The Street of Seven Stars

MP3 Audio CD. The Street of Seven Stars

CHAPTER I

The old stucco house sat back in a garden, or what must once have been
a garden, when that part of the Austrian city had been a royal game
preserve. Tradition had it that the Empress Maria Theresa had used the
building as a hunting-lodge, and undoubtedly there was something royal
in the proportions of the salon. With all the candles lighted in the
great glass chandelier, and no sidelights, so that the broken paneling
was mercifully obscured by gloom, it was easy to believe that the great
empress herself had sat in one of the tall old chairs and listened to
anecdotes of questionable character; even, if tradition may be believed,
related not a few herself.

The chandelier was not lighted on this rainy November night. Outside
in the garden the trees creaked and bent before the wind, and the
heavy barred gate, left open by the last comer, a piano student named
Scatchett and dubbed “Scatch”--the gate slammed to and fro monotonously,
giving now and then just enough pause for a hope that it had latched
itself, a hope that was always destroyed by the next gust.

One candle burned in the salon. Originally lighted for the purpose of
enabling Miss Scatchett to locate the score of a Tschaikowsky concerto,
it had been moved to the small center table, and had served to give
light if not festivity to the afternoon coffee and cakes. It still
burned, a gnarled and stubby fragment, in its china holder; round it the
disorder of the recent refreshment, three empty cups, a half of a
small cake, a crumpled napkin or two,--there were never enough to go
round,--and on the floor the score of the concerto, clearly abandoned
for the things of the flesh.