Part 18 (1/2)

She shook her head slowly.

”Jean,” she said very quietly, ”it is about your coming back that I want to speak to you. I have thought it all out last night. It is not for a little while. When you go it is for always. You can never come back.”

”Never come back! Ah, is it that then that is troubling you?” he said eagerly. ”You mean that you would not mind my going for a little while, only you think it is for more than that?”

”You do not understand, Jean”--it seemed as though she must cry out in wild abandon, as though the tears must come and fill her eyes, as though she were not brave at all. Would not the _bon Dieu_ help her now! She drew her hands away from him, and turned from him for an instant. ”You can never come back, Jean; you can never come back to the old life. You will go on and on, further and further away from it, making a great name for yourself, and your friends will be all like the _grand monde_ who have been here, and I know that I cannot go into that life, too--I understand that all so well. And--and so, Jean, I have come to tell you that you are free.”

”Free!” he cried--and gazed at her in stupefaction. The colour came and went from his face. He had not thought of this from her! And yet it was what he had said in his soul--if only there were nothing between Marie-Louise and himself! It was as if a weight had been lifted from him--only replacing the weight was a miserable p.r.i.c.king of conscience.

”Free! What are you saying?”

And now the dark eyes were bright and deep and unfaltering--and suddenly she drew her form erect, and her head was thrown proudly back.

”Free, Jean, because you must not think any more of me; because you are to be a great man in your country and it is your duty to go, for France has called you, and France is first; because”--her voice, quivering, yet triumphant, was ringing through the room--”because I give you to France, Jean! You do not belong to me now--you belong to France!”

For a moment he did not speak. There seemed a thousand emotions, soul-born, surging upon him. Her words thrilled him; it was over; there was relief; it was done. She had gone where he had not dared to go in his thoughts--to the end. He would never come back, she said.

He was free. But he could not have her think that he could let her go like that!

”No, no, Marie-Louise!” he burst out. ”Do you think that even if I belonged to France, even if all my life were changed, that I could ever forget you, that I could forget Bernay-sur-Mer, and all the people and my life here?”

”Yes,” she said, ”you will forget.”

”Never!” he a.s.serted fiercely.

”Jean”--her voice was low again--”it is the _bon Dieu_ last night who has made me understand. I do not know what is in the new world that you are going to, only that you will be one of the greatest and perhaps one of the richest men in France. And I understand you better, Jean, I think, than you understand yourself. This fame and power will mean more to you than anything else, and it will grow and grow and grow, Jean. And, oh, Jean, I am afraid you will forget that it is not you at all who does these great things but that it is the _bon Dieu_ who lets you do them, and that you will grow proud, Jean, and lose all the best out of your life because you will even forget that once those clothes hanging there”--she pointed toward the rough fisherman's suit--”were yours.”

It was strange to hear Marie-Louise talking so! He did not entirely understand. Something was bewildering him. She was telling him that he must think no more of her, that it was finished. And there was no scene. And she did not reproach him. And there were no tears. And it did not seem as though it were quite real. He had pictured quite another kind of scene, where there would be pa.s.sion and angry words.

And there was nothing of that--only Marie-Louise, like a grown-up Marie-Louise, like a mother almost, speaking so gravely and anxiously to him of things one would not expect Marie-Louise to know anything about.

She turned from him impulsively; and from the peg took down the cap and the rough suit, and from the floor gathered up the heavy boots with the coa.r.s.e socks tucked into their tops--and, as he watched her in amazement, she thrust them suddenly into his arms.

”Promise me, Jean,” she said in the same low way, ”that you will keep these with you always, and that sometimes in your great world you will look at them and remember--that they, too, belong to France”--and then suddenly her voice broke, and she had run from the room.

She was gone. Jean's eyes, from the doorway, s.h.i.+fted to the clothes that cluttered up his arms--and for a long time he did not move. Then one hand lifted slowly, and in a dazed sort of way brushed the hair back from his eyes. It was a strange thing, that--to take these things with him to remember--what was it she had said?--to remember that they, too, belonged to France.

”_Mon Dieu_!” he whispered--and, with a queer lift of his shoulders, turned mechanically to the trunk beside him. ”_Mon Dieu_!” he whispered again--and now there was a twisted little smile of pain upon his lips as understanding came, and almost reverently he laid the things in the bottom of the trunk.

-- XI --

THE PENDULUM

How many miles had they come? Jean did not know. It had been far--but far along a road of golden dreams, where time and distance mattered only because they were so quickly pa.s.sed.

It was Myrna Bliss who had suggested it because, had she not said? she wanted to have a little talk with him alone before she left for Paris that afternoon--and they would walk out along the road before her father started, and the automobile would pick her up on the way.

And so they had come, and so she had talked and he had listened--feasting his eyes upon the superb, alluring figure that swung, so splendidly supreme, along beside him. She had told him of Paris--Paris, the City Beautiful--of the great city that was the glory of France, of its magnificent boulevards, its statues, its arches, its wonderful architecture, its wealth of art garnered from the ages, its happy mirth, its gaiety, its richness and its life, the life that would now be his. And he had listened, rapt, absorbed, fascinated, as though to some entrancing melody, now martial, now in softer strain, that stirred his pulse as it carried him beyond himself, and unfettered his imagination until it swept, free as a bird in air, into the land of dreams, that knew a fierce, ecstatic echo in his soul--the melody of her voice.

But now there had come a jarring note into that melody; and a sudden, swift emotion, that mingled dismay, a pa.s.sionate longing, a panic sense of impotency, was upon him. The quick throb of the motor was sounding from down the road behind them. Monsieur Bliss was coming now. In a moment she would be gone.

She had heard it, too, for she ceased speaking abruptly, and, halting, turned to face him.

”Isn't it too bad, Jean?” she cried disappointedly. ”And I had hardly begun to tell you about it! But then, never mind, the rest of it all you will see for yourself in a few more days, when you get to Paris.”