Читать книгу The Beloved Traitor (Mystery Classic) - Frank L. Packard - Страница 7

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It was half clay, half mud; but out of it one could fashion the little poupées, the dolls for the children. They would not last very long, it was true; but then one fashioned them quickly, and there was delight in making them.

Jean dug a piece of the clay with his sheaf knife, leaned over from the bank of the little creek, and moistened it in the water. He dug another, moistened that, moulded the two together—and Marie-Louise smiled at him a little tremulously, as their eyes met.

The tears were very near to those brave dark eyes since three days ago. Jean mechanically added a third piece of clay to the other two. Much had happened in those three days—all Bernay-sur-Mer seemed changed since that afternoon when Gaston, so Marie-Louise had told him, seeing a boat adrift and fearing there might be some one in it, had tried during a lull in the storm to reach it with her assistance, and an oar had broken, and the tide on the ebb had driven them close to the Perigeau where they had swamped, and somehow Gaston had been flung upon the outer edges of the reef, and the boat, sodden, weighted, following, had crushed him against the rocks.

Jean looked at Marie-Louise again. She was all in black now—she and good Mother Fregeau had made the dress between them for the church that morning, when Father Anton had said the mass for Gaston. But Marie-Louise was not looking at him—her elbows were on the ground, her chin was cupped in her hands, and the long black lashes veiled her eyes. She had not told him any more of the story—Jean could picture that for himself. How many times must she have risked her life to have pulled Gaston to the rocks higher up upon the reef! A daughter of France, Gaston had called her. Bon Dieu, but she was that, with her courage and her strength! One would not think the strength was there, but then the black dress did not cling like the wet clothes that other night to show the litheness of the rounded limbs.

His fingers began to work into the clay, unnaturally diffident and hesitant at first, not with the deft certainty of their custom, but as though groping tentatively for something that was curiously intangible, that eluded them. Marie-Louise, as she had been that night, was living before him again—the lines of her form so full of grace and so beautiful, so full of the virility of her young womanhood, the shapely head, the hair streaming in abandon about her shoulders—and it was like and yet not like that great bronze statue so often in his dreams, imaginary and yet so real, that was set in the midst of that great city in a great square. And then suddenly, strangely, of their own volition, it seemed, his fingers, where they had been hesitant before, began now to work with a sure swiftness.

His eyes were drinking in the contour of Marie-Louise's face in a rapt, eager, subconscious way. There was something deeper there than the mere prettiness of feature, something that was impressing itself in an absorbing, insistent way upon him. Her face made him think of the face of that statue—there was a hint of masculinity that brought with it no coarseness, nor robbed it of its sweetness or its charm, but like that massive face of bronze that towered high, that people with uplifted heads stood and gazed upon, that none passed by without a pause, stamped it with calm fearlessness; and courage and resolve outshone all else and alone was dominant there.

Marie-Louise sat up suddenly from the ground and turned toward him, her brows gathered in a pretty, puzzled way.

"Why do you look at me like that, Jean?" she demanded abruptly. "And what are you doing there? It is not the doll you promised to make for little Ninon Lachance—it is much too big." She leaned forward. "What are you making?"

"Ma foi!" Jean muttered, with a little start—and stared at the lump of clay. "I—I do not know."

"Well, then," said Marie-Louise gravely, "don't do any more. I want to talk to you, Jean."

"How, not do any more!" protested Jean whimsically. "Was it not you who said, 'We will go to the creek this afternoon and make poupées'? And look"—he jerked his hand toward a large basket on the ground beside him—"to do that I shall perhaps not keep my promise to meet the Lucille when she comes in and bring a panier of fish to Jacques Fregeau at the Bas Rhône. And now you say, 'Don't do any more'!"

"Yes; I know," admitted Marie-Louise. "But I want to talk to you. Listen, Jean. To-morrow Mother Fregeau must go back to the Bas Rhône. She has been too long away in her kindness now. You know how she came to me the next morning after Uncle Gaston died, and put her arms around me and has stayed ever since."

Jean shifted the lump of clay a little away from Marie-Louise, but his fingers still worked on.

"She has a heart of gold," asserted Jean. "Who should know any better than I, who have lived with her all these years?"

Marie-Louise's eyes travelled slowly in a half tender, half pensive way over Jean. His coat was off; the loose shirt was open at the neck displaying the muscular shoulders, and the sleeves were rolled up over the brown, tanned arms; the powerful hands, powerful for all their long, slim, tapering fingers, worked on and on; the black hair clustered truantly, as it always did, over the broad, high forehead. She had known Jean all her life, as many years as she could remember, and her love for him was very deep. It had come to seem her life, that love; and each night in her prayers she had asked the bon Dieu to bless and take care of Jean, and to make her a good wife to him when that time should come. It was so great, that love, that sometimes it frightened her—somehow it was frightening her now, for there was a side to Jean that, well as she knew him, she felt intuitively she had never been able to understand.

