The Beloved Traitor Part 33

THROUGH THE FOG

With an angry tightening of his lips, as he caught sight of Myrna still the centre of the same masculine _entourage_, Jean turned from the window where he had paused for an instant to glance into the ship's main saloon, transformed for the moment into a ballroom, and resumed his moody pacing up and down the deck. He pulled his ulster more closely about him, for the night was cold, lighted a cigarette and puffed at it irritably, as he was forced to acknowledge the, for the most part effusive, salutes that his fellow pa.s.sengers went out of their way to accord him, as in couples and groups they constantly came and went between the saloon and the deck. Then, after another turn or two, he tossed away his cigarette with a vicious jerk, sought out the most secluded portion of the deck--a recess near the ship's funnels--and, appropriating a steamer chair, flung himself into it.

He had barely ensconced himself there, however, when, with a muttered oath, he sat angrily upright in the chair again. Was there no place on the cursed ship where he could be alone for five minutes with his own thoughts? He had left the dance after a heated, if short, altercation with Myrna, been annoyed by the advances of those on deck, and now two women had elected to halt within earshot of him around the corner to _discuss_ him!

"Well," murmured a voice sweetly, "have you met the famous Monsieur Laparde yet?"

"No"--eagerly. "Have you?"

"No--not exactly, my dear"--patronisingly. "But I'll promise to introduce you in the morning."

"Oh, _will_ you? How perfectly gorgeous! You _are_ a dear! But how have you managed it? Tell me all about it! I'm simply dying to know how you succeeded!"

"It wasn't at all difficult"--in nave self-disparagement. "I met Mr.

Bliss. He's simply charming, and so unaffected! He is going to tell me all about the art schools in Paris--of course, I'm terribly interested! There are three in their party, you know--Mr. Bliss and his daughter, and Monsieur Laparde."

"Do you think she's pretty? I don't see what all the men are raving about! And did you notice her dress to-night--those black velvet shoulder straps are actually startling!"

"Yes--_aren't_ they? I've heard so many remarks about them! But I suppose she is pretty--in a way. It's being whispered around that she is going to marry Monsieur Laparde. I wonder if it's true?"

"Huh!"--with a sniff. "Well, if it is true, Monsieur Laparde does not do what I would do if I were a man in his place. It's simply outrageous the way she carries on, if she's engaged. I wouldn't stand it for a moment! She must have the wool pretty thoroughly pulled over his eyes, if he imagines she is in love with him!"

"In love with his name, my dear"--in cooing amendment. "I don't suppose she _does_ care for anything else. She doesn't appeal to me as that kind of a woman. I'm sure I think just as you do about her. I wouldn't care to trust her very far from what I've seen of her--she's the sort that always strikes me as being capable of saying _anything_ behind one's back! She flirts mercilessly!"

"Yes; and fancy a man like Monsieur Laparde permitting himself to be made ridiculous! Did you notice this morning, when everybody wanted to walk, that the deck was utterly impa.s.sable with her court spreading their chairs two or three deep all around her? Of course, one can't _say_ anything! And all the time she had Monsieur Laparde trotting back and forth like an overgrown errand boy, carrying books and wraps and--"

"No, my dear, you are quite wrong there. She couldn't make a man like Monsieur Laparde ridiculous--she could only make one feel sorry for him."

"Well, anyway, it's quite evident that she--oh, isn't that Lord Mornely just going inside? Gracious, I had no idea I was getting so cold! Do come! I'm nearly perished! We'll catch our deaths out here!"

The arms of the steamer chair creaked as Jean's hands clenched upon them. His face was crimson with pa.s.sion. What right had these cursed and _ba.n.a.le_ women to meddle in his affairs, and to discuss him? His hands gripped harder on the chair and it creaked again. So, then, this was the talk and gossip of the ship--and everybody knew it! If it were idle talk he could have laughed at it, and gone and bowed before them sardonically, and taken his revenge in their confusion; but it was true, and it only made his fury the greater. They had but voiced his own thoughts of five minutes ago, and his thoughts of yesterday, and of the day before, and of the days before that, since almost from the moment indeed that Myrna had promised to be his wife--the moment that once, like a poor, deluded fool, he had thought would be counted the greatest in his life! A hundred little things during his convalescence had been like signposts of bitter disappointment. She cared nothing for Jean Laparde the man; she was marrying Jean Laparde the sculptor-genius, whose name was on every tongue! She did not know the meaning of love! She loved only what his name might bring her. There was no tenderness, no intimacy. She _put up_ with him--_sacre nom_!--that was all! He had refused to believe it in those few days in Paris. He had shut his eyes to it then. He could not shut his eyes to it here on board ship--where everybody's eyes, even those d.a.m.ned cats'!

were open. And now she seemed to a.s.sume that, since he was her property, her possession, and that the whole matter, as far as it concerned her, was quite and entirely settled to her satisfaction, she could devote herself to a new affair every half-hour, while he, he, Jean Laparde, the great Laparde, looked on--and grinned!

