Part 8 (1/2)
Peter was clever. Harmony, expecting an invitation to walk, had nerved herself to a cool refusal. This took her off guard.
”Then you do not prescribe air?”
”That's up to how you feel. If you care to go out and don't mind my going along as a sort of Old Dog Tray I haven't anything else to do.”
Dr. Gates, eating stewed fruit across the table, gave Peter a swift glance of admiration, which he caught and acknowledged. He was rather exultant himself; certainly he had been adroit.
”I'd rather like a short walk. It will make me sleep,” said Harmony, who had missed the by-play. ”And Old Dog Tray would be a very nice companion, I'm sure.”
It is doubtful, however, if Anna Gates would have applauded Peter had she followed the two in their rambling walk that night. Direction mattering little and companions.h.i.+p everything, they wandered on, talking of immaterial things--of the rough pavements, of the shop windows, of the gray medieval buildings. They came to a full stop in front of the Votivkirche, and discussed gravely the twin Gothic spires and the Benk sculptures on the facade. And there in the open square, casting diplomacy to the winds, Peter Byrne turned to Harmony and blurted out what was in his heart.
”Look here,” he said, ”you don't care a rap about spires. I don't believe you know anything about them. I don't. What did that idiot of a woman doctor say to you to-day?”
”I don't know what you mean.”
”You do very well. And I'm going to set you right. She starts out with two premises: I'm a man, and you're young and attractive. Then she draws some sort of fool deduction. You know what I mean?”
”I don't see why we need discuss it,” said poor Harmony. ”Or how you know--”
”I know because she told me. She knew she had been a fool, and she came to me. I don't know whether it makes any difference to you or not, but--we'd started out so well, and then to have it spoiled! My dear girl, you are beautiful and I know it. That's all the more reason why, if you'll stand for it, you need some one to look after you--I'll not say like a brother, because all the ones I ever knew were darned poor brothers to their sisters, but some one who will keep an eye on you and who isn't going to fall in love with you.”
”I didn't think you were falling in love with me; nor did I wish you to.”
”Certainly not. Besides, I--” Here Peter Byrne had another inspiration, not so good as the first--”Besides, there is somebody at home, you understand? That makes it all right, doesn't it?”
”A girl at home?”
”A girl,” said Peter, lying manfully.
”How very nice!” said Harmony, and put out her hand. Peter, feeling all sorts of a cheat, took it, and got his reward in a complete restoral of their former comradely relations. From abstractions of church towers and street paving they went, with the directness of the young, to themselves. Thereafter, during that memorable walk, they talked blissful personalities, Harmony's future, Peter's career, money--or its lack--their ambitions, their hopes, even--and here was intimacy, indeed!--their disappointments, their failures of courage, their occasional loss of faith in themselves.
The first real snow of the year was falling as they turned back toward the Pension Schwarz, a damp snow that stuck fast and melted with a chilly cold that had in it nothing but depression. The upper spires of the Votivkirche were hidden in a gray mist; the trees in the park took on, against the gloom of the city hall, a snowy luminosity. Save for an occasional pedestrian, making his way home under an umbrella, the streets were deserted. Byrne and Harmony had no umbrella, but the girl rejected his offer of a taxicab.
”We should be home too quickly,” she observed naively. ”And we have so much to say about me. Now I thought that perhaps by giving English lessons in the afternoon and working all morning at my music--”
And so on and on, square after square, with Peter listening gravely, his head bent. And square after square it was borne in on him what a precarious future stretched before this girl beside him, how very slender her resources, how more than dubious the outcome.
Poverty, which had only stimulated Peter Byrne in the past, ate deep into his soul that night.
Epochmaking as the walk had been, seeing that it had reestablished a friends.h.i.+p and made a working basis for future comradely relations, they were back at the corner of the Alserstra.s.se before ten. As they turned in at the little street, a man, lurching somewhat, almost collided with Harmony. He was a short, heavy-set person with a carefully curled mustache, and he was singing, not loudly, but with all his maudlin heart in his voice, the barcarolle from the ”Tales” of Hoffmann. He saw Harmony, and still singing planted himself in her path. When Byrne would have pushed him aside Harmony caught his arm.
”It is only the Portier from the lodge,” she said.
The Portier, having come to rest on a throaty and rather wavering note, stood before Harmony, bowing.
”The Fraulein has gone and I am very sad,” he said thickly. ”There is no more music, and Rosa has run away with a soldier from Salzburg who has only one lung.”
”But think!” Harmony said in German. ”No more practicing in the early dawn, no young ladies bringing mud into your newscrubbed hall! It is better, is it not? All day you may rest and smoke!”
Byrne led Harmony past the drunken Portier, who turned with caution and bowed after them.