She spoke abruptly again, a little absently.

"I do not know yet what I am to do. There is the house, and Father Anton says I must not live there alone."

"But, no!" agreed Jean. "Of course not! That is what I say, too. It is all the more reason why we should not wait any longer, you and I, Marie-Louise."

A tinge of colour crept shyly into Marie-Louise's face, as she shook her head.

"No; we must wait, Jean. It is too soon after—after poor Uncle Gaston."

"But it was Gaston's wish, that," persisted Jean gently. "Have I not told you what he said, petite?"

Again Marie-Louise shook her head.

"But one is sad for all that," she answered. "And to go to the church, Jean, when one is sad, when one should go so happy! Oh, I want to be happy then, Jean. I do not want to think of anything that day but only you, Jean—and sing, and there must be sunshine and fête. But now, for a little while, it is Uncle Gaston. You do not think that wrong?"

"No," said Jean slowly, "it is not wrong, and I understand; but then, too, Gaston would understand, for it was his wish."

Marie-Louise bent forward with a strange little impulsive movement.

"That is twice you have said that, Jean," she said. "I—I almost wish Uncle Gaston had not said what he did to you that night. Jean, it—it is not what he said, nor what you said to him. That must not make any difference. Never, never, Jean! One does not marry for that—it is only if there is love."

"Mais, 'cré nom!" exclaimed Jean, suddenly setting aside his clay and catching Marie-Louise's face between his hands. "Why do you talk like that? What queer fancies are in that little head? Now, tell me"—he kissed her lips, while the blood rushed crimson to her cheeks—"tell me, is that not answer enough? And have we not loved each other long before that night, and does not all Bernay-sur-Mer know that it will dance at the noces?"

"Yes," whispered Marie-Louise, a little breathlessly.

"Ah, then," said Jean tenderly, "you must not talk like that. What, Marie-Louise, if I should say to myself, 'now perhaps Marie-Louise has not loved me all these years, and—'"

She drew hurriedly away.

"Don't, Jean!" she said quickly. "It hurts, that! I love you so much that sometimes I am afraid. And to-day I am afraid. I do not know why. And sometimes it is so different. That night on the reef when I thought that soon the rocks would be covered and that there was no help for Uncle Gaston and myself, and that no one could come to us even if we were seen, I saw your lantern and the bon Dieu told me it was you and I had no more fear. I was so sure then—so sure then. Oh, Jean, you must be very good to me to-day. It—it was so hard"—the dark eyes were swimming now with tears—"to say good-bye to Uncle Gaston. Perhaps it is that that is making me feel so strangely. But sometimes it seems as though it could never be, the great happiness for you and me, it is so great to think about that—that it frightens me. And I have wanted to talk to you about it, Jean, often and often. Does it make you very glad and happy, too, to think of just you and me together here, and our home, and the fishing, and—and years and years of it?"

"But, yes; of course!" smiled Jean; and, picking up the clay again, began to scrape at it with his knife.

"But are you sure, Jean?"—there was a little tremor in her voice. "I do not mean so much that you are sure you love me, but that you are sure you would always be happy to stay here in Bernay-sur-Mer. You are not like the other men."

"How not like them?" Jean demanded, surveying in an absorbed sort of way the little clay figure that was taking on rough outline now. "How not like them?"

"Well—that!"—Marie-Louise pointed at the clay in his hands. "That, for one thing—that you are always playing with, that it seems you cannot put aside for an instant, even though I asked you to a moment ago. You are always making the poupées, and if not the poupées with mud and dirt, then you must waste the inside of Mother Fregeau's loaves that she bakes herself, or steal the dough before it reaches the oven to keep your fingers busy making little faces and droll things out of it."

Jean looked up to stare at Marie-Louise a little perplexedly.

"Mais, zut!" he exclaimed. "And what of that! And if I amuse myself that way, what of that? It is nothing!"

"Nevertheless," Marie-Louise insisted, nodding her head earnestly, "it is true what I have said—that you are not like the other men in Bernay-sur-Mer. Do you think that I have not watched you, Jean? And have you not said little things to show that you grow tired of the fishing?"

"But that is true of everybody," Jean protested. "Does not Father Anton say that all the world is poor because there is none in it who is contented? And if I grumble sometimes, do not all the others do the same? Pierre Lachance will swear to you twice every hour that the fishing is a dog's life."

She shook her head.

"It is different," she said. "You are not Pierre Lachance, Jean, and I want you to be happy all your life—that is what I ask the bon Dieu for always in my prayers. And I do not know why these thoughts come, and I do not understand them, only I know that they are there."