He rose savagely from his chair, and, turning up the collar of his ulster and pulling his cap far down over his eyes, went along to the extreme end of the deck. Here, unprotected by the canvas weather-cloths such as those along the ship's side that closed in the promenade, sheltering the pa.s.sengers from the damp, driving mist of a North Atlantic fog, it was wet and uninviting enough to guarantee him immunity from any intrusion. Below him, as he looked over the rail, the steerage deck, dim, dismal, forbidding, was deserted save for a few people, who, probably choosing the lesser of two evils, braving the night in preference to sharing the fetid atmosphere below with many hundred others, were huddled about in miserable discomfort. He stared at this sight for a moment; then turned around, and leaned with his back against the rail to face the gay, brilliantly-lighted scene far down at the other end of the promenade deck. He watched this sullenly--the extravagantly gowned women and their escorts coming and going like hiving bees from the deck to the saloon ... cl.u.s.tering around the entrance ... retailing the ship's gossip ... a breath of air ... a cigarette ... and back to the dance again. Who cared what the night was like? Who cared if, far up above on the mighty liner's bridge, oil-skinned figures peered out anxiously into the night? Who cared or thought of those huddled forms on the steerage deck? Who cared--the sea was smooth, and one could dance?

Jean dug his hands deep down into his pockets and closed them fiercely.

The long, hoa.r.s.e-throated cry of the fog siren boomed out and vibrated through the ship--and died away; and, sharp in contrast, came again the calm, steady pulse and throb of the engines, and laughter, and the dreamy, sobbing notes of a waltz.

And now a depression, utter and profound, a more grievous thing than the fury that had preceded it, was settling upon him. It was not only Myrna, the knowledge forced home upon him that he was but a vehicle for her ambitions, that their marriage was to be a hollow thing, a form, a husk covering the semblance of love--it was the sea! Until this trip he had not seen it since he had left Bernay-sur-Mer. It held a thousand memories. He had fought them back angrily, defiantly ever since he had come on board--but they had been present almost from the hour that the sh.o.r.es of the France he loved had faded from sight, and at unexpected moments this thing and that had flashed suddenly upon him, striking with quick, stabbing pa.s.ses under his guard. But now, his spirits at a low ebb, reckless of combating even poignant memories--those memories were surging overwhelmingly upon him. It seemed to mirror his life like some strange kaleidoscope, the sea that he had always known; it seemed to stir something within him that was soul-deep in his life--the smell of it in his nostrils, the feel of it upon his cheeks was flinging wide apart now the floodgates of the past.

Living, vivid before him was the sparkling, wonderful blue of that southern sea, fringed with the little white cottages of Bernay-sur-Mer that had been his home; and beneath bare feet he felt again the smooth, fine, yielding sand upon the beach where as a baby he had crawled, where still a baby he had taken his first step, where as a man he had struggled for his place among men and once had played a man's part.

The cheery voices of the fishermen as they launched their boats were in his ears; they called to him; and laughed; and, because all were his friends, twitted him good-naturedly, twitted him and teased him about--about Marie-Louise. Marie-Louise! A low, sharp, involuntary cry of pain rose to his lips. With a violent effort he tried to shake himself free from his thoughts--but it was as though he were in the grip of some strange, immutable power that held him bound and shackled, while with lightning-like rapidity, whether he would or no, upon him rushed the ever-changing scenes. The face of Madame Fregeau, his foster-mother, coa.r.s.e-featured perhaps, but beautiful because it was a sweet and wholesome face, came before him; and her arms that were rough, and red, and shapeless were around his neck in an old-time embrace. She had loved him, the good Mother Fregeau! Came the faces of Pierre Lachance, of Papa Fregeau, of little Ninon, of a score of toddling mites clapping their hands in childish ecstasy over the clay _poupees_ he had made for them--and all these had been his friends.

And all these were gone now, all were gone, and in their place was--what? He raised his head. Hoa.r.s.e-tongued, the siren cried again.

