The Belovéd Traitor

by Frank L. Packard

The car shot forward in a savage bound. She was probably watching him from behind the curtain of a window! His hands clenched fiercely on the steering wheel—and he flung the throttle wide. It was enough! This had lasted long enough! It was her idea of punishment, perhaps! "Mademoiselle Bliss is out, Monsieur Laparde"—he mimicked the colourless-voiced flunky viciously. To telephones, personal calls—the same answer; to notes—no answer at all. Well, she would answer—and soon! He would take care of that, and—he jammed the brakes frantically on the machine, as a figure, barely escaping disaster as the result of his reckless driving, jumped wildly away from in front of the car; while a voice shouted in sharp protest:

"Hey, there—where are you going!"

"To the devil!" snarled Jean—and chuckled the next instant with sudden malicious delight, as he recognised the other. It was Father Anton—on his way to the Bliss residence, probably.

"You are travelling fast, my son!"—grave and quiet, the note of protest gone, Father Anton's voice came back from the curb—and then the old priest was blotted from sight, and the car was speeding down the boulevard again.

Hah! Father Anton! Father Anton—the grandmother! Father Anton, who had thought on arriving in Paris to lecture him, Jean Laparde, on how he should live, and sermonise on the pleasures of the flesh, and the dangers of power and wealth and position, and to haunt the studio with a sanctimoniously grieved expression everlastingly on his face! Ha, ha! Father Anton! Father Anton was the man who once had preached so fatuously on the nothingness of fame! Well, Father Anton, if he were not blind, could—again Jean checked the car violently, this time in response to a harsh, strident, authoritative command.

And then a gendarme was running alongside, gesticulating furiously—but the next moment the man was touching his cap.

"Ah, it is Monsieur Laparde! Pardon, mille pardons, Monsieur Laparde!" The man's voice dropped to a low tone, as he leaned in over the side of the car. "But if monsieur will be good enough to have a care. It will get us into trouble if we do not do our duty, and monsieur would not like that to happen. Ah, monsieur"—at Jean's five-franc piece. "Ah—"

The car was off again. But now Jean laughed aloud. Fame! Who was there that did not know Jean Laparde—from the President of France to the gamin of the gutters! It began to salve a little his irritation, his ugly mood. To the devil with Father Anton—as he had just now had the pleasure of intimating to him. There was little that was empty in the fame that was his. Wealth had been poured upon him; there was nothing, nothing that was beyond his reach, nothing that he could desire and be obliged to refuse himself; and, yes—'cré nom, one could say it for it was true—throughout all France he was worshipped as though he were a demigod. He had only to enter a café anywhere, and in a moment from the tables around he would catch the whispers: "Look! There is Jean Laparde, the great sculptor!" And position—what man in all of France, or in Europe, occupied a position comparable to his! None! There was none! He would change places with no one! He owed allegiance to none; he received it from all. He received the cheers, the acclaim of the populace; the decorations of governments and royalty! And none could take this from him. It was his! And there were to be years of it—all the years he lived. He was young yet. Years of it! He was Jean Laparde, Jean Laparde, Jean Laparde—the man whose name sent a magic thrill even to his own soul. God, how he loved it all with a passion and a desire and an insatiability that was rooted in his very breath of life!

The car was speeding now out through the suburbs of the great city—on—on—on! His thoughts were bringing him exhilaration in abundant measure; something in the sense of freedom, in the swift motion, brought him elated excitement. His blood was whipping buoyantly through his veins. There would be a day of this—to go somewhere, anywhere—without plan, or predetermination, this road or that, it mattered not at all—a day of it—prompted no longer by the sullen, disgruntled mood that had caused him to set out, but by a more potent and saner spirit of almost boyish vagabondage that bade him keep on.

Myrna! He smiled now. He was a fool to have spoilt the last few days for himself just because he had not seen her! Let her have her way for a while, if it pleased her! No doubt she was trying to discipline him! It was delightful, that! Discipline Jean Laparde! It was he who would play the rôle of disciplinarian before he was through—not she! He loved her, wanted her—and, by Heaven, he was Jean Laparde! And what Jean Laparde wanted was his! She belonged to him, and his she would be, and no other man's! Paul Valmain, eh? Next time he would deal with Paul Valmain, and not with Myrna. The poor fool—who ranted and raved and screamed like a cockatoo on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies, and dreamed that it was impassioned eloquence! It would be well for Paul Valmain to take another road than that of Jean Laparde! The poor fool—that did not know the power of Jean Laparde! He held Paul Valmain, as he held every other man in France, between his thumb and forefinger—to pinch, if he saw fit. A whisper in the ear of this one and that, and Paul Valmain was as dead politically as though he had never been born.