The Beloved Traitor Part 30

Madame Garneau immediately pushed her back into the chair.

"But you are to remain quiet--eh, _ma pet.i.te_!" She wagged her finger severely in front of Marie-Louise's nose. "Now sit still, or you shall have neither one nor the other!"

"What nonsense!" laughed Marie-Louise, as she stood up once more. "I am quite well again--and I am even to go out this morning."

The paper bag banged belligerently on Madame Garneau's hip, as she placed her arms akimbo.

"You are to go out! And who said you are to go out?"

"But, who else--the doctor," Marie-Louise answered with a smile.

"Ah, the doctor!" sniffed Madame Garneau disdainfully. "I have my opinion of doctors! In two or three days it will be time enough!" She wagged her forefinger again, and held up the bag. "Eh, _bien_--can you guess?"

"Never!" admitted Marie-Louise, shaking her head prettily.

"Cream-puffs!" announced Madame Garneau triumphantly. It was perhaps the most indigestible edible with which she could have outraged a diet list, but in that quarter of Paris, where _sous_ were scarce, cream-puffs were the delicacy _par excellence_, and therefore a delicacy for all occasions, rare enough in any event, when they could be obtained. And besides, as Madame Garneau had said, she had her opinion of doctors--Madame Garneau, even if unconsciously so, was consistent! "Cream-puffs, _ma pet.i.te_! From the _patisserie_ around the corner--I sent the gamin, who brought the message from Father Anton, for them. And now what do you say?"

Marie-Louise had neither heart nor appet.i.te for cream-puffs, but she must needs peek excitedly in through the top of the bag, and thank Madame Garneau effusively, while she protested earnestly at the extravagance.

"It is nothing!" declared Madame Garneau, her honest face flushed with pleasure. She placed the bag on the foot of the bed. "It is nothing--_ma foi_! And now about Father Anton. He was to have come this afternoon, eh?"

"Yes," said Marie-Louise.

"Well, then," said Madame Garneau, "he is not coming."

"Not coming!"

"It is his poor!" Madame Garneau exclaimed tartly. "Your Father Anton has no sense! I would teach him a lesson if I had anything to do with him! Fancy! The idea! And at his age! He will kill himself! The gamin's mother was sick, and Father Anton must sit up the night, and stay there all this day! And it is not once, but all the time he does that! Bah, I have no patience with him! His heart is too soft! It is well for his poor that I am not Father Anton!" There was finality in the shrug of Madame Garneau's shoulders. She glanced at Marie-Louise, and then her eyes fell upon the paper bag. "Oh, I forgot to tell you!"

she said anxiously. "There is a cream-puff gone from the quarter-dozen. I gave one to the gamin, he made such eyes at the bag."

She tucked in a refractory wisp of hair that was straying over her ear.

"Well, then, as I was saying, he is not coming this afternoon, but he will come this evening; and he said you were not to worry at all, because what he was talking to you about yesterday--whatever that is!--is all arranged."

All arranged! It came as a sudden shock. Marie-Louise turned her head quickly away, and, with her back to Madame Garneau, stood looking out of the window. All arranged! Then what should she do--what should she do? She put her hands wearily to her eyes.

"_Mais, la, la_!" soothed Madame Garneau. "You must not be disappointed. It is only for a few hours. He will come this evening."

Marie-Louise forced a laugh.

"But I am not disappointed," she answered. "I do not mind at all."

She was still staring down into the street. If Madame Garneau would only go so that she could think what to do, and--no! She knew what she must do, she had thought it all out before; it was only that the moment when she must act upon her decision was thrust so suddenly upon her.

"Oh, Madame Garneau, I was almost forgetting!" she cried--and, turning from the window, ran to the dilapidated and wobbly bureau, pulled open a drawer, and took out her purse. "It is a week since I have paid for my room--a week to-day, isn't it?"

Madame Garneau promptly retreated toward the door.

"_Mais, non_! _Mais, non_!" she protested. "When one is sick, one does not earn the _sous_! Next week, the week after, when you are at work again, you shall--"

Marie-Louise laughingly caught Madame Garneau's hand, and began to count the franc pieces into it; while Madame Garneau, still protesting, kept up her retreat for the door.

