“The manual?” she whispered.
The boy nodded. And so just inside the door of
the bedroom across from the old salon of Maria Theresa
the sentry, with sad eyes but no lack of vigor, went
again through the Austrian manual of arms, and because
he had no carbine he used Peter’s old walking-stick.
When it was finished the boy smiled faintly, tried
to salute, lay still.
Peter was going back to America and still he had not
told Harmony he loved her. It was necessary that
he go back. His money had about given out, and
there was no way to get more save by earning it.
The drain of Jimmy’s illness, the inevitable
expense of the small grave and the tiny stone Peter
had insisted on buying, had made retreat his only
course. True, Le Grande had wished to defray
all expenses, but Peter was inexorable. No money
earned as the dancer earned hers should purchase peaceful
rest for the loved little body. And after seeing
Peter’s eyes the dancer had not insisted.
A week had seen many changes. Marie was gone.
After a conference between Stewart and Peter that
had been decided on. Stewart raised the money
somehow, and Peter saw her off, palpitant and eager,
with the pin he had sent her to Semmering at her throat.
She kissed Peter on the cheek in the station, rather
to his embarrassment. From the lowered window,
as the train pulled out, she waved a moist handkerchief.
“I shall be very good,” she promised him.
The last words he heard above the grinding of the
train were her cheery: “To America!”
Peter was living alone in the Street of Seven Stars,
getting food where he might happen to be, buying a
little now and then from the delicatessen shop across
the street. For Harmony had gone back to the
house in the Wollbadgasse. She had stayed until
all was over and until Marie’s small preparations
for departure were over. Then, while Peter was
at the station, she slipped away again. But this
time she left her address. She wrote:—
“You will come to visit me, dear Peter, because
I was so lonely before and that is unnecessary now.
But you must know that I cannot stay in the Siebensternstrasse.
We have each our own fight to make, and you have been
trying to fight for us all, for Marie, for dear little
Jimmy, for me. You must get back to work now;
you have lost so much time. And I am managing
well. The Frau Professor is back and will take
an evening lesson, and soon I shall have more money
from Fraulein Reiff. You can see how things are
looking up for me. In a few months I shall be
able to renew my music lessons. And then, Peter,—the
career!
“Harmony.”
Her address was beneath.
Peter had suffered much. He was thinner, grayer,
and as he stood with the letter in his hand he felt
that Harmony was right. He could offer her nothing
but his shabby self, his problematic future.
Perhaps, surely, everything would have been settled,
without reason, had he only once taken the girl in
his arms, told her she was the breath of life itself
to him. But adversity, while it had roused his
fighting spirit in everything else, had sapped his
confidence.
