“What in the world—”
“And, please, tell me where lives the Fraulein
Harmony. The Herr Georgiev eats not nor sleeps
that he cannot find her.”
Dr. Jennings was puzzled.
“She wishes to know where the girl lives,”
she interpreted to Mrs. Boyer. “A man wishes
to know.”
“Naturally!” said Mrs. Boyer. “Well,
don’t tell her.”
Olga gathered from the tone rather than the words
that she was not to be told. She burst into a
despairing appeal in which the Herr Georgiev, Peter,
a necktie Peter had forgotten, open windows, and hot
water were inextricably confused. Dr. Jennings
listened, then waved her back with a gesture.
“She says,” she interpreted as they walked
on, “that Dr. Peter—by which I suppose
she means Dr. Byrne—has left a necktie,
and that she’ll be in hot water if she does not
return it.”
Mrs. Boyer sniffed.
“In love with him, probably, like the others!”
she said.
Peter went to Semmering the next morning, tiptoeing
out very early and without breakfast. He went
in to cover Jimmy, lying diagonally across his small
bed amid a riot of tossed blankets. The communicating
door into Harmony’s room was open. Peter
kept his eyes carefully from it, but his ears were
less under control. He could hear her soft breathing.
There were days coming when Peter would stand where
he stood then and listen, and find only silence.
He tore himself away at last, closing the outer door
carefully behind him and lighting a match to find
his way down the staircase. The Portier was not
awake. Peter had to rouse him, and to stand by
while he donned the trousers which he deemed necessary
to the dignity of his position before he opened the
street door.
Reluctant as he had been to go, the change was good
for Peter. The dawn grew rosy, promised sunshine,
fulfilled its promise. The hurrying crowds at
the depot interested him: he enjoyed his coffee,
taken from a bare table in the station. The horizontal
morning sunlight, shining in through marvelously clean
windows, warmed the marble of the floor, made black
shadows beside the heaps of hand luggage everywhere,
turned into gold the hair of a toddling baby venturing
on a tour of discovery. The same morning light,
alas! revealed to Peter a break across the toe of one
of his shoes. Peter sighed, then smiled.
The baby was catching at the bits of dust that floated
in the sunshine.
Suddenly a great wave of happiness overwhelmed Peter.
It was a passing thing, born of nothing, but for the
instant that it lasted Peter was a king. Everything
was well. The world was his oyster. Life
was his, to make it what he would—youth
and hope and joy. Under the beatific influence
he expanded, grew, almost shone. Youth and hope
and joy—that cometh in the morning.
The ecstasy passed away, but without reaction.
Peter no longer shone; he still glowed. He picked
up the golden-haired baby and hugged it. He hunted
out a beggar he had passed and gave him five Hellers.
He helped a suspicious old lady with an oilcloth-covered
bundle; he called the guard on the train “son”
and forced a grin out of that dignitary.
