It was only a week ago that she had come to him so happily, so gladly, the proud light in her eyes, to talk of the great thing Jean had done—and she had changed a great deal in the week. The proud light would come back quickly enough at mention of Jean, but she had grown strangely quiet and silent. And Jean, too, had changed. It seemed, as indeed it was true, that Jean was no longer one of the village.
The old priest took off his offending spectacles, rubbed them with his handkerchief, and replaced them only to find that the mistiness was in his own wet eyes.
Jean did not seem the same in his new clothes. Of course, it was quite natural that Jean should have discarded his fisherman's dress. Mademoiselle Bliss had said very truly that though it might be picturesque in Bernay-sur-Mer, in Paris it would be only eccentric; and besides, to go to Marseilles with his new friends of his new world, one needed to be dressed as they were not to be ridiculous. Monsieur Bliss had been very generous. The American was very whole-heartedly interested in his protégé. Jean would lack for nothing that either money or influence could procure.
But it was not only the clothes—Jean himself had changed. Father Anton shook his head again slowly. It had come gradually during the week, and he, who loved Jean as a son, had not failed to see it. At first it had been amazement, bewilderment, incredulity, then a dawning belief in the genius of his power that they preached to him, and then a fierce assurance that it was so; it had begun with wonder at the camaraderie with which the famous men who had come there treated him, at the respect that Bernay-sur-Mer paid to him—and it had ended with the acceptance of it as his due, and had come to be looked for with a tinge of arrogance as though he had drunk of heady wine. Yes, it was a change! Jean was afire now, a different man, consumed, possessed with the lure of fame, the golden vista that was before his eyes, steeping his soul in it, reaching out to it, straining toward it like a young eagle that suddenly liberated from captivity takes wings to the great void.
And so the paper slid unheeded to the floor from the old priest's knees that night, a week after the American strangers had come to Bernay-sur-Mer, and the spectacles were removed again—but this time the eyes were wiped. He was glad for Jean, proud in his love for the greatness that was to come—but somehow in his heart there was sadness, too. It seemed that between Marie-Louise and Jean a shadow crept, and lengthened, and there was a parting of the ways.
"I love you both, my children, Marie-Louise and Jean," the old curé whispered. "I am an old man. Perhaps I am foolish in my fears. I pray the good God for you both."
— IX —
FORKED ROADS
It was the room Myrna Bliss had occupied. Mother Fregeau had insisted; Jacques Fregeau had implored. It was fitting that the best at the Bas Rhône should be Jean's. The little back room that had been his for ten years was quite impossible. It was different now. It would be but to make him ridiculous—what with all these grand strangers that were around him! And besides, merveille du bon Dieu, was he not now himself the greatest of the great ones!