It seemed like the wail of a lost soul out-flung into the night, into the vastness, calling, calling where there was none to answer--echoing the loneliness that was filling his heart that night.

He had forgotten all these things in Paris; he had made himself forget--and besides there had been Myrna. He had fought for her, striven for her tempestuously, fiercely, as a prize that nor heaven nor h.e.l.l could hold back from him--and, ghastly in its mocking irony, it was only when the prize was won that, like some wondrously beautiful, iridescent bubble, glorious in its colours as the sunlight played upon it, it burst and nothing but the dregs of it remained as he reached out and grasped it in his hands. He had looked for the love, the pa.s.sion that he could give in return; he had found only a cold-blooded strategical move on the checkerboard of social aspirations. He was not blind any more--nor angry. It was only a profound and bitter loneliness that he knew. It would be a dreary thing, that marriage--and dreary years. Once, when he had no right, he had forced his kisses upon her; he had no more inclination now to force from her what should be so freely offered--and was withheld!

Who cared for Jean Laparde? Not Myrna! He had bought her as he had sworn he would buy her, and his own words had come true--with fame. He was the great Laparde! But who cared for _Jean_ Laparde? None that he knew now! All that was in the past; all that was in the little village on the Mediterranean sh.o.r.e in the days when he had made the clay _poupees_ on the banks of the creek, and dreamed of that wondrous dream statue that had been so real a thing to him--and now even that was gone--and he was alone.

Ah, they were back again, those scenes of Bernay-sur-Mer! Whose face was that? Gaston Bernier! Old Gaston! And what was this that he was living again, that was so cruel in its realism? That night on the Perigeau ... that night when old Gaston died ... that day when he had made the beacon for Marie-Louise, the beacon with its arms outstretched that--he covered his face suddenly with his hands. If he could only strangle these thoughts--G.o.d, the loneliness and the pain they brought!

How the strains of that waltz seemed to sob out like some broken-hearted, lost and wandering thing! He shivered a little. How cold the night was, how wet and damp! How the engines throbbed, throbbed, throbbed, and seemed to catch the tempo of the distant music, and like m.u.f.fled drums beat time to it as to a dirge!

His hands dropped to his sides. From far down the deck came Myrna's rippling, silvery peal of laughter; and, through the group around her, he caught the sparkle of the magnificent diamond necklace at her throat, the white, fluffy wrap of fur thrown across her shoulders--and heard her laugh again. And at her laugh, he turned bitterly around to the rail to face the night as the ship drove into it, to let the wind and the wet mist blow into his face, to look down on the steerage deck below him. What a contrast! There, just beneath where he stood, in the filmy light that shone out from an open alleyway, alone, unsheltered, a pathetic figure in the drifting mist, her clothes damp around her, a woman leaned with bowed head against the ship's side. A wave of pity, but a pity that knew bitterness and irony, came upon him.

What would he read in the face of this poor immigrant if he could but see it? Misery? She looked miserable enough! Loneliness? Was she lonely, too? Was she as lonely as he? And then, as though in answer to his thoughts, she turned suddenly, lifting her face, and with a gesture of infinite yearning, of infinite longing, stretched out her arms toward the land, toward France, so far behind.

He did not move. He uttered no sound. In that moment, as she made that gesture, he was living only subconsciously. It was his beacon with outstretched arms, with those pure, perfect lips, with that sweet, gentle face, beautiful even with the pallor that was upon it. _It was Marie-Louise_!

The voices, the waltz strains, the throb of the engine, the sounds about him, the lift and fall of the liner's deck, the blackness of the night, all were blotted from him. He was conscious only of that figure on the deck below. There she stood, her arms outstretched--outstretched as he had modelled her in that figure that first had brought him fame, and his own words of the days gone by were ringing in his ears again. "See, it is a beacon--the welcome of the fisherman home from the sea. And are you not that, Marie-Louise, and will you not stand on the sh.o.r.e at evening and hold out your arms for me as I pull home in the boat? Are you not the beacon, Marie-Louise--for me?" A welcome he had called it then, that posture of outstretched arms, that now symbolised, mute in its anguish, the tearing away from her of all that life had ever held to make it glad and joyous, the love of cherished France, her native country, her home, the friends that made home dear, those that loved her, those she loved.

Those she loved! And of them all, she had loved him, Jean Laparde--the most! It seemed to sound the depths of some abysmal treason in his soul. Whom or what had she to welcome now? It seemed to sum up all the tragedy that life could hold, and sweep upon him and engulf him.

