The Beloved Traitor Part 2

But it was not easy, that little way back to the boat. Burdened now, the wind behind his back sent him staggering forward before he could find footing, and ten times in the dozen steps he lurched, slipped and all but fell before, close to the boat again, he laid Gaston down upon the rocks.

"We must bale out the boat, Marie-Louise," he shouted, wading quickly into the water; "or with what we take in on the way back she will not ride. See, I will hold it while you bale--it will be easier for you."

She answered something as she set instantly to work, but her words were lost in the storm. And Jean, through the darkness, as he gripped at the boat, watched her, his mind a sea of turmoil like the turmoil of the sea about him. Gaston was hurt--yes, very badly hurt, it would seem--how had it happened?--how had they come, Marie-Louise and Gaston, to be upon the Perigeau?--and he, who had given up hope, who had thought to perish out there in that crossing, he, too, was on the Perigeau--the way to get back was to run straight in with the bay--it would not be so hard if they could out-race the waves--if the waves came in over the stern it would be to swamp and--G.o.d had been very good to let them live and--

Marie-Louise's hand closed over his on the gunwale.

"It is done, Jean--what I could do," she said. "I will hold the boat again while you lift Uncle Gaston in."

And suddenly Jean's heart was very full.

"Marie-Louise, Marie-Louise!" he said hoa.r.s.ely--and while her hands grasped the rocking boat, his crept around the wet shoulders for an instant, and to her face, and turned the face upward to his, and, in that wild revelry of storm, kissed her; and with a choked sob he went from her then and picked up the unconscious form upon the rocks.

And so they started back.

There was no sweep of tide to battle with now--the waves bore them high and shot them onward, sh.o.r.eward; and the storm was wings to them. But there was danger yet; on the top of the crests it was like a pivot, each one threatening to whirl them broadside and capsize them on the breathless rush down the steep slope that yawned below--that, and the fear that the downward rush, breathless as it was, would not be fast enough to escape the crest itself, which, following them always, hanging over them like hesitant doom far up above, trembling, twisting, writhing, might break in a seething torrent and, sweeping over them, engulf them. It was not so hard now, the way back, there was not the pitiless current that numbed the soul because the body was so frail; but all the craft Jean knew, all the strength that was his was in play again.

The boat swept onward. Marie-Louise was crouched in the stern supporting Gaston's head upon her lap. Jean could not see her face.

When he dared take his eyes for an instant from the racing waves behind her, he looked at her, but he could not see her face--it was bent always over Gaston's head. And a fear grew heavy in Jean's heart--the old fisherman had not moved since he, Jean, had found the other on the reef. Once he shouted at Marie-Louise, shouted out the fear that was upon him--but she only shook her head.

The rain had stopped--he noticed the fact with a strange shock of surprise--surprise that he had not noticed it before, as though it were something extraneous to his surroundings. And then he remembered that as he had stood outside the Bas Rhone he had seen that the wind had changed, and had told himself that by morning it would be better weather. He glanced above him. The storm wrack was still there; but it was broken now, and the low, flying clouds seemed thinner--yes, by morning it would be bright sunshine, and of the storm only the heavy sea would be left.

He gave his eyes to the tumbling waters again--and, suddenly, with a great cry, began to pull until it seemed his arms must break. Roaring behind them, a giant wave was on the point of breaking--closer it came--closer--he yelled to Marie-Louise:

"Hold fast, Marie-Louise! Hold fast!"

And then it was upon them.

For a moment it was a vortex--a white, swirling flood of water churned to lather. It hid the stern of the boat, hid Marie-Louise and Gaston at her feet, as it poured upon them--and the boat, lifted high up, hung dizzily for an instant, poised as on the edge of an abyss, then the wave rolled under them, and the boat swept on in its wake, the shipped water rushing now this way now that in the bottom.

It was an escape! The blessed saints still had them in their keeping!

Jean sucked in his breath. A foot nearer when the wave had broken, and, instead of the few bucketsful they had taken, the boat would have filled! And now Marie-Louise, already baling at the water, cried out to him.

"See! It was a mercy!"--her voice rang with a glad uplift. "It was sent by the _bon Dieu_, that wave! It has brought life to Uncle Gaston!"

It was true. The deluge of water had, temporarily at least, restored the old fisherman to consciousness, for he raised himself up now, and Jean heard him speak.

After that, time marked no definite pa.s.sing for Jean. Occasionally he heard Marie-Louise's voice as she spoke to her uncle; and occasionally he heard the old fisherman reply--but that was all. In nearer the sh.o.r.e, where the current rushing through the narrows had lost its potency, he edged the boat across the heavy sea, gained the comparative calm under the lee of the headland, and began to work back to the upper end--it was easier that way, difficult and slow as the progress was, than to land and carry old Gaston along the beach. An hour? It might have been that--or two--or half an hour--when he and Marie-Louise, in the water beside him again, and close by where the lantern under the bluff still burned as he had left it, were dragging the boat free from the breakers and up upon the sand.

