Harmony's only thought had been flight, from Peter, from McLean, from
Mrs. Boyer. She had devoted all her energies to losing herself,
to cutting the threads that bound her to the life in the
Siebensternstrasse. She had drawn all her money, as Peter discovered
later. The discovery caused him even more acute anxiety. The city was
full of thieves; poverty and its companion, crime, lurked on every
shadowy staircase of the barracklike houses, or peered, red-eyed, from
every alleyway.
And into this city of contrasts--of gray women of the night hugging
gratings for warmth and accosting passers-by with loathsome gestures, of
smug civilians hiding sensuous mouths under great mustaches, of dapper
soldiers to whom the young girl unattended was potential prey, into
this night city of terror, this day city of frightful contrasts, ermine
rubbing elbows with frost-nipped flesh, destitution sauntering along
the fashionable Prater for lack of shelter, gilt wheels of royalty and
yellow wheels of courtesans--Harmony had ventured alone for the second
time.
And this time there was no Peter Byrne to accost her cheerily in the
twilight and win her by sheer friendliness. She was alone. Her funds
were lower, much lower. And something else had gone--her faith. Mrs.
Boyer had seen to that. In the autumn Harmony had faced the city
clear-eyed and unafraid; now she feared it, met it with averted eyes,
alas! understood it.
It was not the Harmony who had bade a brave farewell to Scatchy and the
Big Soprano in the station who fled to her refuge on the upper floor of
the house in the Wollbadgasse. This was a hunted creature, alternately
flushed and pale, who locked her door behind her before she took off
her hat, and who, having taken off her hat and surveyed her hiding-place
with tragic eyes, fell suddenly to trembling, alone there in the
gaslight.
She had had no plans beyond flight. She had meant, once alone, to think
the thing out. But the room was cold, she had had nothing to eat,
and the single slovenly maid was a Hungarian and spoke no German. The
dressmaker had gone to the Ronacher. Harmony did not know where to find
a restaurant, was afraid to trust herself to the streets alone. She went
to bed supperless, with a tiny picture of Peter and Jimmy and the wooden
sentry under her cheek.
The pigeons, cooing on the window-sill, wakened her early. She was
confused at first, got up to see if Jimmy had thrown off his blankets,
and wakened to full consciousness with the sickening realization that
Jimmy was not there.
The dressmaker, whose name was Monia Reiff, slept late after her evening
out. Harmony, collapsing with hunger and faintness, waited as long as
she could. Then she put on her things desperately and ventured out.
Surely at this hour Peter would not be searching, and even if he were he
would never think of the sixteenth district. He would make inquiries, of
course--the Pension Schwarz, Boyers', the master's.
The breakfast brought back her strength and the morning air gave her
confidence. The district, too, was less formidable than the neighborhood
of the Karntnerstrasse and the Graben. The shops were smaller. The
windows exhibited cheaper goods. There was a sort of family atmosphere
about many of them; the head of the establishment in the doorway, the
wife at the cashier's desk, daughters, cousins, nieces behind the
wooden counters. The shopkeepers were approachable, instead of familiar.
Harmony met no rebuffs, was respectfully greeted and cheerfully listened
to. In many cases the application ended in a general consultation,
shopkeeper, wife, daughters, nieces, slim clerks with tiny mustaches.
She got addresses, followed them up, more consultations, more addresses,
but no work. The reason dawned on her after a day of tramping, during
which she kept carefully away from that part of the city where Peter
might be searching for her.
The fact was, of course, that her knowledge of English was her sole
asset as a clerk. And there were few English and no tourists in the
sixteenth district. She was marketing a commodity for which there was no
demand.
She lunched at a Konditorei, more to rest her tired body than because
she needed food. The afternoon was as the morning. At six o'clock,
long after the midwinter darkness had fallen, she stumbled back to the
Wollbadgasse and up the whitewashed staircase.
She had a shock at the second landing. A man had stepped into the angle
to let her pass. A gasjet dared over his head, and she recognized the
short heavy figure and ardent eyes of Georgiev. She had her veil down
luckily, and he gave no sign of recognition. She passed on, and she
heard him a second later descending. But there had been something
reminiscent after all in her figure and carriage. The little Georgiev
paused, halfway down, and thought a moment. It was impossible, of
course. All women reminded him of the American. Had he not, only the
day before, followed for two city blocks a woman old enough to be
his mother, merely because she carried a violin case? But there was
something about the girl he had just passed--Bah!