It was Marie-Louise standing there on the steerage deck! It was Marie-Louise! He did not need to ask why--the answer was in his own soul.

And now a moan broke from his lips; and condemnation, stripped of mercy, naked, bare in its remorseless arraignment, surged upon him.

Honour, and glory, and wealth, and power, and fame, and luxury were his--and what had she, alone here in the cold, wet misery of the steerage, driven to the deck perhaps for a breath of pure air from where below a thousand, babel-tongued, were cattle-herded? What had she--where he had all? If the memories of that little white-cottaged haven on the sun-kissed sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean had brought him a bitter loneliness--what must those memories be bringing to her? There, in Bernay-sur-Mer, was the only life that she had ever known; there were the simple folk who loved her; there were her friends, her a.s.sociations; there was her little world; there was her all--and he had driven her from it! As surely as though by brutal physical force, he had driven her from it! Yes; he had done that! That was why she was here!

His face, grey as the mist around him, went down on his arms upon the rail, and a sob shook the great shoulders. Where were the dreams that she and he had dreamed of life there together in the love that had known its birth in childhood? Where were they? Who had shattered them, that she was no longer there, but stood an outcast, friendless and alone, here in the steerage of the ship that was taking her from France? Where was the oath that he had sworn to Gaston as the brave old fisherman had died? "There is a crucifix there; swear that you will guard her and that you will let no harm come to her." Forsworn!

A traitor! He had chosen fame, and power, and position--and she, in her pure, unselfish love, had stood aside for him!

Again the sullen boom of the siren mourned out into the night, held, quavered, died away. Silence, intense, absolute! Then, stealing again upon the senses, the slap and wash of water against the liner's hull, the medley of a thousand ship sounds.

"_G.o.d_!"--the soul-torn cry fluttered from Jean's lips.

He had chosen wealth, and power, and fame, and position, and they had been Marie-Louise's gift to him--and his gift to her in return had been the bitterest dregs of life! And now wealth, and power, and fame, and position were his to-day, his beyond that of any other man's, he knew them all; they were his; he knew the adulation and the fawning of the great; but out of it all, out of the pomp and pageantry and the glitter, the tinsel and the gleam of gold, where was the one supreme, undying, immortal truth of life--who cared for Jean Laparde?

And then, as he raised his head and looked at her again, a strange, glad wonder crept upon him. Who cared for Jean Laparde? Out of all the world, who cared for Jean Laparde? In the figure there, wind-swept, the damp, thin clothing clinging closely about her form, in the face, half-veiled by the night and mist, he saw again that figure on the Perigeau Reef that once he had been man enough to risk his all, his life to save; and the kiss that had been his, the kiss that pledged them to each other in the fury of that storm, seemed warm again upon his lips--a pledge again--his answer! Who cared for Jean Laparde?

He strained toward her over the rail. It seemed as though some flame of glory were lighting up her face, and, reflected back, was lighting up his own soul with understanding. Those lips, the face, the throat, everything, all--he knew it now!--it was _she_ that he had been modelling there in Paris! It was she who was the womanhood of France to him because her soul and his were one, she who had been living in his heart, she that he loved--she who cared for Jean Laparde!

He lifted his head, bared now, far back on the ma.s.sive shoulders.

There was one way, and one way only, that he could claim her now. To be the Jean Laparde of old again! To slough from him the trappings that had stood a barrier between them! To be the Jean Laparde again of the world she knew!

He leaned further over the rail. She was moving away. He watched her, his face aglow--watched her until she was lost in the darkness along the deck.

"Marie-Louise! Marie-Louise!" he whispered, and reached out his arms.

"I am coming to you, Marie-Louise--my beacon--to you, Marie-Louise."

--XI--

THE "DEATH" OF JEAN LAPARDE

How wonderful the metamorphosis in all around him! How glad and gay and happy were the waltz strains floating merrily upon the air from far down the deck, how exquisite the melody and harmony rippling through the chords! And the chill and ugliness of the night were gone; and the loneliness was gone; and it was as though a glorious moonlit, star-decked sky were overhead; and the wet mist that drove upon him was as some magical, refreshing balm that laved his face! And in his heart was song.

"Marie-Louise! Marie-Louise! I am coming to you, Marie-Louise--my beacon--to you, Marie-Louise." He stretched out his arms again across the rail; and then turning, and hurrying because there was a lightness in his steps that would not let them lag, he sought the deck companionway close at hand, and ran up to the deck above.

Not concrete yet, only dim and misty in his mind a plan took form.