"There!"--Marie-Louise triumphantly closed the other's fingers over the money.

"But, no!" Madame Garneau expostulated vigorously. "But I will not hear of it! What do you imagine! I--"

And then Marie-Louise pushed the other playfully through the door, and closed the door, and placed her back against it, and laughed as she heard Madame Garneau grumbling outside and finally go grumbling away--but the laugh was all for Madame Garneau. When she could no longer hear Madame Garneau, she clasped her hands tightly to her bosom, and caught her breath. That was done! She had both paid and got Madame Garneau from the room.

She stood still by the door, her shoulders drooped; her hands dropped to her sides, and her fingers began to pluck nervously at the folds of her dress, as she stared unseeingly before her. Father Anton had it all arranged--the words brought so much, meant so much, and seemed to embody in themselves all that had happened in the week that had pa.s.sed since the night when Jean and Monsieur Valmain had fought in the studio. She had wandered blindly and like one dazed all the rest of that night through the streets of Paris; and it must only have been the _bon Dieu_ who had led her at last to where, lying unconscious on the floor outside the door of his room, Father Anton had found her in the morning. And then--how good they had all been to her!--Father Anton, and Madame Garneau, and Doctor Maurier, the grey-haired, kindly doctor who had been with Jean that night, and who would take not a _sou_ for his visits to her, but only fill the room with sunshine through his good news of Jean.

She remembered that she had asked Father Anton for Jean's doctor because then she would always have word of Jean--and she remembered Father Anton's dismay at the request. "But, Marie-Louise," Father Anton had said anxiously, "you do not know what you are asking! He is the most famous man in Paris, and--" "And he will come," she had told Father Anton. And she had been right, for Doctor Maurier had come; and so each day she had had news of Jean, and now Jean was so well that he was walking about the studio again.

But most of all how good Father Anton had been! She had told him all--everything--and he had not been angry with her; though she knew, from little things he had said inadvertently, that Mademoiselle Bliss had been very angry with him. Dear old Father Anton! He had tried to take all the blame upon himself, because he said he had been deceitful--though she could not understand that, no matter how hard he tried to make her believe it, for he had only helped her to see Jean and to be near Jean, and that was what she herself had pleaded with him to do.

And then, as she had grown stronger and had begun to talk of going away, Father Anton had agreed with her, but he had insisted that she should go back to Bernay-sur-Mer. And he had become so earnest and determined that it must be Bernay-sur-Mer, and because she knew that it was his love for her that made him so anxious about her future, she could not bring herself to tell him what she really meant to do, what, in the long hours through the nights as she had lain awake, she had made up her mind to do--to go somewhere, she did not know where, but somewhere far away where there would be nothing to remind her of Jean--not that she could forget, no matter where she went, but that scenes and a.s.sociations, as they had done in the past two years, might not again prove too strong for her. And so, rather than pain Father Anton by an absolute refusal, or the admission that even he was to go out of her life, she had told him only that she did not want to go back to Bernay-sur-Mer, that her house was sold, and that every one there would think it very strange that she had gone away like that only to return again so soon.

But he was not to be shaken in his determination. "Ah, even if that were true," Father Anton had said to her only yesterday, "nevertheless, my little Marie-Louise, it is the thing you must do. I cannot let you do anything else; and in a little while--who knows!--you will be very happy there again. But it is not true, for there is a way that I have been thinking about as I came here. As for the house, it is as well that it is sold; you have the money, and besides it is much better that you should not live there alone--you will live for a while with those honest Fregeaus, who will be overjoyed. And as for the rest--see, Marie-Louise, this is what we will do! I will speak to Monsieur Bliss and tell him that I wish to go back for a little visit, and we will go together--and the good people of Bernay-sur-Mer will not think it strange at all then, for I will tell them that you have been with me here in Paris, and that it is I who have persuaded you that it is best for you to go back and live in Bernay-sur-Mer. _Tiens_, could anything be better? And I will speak to Monsieur Bliss at once."

