The Belovéd Traitor

by Frank L. Packard

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 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?" 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 shores 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 associations; 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.

"God!"—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 massive 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!