarian and a Jewishstudent from Galicia, she was almost immediately struggling in a sea oflanguage, into which she struck out now and then tentatively, only tobe again submerged. Byrne had bowed to her conventionally, even coldly,aware of the sharp eyes and tongues round the table, but Harmony didnot understand. She had expected moral support from his presence, andfailing that she sank back into the loneliness and depression of theday. Her bright color faded; her eyes looked tragic and rather aloof.She ate almost nothing, and left the table before the others hadfinished.

  What curious little dramas of the table are played under unseeing eyes!What small tragedies begin with the soup and end with dessert! Whatheartaches with a salad! Small tragedies of averted eyes, lookingaway from appealing ones; lips that tremble with wretchedness nibblingdaintily at a morsel; smiles that sear; foolish bits of talk that meannothing except to one, and to that one everything! Harmony, freezing atPeter's formal bow and gazing obstinately ahead during the rest of themeal, or no nearer Peter than the red-paper roses, and Peter, showeringthe little Bulgarian next to her with detestable German in the hope of aglance. And over all the odor of cabbage salad, and the "Nicht Rauchen"sign, and an acrimonious discussion on eugenics between an Americanwoman doctor named Gates and a German matron who had had fifteenchildren, and who reduced every general statement to a personal insult.

  Peter followed Harmony as soon as he dared. Her door was closed, and shewas playing very softly, so as to disturb no one. Defiantly, too, had heonly known it, her small chin up and her color high again; playing the"Humoresque," of all things, in the hope, of course, that he wouldhear it and guess from her choice the wild merriment of her mood. Peterrapped once or twice, but obtained no answer, save that the "Humoresque"rose a bit higher; and, Dr. Gates coming along the hall just then, hewas forced to light a cigarette to cover his pausing.

  Dr. Gates, however, was not suspicious. She was a smallish woman offorty or thereabout, with keen eyes behind glasses and a masculinedisregard of clothes, and she paused by Byrne to let him help her intoher ulster.

  "New girl, eh?" she said, with a birdlike nod toward the door. "Verygay, isn't she, to have just finished a supper like that! Honestly,Peter, what are we going to do?"

  "Growl and stay on, as we have for six months. There is better food, butnot for our terms."

  Dr. Gates sighed, and picking a soft felt hat from the table put it onwith a single jerk down over her hair.

  "Oh, darn money, anyhow!" she said. "Come and walk to the corner withme. I have a lecture."

  Peter promised to follow in a moment, and hurried back to his room.There, on a page from one of his lecture notebooks, he wrote--

  "Are you ill? Or have I done anything?"

  "P. B."

  This with great care he was pushing under Harmony's door when the littleBulgarian came along and stopped, smiling. He said nothing, nor didPeter, who rose and dusted his knees. The little Bulgarian spoke noEnglish and little German. Between them was the wall of language. Buthigher than this barrier was the understanding of their common sex. Heheld out his hand, still smiling, and Peter, grinning sheepishly, tookit. Then he followed the woman doctor down the stairs.

  To say that Peter Byrne was already in love with Harmony would beabsurd. She attracted him, as any beautiful and helpless girl attractsan unattracted man. He was much more concerned, now that he feared hehad offended her, than he would have been without this fillip to hisinterest. But even his concern did not prevent his taking copious andintelligent notes at his lecture that night, or interfere with hisenjoyment of the Stein of beer with which, after it was over, he washeddown its involved German.

  The engagement at Stewart's irked him somewhat. He did not approve ofStewart exactly, not from any dislike of the man, but from a lack offineness in the man himself--an intangible thing that seems to be amatter of that unfashionable essence, the soul, as against the clay; ofthe thing contained, by an inverse metonymy, for the container.

  Boyer, a nerve man from Texas, met him on the street, and they walkedto Stewart's apartment together. The frosty air and the rapid exercisecombined to drive away Byrne's irritation; that, and the recollectionthat it was Saturday night and that to-morrow there would be no clinics,no lectures, no operations; that the great shambles would be closed downand that priests would read mass to convalescents in the chapels. He waswhistling as he walked along.

  Boyer, a much older man, whose wife had come over with him, stoppedunder a street light to consult his watch.

  "Almost ten!" he said. "I hope you don't mind, Byrne; but I told JennieI was going to your pension. She detests Stewart."

