The Beloved Traitor Part 22

"Jean Laparde! Jean Laparde! _Vive_ Jean Laparde!"

She could not see any more. Her eyes were blinded with tears now, and they were proud tears, and they were glad tears, and they were wondering tears that she could not comprehend herself. Jean's beacon!

Had the _bon Dieu_ permitted her to be that in a little way, given it to her to have helped just a little, to have had just a little share in bringing Jean to this great moment, this wonderful triumph? Jean's beacon! How vividly that scene of the years ago came back, when she had told Jean he did not belong to her--and reliving that scene, here in the presence of its great fulfilment, she spoke aloud unconsciously.

"It is true! He does not belong to me. He belongs to France!"

And Father Anton, because he did not understand, because it seemed that the disillusionment must have been so much more complete and so much more cruel and hard to bear than he had feared it would be, and because her renunciation was accepted so bravely, turned away his head and did not answer.

And Marie-Louise's fingers closed in a tense, involuntary pressure over Father Anton's hand--and she spoke again.

"He belongs to France!"

And then, after another moment:

"Take me--back now--Father Anton, please."

-- II --

26 RUE VANITAIRE

Myrna Bliss tapped petulantly with the toe of her small shoe on the floor of the limousine, glanced at the diamond-encircled bracelet watch on her wrist, remarked more or less abstractedly that it was a minute or so after five o'clock, and stared through the plate gla.s.s windows at the backs of her liveried chauffeur and footman. The reception of the night before had, so far as she was concerned, been marked by two incidents, which, at the present moment, were very fully occupying her thoughts.

It had required all her tact and ingenuity to avert a declaration from Paul Valmain, which would have been a disaster, because any declaration was a disaster until that moment arrived when one reached the point where one began to fear that horrible word "pa.s.see" and it became necessary to accept the inevitable--and marry. A declaration, as any one could see, whether it was accepted or refused, had its consequences--one's proprietorship in a man became either restricted to that one man alone, which in turn was very like locking one's self in a cage and handing over the key; or it was lost altogether. And Paul Valmain was almost as much run after by her set as Jean Laparde!

Fancy! Only thirty, a bachelor--and already the leader of his political party! Yes, decidedly, besides being amazingly handsome and amazingly brilliant, Paul was a figure in France!

The man was pa.s.sionately, madly in love with her; and so was Jean--which went without saying! Imagine! The two lions of social Paris! Nothing, not an affair, was complete without them--and she had only to lift a finger as to two slaves! Therefore social Paris was utterly and completely under her domination. She, literally, was Paris. It was very plain! So long as she exercised a proprietorship over both of them, Paris was at her feet. It was not a question of choice between them--not at all. Jean was the lion, so much so that she could even hold court with Jean alone; but with both, her position was impregnable. The trouble was--her brows puckered into anxious little furrows--that at the first opportunity Paul would renew the attack. It was very nice to have Paris at one's feet, but it was quite another matter to keep it there. Paul, of course, was the more difficult of the two to keep in hand. Jean, because he had never seemed to shake off entirely that diffidence toward her born of Bernay-sur-Mer, she had so far been able to manage quite simply, only--her eyes shifted from the chauffeur's back to the toe of her shoe, and her foot ceased its petulant tapping on the floor--that was the other incident of last night.

It had happened just after the arrival of the President. Jean had sought her out. She remembered the heightened colour in his cheeks, the sort of nervous brilliance in his eyes. He had been drunk--drunk with the wealth, the glamour, the power that was his; intoxicated with the fame, the adulation, the triumph of the moment. He was a glutton for that--for fame. There was very little else that mattered to Jean.

He was the supreme type of egoist. She could dissect Jean very coolly and with precision, she thought.

"The studio, to-morrow afternoon at five, Myrna--don't fail," he had said--and had pa.s.sed on.

There had been a certain air of authority in his tones--to which she had promptly taken exception, and to which, in an annoying and persistent way, she still took exception. Furthermore, it conveyed a possible, and alarming hint that his docility perhaps was wearing thin.

