In looking back after a catastrophe it is easy to trace the steps by
which the inevitable advanced. Destiny marches, not by great leaps but
with a thousand small and painful steps, and here and there it leaves
its mark, a footprint on a naked soul. We trace a life by its scars, as
a tree by its rings.
Anna Gates was not the best possible companion for Harmony, and this
with every allowance for her real kindliness, her genuine affection for
the girl. Life had destroyed her illusions, and it was of illusions
that Harmony's veil had been woven. To Anna Gates, worn with a thousand
sleepless nights, a thousand thankless days, withered before her time
with the struggling routine of medical practice, sapped with endless
calls for sympathy and aid, existence ceased to be spiritual and became
physiological.
Life and birth and death had lost their mysteries. The veil was rent.
To fit this existence of hers she had built herself a curious creed,
a philosophy of individualism, from behind which she flung strange
bombshells of theories, shafts of distorted moralities, personal
liberties, irresponsibilities, a supreme scorn for modern law and the
prophets. Nature, she claimed, was her law and her prophet.
In her hard-working, virginal life her theories had wrought no mischief.
Temptation had been lacking to exploit them, and even in the event of
the opportunity it was doubtful whether she would have had the strength
of her convictions. Men love theories, but seldom have the courage of
them, and Anna Gates was largely masculine. Women, being literal, are
apt to absorb dangerous doctrine and put it to the test. When it is
false doctrine they discover it too late.
Harmony was now a woman.
Anna would have cut off her hand sooner than have brought the girl to
harm; but she loved to generalize. It amused her to see Harmony's eyes
widen with horror at one of her radical beliefs. Nothing pleased
her more than to pit her individualism against the girl's rigid and
conventional morality, and down her by some apparently unanswerable
argument.
On the day after the incident in the kitchen such an argument took
place--hardly an argument, for Harmony knew nothing of mental fencing.
Anna had taken a heavy cold, and remained at home. Harmony had been
practicing, and at the end she played a little winter song by some
modern composer. It breathed all the purity of a white winter's day; it
was as chaste as ice and as cold; and yet throughout was the thought of
green things hiding beneath the snow and the hope of spring.
Harmony, having finished, voiced some such feeling. She was rather
ashamed of her thought.
“It seems that way to me,” she finished apologetically. “It sounds
rather silly. I always think I can tell the sort of person who composes
certain things.”
“And this gentleman who writes of winter?”
“I think he is very reserved. And that he has never loved any one.”
“Indeed!”
“When there is any love in music, any heart, one always feels it,
exactly as in books--the difference between a love story and--and--”
“--a dictionary!”
“You always laugh,” Harmony complained
“That's better than weeping. When I think of the rotten way things go in
this world I want to weep always.”
“I don't find it a bad world. Of course there are bad people, but there
are good ones.”
“Where? Peter and you and I, I suppose.”
“There are plenty of good men.”
“What do you call a good man?”
Harmony hesitated, then went on bravely:--
“Honorable men.”
Anna smiled. “My dear child,” she said, “you substitute the code of a
gentleman for the Mosaic Law. Of course your good man is a monogamist?”
Harmony nodded, puzzled eyes on Anna.
“Then there are no 'good' people in the polygamous countries, I suppose!
When there were twelve women to every man, a man took a dozen wives.
To-day in our part of the globe there is one woman--and a fifth
over--for every man. Each man gets one woman, and for every five couples
there is a derelict like myself, mateless.”
Anna's amazing frankness about herself often confused Harmony. Her
resentment at her single condition, because it left her childless,
brought forth theories that shocked and alarmed the girl. In the
atmosphere in which Harmony had been reared single women were always
presumed to be thus by choice and to regard with certain tolerance those
weaker sisters who had married. Anna, on the contrary, was frankly
a derelict, frankly regretted her maiden condition and railed with
bitterness against her enforced childlessness. The near approach of
Christmas had for years found her morose and resentful. There are, here
and there, such women, essentially mothers but not necessarily wives,
their sole passion that of maternity.
Anna, argumentative and reckless, talked on. She tore away, in her
resentment, every theory of existence the girl had ever known, and
offered her instead an incredible liberty in the name of the freedom of
the individual. Harmony found all her foundations of living shaken, and
though refusing to accept Anna's theories, found her faith in her own
weakened. She sat back, pale and silent, listening, while Anna built up
out of her discontent a new heaven and a new earth, with liberty written
high in its firmament.