  "Oh, that's all right. She knows you're playing poker?"

  "Yes. She doesn't object to poker. It's the other. You can't make a goodwoman understand that sort of thing."

  "Thank God for that!"

  After a moment of silence Byrne took up his whistling again. It was the"Humoresque."

  S
tewart's apartment was on the third floor. Admission at that hour wasto be gained only by ringing, and Boyer touched the bell. The lightswere still on, however, in the hallways, revealing not overclean stairsand, for a wonder, an electric elevator. This, however, a card announcedas out of order. Boyer stopped and examined the card grimly.

  "'Out of order'!" he observed. "Out of order since last spring, judgingby that card. Vorwarts!"

  They climbed easily, deliberately. At home in God's country Boyer playedgolf, as became the leading specialist of his county. Byrne, with adriving-arm like the rod of a locomotive, had been obliged toforswear the more expensive game for tennis, with a resulting musculardevelopment that his slight stoop belied. He was as hard as nails,without an ounce of fat, and he climbed the long steep flights with anelasticity that left even Boyer a step or so behind.

  Stewart opened the door himself, long German pipe in hand, his coatreplaced by a worn smoking-jacket. The little apartment was thick withsmoke, and from a room on the right came the click of chips and thesound of beer mugs on wood.

  Marie, restored to good humor, came out to greet them, and both menbowed ceremoniously over her hand, clicking their heels together andbowing from the waist. Byrne sniffed.

  "What do I smell, Marie?" he demanded. "Surely not sausages!"

  Marie dimpled. It was an old joke, to be greeted as one greets an oldfriend. It was always sausages.

  "Sausages, of a truth--fat ones.'

  "But surely not with mustard?"

  "Ach, ja--englisch mustard."

  Stewart and Boyer had gone on ahead. Marie laid a detaining hand onByrne's arm.

  "I was very angry with you to-day."

  "With me?"

  Like the others who occasionally gathered in Stewart's unconventionalmenage, Byrne had adopted Stewart's custom of addressing Marie inEnglish, while she replied in her own tongue.

  "Ja. I wished but to see nearer the American Fraulein's hat, andyou--She is rich, so?"

  "I really don't know. I think not."

  "And good?"

  "Yes, of course."

  Marie was small; she stood, her head back, her eyes narrowed, lookingup at Byrne. There was nothing evil in her face, it was not even hard.Rather, there was a sort of weariness, as of age and experience. Shehad put on a white dress, cut out at the neck, and above her collarboneswere small, cuplike hollows. She was very thin.

  "I was sad to-night," she said plaintively. "I wished to jump out thewindow."

  Byrne was startled, but the girl was smiling at the recollection.

  "And I made you feel like that?"

  "Not you--the other Fraulein. I was dirt to her. I--" She stoppedtragically, then sniffled.

  "The sausages!" she cried, and gathering up her skirts ran toward thekitchen. Byrne went on into the sitting-room.

  Stewart was a single man spending two years in post-graduate work inGermany and Austria, not so much because the Germans and Austrians couldteach what could not be taught at home, but because of the wealth ofclinical material. The great European hospitals, filled to overflowing,offered unlimited choice of cases. The contempt for human life ofoverpopulated cities, coupled with the extreme poverty and helplessnessof the masses, combined to form that tragic part of the world which diesthat others may live.

  Stewart, like Byrne, was doing surgery, and the very lack of finenesswhich Byrne felt in the man promised something in his work, a sort ofruthlessness, a singleness of purpose, good or bad, an overwhelmingegotism that in his profession might only be a necessary self-reliance.

  His singleness of purpose had, at the beginning of his residence inVienna, devoted itself to making him comfortable. With the narrow meansat his control he had the choice of two alternatives: To live, as Byrnewas living, in a third-class pension, stewing in summer, freezing inwinter, starving always; or the alternative he had chosen.

  The Stewart apartment had only three rooms, but it possessed that luxuryof luxuries, a bath. It was not a bath in the usual sense of wateron tap, and shining nickel plate, but a bath for all that, where withpremeditation and forethought one might bathe. The room had once beena fuel and store room, but now boasted a tin tub and a stove with areservoir on top, where water might be heated to the boiling point, atthe same time bringing up the atmosphere to a point where the tin tubsizzled if one touched it.

