The Belovéd Traitor

by Frank L. Packard

In through the window the late afternoon sun played over the faded wallpaper of the chambre de luxe; from without there was the hum of voices, exclamations of amazement, cries of delight and admiration, the curious composite sound of a gathered, eager crowd. And Jean, well back from the sill that he might not be seen, glanced outside, it was his—his! The work that he had done during the past week in the atelier they had made for him in the barn behind the Bas Rhône! It was finished! Monsieur Bidelot was exhibiting it now to Bernay-sur-Mer. The great Academician was standing in the tonneau of the automobile and holding it up for every one to look at—the fisherman with his boat and net in clay. Ah, they understood that, the people of Bernay-sur-Mer! But they understood only that it was magnificent because Bidelot and Monsieur Bliss and the great men who had come amongst them told them that it was magnificent.

For years he had made the poupées, and they had seen nothing—and he had seen nothing. But now they knew because they were told; and now he knew because his soul, his brain was ablaze with the knowledge of creative power, because what had gone before was nothing, because what was to come would sweep the past, that little thing that Bidelot in his emotion cried over, into insignificance.

He drew back, his head high; his outflung arms, hands clenched, stretched heavenward. These strangers, these great critics had said it, and it was so! The name of Jean Laparde would never die!

He stripped off the long sculptor's apron that covered him from neck to knees, and held it out at arm's length, gazing first at it and then at the rough fisherman's clothes that hung, where Mother Fregeau had placed them, on the end peg on the wall—a little apart, significantly it seemed, whether by accident or design, from the new clothes that had come from Marseilles. And then he laughed out suddenly in a quick, exalted way, and tossed the apron on the bed. It was all changed, that! He was through with the fisherman's dress, he was through with Bernay-sur-Mer! To-night he was to dine with Bidelot and a score of others in Marseilles, and after that in a few days it would be—Paris.

He undressed hurriedly, and began to dress again in a clean suit—but a little slowly now, none too deftly. They were still strange to him these clothes; but then everything was strange. The people around him were strange. At times he felt awkward, constrained in their presence—and at times he could laugh down at them as from a superior height. Ay, he could laugh—they were at his feet! Only—he frowned heavily—he could not laugh at Myrna Bliss. He was not master there! And yet she, somehow, did not erect the barrier. It was himself that did that—because he could not forget that behind the roguish smile in the grey eyes might lurk the thought that, after all, he was only a fisherman.

A fisherman! They were cheering now outside. His hands shut tightly. A fisherman! He was no longer a fisherman! He was Jean Laparde, a sculptor of France, a man before whom lay a path of glory, a man whom the nation would acclaim, a man of whose future all stood in envy! They had told him that, these men whom France had already honoured, these men who had accepted him as more than their equal. But there was no need for them to tell him—he knew it in his soul. None, no man, the world itself, could hold back now the genius of Jean Laparde!

Paris! He was pacing the room now, his eyes afire. To-morrow or the next day, when the Blisses had made their plans, Paris and fame was his. What a life it was that now opened out before him! A place amongst the highest, the world to resound with the name of Jean Laparde—and those grey eyes, that bronze hair, that glorious beauty of the American—God! he would immortalise her in clay, in bronze, in marble.

Ay, they might well cheer while the chance was theirs, these people of Bernay-sur-Mer! To-morrow or the next day he would be saying good-bye to them, and—he stood suddenly still—and good-bye, too, to Marie-Louise. The thought put a damper upon his spirits; his brows gathered in deep furrows of impatient perplexity.

He had not seen much of Marie-Louise in the last week—he had seen her scarcely at all. Only twice—when she with many others had stood in the doorway to watch his work. She had smiled at him then, as though it were her work, too, as though it were a joint proprietorship—but she had gone before he could speak to her. And at the cottage, when he had been there at the invitation of Myrna or her father, Marie-Louise, strangely enough, now that he thought of it, was never to be seen.

He would have to speak to her, of course, about going away; but what chance, with the whirl he had been in, had he had to do it? She would know that he was going to Paris, for everybody knew it—but he would have to speak to her himself about it before he went. And what was he to say? Certainly, he loved Marie-Louise—but the great chance of his life was before him. What was he to say to her? He would go to Paris for a time, make this great name for himself, and then afterwards—what?