The Beloved Traitor (Mystery Classic). Frank L. Packard
the boat.
"Gaston!" he called. "See, we are back! Can you hear me?"
"Yes," Gaston answered feebly.
"Then put your arms around my neck, mon brave, and I will lift you up."
The arms rose slowly, clasped; and Jean, straightening up, was holding the other as a woman holds a child. Gaston's head fell on his shoulder, and the old fisherman whispered weakly in his ear.
"My side, Jean—hold me—lower—down."
"But, yes," Jean answered cheerily. "There—is that better. We shall get easily to the house like this, and Marie-Louise"—she was back again now—"will lead the way with the lantern."
Gaston's only answer was a slight pressure of his arm around Jean's neck—but now, as the lantern's rays for an instant fell upon the other's features, Jean's own face set like stone. The old fisherman's eyes were closed, and the skin, where it showed through the grizzled beard, wet and tangled now, was a deathly white—and Jean, motioning to Marie-Louise, started hurriedly forward.
Only once on the way to the house, as Jean followed Marie-Louise up the path from the beach, did Gaston speak again; and then it was as though he were talking to himself, his tones low and broken, almost like the sobbing of a child. Jean caught the words.
"René—René, my brother—the light is out, René—the light is out."
And with the words, something dimmed suddenly before Jean's eyes, and the path, for a moment, and Marie-Louise were as a mist in front of him. The light! For fourteen years the man he held in his arms had burned that light—and the light was out now forever.
He hurried on, and, reaching the house, laid Gaston on the bed in the little room off the kitchen that belonged to the other; then turned swiftly to Marie-Louise, for the old fisherman had lost consciousness again.
"Cognac, Marie-Louise!" he said quickly.
She ran for the brandy—and while Jean forced a few drops through Gaston's lips, holding up the lantern to watch the other, she went from the room again and brought back a lamp.
"Jean," she cried pitifully, as she set it upon the table, "he is not—"
Jean shook his head.
"No; he will be better in a minute now. It is but a little fainting spell."
She did not answer—barefooted, the short skirt just reaching to the ankles, her black hair, loosened, tumbling about her shoulders in a sodden mass, she came a little closer to the bed, her hands clasped, the dark eyes wide with troubled tenderness, the red lips parted, the white cheeks still glistening with spray; and, unconscious of her pose, the wet clothes, untrammelled in their simplicity, clinging closely to her limbs and her young rounded bosom, revealed in chaste freedom the perfect contour and beauty of her form.
Something stirred Jean's spirit within him, and for a moment he was oblivious to his surroundings; for, as he looked, she seemed to stand before him the living counterpart of a wondrous piece of sculpture, in bronze it was, marvellously conceived, that he had dreamed of again and again in vague, restless dreams—the statue, for it was always the same statue in his dreams, that was set in the midst of a great city, in a great square, and—
"Marie-Louise!" he said aloud unconsciously.
But she shook her head, pointing to the bed.
Gaston had stirred, and, opening his eyes now, fixing them on the glass still held in Jean's hand, he motioned for more brandy. And Jean, his moment of abstraction gone as quickly as it had come, bent hastily forward and gave it to him.
The raw spirit brought a flush to the old fisherman's cheeks.
"Father Anton," he said. "Go for Father Anton."
"Bien sûr!" responded Jean soothingly. "I will go at once. It was what I thought of when I was carrying you up the beach. I said: 'Since there is no doctor in Bernay-sur-Mer, I will get Father Anton, who is as good a doctor as he is a priest, and he will have Gaston here on his feet again by morning.'" He moved away from the bed—but Gaston put out his hand and stopped him.
"Not you, Jean; I want to talk to you—Marie-Louise will go."
"Marie-Louise!" exclaimed Jean, shaking his head. "But no! You have forgotten the storm, Gaston—and, see, she is all wet and tired, and she has been, I do not know how many hours, exposed out there on that curséd Perigeau."
A smile, half stubborn, half of pride, struggled through a twist of pain on the old fisherman's lips.
"And what of that! She has been brought up to it. A dozen times and more she has been longer in a storm than this. She is not of the milk-and-water breed is Marie-Louise, she is a Bernier, and, the bon Dieu be praised, the Berniers do not stop for that! Is it not so, Marie-Louise?"
"Yes, uncle," she answered softly. "I will go; and I will not be long."
"Go then, Marie-Louise," he said. "I wish it."
She bent and kissed him, and picked up the lantern, and shook her head in a pretty gesture at Jean, as though half to tease him for the perturbed look upon his face, and half in grave wistfulness to charge him with the sick man's care—and then she went from the room, and presently the front door closed behind her.
The lamp flickered with the inrush of wind from the opening of the door—flickered over a spotless bare floor, an incongruous high-poster bed that had been a wedding gift to Marie-Louise's father and mother from the man who lay upon it now, flickered over the raftered ceiling, the scant furnishings which were a single chair and a table, flickered over a crucifix upon the wall—and then burned on once more in a steady flame. It was like the shrug of Jean's shoulders, the flicker of that lamp; for, with the shrug, he resumed again his former position over Gaston—it was true after all, Marie-Louise would come to no harm, they were used to that, they fisherfolk of Bernay-sur-Mer.
"Tiens, Gaston!" he said. "See, we will get off your wet clothes, and you will tell me how it happened this misère, and about the hurt. But first this—mon Dieu!—but I did not guess it was like that—a clean bandage, eh?—that is first—I will find something"—he had unbuttoned the other's jacket, disclosing a rent shirt, and, on the left side, a wad of cloth, blood-soaked now, where Marie-Louise evidently had made a pad for the wound with her underskirt, and had tied it in place with long strips torn from the garment. He began to loosen one of the strips; but Gaston, who until then had lain passive with eyes closed, caught his hand.
"Let it alone, Jean—you will only make it bleed the more."
"Ay," agreed Jean thoughtfully; "perhaps that is so. It would be better maybe to leave it for Father Anton."
A wan smile came to Gaston's lips.
"Father Anton will not touch it either, Jean."
And then Jean, with a sudden start, stared into the other's eyes.
"It is destiny!" said Gaston slowly. "Did you, too, like Marie-Louise, think it was for that I sent for the good father? It is the priest and Mother Church I need, there is no doctor that could help."
"But, no!" Jean protested anxiously. "You must not talk like that, Gaston! It is not so! Wait! You will see! Father Anton will tell you that in a few days you will be strong again. It is the weakness now."
Gaston shook his head.
"You are a brave man, Jean, but I, too, am brave—and I am not afraid—not afraid for myself—it is for Marie-Louise—it is for that I kept you here and sent her for Father Anton. I know—something is hurt inside—I am bleeding there."
And now Jean made no answer—no words would come. The utter weakness in the voice, the feeble movements of the hands, the greyer pallor in the other's face seemed to dawn upon him with its full significance for the first time—and for a moment it seemed to stun and bewilder him.
"It is destiny!" said Gaston again. "Listen! It is fourteen years since René, my brother, Marie-Louise's father,