A bad week for Harmony followed, a week of weary days and restless
nights when she slept only to dream of Peter--of his hurt and
incredulous eyes when he found she had gone; of Jimmy--that he needed
her, was worse, was dying. More than once she heard him sobbing and
wakened to the cooing of the pigeons on the window-sill. She grew thin
and sunken-eyed; took to dividing her small hoard, half of it with her,
half under the carpet, so that in case of accident all would not be
gone.
This, as it happened, was serious. One day, the sixth, she came back wet
to the skin from an all-day rain, to find that the carpet bank had been
looted. There was no clue. The stolid Hungarian, startled out of her
lethargy, protested innocence; the little dressmaker, who seemed honest
and friendly, wept in sheer sympathy. The fact remained--half the small
hoard was gone.
Two days more, a Sunday and a Monday. On Sunday Harmony played, and
Georgiev in the room below, translating into cipher a recent conference
between the Austrian Minister of War and the German Ambassador, put
aside his work and listened. She played, as once before she had played
when life seemed sad and tragic, the “Humoresque.” Georgiev, hands
behind his head and eyes upturned, was back in the Pension Schwarz that
night months ago when Harmony played the “Humoresque” and Peter stooped
outside her door. The little Bulgarian sighed and dreamed.
Harmony, a little sadder, a little more forlorn each day, pursued her
hopeless quest. She ventured into the heart of the Stadt and paid a
part of her remaining money to an employment bureau, to teach English
or violin, whichever offered, or even both. After she had paid they told
her it would be difficult, almost impossible without references. She had
another narrow escape as she was leaving. She almost collided with Olga,
the chambermaid, who, having clashed for the last time with Katrina, was
seeking new employment. On another occasion she saw Marie in the crowd
and was obsessed with a longing to call to her, to ask for Peter, for
Jimmy. That meeting took the heart out of the girl. Marie was white and
weary--perhaps the boy was worse. Perhaps Peter--Her heart contracted.
But that was absurd, of course, Peter was always well and strong.
Two things occurred that week, one unexpected, the other inevitable.
The unexpected occurrence was that Monia Reiff, finding Harmony being
pressed for work, offered the girl a situation. The wage was small, but
she could live on it.
The inevitable was that she met Georgiev on the stairs without her veil.
It was the first day in the workroom. The apprentices were carrying home
boxes for a ball that night. Thread was needed, and quickly. Harmony,
who did odds and ends of sewing, was most easily spared. She slipped on
her jacket and hat and ran down to the shop near by.
It was on the return that she met Georgiev coming down. The afternoon
was dark and the staircase unlighted. In the gloom one face was as
another. Georgiev, listening intently, hearing footsteps, drew back
into the embrasure of a window and waited. His swarthy face was tense,
expectant. As the steps drew near, were light feminine instead of
stealthy, the little spy relaxed somewhat. But still he waited,
crouched.
It was a second before he recognized Harmony, another instant before he
realized his good fortune. She had almost passed. He put out an unsteady
hand.
“Fraulein!”
“Herr Georgiev!”
The little Bulgarian was profoundly stirred. His fervid eyes gleamed.
He struggled against the barrier of language, broke out in passionate
Bulgar, switched to German punctuated with an English word here and
there. Made intelligible, it was that he had found her at last. Harmony
held her spools of thread and waited for the storm of languages to
subside. Then:--
“But you are not to say you have seen me, Herr Georgiev.”
“No?”
Harmony colored.
“I am--am hiding,” she explained. “Something very uncomfortable happened
and I came here. Please don't say you have seen me.”
Georgiev was puzzled at first. She had to explain very slowly, with his
ardent eyes on her. But he understood at last and agreed of course. His
incredulity was turning to certainty. Harmony had actually been in the
same building with him while he sought her everywhere else.
“Then,” he said at last, “it was you who played Sunday.”
“I surely.”
She made a move to pass him, but he held out an imploring hand.
“Fraulein, I may see you sometimes?”
“We shall meet again, of course.”
“Fraulein,--with all respect,--sometime perhaps you will walk out with
me?”
“I am very busy all day.”
“At night, then? For the exercise? I, with all respect, Fraulein!”
Harmony was touched.
“Sometime,” she consented. And then impulsively: “I am very lonely, Herr
Georgiev.”