She knew quite well what was in Father Anton's mind. If she were in Bernay-sur-Mer he would feel that she was quite safe, that no harm could come to her; and he had mentioned, so innocently as he believed, Amide Dubois once or twice, and he was perhaps imagining that some day she would marry there. But he did not understand! She shook her head slowly; and then, suddenly rousing herself, she walked across the room to the little bureau, and took out her things, and laid them upon the bed, and began to make them up into a little bundle--the same bundle she had carried with her from Bernay-sur-Mer. He did not understand!

It was all arranged! Father Anton had seen Monsieur Bliss then--and perhaps it would be to-morrow, or maybe even to-night that Father Anton would want her to go with him. But she could not go back to Bernay-sur-Mer! For nothing in the world would she go back there! If there were no other reasons, there was one that alone made it impossible--some day Jean might return there himself for a visit. And she must go somewhere where there was no possibility that she and Jean should ever see each other--and she must go now while she had the chance. There was nothing to keep her any longer; she was quite well and strong again, and she knew that Jean was getting well, and--and she had seen Jean and his work, and she could picture his splendid life stretching out before him in which even his marriage with Mademoiselle Bliss, who was very rich and of the _grand monde_, would help to make him even greater, and--and so there remained nothing more to hold her there. It was very wonderful that it should be her lips that Jean had fashioned--unconsciously, as Father Anton said--into his clay. It was very wonderful! It was something that the _bon Dieu_ had given her to make her glad; to make the sadness and remorse for the tragedy she had brought about less terrible; to make her know that, after all, her share in Jean's career had not just ended with that day, so long ago in Bernay-sur-Mer, when she had given him to France.

She tied the bundle neatly. She was ready to go now, and she picked it up, took a step toward the door--and, holding the bundle in her hand, paused hesitantly. She could not go like that--Father Anton would be in a state of frenzy over her. She--she could write him a little note.

Yes; she would do that. She set the bundle down, and hurriedly untied it. She remembered that when she had written down Father Anton's address before leaving Bernay-sur-Mer she had put the pencil in the pocket of her ap.r.o.n. Yes; here it was, but--she looked around her in sudden anxiety--there was nothing, no paper to write on. Her eyes rested upon the bed. Madame Garneau's cream-puffs! She picked up the bag, tore a piece from it, and, taking it to the window sill, wrote a few hurried sentences. It was just to say that she could never go to Bernay-sur-Mer; just to say that she was going away, very far away somewhere, and that he must not be sad about her, or try to find her for she did not know where she was going herself; just to say that she loved him, and that he had been so good, so very, very good to her, and that she would pray always to the _bon Dieu_ for him.

There was a mist in her eyes as she folded the yellow, grease-spotted paper--she could buy an envelope and a stamp and mail it to Father Anton. She took up her bundle again, and went to the door; and, making sure that Madame Garneau was not in sight, hurried out of the house to the street. Here, she ran until she had turned the first corner and could no longer be seen from the house, then walked quietly along.

Blocks away, she stepped into a little store.

"Monsieur," she said to the man who served her with her envelope and stamp, "monsieur, will you be kind enough to tell me the way to the railway station?"

"To which one, mademoiselle?" he inquired politely. "The _Gare de l'Est, the Gare du Nord, the Gare St. Lazare_, the--"

She had not thought that there might be more than one, but one would take her away equally as well as another--it made no difference. Only he would think it very strange that she did not know which one she wanted.

"The _Gare St. Lazare_, if you please, monsieur," she ventured quickly--and thanked him when he had told her, and went out on the street again.

--IX--

MYRNA'S STRATEGY

"Two months--three months in America! And to be married there!"

e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Henry Bliss, as he stared at his daughter in utter bewilderment.

Myrna, from the depths of her father's favourite lounging chair, which she had appropriated on entering the library after dinner that evening, nodded her head in a quite matter-of-fact way.

"Isn't this rather--rather sudden?" inquired Henry Bliss, mustering a facetious irony to his rescue.

"Oh, no!" said Myrna demurely. "I decided upon it almost a week ago."