“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 friendship and made a working basis for future comradely relations, they were back at the corner of the Alserstrasse 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.
“Gute Nacht,” he called. “Kuss die Hand, Fraulein. Four rooms and the salon and a bath of the finest.”
As they went up the Hirschengasse they could hear him pursuing his unsteady way down the street and singing lustily. At the door of the Pension Schwarz Harmony paused.
“Do you mind if I ask one question?”
“You honor me, madam.”
“Then—what is the name of the girl back home?”
Peter Byrne was suddenly conscious of a complete void as to feminine names. He offered, in a sort of panic, the first one he recalled:—
“Emma.”
“Emma! What a nice, old-fashioned name!” But there was a touch of disappointment in her voice.
Harmony had a lesson the next day. She was a favorite pupil with the master. Out of so much musical chaff he winnowed only now and then a grain of real ability. And Harmony had that. Scatchy and the Big Soprano had been right—she had the real thing.
The short half-hour lesson had a way with Harmony of lengthening itself to an hour or more, much to the disgust of the lady secretary in the anteroom. On that Monday Harmony had pleased the old man to one of his rare enthusiasms.
“Six months,” he said, “and you will go back to your America and show them how over here we teach violin. I will a letter—letters— give you, and you shall put on the programme, of your concerts that you are my pupil, is it not so?”
Harmony was drawing on her worn gloves; her hands trembled a little with the praise and excitement.
“If I can stay so long,” she answered unsteadily.
“You must stay. Have I so long labored, and now before it is finished you talk of going! Gott im Himmel!”
“It is a matter of money. My father is dead. And unless I find something to do I shall have to go back.”
The master had heard many such statements. They never ceased to rouse his ire against a world that had money for everything but music. He spent five minutes in indignant protest, then:—
“But you are clever and young, child. You will find a way to stay. Perhaps I can now and then find a concert for you.” It was a lure he had thrown out before, a hook without a bait. It needed no bait, being always eagerly swallowed. And no more talk of going away. I refuse to allow. You shall not go.”
Harmony paid the lady secretary on her way out. The master was interested. He liked Harmony and he believed in her. But fifty Kronen is fifty Kronen, and South American beef is high of price. He followed Harmony into the outer room and bowed her out of his studio.
“The Fraulein has paid?” he demanded, turning sharply to the lady secretary.
“Always.”
“After the lesson?”
“Ja, Herr Professor.”
“It is better,” said the master, “that she pay hereafter before the lesson.”
“Ja, Herr Professor.”
Whereupon the lady secretary put a red-ink cross before Harmony’s name. There were many such crosses on the ledger.
CHAPTER VII
For three days Byrne hardly saw Harmony. He was off early in the morning, hurried back to the midday meal and was gone again the moment it was over. He had lectures in the evenings, too, and although he lingered for an hour or so after supper it was to find Harmony taken possession of by the little Bulgarian, seized with a sudden thirst for things American.
On the evening of the second day he had left Harmony, enmeshed and helpless in a tangle of language, trying to explain to the little Bulgarian the reason American women wished to vote. Byrne flung down the stairs and out into the street, almost colliding with Stewart.
They walked on together, Stewart with the comfortably rolling gait of the man who has just dined well, Byrne with his heavy, rather solid tread. The two men were not congenial, and the frequent intervals without speech between them were rather for lack of understanding than for that completeness of it which often fathers long silences. Byrne was the first to speak after their greeting.
“Marie all right?”
“Fine. Said if I saw you to ask you to supper some night this week.”
“Thanks. Does it matter which night?”
“Any but Thursday. We’re hearing ‘La Boheme.’”
“Say Friday, then.”
Byrne’s tone lacked enthusiasm, but Stewart in his after-dinner mood failed to notice it.
“Have you thought any more about our conversation of the other night?”
“What was that?”
Stewart poked him playfully in the ribs.
“Wake up, Byrne !” he said. “You remember well enough. Neither the Days nor any one else is going to have the benefit of your assistance if you go on living the way you have been. I was at Schwarz’s. It is the double drain there that tells on one—eating little and being eaten much. Those old walls are full of vermin. Why don’t you take our apartment?”
“Yours?”
“Yes, for a couple of months. I’m through with Schleich and Breidau can’t take me for two months. It’s Marie’s off season and we’re going to Semmering for the winter sports. We’re ahead enough to take a holiday. And if you want the flat for the same amount you are spending now, or less, you can have it, and—a home, old man.”
Byrne was irritated, the more so that he realized that the offer tempted him. To his resentment was added a contempt of himself.
“Thanks,” he said. “I think not.”
“Oh, all right.” Stewart was rather offended. “I can’t do more than give you a chance.”
They separated shortly after and Byrne went on alone. The snow of Sunday had turned to a fine rain which had lasted all of Monday and Tuesday. The sidewalks were slimy; wagons slid in the ooze of the streets; and the smoke from the little stoves in the street-cars followed them in depressing horizontal clouds. Cabmen sat and smoked in the interior of musty cabs. The women hod-carriers on a new building steamed like horses as they worked.
Byrne walked along, his head thrust down into his upturned collar; moisture gathered on his face like dew, condensed rather than precipitated. And as he walked there came before him a vision of the little flat on the Hochgasse, with the lamp on the table, and the general air of warmth and cheer, and a figure presiding over the brick stove in the kitchen. Byrne shook himself like a great dog and turned in at the gate of the hospital. He was thoroughly ashamed of himself.