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In the pit stood the tree, candle-lighted. There was no other illumination in the room. The semi-darkness, the blazing tree, the rows of hopeful, hoping, hopeless, rising above, white faces over white gowns, the soft rustle of expectancy, the silence when the Dozent with the red beard stepped out and began to read an address all caught Harmony by the throat.
Peter re-read the gushing letter in his hand and thought fiercely. "She is on her way here," said the Dozent. "That is bad. Paris to Wien is two days and a night. She may hourly arrive." "We might send him away to another hospital." The Dozent shrugged his shoulders. "Had I a home " he said, and glanced through the door to the portrait on the stand.
"So I thought. It appears a letter of how you say it? Ah, yes, condolence." Peter opened the letter and read it. Then without a word he gave it open to the Dozent. There was silence in the laboratory while the Dozent read it, silence except for his canary, which was chipping at a lump of sugar. Peter's face was very sober. "So. A mother! You knew nothing of a mother?"
Just outside, round a corner, was the Dozent's laboratory, and beyond the tiny closet where he slept, where on a stand was the photograph of the lady he would marry when he had become a professor and required no one's consent. The Dozent was waiting for Peter. In the amiable conspiracy which kept the boy happy he was arch-plotter. His familiarity with Austrian intrigue had made him invaluable.
"Man, gin ye'd haen the brains o' a cock spug," I heard him sayin' till himsel', "ye michta jaloosed they were to play ye some prank. You muckle, dozent gozlin'," he says; an' he took himsel' a skelp i' the side o' the heid wi' his open luif that near ca'd him on his back. In his stagger his feet tickled amon' his claes, an' he gaithered them up, an' lookit fair dumfoondered like.
Six nurses and a Dozent with a red beard stood about and watched Jimmy put into it, and the Dozent, who had been engaged for five years and could not marry because the hospital board forbade it, made a speech for Jimmy in awe-inspiring German, ending up with a poem that was intended to be funny, but that made the nurses cry. From which it will be seen that Jimmy was a great favorite.
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.
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.
Why doesn't some patient drudge of a privat dozent compile a dictionary of the stable-names of the great? All show dogs and race horses, as everyone knows, have stable-names. On the list of entries a fast mare may appear as Czarina Ogla Fedorovna, but in the stable she is not that at all, nor even Czarina or Olga, but maybe Lil or Jennie.
For by this time Harmony was his very good friend, admitted to the Jimmy club, which consisted of Nurse Elisabet, the Dozent with the red beard, Anna and Peter, and of course the sentry, who did not know that he belonged. "Gelatin, to be sure," replied Peter, and produced the horns.
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