  Behind the bathroom a tiny kitchen with a brick stove; next, a bedroom;the whole incredibly neat. Along one side of the wall a clothespress,which the combined wardrobes of two did not fill. And beyond that again,opening through an arch with a dingy chenille curtain, the sitting-room,now in chaotic disorder.

  Byrne went directly to the sitting-room. There were four men alreadythere: Stewart and Boyer, a pathology man named Wallace Hunter, doingresearch work at the general hospital, and a young piano student fromTennessee named MacLean. The cards had been already dealt, and Byrnestood by waiting for the hand to be played.

  The game was a small one, as befitted the means of the majority. It wasa regular Saturday night affair, as much a custom as the beer that satin Steins on the floor beside each man, or as Marie's boiled Wienersausages.

  The blue chips represented a Krone, the white ones five Hellers.MacLean, who was hardly more than a boy, was winning, drawing in chipswith quick gestures of his long pianist's fingers.

  Byrne sat down and picked up his cards. Stewart was staying out, and so,after a glance, did he. The other three drew cards and fell to betting.Stewart leaned back and filled his long pipe, and after a second'shesitation Byrne turned to him.

  "I don't know just what to say, Stewart," he began in an undertone. "I'msorry. I didn't want to hurt Marie, but--"

  "Oh, that's all right." Stewart drew at his pipe and bent forward towatch the game with an air of ending the discussion.

  "Not at all. I did hurt her and I want to explain. Marie has been kindto me, and I like her. You know that."

  "Don't be an ass!" Stewart turned on him sharply. "Marie is a littlefool, that's all. I didn't know it was an American girl."

  Byrne played in bad luck. His mind was not on the cards. He stayedout of the last hand, and with a cigarette wandered about the room. Heglanced into the tidy bedroom and beyond, to where Marie hovered overthe stove.

  She turned and saw him.

  "Come," she called. "Watch the supper for me while I go down for morebeer."

  "But no," he replied, imitating her tone. "Watch the supper for me whileI go down for more beer."

  "I love thee," she called merrily. "Tell the Herr Doktor I love thee.And here is the pitcher."

  When he returned the supper was already laid in the little kitchen. Thecards were put away, and young MacLean and Wallace Hunter were replacingthe cover and the lamp on the card-table. Stewart was orating from apinnacle of proprietorship.

  "Exactly," he was saying, in reply to something gone before; "I usedto come here Saturday nights--used to come early and take a bath.Worthington had rented it furnished for a song. Used to sit in a cornerand envy Worthington his bathtub, and that lamp there, and decent food,and a bed that didn't suffer from necrosis in the center. Then when hewas called home I took it."

  "Girl and all, wasn't it?"

  "Girl and all. Old Worth said she was straight, and, by Jove, she is. Hecame back last fall on his wedding trip--he married a wealthy girl andcame to see us. I was out, but Marie was here. There was the deuce topay."

  He lowered his voice. The men had gathered about him in a group.

  "Jealous, eh?" from Hunter.

  "Jealous? No! He tried to kiss her and she hit him--said he didn'trespect her!"

  "It's a curious code of honor," said Boyer thoughtfully. And indeed tonone but Stewart did it seem amusing. This little girl of the streets,driven by God knows what necessity to make her own code and, having madeit, living up to it with every fiber of her.

  "Bitte zum speisen!" called Marie gayly from her brick stove, and themen trooped out to the kitchen.

  The supper was spread on the tabl
e, with the pitcher of beer in thecenter. There were Swiss cheese and cold ham and rolls, and above allsausages and mustard. Peter drank a great deal of beer, as did theothers, and sang German songs with a frightful accent and much vigor andsentiment, as also did the others.

  Then he went back to the cold room in the Pension Schwarz, and toldhimself he was a fool to live alone when one could live like a princefor the same sum properly laid out. He dropped into the hollow center ofhis bed, where his big figure fitted as comfortably as though it lay ina washtub, and before his eyes there came a vision of Stewart's flat andthe slippers by the fire--which was eminently human.

  However, a moment later he yawned, and said aloud, with considerablevigor, that he'd be damned if he would--which was eminently Peter Byrne.Almost immediately, with the bed coverings, augmented by his overcoat,drawn snug to his chin, and the better necktie swinging from the gasjetin the air from the opened window, Peter was asleep. For four hours hehad entirely forgotten Harmony.