The Beloved Traitor Part 15

"I?" said Jean, in sudden dismay. He, to eat with the _grand monde_!

But perhaps he had not understood--they would give him lunch with Jules and Nanette and Marie-Louise. He had heard Nanette make that very plain to Marie-Louise a little while ago. "I--I have my dinner with me," he stammered, and pointed to a paper parcel in the stern of the boat. "I will be ready when mademoiselle and monsieur are ready."

"Oh, will you?" laughed Henry Bliss. "Well, I guess not! You'll come up and lunch with Myrna and me."

"No," said Jean, embarra.s.sed, "I--"

"Yes, you will," insisted Henry Bliss.

"Why, Jean," expostulated Myrna, "of course you will, we--" she stopped abruptly. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "I think I know! It's what that stupid Nanette said to Marie-Louise about sitting at table with us, isn't it?"

"What's that?" demanded Henry Bliss quickly. "What has Marie-Louise to do with--h'm--yes--I remember"--his face screwed up perplexedly. "Her fiance, she said--h'm--yes--it _is_ a bit awkward, isn't it?"

"It's nothing of the kind!" declared Myrna, and, with a laugh, possessed herself of the paper parcel from the boat. "It's quite a different matter. If only half of what father has said is true, Jean, it would be an honour for any one to have Jean Laparde as a guest. And anyway I've got your lunch now!" She waved it in the air, threatening him merrily with it; then turned, and ran toward the house. "You come when you're called, sir!" she flung back over her shoulder, laughing again.

-- VIII --

SHADOWS BEFORE

Who, in all France, a week ago, had heard of Bernay-sur-Mer? Upon whose lips to-day was not the name of that little Mediterranean village? Men, the great men of France, came at the bidding of their confrere, the American millionaire art-critic; came sceptically--and stayed to wonder. And because there were no accommodations in Bernay-sur-Mer, they made their headquarters at Ma.r.s.eilles, and their daily pilgrimages from there; an arrangement that, if in a measure inconvenient, was not without its compensation, for at Ma.r.s.eilles was being made the plaster cast of that exquisite little figure, fas.h.i.+oned so amazingly from scarcely more than mud, that marked a new epoch to them in the world of sculpture, the birth of a supreme genius, a surpa.s.sing glory for the art of France!

They came and watched Jean at his work; for there was clay now such as Jean had never imagined, clay that seemed to give form itself, of its own initiative, to wonderful conceptions. They watched and marvelled; and at night they carried him back with them to Ma.r.s.eilles to fete him, until indeed to Jean the world of yesterday was as some vast haze, befogged, that had shut down behind him.

"In a year, with the study of technique in Paris!" murmured Henry Bliss ecstatically.

And old Bidelot, seventy years of age, grizzle-haired, the most caustic, bitter critic of them all, stormed in his wrath.

"Technique! You talk of technique--for _him_! He is a school in himself--a school that will revolutionise the art. You talk of technique for a genius awakened out of the sleep of ignorance, who in a day accomplishes undying work that no other man in Paris, in Rome--bah!

where you will--could accomplish in twice a lifetime! You are senile, my poor friend Bliss--you are in your dotage!"

Jean Laparde! Was it possible that this was Jean Laparde? The simple fisherfolk stared awe-struck at each other, at the metamorphosis that had come to Bernay-sur-Mer, at the great people who came and went, to whom one instinctively lifted one's hat--the great people who now lifted their hats to Jean. It was true! Could they not see with their own eyes? One, too, then, should lift one's hat to Jean. And did not the good Father Anton read to them from the newspapers that all France was ringing with the name of Jean Laparde?

"_Sacre nom d'un miracle_!" swore Pierre Lachance heavily. "And once he made clay _poupees_ for little Ninon! _Bon Dieu_, think of that!"

Bernay-sur-Mer had set Jean apart, above itself.

But the old cure was troubled in his heart. And one night, after a week had gone since the American strangers had come to Bernay-sur-Mer, Father Anton shook his head over his newspaper as he read of Jean Laparde--and found difficulty with his spectacles, for his thoughts were of Marie-Louise.

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 Ma.r.s.eilles 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 protege. 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 a.s.surance 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 cure whispered. "I am an old man. Perhaps I am foolish in my fears. I pray the good G.o.d 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 Rhone 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!

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 Rhone! 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 _poupees_, 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 ap.r.o.n 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 Ma.r.s.eilles. And then he laughed out suddenly in a quick, exalted way, and tossed the ap.r.o.n 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 Ma.r.s.eilles, 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--G.o.d! 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 proprietors.h.i.+p--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_?

He refused to tolerate the question. He had refused to tolerate it all week. It was enough for the present that he was going for a time to Paris. Marie-Louise was sensible enough not to make a scene. She could see readily enough that he must go and that she must stay. How, for instance, could she a.s.sociate with women of fas.h.i.+on and society like Myrna Bliss, who would be the women of the new world that must necessarily form part of his life hereafter. What was he thinking of?

Was it the "afterwards" again? Was he not coming back to Marie-Louise?

Was he choosing now between his art and Marie-Louise? No; he was not--he would not! That was an issue for the future. It would work itself out. Why should he plague himself about it!

He loved Marie-Louise, of course; but it would have been easier now if there had been nothing between them. He could not go to Marie-Louise and say: Marie-Louise, I love you; but it is finished--you can see that the _grand monde_ would make a very great difference between Jean Laparde, the great sculptor, and Marie-Louise the fisherwoman of Bernay-sur-Mer. No; he could not say that, but--_sacre nom_!--was he back to the everlasting "afterwards" again, when he refused so resolutely to go beyond the present? Was it not enough that he was simply going to Paris for a time--a matter that would seem natural enough to her, and of which she would be glad because great things had come to him? He would talk to her like that--that would be enough--Marie-Louise was a sensible girl. One could not say to her that it would be better to finish everything, he would never say that to Marie-Louise--but if, _par example_, he and Marie-Louise had never talked of the marriage there would be nothing now to trouble him.

And--he swung around sharply as a knock sounded on the door.

"Come!" he called.

Papa Fregeau stuck in his head.

"_Pardon_, Monsieur Jean"--it was "monsieur" now--"it is Mademoiselle Bliss who is alone in the cafe below. Will Monsieur Jean see her for a moment before he goes out?"