“So Anna Gates has gone home!” she reflected. “When?”
“This morning.”
“Then the girl is there alone?”
“Yes. She is very young and inexperienced, and the boy—it’s myocarditis. She’s afraid to be left with him.”
“Is she quite alone?”
“Absolutely, and without funds, except enough for her lessons. Our arrangement was that she should keep the house going; that was her share.”
Dr. Jennings was impressed. It was impossible to talk to Peter and not believe him. Women trusted Peter always.
“You’ve been very foolish, Dr. Byrne,” she said as she rose; “but you’ve been disinterested enough to offset that and to put some of us to shame. Tomorrow at three, if it suits you. You said the Siebensternstrasse?”
Peter went home exultant.
CHAPTER XVII
Christmas-Day had had a softening effect on Mrs. Boyer. It had opened badly. It was the first Christmas she had spent away from her children, and there had been little of the holiday spirit in her attitude as she prepared the Christmas breakfast. After that, however, things happened.
In the first place, under her plate she had found a frivolous chain and pendant which she had admired. And when her eyes filled up, as they did whenever she was emotionally moved, the doctor had come round the table and put both his arms about her.
“Too young for you? Not a bit!” he said heartily. “You’re better-looking then you ever were, Jennie; and if you weren’t you’re the only woman for me, anyhow. Don’t you think I realize what this exile means to you and that you’re doing it for me?”
“I—I don’t mind it.”
“Yes, you do. To-night we’ll go out and make a night of it, shall we? Supper at the Grand, the theater, and then the Tabarin, eh?”
She loosened herself from his arms.
“What shall I wear? Those horrible things the children bought me—”
“Throw ‘em away.”
“They’re not worn at all.”
“Throw them out. Get rid of the things the children got you. Go out to-morrow and buy something you like—not that I don’t like you in anything or without—”
“Frank!”
“Be happy, that’s the thing. It’s the first Christmas without the family, and I miss them too. But we’re together, dear. That’s the big thing. Merry Christmas.”
An auspicious opening, that, to Christmas-Day. And they had carried out the program as outlined. Mrs. Boyer had enjoyed it, albeit a bit horrified at the Christmas gayety at the Tabarin.
The next morning, however, she awakened with a keen reaction. Her head ached. She had a sense of taint over her. She was virtue rampant again, as on the day she had first visited the old lodge in the Siebensternstrasse.
It is hardly astonishing that by association of ideas Harmony came into her mind again, a brand that might even yet be snatched from the burning. She had been a bit hasty before, she admitted to herself. There was a woman doctor named Gates, although her address at the club was given as Pension Schwarz. She determined to do her shopping early and then to visit the house in the Siebensternstrasse. She was not a hard woman, for all her inflexible morality, and more than once she had had an uneasy memory of Harmony’s bewildered, almost stricken face the afternoon of her visit. She had been a watchful mother over a not particularly handsome family of daughters. This lovely young girl needed mothering and she had refused it. She would go back, and if she found she had been wrong and the girl was deserving and honest, she would see what could be done.
The day was wretched. The snow had turned to rain. Mrs. Boyer, shopping, dragged wet skirts and damp feet from store to store. She found nothing that she cared for after all. The garments that looked chic in the windows or on manikins in the shops, were absurd on her. Her insistent bosom bulged, straight lines became curves or tortuous zigzags, plackets gaped, collars choked her or shocked her by their absence. In the mirror of Marie Jedlicka, clad in familiar garments that had accommodated themselves to the idiosyncrasies of her figure, Mrs. Boyer was a plump, rather comely matron. Here before the plate glass of the modiste, under the glare of a hundred lights, side by side with a slim Austrian girl who looked like a willow wand, Mrs. Boyer was grotesque, ridiculous, monstrous. She shuddered. She almost wept.
It was bad preparation for a visit to the Siebensternstrasse. Mrs. Boyer, finding her vanity gone, convinced that she was an absurdity physically, fell back for comfort on her soul. She had been a good wife and mother; she was chaste, righteous. God had been cruel to her in the flesh, but He had given her the spirit.
“Madame wishes not the gown? It is beautiful—see the embroidery! And the neck may be filled with chiffon.”
“Young woman,” she said grimly, “I see the embroidery; and the neck may be filled with chiffon, but not for me! And when you have had five children, you will not buy clothes like that either.”
All the kindliness was gone from the visit to the Siebensternstrasse; only the determination remained. Wounded to the heart of her self-esteem, her pride in tatters, she took her way to the old lodge and climbed the stairs.
She found a condition of mild excitement. Jimmy had slept long after his bath. Harmony practiced, cut up a chicken for broth, aired blankets for the chair into which Peter on his return was to lift the boy.
She was called to inspect the mouse-cage, which, according to Jimmy, had strawberries in it.
