The Beloved Traitor Part 7

Jean shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, since they are gone, what does it matter?"

"Gone! _Tonnerre_!"--Papa Fregeau's face was apoplectic, and his fat cheeks puffed in and out like toy balloons. "Gone! Have I not told you that they are not gone!"

"You have told me nothing"--there was a sudden, quick interest in Jean's voice. "They are gone--and they are not gone! What are you talking about?"

"I do not know what I am talking about!" snapped Papa Fregeau fiercely.

"How should I know! It is first this, then that, then this, then that--it is a _badauderie_! She is crazy, the girl; the father is no better; the maid, Nanette, is a hussy. She slapped my face when I but paid her a pretty compliment; and Jules, the chauffeur, is a pig who lies on his back under the infernal machine and will not lift a finger with the baggage. Wait! Listen! Come here!" He pulled Jean in through the door and across the cafe to the bar at the far end of the room, where he hastily decanted a gla.s.s of cognac and tossed it off.

"See! Listen!" he went on excitedly, replenis.h.i.+ng his gla.s.s. "I repack everything on the machine again, which is out there behind the tavern. I climb the stairs and I descend the stairs three dozen times, there is always one more package. And then fifteen minutes ago mademoiselle returns from her walk alone, and waves her hands--_pouf_!--just like that--and she says: 'Monsieur Fregeau, we will stay; take the baggage back to the rooms!' _C'est insupportable, ca_!" Papa Fregeau flung out his arms in abandoned despair. "And now there is no supper for them. _Sapristi_, I am no cook; but I could cook fish if you, _miserable_ that you are, had brought them--heh! And it is too late now to send for Mother Fregeau."

Jean was paying but slender attention. They had not gone! They were going to stay!

"Get Madame Lachance, next door, to help you," he said absently. Then abruptly: "Mademoiselle returned alone, you say--and what of monsieur, her father?"

Papa Fregeau made a gulp at his second gla.s.s.

"He is impossible!" he choked. "With him it is the sunset! Who ever heard of such a thing! He is on the beach to gaze at the sunset! _Nom d'un nom_, is it extraordinary that the sun should set! But it is not him, it is mademoiselle. I am sure he knows nothing of all this, and concerns himself less. It is mademoiselle's doing. And I have had enough! I will not any longer be made a fool of!" He banged his pudgy fist on the _comptoir_. "Is it to stand on my head that I am patron of the Bas Rhone! _Sacre bleu_! I will not support it! I tell you that I will not--" Papa Fregeau's mouth remained wide open.

"Monsieur Fregeau!" a voice called softly in excellent French from the rear door. "Nanette is struggling with a valise on the back stairs that is much too heavy for her, and perhaps if you--"

Papa Fregeau's mouth closed, opened again--and, in his haste to make a bow, the cognac gla.s.s became a shower of tinkling splinters on the floor.

"But _immediatement_! Instantly, Mademoiselle!" cried Papa Fregeau effusively. "On the moment! A valise that is too heavy for her! It is a sacrilege! It is unpardonable! Instantly, Mademoiselle, on the instant! On the moment!"--and he rushed from the room.

She stood in the doorway; and, from under bewitchingly half closed lids, the grey eyes met Jean's. And under her gaze that was quite calm, unruffled, self-possessed now, the blood rushed tingling again through his veins, and again he felt it mounting to his cheeks. She wore no hat now; and, with the sun's last rays through the doorway falling softly upon her wealth of hair, it was as though it were a wondrously woven ma.s.s of glinting bronze that crowned her head.

Jean's cap was in his hand.

"Oh!" she said. "You are the"--there was just a trace of hesitation over the choice of the word--"the man who pa.s.sed us on the bridge a little while ago, aren't you?"

There was something, a sort of indefinable challenge, in the voice and eyes, a carelessness that, well as it was simulated, was not wholly genuine. Jean's eyes met the grey ones, held them--and suddenly he smiled, accepting the challenge.

"It is good of mademoiselle to recognise me," he answered.

She stared at him for an instant, her eyes opening wide; and then, with a contagious, impulsive laugh, she came forward into the room.

"Of course!" she cried. "You would answer like that! I knew it! You are less like a fisherman, for all your clothes, than any man I ever saw."

"I?" said Jean, in quick surprise. It was strange she had said that!

