Jason: A Romance

by Justus Miles Forman

There was no further sign of the other car, the pursuer, if so it had been, but he passed two or three men on bicycles and others walking, and what one of these might not be a spy paid to track him down?

It had frightened him badly, that hour of suspense and flight, and he determined to remain at La Lierre for at least a few days, and wrote to his servant in the rue du Faubourg to forward his letters there under the false name by which he had hired the place.

He was thinking very wearily of all these things as he sat on the fallen tree-trunk in the garden and stared unseeing across tangled ranks of roses. And after a while his thoughts, as they were wont to do, returned to Ste. Marie--that looming shadow which darkened the sunlight, that incubus of fear which clung to him night and day. He was so absorbed that he did not hear sounds which might otherwise have roused him. He heard nothing, saw nothing, save that which his fevered mind projected, until a voice spoke his name.

He looked over his shoulder thinking that O'Hara had sought him out. He turned a little on the tree-trunk to see more easily, and the image of his dread stood there a living and very literal shadow against the daylight.

Captain Stewart's overstrained nerves were in no state to bear a sudden shock. He gave a voiceless, whispering cry and he began to tremble very violently, so that his teeth chattered. All at once he got to his feet and began to stumble away backward, but a projecting limb of the fallen tree caught him and held him fast. It must be that the man was in a sort of frenzy. He must have seen through a red mist just then, for when he found that he could not escape his hand went swiftly to his coat-pocket, and in his white and contorted face there was murder plain and unmistakable.

Ste. Marie was too lame to spring aside or to dash upon the man across intervening obstacles and defend himself. He stood still in his place and waited. And it was characteristic of him that at that moment he felt no fear, only a fine sense of exhilaration. Open danger had no terrors for him. It was secret peril that unnerved him, as in the matter of the poison a week before.

Captain Stewart's hand fell away empty, and Ste. Marie laughed.

"Left it at the house?" said he. "You seem to have no luck, Stewart. First the cat drinks the poison, and then you leave your pistol at home. Dear, dear, I'm afraid you're careless."

Captain Stewart stared at the younger man under his brows. His face was gray and he was still shivering, but the sudden agony of fear, which had been, after all, only a jangle of nerves, was gone away. He looked upon Ste. Marie's gay and untroubled face with a dull wonder, and he began to feel a grudging admiration for the man who could face death without even turning pale. He pulled out his watch and looked at it.