Jimmy was dying. Peter, fighting hard, was beaten at last. All through
the night he had felt it; during the hours before the dawn there had
been times when the small pulse wavered, flickered, almost ceased. With
the daylight there had been a trifle of recovery, enough for a bit of
hope, enough to make harder Peter's acceptance of the inevitable.
The boy was very happy, quite content and comfortable. When he opened
his eyes he smiled at Peter, and Peter, gray of face, smiled back. Peter
died many deaths that night.
At daylight Jimmy fell into a sleep that was really stupor. Marie,
creeping to the door in the faint dawn, found the boy apparently
asleep and Peter on his knees beside the bed. He raised his head at
her footstep and the girl was startled at the suffering in his face. He
motioned her back.
“But you must have a little sleep, Peter.”
“No. I'll stay until--Go back to bed. It is very early.”
Peter had not been able after all to secure the Nurse Elisabet, and now
it was useless. At eight o'clock he let Marie take his place, then he
bathed and dressed and prepared to face another day, perhaps another
night. For the child's release came slowly. He tried to eat breakfast,
but managed only a cup of coffee.
Many things had come to Peter in the long night, and one was
insistent--the boy's mother was in Vienna and he was dying without her.
Peter might know in his heart that he had done the best thing for the
child, but like Harmony his early training was rising now to accuse
him. He had separated mother and child. Who was he to have decided the
mother's unfitness, to have played destiny? How lightly he had taken the
lives of others in his hand, and to what end? Harmony, God knows where;
the boy dying without his mother. Whatever that mother might be, her
place that day was with her boy. What a wreck he had made of things! He
was humbled as well as stricken, poor Peter!
In the morning he sent a note to McLean, asking him to try to trace the
mother and inclosing the music-hall clipping and the letter. The letter,
signed only “Mamma,” was not helpful. The clipping might prove valuable.
“And for Heaven's sake be quick,” wrote Peter. “This is a matter of
hours. I meant well, but I've done a terrible thing. Bring her, Mac, no
matter what she is or where you find her.” The Portier carried the note.
When he came up to get it he brought in his pocket a small rabbit and
a lettuce leaf. Never before had the combination failed to arouse and
amuse the boy. He carried the rabbit down again sorrowfully. “He saw
it not,” he reported sadly to his wife. “Be off to the church while
I deliver this letter. And this rabbit we will not cook, but keep in
remembrance.”
At eleven o'clock Marie called Peter, who was asleep on the horsehair
sofa.
“He asks for you.”
Peter was instantly awake and on his feet. The boy's eyes were open and
fixed on him.
“Is it another day?” he asked.
“Yes, boy; another morning.”
“I am cold, Peter.”
They blanketed him, although the room was warm. From where he lay he
could see the mice. He watched them for a moment. Poor Peter, very
humble, found himself wondering in how many ways he had been remiss. To
see this small soul launched into eternity without a foreword, without a
bit of light for the journey! Peter's religion had been one of life and
living, not of creed.
Marie, bringing jugs of hot water, bent over Peter.
“He knows, poor little one!” she whispered.
And so, indeed, it would seem. The boy, revived by a spoonful or two of
broth, asked to have the two tame mice on the bed. Peter, opening the
cage, found one dead, very stiff and stark. The catastrophe he kept from
the boy.
“One is sick, Jimmy boy,” he said, and placed the mate, forlorn and
shivering, on the pillow. After a minute:--
“If the sick one dies will it go to heaven?”
“Yes, honey, I think so.”
The boy was silent for a time. Thinking was easier than speech. His mind
too worked slowly. It was after a pause, while he lay there with closed
eyes, that Peter saw two tears slip from under his long lashes. Peter
bent over and wiped them away, a great ache in his heart.
“What is it, dear?”
“I'm afraid--it's going to die!”
“Would that be so terrible, Jimmy boy?” asked Peter gently. “To go to
heaven, where there is no more death or dying, where it is always summer
and the sun always shines?”
No reply for a moment. The little mouse sat up on the pillow and rubbed
its nose with a pinkish paw. The baby mice in the cage nuzzled their
dead mother.
“Is there grass?”
“Yes--soft green grass.”
“Do--boys in heaven--go in their bare feet?” Ah, small mind and heart,
so terrified and yet so curious!
“Indeed, yes.” And there on his knees beside the white bed Peter painted
such a heaven as no theologue has ever had the humanity to paint--a
heaven of babbling brooks and laughing, playing children, a heaven of
dear departed puppies and resurrected birds, of friendly deer, of trees
in fruit, of speckled fish in bright rivers. Painted his heaven with
smiling eyes and death in his heart, a child's heaven of games and
friendly Indians, of sunlight and rain, sweet sleep and brisk awakening.
The boy listened. He was silent when Peter had finished. Speech was
increasingly an effort.
“I should--like--to go there,” he whispered at last.
He did not speak again during all the long afternoon, but just at dusk
he roused again.
“I would like--to see--the sentry,” he said with difficulty.
And so again, and for the last time, Rosa's soldier from Salzburg with
one lung.
Through all that long day, then, Harmony sat over her work, unaccustomed
muscles aching, the whirring machines in her ears. Monia, upset over the
morning's excitement, was irritable and unreasonable. The gold-tissue
costume had come back from Le Grande with a complaint. Below in the
courtyard all day curious groups stood gaping up the staircase, where
the morning had seen such occurrences.
At the noon hour, while the girls heated soup and carried in pails of
salad from the corner restaurant, Harmony had fallen into the way of
playing for them. To the music-loving Viennese girls this was the hour
of the day. To sit back, soup bowl on knee, the machines silent, Monia
quarreling in the kitchen with the Hungarian servant, and while the
pigeons ate crusts on the window-sills, to hear this American girl play
such music as was played at the opera, her slim figure swaying, her
whole beautiful face and body glowing with the melody she made, the
girls found the situation piquant, altogether delightful. Although she
did not suspect it, many rumors were rife about Harmony in the workroom.
She was not of the people, they said--the daughter of a great American,
of course, run away to escape a loveless marriage. This was borne out
by the report of one of them who had glimpsed the silk petticoat. It
was rumored also that she wore no chemise, but instead an infinitely
coquettish series of lace and nainsook garments--of a fineness!
Harmony played for them that day, played, perhaps, as she had not played
since the day she had moved the master to tears, played to Peter as she
had seen him at the window, to Jimmy, to the little Georgiev as he went
down the staircase. And finally with a choke in her throat to the little
mother back home, so hopeful, so ignorant.
In the evening, as was her custom, she took the one real meal of the day
at the corner restaurant, going early to avoid the crowd and coming back
quickly through the winter night. The staircase was always a peril, to
be encountered and conquered night after night and even in the daytime
not to be lightly regarded. On her way up this night she heard steps
ahead, heavy, measured steps that climbed steadily without pauses. For
an instant Harmony thought it sounded like Peter's step and she went
dizzy.
But it was not Peter. Standing in the upper hall, much as he had stood
that morning over the ammunition boxes, thumbs in, heels in, toes out,
chest out, was the sentry.
Harmony's first thought was of Georgiev and more searching of the
building. Then she saw that the sentry's impassive face wore lines of
trouble. He saluted. “Please, Fraulein.”
“Yes?”
“I have not told the Herr Doktor.”
“I thank you.”
“But the child dies.”
“Jimmy?”
“He dies all of last night and to-day. To-night, it is, perhaps, but of
moments.”
Harmony clutched at the iron stair-rail for support. “You are sure? You
are not telling me so that I will go back?”
“He dies, Fraulein. The Herr Doktor has not slept for many hours. My
wife, Rosa, sits on the stair to see that none disturb, and her cousin,
the wife of the Portier, weeps over the stove. Please, Fraulein, come
with me.”
“When did you leave the Siebensternstrasse?”
“But now.”
“And he still lives?”
“Ja, Fraulein, and asks for you.”
Now suddenly fell away from the girl all pride, all fear, all that was
personal and small and frightened, before the reality of death. She
rose, as women by divine gift do rise, to the crisis; ceased trembling,
got her hat and coat and her shabby gloves and joined the sentry again.
Another moment's delay--to secure the Le Grande's address from Monia.
Then out into the night, Harmony to the Siebensternstrasse, the tall
soldier to find the dancer at her hotel, or failing that, at the
Ronacher Music-Hall.
Harmony took a taxicab--nothing must be spared now--bribed the chauffeur
to greater speed, arrived at the house and ran across the garden, still
tearless, up the stairs, past Rosa on the upper flight, and rang the
bell.
Marie admitted her with only a little gasp of surprise. There was
nothing to warn Peter. One moment he sat by the bed, watch in hand,
alone, drear, tragic-eyed. The next he had glanced up, saw Harmony and
went white, holding to the back of his chair. Their eyes met, agony
and hope in them, love and death, rapture and bitterness. In Harmony's,
pleading, promise, something of doubt; in Peter's, only yearning, as of
empty arms. Then Harmony dared to look at the bed and fell on her knees
in a storm of grief beside it. Peter bent over and gently stroked her
hair.
Le Grande was singing; the boxes were full. In the body of the immense
theater waiters scurried back and forward among the tables. Everywhere
was the clatter of silver and steel on porcelain, the clink of glasses.
