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Page 45

"But, mother!" expostulated the oldest girl. "When you are so
afraid of the ocean! And a year!"

"What is to be will be," she had replied. "If I'm going to be
drowned I'll be drowned, whether it's in the sea or in a bathtub.
And I'll not let father go alone."

Fatalism being their mother's last argument and always final, the
children gave up. They let her go. More, they prepared for her so
elaborate a wardrobe that the poor soul had had no excuse to
purchase anything abroad. She had gone through Paris looking
straight ahead lest her eyes lead her into the temptation of the
shops. In Vienna she wore her home-town outfit with
determination, vaguely conscious that the women about her had
more style, were different. She priced unsuitable garments
wistfully, and went home to her trunks full of best materials
that would never wear out. The children, knowing her, had bought
the best.

To this couple, then, Stewart had rented his apartment. It is
hard to say by what psychology he found their respectability so
satisfactory. It was as though his own status gained by it. He
had much the same feeling about the order and decency with which
Marie managed the apartment, as if irregularity were thus
regularized.

Marie had met him once for a walk along the Graben. She had worn
an experimental touch of rouge under a veil, and fine lines were
drawn under her blue eyes, darkening them. She had looked very
pretty, rather frightened. Stewart had sent her home and had
sulked for an entire evening.

So curious a thing is the mind masculine, such an order of
disorder, so conventional its defiance of convention. Stewart
breaking the law and trying to keep the letter!

On the day they left for Semmering Marie was up at dawn. There
was much to do. The house must be left clean and shining. There
must be no feminine gewgaws to reveal to the Frau Doktor that it
was not a purely masculine establishment. At the last moment, so
late that it sent her heart into her mouth, she happened on the
box of rouge hidden from Stewart's watchful eyes. She gave it to
the milk girl.

Finally she folded her meager wardrobe and placed it in the Herr
Doktor's American trunk: a marvel, that trunk, so firm, so heavy,
bound with iron. And with her own clothing she packed Stewart's,
the dress-suit he had worn once to the Embassy, a hat that
folded, strange American shoes, and books--always books. The Herr
Doktor would study at Semmering. When all was in readiness and
Stewart was taking a final survey, Marie ran downstairs and
summoned a cab. It did not occur to her to ask him to do it.
Marie's small life was one of service, and besides there was an
element in their relationship that no one but Marie suspected,
and that she hid even from herself. She was very much in love
with this indifferent American, this captious temporary god of
her domestic altar. Such a contingency had never occurred to
Stewart; but Peter, smoking gravely in the little apartment, had
more than once caught a look in Marie's eyes as she turned them
on the other man, and had surmised it. It made him uncomfortable.

When the train was well under way, however, and he found no
disturbing element among the three others in the compartment,
Stewart relaxed. Semmering was a favorite resort with the
American colony, but not until later in the winter. In December
there were rains in the mountains, and low-lying clouds that
invested some of the chalets in constant fog. It was not until
the middle of January that the little mountain train became
crowded with tourists, knickerbockered men with knapsacks, and
jaunty feathers in their soft hats, boys carrying ski, women with
Alpine cloaks and iron-pointed sticks.

Marie was childishly happy. It was the first real vacation of her
life, and more than that she was going to Semmering, in the very
shadow of the Raxalpe, the beloved mountain of the Viennese.

Marie had seen the Rax all her life, as it towered thirty miles
or so away above the plain. On peaceful Sundays, having climbed
the cog railroad, she had seen its white head turn rosy in the
setting sun, and once when a German tourist from Munich had
handed her his fieldglass she had even made out some of the
crosses that showed where travelers had met their deaths. Now she
would be very close. If the weather were good, she might even say
a prayer in the chapel on its crest for the souls of those who
had died. It was of a marvel, truly; so far may one go when one
has money and leisure.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Tue 23rd Dec 2025, 3:38

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart