The Belovéd Traitor

by Frank L. Packard

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. Only one thing stood out, sharp-lined, clear, absolute, irrevocable in itself—he must go to Marie-Louise paying the price. For, apart from all else, apart from the certainty that if he went to her as the great Laparde she would only bid him return again, not in bitterness but in her splendid self-abnegation, apart from this—how else could he make her believe him? He, a man who once had forsworn his oath; he, who once, in her stead, had chosen in ghastly selfishness the fame, the position, the place that were now his—how else could he make her believe him? How else, unless he flung them from him, when once for these very things, a traitor to his manhood and to her, he had turned his back upon her, could she believe that now he held them as naught compared to her; how else could she believe that in his soul and heart, dominant, supreme, lived now only a love for her, greater than it had ever been because it was chastened now, a love near like to her own great wondrous love that she had offered him—and he had spurned? How else—unless to-night the great Laparde should die, and in his place should live again the Jean Laparde she once had known, the humble fisherman of Bernay-sur-Mer? The fisherman of Bernay-sur-Mer! Yes, that was it! It seemed to crystallise suddenly, sharply, into definite, tangible form, the shadowy, nebulous plan that, from the moment his decision had been made as he had stood and watched her there below him on the steerage deck, had been seeking for expression in his mind. The fisherman of Bernay-sur-Mer! None would recognise in the fisherman of Bernay-sur-Mer the Jean Laparde that the world knew—none save her!

He was before the door of his luxurious deck-suite, and in feverish excitement now he flung it open, closed and locked it behind him, switched on the lights, and ran through the sitting-room into the bedroom beyond. Here, where there had been confusion, his things thrown everywhere when he had dressed for dinner and the dance, all was now in order, and his two steamer trunks were neatly stowed away—the steward's work—beneath the brass bed. He dropped on his knees, and hurriedly dragged one out—the one that Myrna Bliss had chosen for him that day when they had gone to Marseilles from Bernay-sur-Mer. If only Hector had not disturbed it! Bon Dieu, if Hector had not meddled with it! He wrenched up the lid. It was Marie-Louise who had thrust that fisherman's suit into his arms that day when she had told him he was free! What was it she had said? Yes, yes! "Promise me, Jean, that you will keep these with you always, and that sometimes in your great world you will look at them and remember—that they too belong to France." And he had laid them in the bottom of the trunk; and, because he had not forgotten so soon, when Hector, whom he had found already installed at the studio, had unpacked for him on his first arrival in Paris, he had told Hector always to leave them there, never to take them out—but after that he had forgotten. He lifted out the tray, and began to remove the clothing that lay beneath it. It was Hector who had packed the trunk for the journey, and—with an exultant cry, he straightened up, the old, worn, heavy boots, the coarse socks still tucked into their tops, in his hands.

He put these down, and reached into the trunk again. Yes, they were all here—the cap; the woollen shirt; the rough suit, crumpled, white-spotted with the old salt stains of the sea.