books.jibble.org

Page 82

Stewart was not ignorant of all that went on in her mind. She had
threatened him with the balcony, just as, earlier in the winter,
it had been a window-ledge with which she had frightened him. But
there was this difference, whereas before he had drawn her back
from the window and clapped her into sanity, now he let her
alone. At the end of one of their quarrels she had flung out on
to the balcony, and then had watched him through the opening in
the shutter. He had lighted a cigarette!

Stewart spent every daylight hour at the hotel, or walking over
the mountain roads, seldom alone with Anita, but always near her.
He left Marie sulking or sewing, as the case might be. He
returned in the evening to find her still sulking, still sewing.

But Marie did not sulk all day, or sew. She too was out, never
far from Stewart, always watching. Many times she escaped
discovery only by a miracle, as when she stooped behind an
oxcart, pretending to tie her shoe, or once when they all met
face to face, and although she lowered her veil Stewart must have
known her instantly had he not been so intent on helping Anita
over a slippery gutter.

She planned a dozen forms of revenge and found them impossible of
execution. Stewart himself was frightfully unhappy. For the first
time in his life he was really in love, with all the humility of
the condition. There were days when he would not touch Anita's
hand, when he hardly spoke, when the girl herself would have been
outraged at his conduct had she not now and then caught him
watching her, seen the wretchedness in his eyes.

The form of Marie's revenge was unpremeditated, after all. The
light mountain snow was augmented by a storm; roads were ploughed
through early in the morning, leaving great banks on either side.
Sleigh-bells were everywhere. Coasting parties made the steep
roads a menace to the pedestrian; every up-climbing sleigh
carried behind it a string of sleds, going back to the
starting-point.

Below the hotel was the Serpentine Coast, a long and dangerous
course, full of high-banked curves, of sudden descents, of long
straightaway dashes through the woodland. Two miles, perhaps
three, it wound its tortuous way down the mountain. Up by the
highroad to the crest again, only a mile or less. Thus it
happened that the track was always clear, except for speeding
sleds. No coasters, dragging sleds back up the slide, interfered.

The track was crowded. Every minute a sled set out, sped down the
straightaway, dipped, turned, disappeared. A dozen would be lined
up, waiting for the interval and the signal. And here, watching
from the porch of the church, in the very shadow of the saints,
Marie found her revenge.

Stewart had given her a little wrist watch. Stewart and Anita
were twelfth in line. By the watch, then, twelve minutes down the
mountain-side, straight down through the trees to a curve that
Marie knew well, a bad curve, only to be taken by running well up
on the snowbank. Beyond the snowbank there was a drop, fifteen
feet, perhaps more, into the yard of a Russian villa. Stewart and
Anita were twelfth; a man in a green stocking-cap was eleventh.
The hillside was steep. Marie negotiated it by running from tree
to tree, catching herself, steadying for a second, then down
again. Once she fell and rolled a little distance. There was no
time to think; perhaps had she thought she would have weakened.
She had no real courage, only desperation.

As she reached the track the man in the green stocking-cap was in
sight. A minute and a half she had then, not more. She looked
about her hastily. A stone might serve her purpose, almost
anything that would throw the sled out of its course. She saw a
tree branch just above the track and dragged at it frantically.
Some one was shouting at her from an upper window of the Russian
villa. She did not hear. Stewart and Anita had made the curve
above and were coming down at frantic speed. Marie stood, her
back to the oncoming rush of the sled, swaying slightly. When she
could hear the singing of the runners she stooped and slid the
tree branch out against the track.

She had acted almost by instinct, but with devilish skill. The
sled swung to one side up the snowbank, and launched itself into
the air. Marie heard the thud and the silence that followed it.
Then she turned and scuttled like a hunted thing up the mountain
side.

Previous Page | Next Page

Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Fri 26th Dec 2025, 15:29

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart