Anna Gates was no fool. While she made her few preparations for dinner she repented bitterly what she had said to Harmony. It is difficult for the sophistry of forty to remember and cherish the innocence of twenty. For illusions it is apt to substitute facts, the material for the spiritual, the body against the soul. Dr. Gates, from her school of general practice, had come to view life along physiological lines.
With her customary frankness she approached Peter after the meal.
“I’ve been making mischief, Peter. I been talking too much, as usual.”
“Certainly not about me, Doctor. Out of my blameless life—”
“About you, as a representative member of your sex. I’m a fool.”
Peter looked serious. He had put on the newly pressed suit and his best tie, and was looking distinguished and just now rather stern.
“To whom?”
“To the young Wells person. Frankly, Peter, I dare say at this moment she thinks you are everything you shouldn’t be, because I said you were only human. Why it should be evil to be human, or human to be evil—”
“I cannot imagine,” said Peter slowly, “the reason for any conversation about me.”
“Nor I, when I look back. We seemed to talk about other things, but it always ended with you. Perhaps you were our one subject in common. Then she irritated me by her calm confidence. The world was good, everybody was good. She would find a safe occupation and all would be well.”
“So you warned her against me,” said Peter grimly.
“I told her you were human and that she was attractive. Shall I make ‘way with myself?”
“Cui bono?” demanded Peter, smiling in spite of himself. “The mischief is done.”
Dr. Gates looked up at him.
“I’m in love with you myself, Peter!” she said gratefully. “Perhaps it is the tie. Did you ever eat such a meal?”
CHAPTER VI
A very pale and dispirited Harmony it was who bathed her eyes in cold water that evening and obeyed little Olga’s “Bitte sum speisen.” The chairs round the diningtable were only half occupied—a free concert had taken some, Sunday excursions others. The little Bulgarian, secretly considered to be a political spy, was never about on this one evening of the week. Rumor had it that on these evenings, secreted in an attic room far off in the sixteenth district, he wrote and sent off reports of what he had learned during the week—his gleanings from near-by tables in coffee-houses or from the indiscreet hours after midnight in the cafe, where the Austrian military was wont to gather and drink.
Into the empty chair beside Harmony Peter slid his long figure, and met a tremulous bow and silence. From the head of the table Frau Schwarz was talking volubly—as if, by mere sound, to distract attention from the scantiness of the meal. Under cover of the Babel Peter spoke to the girl. Having had his warning his tone was friendly, without a hint of the intimacy of the day before.
“Better?”
“Not entirely. Somewhat.”
“I wish you had sent Olga to me for some tablets. No one needs to suffer from headache, when five grains or so of powder will help them.”
“I am afraid of headache tablets.”
“Not when your physician prescribes them, I hope!”
This was the right note. Harmony brightened a little. After all, what had she to do with the man himself? He had constituted himself her physician. That was all.
“The next time I shall send Olga.”
“Good!” he responded heartily; and proceeded to make such a meal as he might, talking little, and nursing, by a careful indifference, her new-growing confidence.
It was when he had pushed his plate away and lighted a cigarette—according to the custom of the pension, which accorded the “Nicht Rauchen” sign the same attention that it did to the portrait of the deceased Herr Schwarz—that he turned to her again.
“I am sorry you are not able to walk. It promises a nice night.”
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 companionship 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.