The Belovéd Traitor

by Frank L. Packard

The tears were very near to those brave dark eyes since three days ago. Jean mechanically added a third piece of clay to the other two. Much had happened in those three days—all Bernay-sur-Mer seemed changed since that afternoon when Gaston, so Marie-Louise had told him, seeing a boat adrift and fearing there might be some one in it, had tried during a lull in the storm to reach it with her assistance, and an oar had broken, and the tide on the ebb had driven them close to the Perigeau where they had swamped, and somehow Gaston had been flung upon the outer edges of the reef, and the boat, sodden, weighted, following, had crushed him against the rocks.

Jean looked at Marie-Louise again. She was all in black now—she and good Mother Fregeau had made the dress between them for the church that morning, when Father Anton had said the mass for Gaston. But Marie-Louise was not looking at him—her elbows were on the ground, her chin was cupped in her hands, and the long black lashes veiled her eyes. She had not told him any more of the story—Jean could picture that for himself. How many times must she have risked her life to have pulled Gaston to the rocks higher up upon the reef! A daughter of France, Gaston had called her. Bon Dieu, but she was that, with her courage and her strength! One would not think the strength was there, but then the black dress did not cling like the wet clothes that other night to show the litheness of the rounded limbs.

His fingers began to work into the clay, unnaturally diffident and hesitant at first, not with the deft certainty of their custom, but as though groping tentatively for something that was curiously intangible, that eluded them. Marie-Louise, as she had been that night, was living before him again—the lines of her form so full of grace and so beautiful, so full of the virility of her young womanhood, the shapely head, the hair streaming in abandon about her shoulders—and it was like and yet not like that great bronze statue so often in his dreams, imaginary and yet so real, that was set in the midst of that great city in a great square. And then suddenly, strangely, of their own volition, it seemed, his fingers, where they had been hesitant before, began now to work with a sure swiftness.

His eyes were drinking in the contour of Marie-Louise's face in a rapt, eager, subconscious way. There was something deeper there than the mere prettiness of feature, something that was impressing itself in an absorbing, insistent way upon him. Her face made him think of the face of that statue—there was a hint of masculinity that brought with it no coarseness, nor robbed it of its sweetness or its charm, but like that massive face of bronze that towered high, that people with uplifted heads stood and gazed upon, that none passed by without a pause, stamped it with calm fearlessness; and courage and resolve outshone all else and alone was dominant there.

Marie-Louise sat up suddenly from the ground and turned toward him, her brows gathered in a pretty, puzzled way.

"Why do you look at me like that, Jean?" she demanded abruptly. "And what are you doing there? It is not the doll you promised to make for little Ninon Lachance—it is much too big." She leaned forward. "What are you making?"

"Ma foi!" Jean muttered, with a little start—and stared at the lump of clay. "I—I do not know."

"Well, then," said Marie-Louise gravely, "don't do any more. I want to talk to you, Jean."

"How, not do any more!" protested Jean whimsically. "Was it not you who said, 'We will go to the creek this afternoon and make poupées'? And look"—he jerked his hand toward a large basket on the ground beside him—"to do that I shall perhaps not keep my promise to meet the Lucille when she comes in and bring a panier of fish to Jacques Fregeau at the Bas Rhône. And now you say, 'Don't do any more'!"

"Yes; I know," admitted Marie-Louise. "But I want to talk to you. Listen, Jean. To-morrow Mother Fregeau must go back to the Bas Rhône. She has been too long away in her kindness now. You know how she came to me the next morning after Uncle Gaston died, and put her arms around me and has stayed ever since."