"Then—voilà! We will drive them away, and they must never come back!" Jean burst out, half gaily, half gravely. "See, now, Marie-Louise"—he caught her hand in both of his, putting aside the lump of clay again—"it is true that sometimes I am like that, and I do not understand either; but one must take things as they are, is that not so?"

She nodded—a little doubtfully.

"Well, then," cried Jean, "why should I not be happy here? Have I not you, and is that not most of all? And as for the rest, do I not do well with the fishing? Is there any who does better? Do they not speak of the luck of Jean Laparde? 'Cré nom! Different from the others! Who is a fisherman if it is not I, who have been a fisherman all my life? And of what good is it to wish for anything else? What else, even if I wanted to, could I do? I do not know anything else but the boats and the nets. Is it not so, Marie-Louise?"

"Y-yes," she said, and her eyes lifted to meet his.

"And happy!" he went on. "Ah, Marie-Louise, with those bright eyes of yours that belong all to me, who could be anything but happy? Tiens! You are to be my little wife, and Bernay-sur-Mer and the blue water is to be our home, and we will fish together, and you shall sing all day in the boat, and—well, what more is there to ask for?"

"Oh, Jean!"—she was smiling now.

"There, you see!" said Jean, and burst out laughing. "Marie-Louise is herself again, and—pouf!—the blue devils are blown away. And now wait until I have finished this, and I will show you something"—he picked up the clay once more. "Only you must not look until it is done."

"Mustn't I? Oh!"—with a little moue of resignation. "Well, then, hurry, Jean," she commanded, and cupped her chin in her hands again, her elbows propped upon the ground.

It was playfully that Jean turned his back upon her, hiding his work, but as his fingers began again to draw and model the clay and his knife to chisel it, the smile went slowly from his face and his lips grew firmly closed. It was strange that Marie-Louise should have known! It was true, the fishing grew irksome too often now; for those moods, like the mood in the storm, came very often, much more often than they had been wont to do. He had laughed at her, but that was only to pretend, to chase the sadness away and make her eyes shine again. It was true, too, as he had told her, that one must take things as they were. Whether he wanted to fish or not, he must fish—voilà! How else could one make the sous with which to live?

Oh, yes, he had laughed to make her laugh; but now, pardieu! it was bringing that mood upon himself. Where was that great city and that great square, and what was that great statue before which the people stood rapt and spellbound, and why should it come so often to his thoughts and be so real as though it were a very truth and not some queer imagination of his brain? There were wonderful things in the face of that bronze figure. He leaned a little forward toward the clay before him, his lips half parted now, his fingers seeming to tingle with a life, throbbing, palpitant, that was all their own, that was apart from him entirely, for they possessed a power of movement and a purpose that he had nothing to do with. He became absorbed in his work, lost in it. Time passed.

"Jean," Marie-Louise called out, "let me see it now."

"Wait!" he said almost harshly. "Wait! Wait! Wait!"

"Jean!"—it was a hurt little cry.

He did not hear her. There was something at the base of that statue of his dreams that always troubled him, that the people always pointed at as they gazed; but he had never been able to make out what it was there at the base of the statue. It was very strange that he was never able to see that, when he could see the figure of the woman with the wonderful face so plainly!

He worked on and on. There were neither hours nor minutes—the afternoon deepened. There was no creek, no Marie-Louise, no Bernay-sur-Mer, nothing—only those dreams and the little clay figure in his hands.

And then Marie-Louise, her face a little white, timidly touched his arm.

"Jean!" she said hesitantly.

Her voice roused him. It seemed as though he was awakened from a sleep. He brushed the hair back from his eyes, and looked around.

"Mon Dieu," he said, "but that was, strange!" And then he smiled, still a little dazed, and lifted around the clay figure for her to see. "I do not know if it is finished," he said, staring at it; "but perhaps I could do no better with it even if I worked longer."

Marie-Louise's eyes, puzzled, anxious, on Jean's face, shifted to the little clay figure—and their expression changed instantly.

"But, Jean!" she cried, clasping her hands. "But, Jean, that is not a poupée you have made there. It—it will never do at all! Ninon Lachance would break the arms off at the first minute, and it is too charmante for that. Oh, but, Jean, it—it is adorable!"

Jean was inspecting the figure in a curiously abstracted way, as though he had never seen it before, turning his head now to this side, now to that, and turning the clay around and around in his hands to examine it from all angles, while a heightened colour crept into his face and dyed his cheeks. It was a small figure, hardly a foot and a half in height—the figure of a fisherwoman, barefooted, in short skirts, the clothes as though windswept clinging close around her limbs, her arms stretched out as to the sea. He laughed a little unnaturally.

"Well, then, since it will not do for Ninon Lachance, and you like it, Marie-Louise," he said a little self-consciously; "it is for you."