It was only that afternoon that Marie-Louise had said almost the same thing. Not like a fisherman! Why not? What was this imagined difference between himself and the other men in Bernay-sur-Mer?

"Yes; you," she returned briskly. "And now I suppose you will tell me that you were born here, and have lived here all your life?"

"But yes, mademoiselle," he smiled again, and shrugged his shoulders; "since it is so. I have never been anywhere else."

"And since it is so, it must be so," she nodded. "What is your name?"

"Jean Laparde," he replied.

"Jean"--she repeated the word deliberately. "I like Jean," she decided, nodding her head again. "I like Laparde, too, but I will call you Jean."

Jean's eyes met hers a little quizzically. She carried things by a.s.sault, this beautiful American girl! There was a certain element of intimacy, an air of proprietors.h.i.+p adopted toward him that somehow, at one and the same time, quickened his pulse at the vague promise that they would not be strangers if only she should stay in Bernay-sur-Mer, and piqued his man-mind at the hint of mastery being s.n.a.t.c.hed from him.

"All call me Jean," he said quietly.

"Then that is settled!" she announced brightly. "Now tell me--Jean.

Is there any other place in the village besides this impossible Taverne du Bas Rhone where we could stay for a week--a month--as long as we liked?"

"A week--a month!"--Jean leaned suddenly toward her, an incredulous delight unconsciously spontaneous in his voice. "You are going to stay that long? But Papa Fregeau said you had no sooner arrived than you decided to go again, and--"

"Your Papa Fregeau has a tongue that runs away with him," she interrupted quickly. "One may change one's mind, I suppose? This place will do for to-night; but afterwards--surely there is some other place where we could stay?"

Jean shook his head.

"There is only the Bas Rhone," he said slowly. "I--I am afraid--"

"And now, after all, you are going to be stupid!" she exclaimed reproachfully.

What was it? What did she mean? It was not the words--they were nothing. It was the tone, her eyes, an appeal in the exquisite grace of the lithe form bending toward him, the touch of the fingers laid lightly on his sleeve, that look again that levelled all barriers between them--until she was a woman and he was a man. His mind was in riot. He was a fool! And yet, fool or no, the thought would come.

Why did she want to stay now? Papa Fregeau had said that almost on their arrival they had decided to go on. It was during her walk that she had changed her mind. What had happened on that walk to make her change her mind? A walk in Bernay-sur-Mer was not full of incident!

It was ridiculous, absurd, fantastical, but it was there, the thought, sweeping him with a surge of wild emotion--was it that meeting on the bridge? But why? How? He was a rough-garbed fisherman, and she--

She laughed delightedly.

"What a frown! How fierce you are! Is it then such a terrible affair to help me a little--Jean?"

"_Mon Dieu_!" cried Jean--and the words were on his lips with a rush.

"But--_no_!"

"Oh!" she murmured, and drew back a little; and the colour, rising, glowed pink through her cheeks. "You _are_ impulsive, aren't you?

Well, then, since you are to help me, what are we to do?"

Jean's eyes were revelling in that pink flush. It was satisfying to the man-mind, that--even though she were of the _grand monde_ then, a woman was a woman after all. It was a sort of turning of the tables, that added to the magnetism of her presence because it put him suddenly more at his ease. But to help her--that was another matter.

Bernay-sur-Mer was--Bernay-sur-Mer! _Voila tout_! Apart from the Bas Rhone there was no accommodation for strangers, for there was nothing stranger than strangers in Bernay-sur-Mer. Since then there was no other place for them to go, he could think of no other place. And yet, a week, a month--to think that she would spend that time in Bernay-sur-Mer! _Ciel_! Where were his brains?

"Well?" she prompted, with alluring imperiousness.

It was the force of habit. In trouble, in perplexity, in joy, in sorrow, for counsel, for advice there was but one court of appeal in Bernay-sur-Mer--the good Father Anton. The role of Father Anton was not only spiritual--it was secular. Bernay-sur-Mer was a child and Father Anton was its parent--it had always been so.

"I will ask Father Anton," said Jean.

"Father Anton? Who is Father Anton?" she demanded.

"He is the cure," Jean answered. "I do not know of any place, but Father Anton will know if there is any, and--"

"Splendid!" she broke in excitedly. "Let us go and ask Father Anton at once. Come along"--she crossed the cafe to the front door. "Come along, Jean, and show me the way."