When her reckless mood had passed Anna was regretful enough at the
girl's stricken face.
“I'm a fool!” she said contritely. “If Peter had been here he'd have
throttled me. I deserve it. I'm a theorist, pure and simple, and
theorists are the anarchists of society. There's only one comfort about
us--we never live up to our convictions. Now forget all this rot I've
been talking.”
Peter brought up the mail that afternoon, a Christmas card or two for
Anna, depressingly early, and a letter from the Big Soprano for Harmony
from New York. The Big Soprano was very glad to be back and spent two
pages over her chances for concert work.
“... I could have done as well had I stayed at home. If I had had the
money they wanted, to go to Geneva and sing 'Brunnhilde,' it would have
helped a lot. I could have said I'd sung in opera in Europe and at least
have had a hearing at the Met. But I didn't, and I'm back at the church
again and glad to get my old salary. If it's at all possible, stay until
the master has presented you in a concert. He's quite right, you haven't
a chance unless he does. And now I'll quit grumbling.
“Scatchy met her Henry at the dock and looked quite lovely, flushed with
excitement and having been up since dawn curling her hair. He was rather
a disappointment--small and blond, with light blue eyes, and almost
dapper. But oh, my dear, I wouldn't care how pale a man's eyes were if
he looked at me the way Henry looked at her.
“They asked me to luncheon with them, but I knew they wanted to be alone
together, and so I ate a bite or two, all I could swallow for the lump
in my throat, by myself. I was homesick enough in old Wien, but I am
just as homesick now that I am here, for we are really homesick only for
people, not places. And no one really cared whether I came back or not.”
Peter had been miserable all day, not with regret for the day before,
but with fear. What if Harmony should decide that the situation was
unpleasant and decide to leave? What if a reckless impulse, recklessly
carried out, were to break up an arrangement that had made a green oasis
of happiness and content for all of them in the desert of their common
despair?
If he had only let her go and apologized! But no, he had had to argue,
to justify himself, to make an idiot of himself generally. He almost
groaned aloud as he opened the gate end crossed the wintry garden.
He need not have feared. Harmony had taken him entirely at his word.
“I am not a beast. I'll let you alone,” he had said. She had had a bad
night, as nights go. She had gone through the painful introspection
which, in a thoroughly good girl, always follows such an outburst as
Peter's. Had she said or done anything to make him think--Surely she had
not! Had she been wrong about Peter after all? Surely not again.
While the Portier's wife, waked, as may happen, by an unaccustomed
silence, was standing guard in the hall below, iron candlestick in
hand, Harmony, having read the Litany through in the not particularly
religious hope of getting to sleep, was dreaming placidly. It was Peter
who tossed and turned almost all night. Truly there had been little
sleep that night in the old hunting-lodge of Maria Theresa.
Peter, still not quite at ease, that evening kept out of the kitchen
while supper was preparing. Anna, radical theories forgotten and wearing
a knitted shawl against drafts, was making a salad, and Harmony, all
anxiety and flushed with heat, was broiling a steak.
Steak was an extravagance, to be cooked with clear hot coals and prayer.
“Peter,” she called, “you may set the table. And try to lay the cloth
straight.”
Peter, exiled in the salon, came joyously. Obviously the wretched
business of yesterday was forgiven. He came to the door, pipe in mouth.
“Suppose I refuse?” he questioned. “You--you haven't been very friendly
with me to-day, Harry.”
“I?”
“Don't quarrel, you children,” cried Anna, beating eggs vigorously.
“Harmony is always friendly, too friendly. The Portier loves her.”
“I'm sure I said good-evening to you.”
“You usually say, 'Good-evening, Peter.'”
“And I did not?”
“You did not.”
“Then--Good-evening, Peter.”
“Thank you.”
His steady eyes met hers. In them there was a renewal of his yesterday's
promise, abasement, regret. Harmony met him with forgiveness and
restoration.
“Sometimes,” said Peter humbly, “when I am in very great favor, you say,
'Good-evening, Peter, dear.'”
“Good-evening, Peter, dear,” said Harmony.