"For me—Jean? Really for me?" she asked happily.

"And why not?" said Jean. "Since it is you."

"Me!"—she looked at him in a prettily bewildered way.

"But, yes," said Jean, holding the figure off at arm's length. "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 shore 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?"

Her hand stole over one of his and pressed it, but it was a moment before she spoke.

"I will pray to the bon Dieu to make me that, Jean—always," she said softly.

He drew her close to him.

"It is the luck of Jean Laparde!" he whispered tenderly.

They sat for a little time in silence—then Jean sprang sharply to his feet.

"Ma foi, Marie-Louise!" he called out in sudden consternation, glancing at the sun. "I did not know we had been here so long." He picked up the little clay figure hastily, placed it in the basket, threw his coat, that was on the ground, over it, and, swinging the basket to the crook of his arm, held out his hand to Marie-Louise. "Come, petite, we will hurry back."

It was not far across the fields and down the little rise to the road that paralleled the beach; and in some five minutes, walking quickly, they came out upon the road itself by the turn near the rough wooden bridge that crossed the creek halfway between the eastern headland and the white, clustering cottages of Bernay-sur-Mer. But here, for all their hurry, they paused suddenly of one accord, looking at each other questioningly, as voices reached them from the direction of the bridge which, still hidden from their view, was just around the bend of the road ahead.

*****

"But, my dear"—it was a man speaking, his tone a sort of tolerant protest—"I am sure it is just the place we have been looking for. It is quiet here."

"Quiet!"—it was a woman's voice this time, in a wealth of irony. "It is stagnation! There isn't a single thing alive here—even the sea is dead! It is enough to give one the blues for the rest of one's life! And the accommodations at that unspeakable tavern are absolutely appalling. I can't imagine what you are dreaming of to want to stay another minute! I'm quite sure there are lots of other places that will furnish all the rest and quiet required, and where, at the same time, we can at least be comfortable. Anyway, I'm not going to stay here!"

"But, Myrna, you—"

"There is some one coming," said the girl.

*****

Jean and Marie-Louise were walking forward again.

"What are they saying, Jean?" asked Marie-Louise.

Jean shook his head.

"I do not know," he answered. "It is English. See! There they are!"

An elderly, well-dressed man, grey-haired, clean-shaven, a little stout, with a wholesomely good-natured, ruddy face, was leaning against the railing of the bridge; and beside him, digging at the planks with the tip of her parasol, stood a girl in dainty white, her head bent forward, her face hidden under the wide brim of a picture hat.

Jean's eyes, attracted as by a magnet, passed over the man and fixed upon the girl. At Nice, at Monte Carlo, so they said, one saw many such as she; but Bernay-sur-Mer was neither Nice nor Monte Carlo, and he had never seen a woman gowned like that before. 'Cré nom, what exquisite harmony of line and poise! If she would but look up! Bon Dieu, but it would be a desecration of the picture if she were not gloriously pretty!

The gentleman, nodding pleasantly, greeted them as they approached.

"Good afternoon!" he said smilingly, in French.

The girl had raised her head, grey eyes sweeping Marie-Louise with well bred indifference—and Jean was staring at her.

"Bon jour, m'sieu!"—he spoke mechanically, lifted his cap mechanically.

His eyes had not left the girl's face. He could not take his eyes from her face. It was a wonderful face, a beautiful face, and something in it thrilled him and bade him feast his eyes upon it to drink in its beauty. And, his head thrown back exposing the bare rugged neck, the broad, sturdy shoulders unconsciously squared a little, the fine, dark eyes wide with admiration and a strange, keen appraisement, the splendid physique, the strength, the power and vigour of young manhood outstanding in face and form, he gazed at her. And her eyes, from Marie-Louise, met his, and from them faded their expression of indifference, and into them came something Jean could not define, only that as the blood rushed suddenly unbidden to his face and he felt it hot upon his cheeks, he saw the colour ebb from hers to a queer whiteness—and then her hat hid her face again—and he had passed by.

It was as though his veins were running fire. He glanced at Marie-Louise. Shyly diffident in the presence of strangers, her head was lowered. She had seen nothing. Seen nothing! Seen what? He did not know. His blood was tingling, his brain was confusion.

He walked on, hurrying unconsciously.

It was Marie-Louise who spoke.

"They are of the grand monde," she said in a sort of wondering excitement, when they were out of ear-shot.

"Yes," said Jean absently.

"And English or American."

"Yes," said Jean.

"But the rich people do not come to Bernay-sur-Mer where there is no amusement for them," she submitted with a puzzled air. "I wonder what they are going to do here?"

Jean's eyes were on the road. He did not raise them.

"Who knows!" said Jean Laparde.