And then, while Marie-Louise ran for the lantern, Jean leaned over into the boat.

"Gaston!" he called. "See, we are back! Can you hear me?"

"Yes," Gaston answered feebly.

"Then put your arms around my neck, _mon brave_, and I will lift you up."

The arms rose slowly, clasped; and Jean, straightening up, was holding the other as a woman holds a child. Gaston's head fell on his shoulder, and the old fisherman whispered weakly in his ear.

"My side, Jean--hold me--lower--down."

"But, yes," Jean answered cheerily. "There--is that better. We shall get easily to the house like this, and Marie-Louise"--she was back again now--"will lead the way with the lantern."

Gaston's only answer was a slight pressure of his arm around Jean's neck--but now, as the lantern's rays for an instant fell upon the other's features, Jean's own face set like stone. The old fisherman's eyes were closed, and the skin, where it showed through the grizzled beard, wet and tangled now, was a deathly white--and Jean, motioning to Marie-Louise, started hurriedly forward.

Only once on the way to the house, as Jean followed Marie-Louise up the path from the beach, did Gaston speak again; and then it was as though he were talking to himself, his tones low and broken, almost like the sobbing of a child. Jean caught the words.

"Rene--Rene, my brother--the light is out, Rene--the light is out."

And with the words, something dimmed suddenly before Jean's eyes, and the path, for a moment, and Marie-Louise were as a mist in front of him. The light! For fourteen years the man he held in his arms had burned that light--and the light was out now forever.

He hurried on, and, reaching the house, laid Gaston on the bed in the little room off the kitchen that belonged to the other; then turned swiftly to Marie-Louise, for the old fisherman had lost consciousness again.

"Cognac, Marie-Louise!" he said quickly.

She ran for the brandy--and while Jean forced a few drops through Gaston's lips, holding up the lantern to watch the other, she went from the room again and brought back a lamp.

"Jean," she cried pitifully, as she set it upon the table, "he is not--"

Jean shook his head.

"No; he will be better in a minute now. It is but a little fainting spell."

She did not answer--barefooted, the short skirt just reaching to the ankles, her black hair, loosened, tumbling about her shoulders in a sodden ma.s.s, she came a little closer to the bed, her hands clasped, the dark eyes wide with troubled tenderness, the red lips parted, the white cheeks still glistening with spray; and, unconscious of her pose, the wet clothes, untrammelled in their simplicity, clinging closely to her limbs and her young rounded bosom, revealed in chaste freedom the perfect contour and beauty of her form.

Something stirred Jean's spirit within him, and for a moment he was oblivious to his surroundings; for, as he looked, she seemed to stand before him the living counterpart of a wondrous piece of sculpture, in bronze it was, marvellously conceived, that he had dreamed of again and again in vague, restless dreams--the statue, for it was always the same statue in his dreams, that was set in the midst of a great city, in a great square, and--

"Marie-Louise!" he said aloud unconsciously.

But she shook her head, pointing to the bed.

Gaston had stirred, and, opening his eyes now, fixing them on the gla.s.s still held in Jean's hand, he motioned for more brandy. And Jean, his moment of abstraction gone as quickly as it had come, bent hastily forward and gave it to him.

The raw spirit brought a flush to the old fisherman's cheeks.

"Father Anton," he said. "Go for Father Anton."

"_Bien sur!_" responded Jean soothingly. "I will go at once. It was what I thought of when I was carrying you up the beach. I said: 'Since there is no doctor in Bernay-sur-Mer, I will get Father Anton, who is as good a doctor as he is a priest, and he will have Gaston here on his feet again by morning.'" He moved away from the bed--but Gaston put out his hand and stopped him.

"Not you, Jean; I want to talk to you--Marie-Louise will go."

"Marie-Louise!" exclaimed Jean, shaking his head. "But no! You have forgotten the storm, Gaston--and, see, she is all wet and tired, and she has been, I do not know how many hours, exposed out there on that cursed Perigeau."

A smile, half stubborn, half of pride, struggled through a twist of pain on the old fisherman's lips.

"And what of that! She has been brought up to it. A dozen times and more she has been longer in a storm than this. She is not of the milk-and-water breed is Marie-Louise, she is a Bernier, and, the _bon Dieu_ be praised, the Berniers do not stop for that! Is it not so, Marie-Louise?"

"Yes, uncle," she answered softly. "I will go; and I will not be long."