Well, that would never do at all! She was going, of course, to the studio now---but she would take care of Jean! Five o'clock, he had said. She would be a little late--as she intended to be. At half past five she had asked Paul Valmain and a choice circle of the younger set to drop in at 26 Rue Vanitaire, as a graceful little courtesy, so to speak, to congratulate Jean on his triumph of the night before! The grey eyes held a smile in which mockery and merriment were mingled.

One's defences should always be in order!

The small shoe began to tap on the floor of the car again. What a short time--what a long time those two years had been since sleepy, anaesthetised Bernay-sur-Mer! Jean had attracted her then because he had been a "new" sensation--and he had attracted her ever since because he continued to be "the" sensation. But attraction and love were quite different, were they not? Success after success, triumph after triumph had been his. It had been astounding, stupefying, magnificent! At first it had been the inner circle of devotees of art, such as those who had gone to Bernay-sur-Mer, who had hailed him; then, in furious and bewildering sequence, Paris, then France, then Europe--and, equally, so her letters told her, he was the rage in America. None made comparisons--there were no comparisons to make. The man towered, stood alone, without rival, as the greatest sculptor of the age. And, in a sense, he had not begun. Men like old Bidelot and her father said that, stupendous as it already was, his genius had not yet attained its full development; that, marvellous as was the power, force and realism of his conceptions, the exquisite beauty of his execution, there still remained an intangible something yet to be achieved.

Myrna shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"Ah, just that _tout pet.i.t chose_!" old Bidelot called it. "So fleeting, so evanescent, so--so--" and he would wave his arms like a grand opera conductor. "Soul," her father called it, in his turn.

"The boy hasn't lived enough yet. He'll get it, and then--well, there's only one word to describe it--immortal!"

Myrna made a wry grimace. What was the use of all that? What did they want? And what rubbish! A man whose work was incomparable, that all the world was going crazy over! And what, after all, did old Bidelot and her father know about it, anyway? Old Bidelot, for example, couldn't make a piece of clay resemble a doughnut, except for the hole, if he tried for a thousand years. And as for her father--Myrna choked a laugh.

She glanced at her watch again--and then, quickly, out of the window.

It was ten minutes past five, and the car was slowing up in front of the studio. In twenty minutes the others would be here--she had told _them_ to be prompt. Some day, it was very possible, she might marry Jean--but not yet. She was far too well contented with her life as it was! She had managed Jean and his tentative outbursts--for his docility, as she dubbed it, had not been mere tameness--with perfect success for two years; and now, if, as she was somewhat inclined to surmise, his actions of last evening presaged another, she was quite capable of managing that--for twenty minutes.

She alighted from the car, and, instructing her chauffeur that he need not wait, ran up the steps of the sort of stoop that was over the concierge's door and apartment beneath. Hector's red head and doll's-blue eyes, for once, a little to her surprise, were not in evidence on the arrival of a car. The front door, however, was not locked. She pushed it open, entered the hallway, crossed to the door of the salon, and knocked. There was no answer. There was, however, nothing strange about that--Jean, probably, was in the studio proper, the _atelier_ beyond. Well, she would surprise him!

She opened the salon door softly, closed it softly, stepped into the centre of the large, magnificently appointed room, whose decorations and remodelling she and her father had planned; and, calmly unb.u.t.toning her long glove, stood looking around her. And then her fingers held quite rigidly on a glove b.u.t.ton. She had not seen him as she had entered! Jean was rising from a divan behind her, near the door. Her arm, still extended, the other hand still on the glove b.u.t.ton, she turned her head and shoulders like a statue on a pivot, to watch him in amazement. Without a word, he had stepped swiftly to the door, locked it--and now he was putting the key in his pocket.

"Jean, what are you doing?" she exclaimed sharply.

He laughed a little--in a low way. It was the first sound he had made.

