It was the middle of November when Anna Gates, sitting
on her trunk in the cold entrance hall on the Hirschengasse,
flung the conversational bomb that left empty three
rooms in the Pension Schwarz.
Mid-December found Harmony back and fully established
in the lodge of Maria Theresa on the Street of Seven
Stars—back, but with a difference.
True, the gate still swung back and forward on rusty
hinges, obedient to every whim of the December gales;
but the casement windows in the salon no longer creaked
or admitted drafts, thanks to Peter and a roll of
rubber weather-casing. The grand piano, which
had been Scatchy’s rented extravagance, had
gone never to return, and in its corner stood a battered
but still usable upright. Under the great chandelier
sat a table with an oil lamp, and evening and morning
the white-tiled stove gleamed warm with fire.
On the table by the lamp were the combined medical
books of Peter and Anna Gates, and an ash-tray which
also they used in common.
Shabby still, of course, bare, almost denuded, the
salon of Maria Theresa. But at night, with the
lamp lighted and the little door of the stove open,
and perhaps, when the dishes from supper had been
washed, with Harmony playing softly, it took resolution
on Peter’s part to put on his overcoat and face
a lecture on the resection of a rib or a discussion
of the function of the pituitary body.
The new arrangement had proved itself in more ways
than one not only greater in comfort, but in economy.
Food was amazingly cheap. Coal, which had cost
ninety Hellers a bucket at the Pension Schwarz, they
bought in quantity and could afford to use lavishly.
Oil for the lamp was a trifle. They dined on venison
now and then, when the shop across boasted a deer from
the mountains. They had other game occasionally,
when Peter, carrying home a mysterious package, would
make them guess what it might contain. Always
on such occasions Harmony guessed rabbits. She
knew how to cook rabbits, and some of the other game
worried her.
For Harmony was the cook. It had taken many arguments
and much coaxing to make Peter see it that way.
In vain Harmony argued the extravagance of Rosa, now
married to the soldier from Salzburg with one lung,
or the tendency of the delicatessen seller to weigh
short if one did not watch him. Peter was firm.
It was Dr. Gates, after all, who found the solution.
“Don’t be too obstinate, Peter,”
she admonished him. “The child needs occupation;
she can’t practice all day. You and I can
keep up the financial end well enough, reduced as
it is. Let her keep house to her heart’s
content. That can be her contribution to the
general fund.”
And that eventually was the way it settled itself,
not without demur from Harmony, who feared her part
was too small, and who irritated Anna almost to a
frenzy by cleaning the apartment from end to end to
make certain of her usefulness.
