The Street of Seven Stars | Page 9

mostly
men--uniformed officers, who made of the neighborhood coffee-house
a sort of club, where under their breath they criticized the Government
and retailed small regimental gossip; professors from the university,
still wearing under the beards of middle life the fine horizontal scars of
student days; elderly doctors from the general hospital across the street;
even a Hofrath or two, drinking beer and reading the "Fliegende
Blaetter" and "Simplicissimus"; and in an alcove round a billiard table
a group of noisy Korps students. Over all a permeating odor of coffee,
strong black coffee, made with a fig or two to give it color. It rose even
above the blue tobacco haze and dominated the atmosphere with its
spicy and stimulating richness. A bustle of waiters, a hum of
conversation, the rattle of newspapers and the click of billiard
balls--this was the coffee-house.
Harmony had never been inside one before. The little music colony had
been a tight-closed corporation, retaining its American integrity, in

spite of the salon of Maria Theresa and three expensive lessons a week
in German. Harmony knew the art galleries and the churches, which
were free, and the opera, thanks to no butter at supper. But of that
backbone of Austrian life, the coffee-house, she was profoundly
ignorant.
Her companion found her a seat in a corner near a heater and
disappeared for an instant on the search for the Paris edition of the
"Herald." The girl followed him with her eyes. Seen under the bright
electric lights, he was not handsome, hardly good-looking. His mouth
was wide, his nose irregular, his hair a nondescript brown,--but the
mouth had humor, the nose character, and, thank Heaven, there was
plenty of hair. Not that Harmony saw all this at once. As he tacked to
and fro round the tables, with a nod here and a word there, she got a
sort of ensemble effect--a tall man, possibly thirty, broadshouldered,
somewhat stooped, as tall men are apt to be. And shabby, undeniably
shabby!
The shabbiness was a shock. A much-braided officer, trim from the
points of his mustache to the points of his shoes, rose to speak to him.
The shabbiness was accentuated by the contrast. Possibly the revelation
was an easement to the girl's nervousness. This smiling and unpressed
individual, blithely waving aloft the Paris edition of the "Herald" and
equally blithely ignoring the maledictions of the student from whom he
had taken it--even Scatchy could not have called him a vulture or
threatened him with the police.
He placed the paper before her and sat down at her side, not to interfere
with her outlook over the room.
"Warmer?" he asked.
"Very much."
"Coffee is coming. And cinnamon cakes with plenty of sugar. They
know me here and they know where I live. They save the sugariest
cakes for me. Don't let me bother you; go on and read. See which of the
smart set is getting a divorce--or is it always the same one? And who's

President back home."
"I'd rather look round. It's curious, isn't it?"
"Curious? It's heavenly! It's the one thing I am going to take back to
America with me--one coffee-house, one dozen military men for local
color, one dozen students ditto, and one proprietor's wife to sit in the
cage and shortchange the unsuspecting. I'll grow wealthy."
"But what about the medical practice?"
He leaned over toward her; his dark-gray eyes fulfilled the humorous
promise of his mouth.
"Why, it will work out perfectly," he said whimsically. "The great
American public will eat cinnamon cakes and drink coffee until the
feeble American nervous system will be shattered. I shall have an
office across the street!"
After that, having seen how tired she looked, he forbade conversation
until she had had her coffee. She ate the cakes, too, and he watched her
with comfortable satisfaction.
"Nod your head but don't speak," he said. "Remember, I am prescribing,
and there's to be no conversation until the coffee is down. Shall I or
shall I not open the cheese?"
But Harmony did not wish the cheese, and so signified. Something
inherently delicate in the unknown kept him from more than an
occasional swift glance at her. He read aloud, as she ate, bits of news
from the paper, pausing to sip his own coffee and to cast an eye over
the crowded room. Here and there an officer, gazing with too open
admiration on Harmony's lovely face, found himself fixed by a pair of
steel-gray eyes that were anything but humorous at that instant, and
thought best to shift his gaze.
The coffee finished, the girl began to gather up her wraps. But the
unknown protested.

"The function of a coffee-house," he explained gravely, "is twofold.
Coffee is only the first half. The second half is conversation."
"I