She stared at him, a thrill upon her that she could not quite define--it was not fear; it was more an uncomfortable disquiet, in which surprise and bewilderment were dominant. But now, as he faced her, she noticed that the same high colour was in his cheeks, the same nervous brilliancy was in his eyes as had been there the night before--and he was not even dressed, he who was so punctilious in the late afternoons in that regard. It was as though he might have but thrown aside his big sculptor's over-dress, for he was in loose white shirt with flowing tie, and belted trousers. Usually she liked him like that; it seemed to accentuate, bring out, unfetter the splendid physique of the man; but now--she shrugged her shoulders with well-affected composure. Myrna Bliss was too self-poised to be swept from her feet by any situation. Jean was acting very strangely! What was the matter with him? She stripped off her gloves coolly, and tossed her outer wraps on a chair.

"You have been working long hours to-day perhaps, Jean"--her voice expressed cold disapproval--"you are not dressed yet."

Jean's hand swept the great shocks of hair back from his forehead, and again he laughed in the same low way.

"I have not been working to-day. I have been waiting--for five o'clock."

What did he mean? She was genuinely disturbed now. Had he been drinking--after the reception--through the night--and since? He was certainly not himself! It was outrageous, if it were not in fun, that he had locked the door! She walked across the room to the bell-cord and pulled it. The bell rang clamorously in the concierge's apartment below.

"I will have Hector prepare some coffee, while you are upstairs dressing, Jean," she said imperiously. "Now, go and dress. You are behaving in a most peculiar manner."

He made no answer--only stood there looking at her, his head thrown back on his powerful shoulders, his eyes still abnormally bright, though the flush was receding now from the strong, handsome face, that, as it grew white, grew very set. Where was Hector? She pulled the cord again. Again the bell jangled in the concierge's below.

"Hector and Madame Mi-mi, his wife, are on a holiday--with five francs apiece in their pockets--at the Bois, I think--to celebrate last night"--he jerked out the words in a colourless, even way.

She noticed that his lips twitched, that the knuckles of his hands were white because his hands at his sides were so tightly clenched. He had sent Hector and madame away--she was quite alone in the place with him.

What did it mean? Jean had never been like this before. But she was at least quite mistress of herself! She drew herself up, walked back across the room, picked up her gloves and wraps, and returned to the door.

"Open that door!" she commanded levelly. "What do you mean by acting like this? How dare you act like this? Are you mad--have you lost your senses? Do you realise what you are doing?"

He laughed outright now--with sudden harshness, bitterly.

"Mad?" he repeated in a choked voice. "Yes; I am mad! I have been mad for two years--and I have been a fool. I am mad now--but I am no longer a fool. I am going to know now--I am going to have an answer now--this afternoon--before you leave this room. When are you going to marry me?"

"Marry you?"--she started back.

"Don't do that!" he flung out pa.s.sionately. "Don't _act_! It is no surprise, that--eh? You know! Your soul knows! I love you--I have loved you since that first time on the bridge, you remember, don't you--that bridge--when your eyes turned my blood to fire? You knew it then--you know it now!"

Once she had told herself, once in those early days before familiarity, intimacy perhaps, had blunted the eager edge of curiosity and interest with which she had studied her new sensation much as one might study a specimen under a microscope, that the man was a smouldering volcano, the soul of him elemental and turbulent. It had grown dim and hazy, that little mental note of cla.s.sification--but she remembered it now.

It was true! Why had she ever lost sight of it? What would he do?

She was not afraid, only--only--he must not have the mastery, even for a single instant. There had been eruptions before--little ones. She had always controlled him--he was just like some great, big animal--one must never let go the leash! And, besides, some day, probably, she _would_ marry him!

She laughed now in her turn--shortly.

"And do you think, do you imagine, Monsieur Jean"--her voice rang sharply through the room--"that you will attain your object any the more readily by acting like this?"

"Yes; I think so!"--Jean was stepping toward her, reaching out his arms to grasp her.

"_Jean_!"--she retreated backward, with a startled cry. The man's face was positively livid, the eyes were burning into hers.