She held out her hand, and the little Bulgarian bent over it and kissed
it reverently. The Herr Georgiev's father was a nobleman in his own
country, and all the little spy's training had been to make of a girl
in Harmony's situation lawful prey. But in the spy's glowing heart there
was nothing for Harmony to fear. She knew it. He stood, hat in hand,
while she went up the staircase. Then:--
“Fraulein!” anxiously.
“Yes?”
“Was there below at the entrance a tall man in a green velours hat?”
“I saw no one there.”
“I thank you, Fraulein.”
He watched her slender figure ascend, lose itself in the shadows,
listened until she reached the upper floors. Then with a sigh he clapped
his hat on his head and made his cautious way down to the street. There
was no man in a green velours hat below, but the little spy had an
uneasy feeling that eyes watched him, nevertheless. Life was growing
complicated for the Herr Georgiev.
Life was pressing very close to Harmony also in those days, a life she
had never touched before. She discovered, after a day or two in the
work-room, that Monia Reiff's business lay almost altogether among the
demi-monde. The sewing-girls, of Marie's type many of them, found in
the customers endless topics of conversation. Some things Harmony was
spared, much of the talk being in dialect. But a great deal of it she
understood, and she learned much that was not spoken. They talked
freely of the women, their clothes, and they talked a great deal about
a newcomer, an American dancer, for whom Monia was making an elaborate
outfit. The American's name was Lillian Le Grande. She was dancing at
one of the variety theaters.
Harmony was working on a costume for the Le Grande woman--a gold brocade
slashed to the knee at one side and with a fragment of bodice made of
gilt tissue. On the day after her encounter with Georgiev she met her.
There was a dispute over the gown, something about the draping. Monia,
flushed with irritation, came to the workroom door and glanced over the
girls. She singled out Harmony finally and called her.
“Come and put on the American's gown,” she ordered. “She wishes--Heaven
knows what she wishes!”
Harmony went unwillingly. Nothing she had heard of the Fraulein Le
Grande had prepossessed her. Her uneasiness was increased when she found
herself obliged to shed her gown and to stand for one terrible moment
before the little dressmaker's amused eyes.
“Thou art very lovely, very chic,” said Monia. The dress added to
rather than relieved Harmony's discomfiture. She donned it in one of the
fitting-rooms, made by the simple expedient of curtaining off a corner
of the large reception room. The slashed skirt embarrassed her; the low
cut made her shrink. Monia was frankly entranced. Above the gold tissue
of the bodice rose Harmony's exquisite shoulders. Her hair was gold;
even her eyes looked golden. The dressmaker, who worshiped beauty, gave
a pull here, a pat there. If only all women were so beautiful in the
things she made!
She had an eye for the theatrical also. She posed Harmony behind the
curtain, arranged lights, drew down the chiffon so that a bit more of
the girl's rounded bosom was revealed. Then she drew the curtain aside
and stood smiling.
Le Grande paid the picture the tribute of a second's silence. Then:--
“Exquisite!” she said in English. Then in halting German: “Do not change
a line. It is perfect.”
Harmony must walk in the gown, turn, sit. Once she caught a glimpse of
herself and was startled. She had been wearing black for so long, and
now this radiant golden creature was herself. She was enchanted and
abashed. The slash in the skirt troubled her: her slender leg had a way
of revealing itself.
The ordeal was over at last. The dancer was pleased. She ordered another
gown. Harmony, behind the curtain, slipped out of the dress and into
her own shabby frock. On the other side of the curtain the dancer
was talking. Her voice was loud, but rather agreeable. She smoked a
cigarette. Scraps of chatter came to Harmony, and once a laugh.
“That is too pink--something more delicate.”
“Here is a shade; hold it to your cheek.”
“I am a bad color. I did not sleep last night.”
“Still no news, Fraulein?”
“None. He has disappeared utterly. That isn't so bad, is it? I could use
more rouge.”
“It is being much worn. It is strange, is it not, that a child could be
stolen from the hospital and leave no sign!”
The dancer laughed a mirthless laugh. Her voice changed, became nasal,
full of venom.
“Oh, they know well enough,” she snapped. “Those nurses know, and
there's a pig of a red-bearded doctor--I'd like to poison him.
Separating mother and child! I'm going to find him, if only to show them
they are not so smart after all.”
In her anger she had lapsed into English. Harmony, behind her curtain,
had clutched at her heart. Jimmy's mother!