Cumner's Son and Other South Sea Folk Part 27

"Yes, I know-well?"

"Well, I should be gone also were it not for this portrait. The chance came. I was tempted. I determined to finish this. I stayed."

"Do you think that he will be caught?"

"Not alive. Carbourd has suffered too much--the galleys, the corde, the triangle, everything but the guillotine. Carbourd has a wife and children--ah, yes, you know all about it. You remember that letter she sent: I can recall every word; can you?"

The girl paused, and then with a rapt sympathy in her face repeated slowly: "I am ill, and our children cry for food. The wife calls to her husband, my darlings say, 'Will father never come home?'"

Marie's eyes were moist.

"Mademoiselle, he was no common criminal. He would have died for the cause grandly. He loved France too wildly. That was his sin."

"Carbourd is free," she said, as though to herself.

"He has escaped." His voice was the smallest whisper. "And now my time has come."

"When? And where do you go?"

"To-night, and to join Carbourd, if I can, at the Pascal River. At King Ovi's Cave, if possible."

The girl was very pale. She turned and looked at Angers, who still slept. "And then?"

"And then, as I have said to you before, to the coast, to board the Parroquet, which will lie off the island Saint Jerome three days from now to carry us away into freedom. It is all arranged by our 'Underground Railway.'"

"And you tell me all this--why?" the girl said falteringly.

"Because you said that you would not let a hunted fugitive starve; that you would give us horses, with which we could travel the Brocken Path across the hills. Here is the plan of the river that you drew; at this point is the King's Cave which you discovered, and is known only to yourself."

"I ought not to have given it to you; but--"

"Ah, you will not repent of a n.o.ble action, of a great good to me--Marie?"

"Hush, monsieur. Indeed, you may not speak to me so. You forget. I am sorry for you; I think you do not deserve this--banishment; you are unhappy here; and I told you of the King's Cave-that was all."

"Ah no, that is not all! To be free, that is good; but only that I may be a man again; that I may love my art--and you; that I may once again be proud of France."

"Monsieur, I repeat, you must not speak so. Do not take advantage of my willingness to serve you."

"A thousand pardons! but that was in my heart, and I hoped, I hoped--"

"You must not hope. I can only know you as M. Laflamme, the--"

"The political convict; ah, yes, I know," he said bitterly: "a convict over whom the knout is held; who may at any moment be shot down like a hare: who has but two prayers in all the world: to be free in France once more, and to be loved by one--"

She interrupted him: "Your first prayer is natural."

"Natural?--Do you know what song we sang in the cages of the ship that carried us into this evil exile here? Do you know what brought tears to the eyes of the guards?--What made the captain and the sailors turn their heads away from us, lest we should see that their faces were wet?

What rendered the soldiers who had fought us in the Commune more human for the moment? It was this:

"'Adieu, patrie!

L'onde est en furie, Adieu patrie, Azur!

Adieu, maison, treille au fruit mer,

Adieu les fruits d'or du vieux mur!

Adieu, patrie, Ciel, foret, prairie; Adieu patrie, Azur.'"

"Hush, monsieur!" the girl said with a swift gesture. He looked and saw that Angers was waking. "If I live," he hurriedly whispered, "I shall be at the King's Cave to-morrow night. And you--the horses?"

"You shall have my help and the horses." Then, more loudly: "Au revoir, monsieur."

At that moment Madame Solde entered the room. She acknowledged Laflamme's presence gravely.

"It is all done, madame," he said, pointing to the portrait.

Madame Solde bowed coldly, but said: "It is very well done, monsieur."

"It is my masterpiece," remarked the painter pensively. "Will you permit me to say adieu, mesdames? I go to join my amiable and attentive companion, Roupet the guard."

He bowed himself out.

Madame Solde drew Marie aside. Angers discreetly left.

The Governor's wife drew the girl's head back on her shoulder. "Marie,"

she said, "M. Tryon does not seem happy; cannot you change that?"

With quivering lips the girl laid her head on the Frenchwoman's breast, and said: "Ah, do not ask me now. Madame, I am going home to-day."

"To-day? But, so soon!--I wished--"

"I must go to-day."

"But we had hoped you would stay while M. Tryon--"

"M. Tryon--will--go with me--perhaps."

"Ah, my dear Marie!" The woman kissed the girl, and wondered.

That afternoon Marie was riding across the Winter Valley to her father's plantation at the Pascal River. Angers was driving ahead. Beside Marie rode Tryon silent and attentive. Arrived at the homestead, she said to him in the shadow of the naoulis: "Hugh Tryon, what would you do to prove the love you say you have for me?"

"All that a man could do I would do."

"Can you see the Semaph.o.r.e from here?"

"Yes, there it is clear against the sky--look!"

But the girl did not look. She touched her eyelids with her finger-tips, as though they were fevered, and then said: "Many have escaped. They are searching for Carbourd and--"