The Belovéd Traitor

by Frank L. Packard

"And so, you see, Marie-Louise," completed Jean to himself, in whimsical wistfulness, "and so, you see, Marie-Louise, that Jean Laparde is dead."

— XII —

AT THE "GATEWAY"

What confusion, what noise, what bewilderment—tugs pulling and snorting as they warped the great liner into her berth; orders shouted; the cries of passengers leaning from the upper decks to the knot of people gathered on the pier below; and, distant, like the muffled roll of a drum, the roar from the city streets!

Marie-Louise clasped at her little bundle of clothing timidly. For hours she had stood there on the crowded steerage deck; for hours she had strained her eyes toward the land, and then at the mighty city unfolding itself as the liner steamed up the harbour. And she had gazed long, too, at that majestic, towering figure on the little island that had evoked such strange emotions from all these people around her—a figure whose fame must be very great, for of these, who could not read or write, who were ignorant and poor, who came from so many, many lands, none, it seemed, even to the little children, but knew and reached out their arms to it, some laughing in hysteria, and some with tears, but all with the one word upon their lips that neither dialect nor tongue confused—liberty!

It was that they had come for, these Czechs of Moravia, these Croatians, these Slovenes from the Austrian provinces of Carinthia and Styria, these Lithuanians and Magyars; it was that, too, that had brought these Jews from a score of lands where the blessed cross that Father Anton had taught her to adore symbolised neither love nor rest for them. How many stories of oppression, and cruelty, and hopelessness had she listened to on the voyage from such as she could understand? It was not the dream of money alone that brought them; it was because, they had told her over and over again, that here they had heard was the land of freedom, that here they could work with no tyranny to rob them of their toil or of their souls, that here they were to know happiness because here was liberty.

How they laughed, and talked, and sobbed, and whispered around her now! How they crowded, and pushed, and swayed in their excitement! How eager some were, how dazed and frightened were others! What a riot of colour and strange dress the women and the men wore! How they clung to their bundles, as instinctively she clung to hers!

What did it mean, that word—liberty? She too, had come for liberty. She, too, had fled from her native country; she, too, had fled to seek freedom from the scenes and memories that were there. That day when she had gone so blindly to the Gare St. Lazare and a train had taken her to Havre, that day when she had no thought of any definite place to go save that she must first of all leave Paris and then go far away, it had seemed like an answer to her perplexity when, in Havre, she had seen the sign in the window of the steamship office about the ship sailing for America from there. And she had bought a ticket; and then—and then that night, here, here on the ship, Jean had come to her.

Her lips quivered suddenly, and her eyes filled with tears. None, none but the bon Dieu and herself knew how near she had come that night to yielding to her love; none else knew how through that brave, splendid act of Jean's her love had seemed suddenly a thousand-fold greater, making it that much the harder to deny, as it pleaded with her to answer the cry of her soul. Oh, it had been so hard, so hard before to let Jean go, to send him from her—but that night when she had turned from him here upon the deck it had been as though she were walking out into some cold, dread place of eternal darkness, where there was no life, no living thing, and all was utter desolation. Why—why had she done it? She had asked herself that a thousand times in the days since then, in the nights when she had lain sleepless in her bunk; and yet, even while she asked, the answer was always present, always there, repeating itself over and over again—Jean had not realised what he was doing, Jean had not realised what he was doing. It was like Jean, so like the big, brave Jean of the old days to give his all on the impulse of the moment, and never a thought to what it might mean in the afterwards. That was why she had sent him away that night—that was why. She would not have been strong enough to have done it for any other cause. She had only been strong because of the bitter regret, the misery that would have come when he began to realise, even with a few hours of the hardships of the steerage, what he had lost—he who would have come from comfort, from refinement to where even soap and water were luxuries; to food that he could not eat, dealt out of huge kettles into dinner pails; to where there was little light and the air was foul; to where like cattle in a pen they slept two hundred in a compartment; to where, instead of servants at his beck and call, there was cold, brutal contempt—and oftentimes a curse; to where, even to her, who had not known the luxuries of Jean's life, it had brought dismay! Yes; in a day of this, even in a few hours of it, with its terrific contrast, he would have known, and—and his love, great as it must have been to have prompted his impulse to the sacrifice that he had tried to make, would not be strong enough to compensate for what he had lost, to make him happy. And so—and so she had sent him back. And the bon Dieu had been very good to her to give her the strength to do it, for she had been right, and she had known Jean better than he knew himself. She had been right; it had been only impulse, stronger than himself for the moment, that had brought him to her, only impulse—for he had gone back. She had not seen him since that night, not even a glimpse of him amongst the passengers on what little of those decks above that she could see, though she had looked whenever, safe from observation herself amongst a crowd of the steerage passengers, she had ventured out on deck. She would have liked to have asked about him, but who was there to ask? To the steerage the life of the great ship was as a thing apart; no news, nothing came to the steerage—sufficient to the steerage was the babel of its own hundred-tongues.