The Belovéd Traitor

by Frank L. Packard

The arms of the steamer chair creaked as Jean's hands clenched upon them. His face was crimson with passion. What right had these cursed and banale 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—sacré 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 damned cats'! were open. And now she seemed to assume 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 passengers 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 ... clustering 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, hoarse-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 shores 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 passes 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, coarse-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 poupées 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. Hoarse-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 hell 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 passion 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 shore in the days when he had made the clay poupées 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—God, 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 muffled 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.