At the lodge the doors stood wide, and a vigorous
sound of scrubbing showed that the Portier’s
wife was preparing for the inspection of possible
new tenants. She was cleaning down the stairs
by the light of a candle, and the steam of the hot
water on the cold marble invested her like an aura.
She stood aside to let them pass, and then went cumbrously
down the stairs to where, a fork in one hand and a
pipe in the other, the Portier was frying chops for
the evening meal.
“What have I said?” she demanded from
the doorway. “Your angel is here.”
“So!”
“She with whom you sing, old cracked voice!
Whose money you refuse, because she reminds you of
your opera singer! She is again here, and with
a man!”
“It is the way of the young and beautiful—there
is always a man,” said the Portier, turning
a chop.
His wife wiped her steaming hands on her apron and
turned away, exasperated.
“It is the same man whom I last night saw at
the gate,” she threw back over her shoulder.
“I knew it from the first; but you, great booby,
can see nothing but red lips. Bah!”
Upstairs in the salon of Maria Theresa, lighted by
one candle and freezing cold, in a stiff chair under
the great chandelier Peter Byrne sat and waited and
blew on his fingers. Down below, in the Street
of Seven Stars, the arc lights swung in the wind.
The supper that evening was even unusually bad.
Frau Schwarz, much crimped and clad in frayed black
satin, presided at the head of the long table.
There were few, almost no Americans, the Americans
flocking to good food at reckless prices in more fashionable
pensions; to the Frau Gallitzenstein’s, for instance,
in the Kochgasse, where there was to be had real beefsteak,
where turkeys were served at Thanksgiving and Christmas,
and where, were one so minded, one might revel in
whipped cream.
The Pension Schwarz, however, was not without adornment.
In the center of the table was a large bunch of red
cotton roses with wire stems and green paper leaves,
and over the side-table, with its luxury of compote
in tall glass dishes and its wealth of small hard
cakes, there hung a framed motto which said, “Nicht
Rauchen,” “No Smoking,”—and
which looked suspiciously as if it had once adorned
a compartment of a railroad train.
Peter Byrne was early in the dining-room. He
had made, for him, a careful toilet, which consisted
of a shave and clean linen. But he had gone further:
He had discovered, for the first time in the three
months of its defection, a button missing from his
coat, and had set about to replace it. He had
cut a button from another coat, by the easy method
of amputating it with a surgical bistoury, and had
sewed it in its new position with a curved surgical
needle and a few inches of sterilized catgut.
The operation was slow and painful, and accomplished
only with the aid of two cigarettes and an artery
clip. When it was over he tied the ends in a
surgeon’s knot underneath and stood back to
consider the result. It seemed neat enough, but
conspicuous. After a moment or two of troubled
thought he blacked the white catgut with a dot of
ink and went on his way rejoicing.