Smoke was everywhere--pipes, cigars, cigarettes. Women smoked between
bites at the tables, using small paper or silver mouthpieces, even a
gold one shone here and there. Men walked up and down among the diners,
spraying the air with chemicals to clear it. At a table just below the
stage sat the red-bearded Dozent with the lady of the photograph. They
were drinking cheap native wines and were very happy.
From the height of his worldly wisdom he was explaining the people to
her.
“In the box--don't stare, Liebchen, he looks--is the princeling I have
told you of. Roses, of course. Last night it was orchids.”
“Last night! Were you here?” He coughed.
“I have been told, Liebchen. Each night he sits there, and when she
finishes her song he rises in the box, kisses the flowers and tosses
them to her.”
“Shameless! Is she so beautiful?”
“No. But you shall see. She comes.”
Le Grande was very popular. She occupied the best place on the program;
and because she sang in American, which is not exactly English and more
difficult to understand, her songs were considered exceedingly risque.
As a matter of fact they were merely ragtime melodies, with a lilt to
them that caught the Viennese fancy, accustomed to German sentimental
ditties and the artificial forms of grand opera. And there was another
reason for her success. She carried with her a chorus of a dozen
pickaninnies.
In Austria darkies were as rare as cats, and there were no cats! So the
little chorus had made good.
Each day she walked in the Prater, ermine from head to foot, and behind
her two by two trailed twelve little Southern darkies in red-velvet
coats and caps, grinning sociably. When she drove a pair sat on the
boot.
Her voice was strong, not sweet, spoiled by years of singing against
dishes and bottles in smoky music halls; spoiled by cigarettes and
absinthe and foreign cocktails that resembled their American prototypes
as the night resembles the day.
She wore the gold dress, decolletee, slashed to the knee over
rhinestone-spangled stockings. And back of her trailed the twelve little
darkies.
She sang “Dixie,” of course, and the “Old Folks at Home”; then a ragtime
medley, with the chorus showing rows of white teeth and clogging with
all their short legs. Le Grande danced to that, a whirling, nimble
dance. The little rhinestones on her stockings flashed; her opulent
bosom quivered. The Dozent, eyes on the dancer, squeezed his companion's
hand.
“I love thee!” he whispered, rather flushed.
And then she sang “Doan ye cry, mah honey.” Her voice, rather coarse but
melodious, lent itself to the negro rhythm, the swing and lilt of the
lullaby. The little darkies, eyes rolling, preternaturally solemn,
linked arms and swayed rhythmically, right, left, right, left. The
glasses ceased clinking; sturdy citizens forgot their steak and beer
for a moment and listened, knife and fork poised. Under the table the
Dozent's hand pressed its captive affectionately, his eyes no longer
on Le Grande, but on the woman across, his sweetheart, she who would
be mother of his children. The words meant little to the audience; the
rich, rolling Southern lullaby held them rapt:--
“Doan ye Cry, mah honey--
Doan ye weep no mo',
Mammy's gwine to hold her baby,
All de udder black trash sleepin' on the flo',”
The little darkies swayed; the singer swayed, empty arms cradled.
She picked the tiniest darky up and held him, woolly head against her
breast, and crooned to him, rocking on her jeweled heels. The crowd
applauded; the man in the box kissed his flowers and flung them. Glasses
and dishes clinked again.
The Dozent bent across the table.
“Some day--” he said.
The girl blushed.
Le Grande made her way into the wings, surrounded by her little troupe.
A motherly colored woman took them, shooed them off, rounded them up
like a flock of chickens.
And there in the wings, grimly impassive, stood a private soldier of the
old Franz Josef, blocking the door to her dressing room. For a moment
gold dress and dark blue-gray uniform confronted each other. Then the
sentry touched his cap.
“Madam,” he said, “the child is in the Riebensternstrasse and to-night
he dies.”
“What child?” Her arms were full of flowers.
“The child from the hospital. Please to make haste.”
Jimmy died an hour after midnight, quite peacefully, died with one hand
in Harmony's and one between Peter's two big ones.
Toward the last he called Peter “Daddy” and asked for a drink. His eyes,
moving slowly round the room, passed without notice the grayfaced woman
in a gold dress who stood staring down at him, rested a moment on the
cage of mice, came to a stop in the doorway, where stood the sentry,
white and weary, but refusing rest.
It was Harmony who divined the child's unspoken wish.
“The manual?” she whispered.
The boy nodded. And so just inside the door of the bedroom across from
the old salon of Maria Theresa the sentry, with sad eyes but no lack of
vigor, went again through the Austrian manual of arms, and because he
had no carbine he used Peter's old walking-stick.
When it was finished the boy smiled faintly, tried to salute, lay still.