She did not say good-bye to Jimmy. She stood
in the doorway and said a little prayer for him.
Marie had made the flower fairies on needles, and
they stood about his head on the pillow—pink
and yellow and white elves with fluffy skirts.
Then, very silently, she put on her hat and jacket
and closed the outer door behind her. In the
courtyard she turned and looked up. The great
chandelier in the salon was not lighted, but from the
casement windows shone out the comfortable glow of
Peter’s lamp.
CHAPTER XXI
Peter had had many things to think over during the
ride down the mountains. He had the third-class
compartment to himself, and sat in a corner, soft
hat over his eyes. Life had never been particularly
simple to Peter—his own life, yes; a matter
of three meals a day—he had had fewer—a
roof, clothing. But other lives had always touched
him closely, and at the contact points Peter glowed,
fused, amalgamated. Thus he had been many people—good,
indifferent, bad, but all needy. Thus, also, Peter
had committed vicarious crimes, suffered vicarious
illnesses, starved, died, loved—vicariously.
And now, after years of living for others, Peter was
living at last for himself—and suffering.
Not that he understood exactly what ailed him.
He thought he was tired, which was true enough, having
had little sleep for two or three nights. Also
he explained to himself that he was smoking too much,
and resolutely—lighted another cigarette.
Two things had revealed Peter’s condition to
himself: McLean had said: “You are
crazy in love with her.” McLean’s
statement, lacking subtlety, had had a certain quality
of directness. Even then Peter, utterly miserable,
had refused to capitulate, when to capitulate would
have meant the surrender of the house in the Siebensternstrasse.
And the absence from Harmony had shown him just where
he stood.
He was in love, crazy in love. Every fiber of
his long body glowed with it, ached with it.
And every atom of his reason told him what mad folly
it was, this love. Even if Harmony cared—and
at the mere thought his heart pounded—what
madness for her, what idiocy for him! To ask
her to accept the half of—nothing, to give
up a career to share his struggle for one, to ask her
to bury her splendid talent and her beauty under a
bushel that he might wave aloft his feeble light!
And there was no way out, no royal road to fortune
by the route he had chosen; nothing but grinding work,
with a result problematical and years ahead.
There were even no legacies to expect, he thought
whimsically. Peter had known a chap once, struggling
along in gynecology, who had had a fortune left him
by a G. P., which being interpreted is Grateful Patient.
Peter’s patients had a way of living, and when
they did drop out, as happened now and then, had also
a way of leaving Peter an unpaid bill in token of
appreciation; Peter had even occasionally helped to
bury them, by way, he defended himself, of covering
up his mistakes.
