Part 38 (1/2)
”I”--oh, it was true; true as life was true; true as love was true; true in G.o.d's sight, as Jean had said it was true; true because all through the years to come, through the suns.h.i.+ne and the storm and until death it would be true!--”I--I am his wife,” she said.
”Marie-Louise!”
She heard Jean breathe her name, she heard the half sob upon his lips, she felt the cold steel of the handcuffs touch her wrist as his hand found and closed on hers--but she was looking only at the officers, hanging, her heart stilled in suspense, upon their every act, trying to read their faces where she could not understand their words. And then, involuntarily, because they told her nothing, because the seconds as they pa.s.sed were as eternities, she flung out her hands to the interpreter.
”What are they saying? What are they saying?” she cried imploringly.
But it was Jean who answered--and his voice was lifted as though in song, radiant, triumphant, deathless.
”You are to be sent back to France, Marie-Louise, Marie-Louise--with me.”
-- XIII --
DAWN
Strange noises! The myriad voices of the s.h.i.+p talking one to another--the creak and grind of girders and stringers; the grunting, faintly from far above, of the wooden superstructure; the whine and complaint of the deck-beams as the vessel lurched to the sea; the sibilant hiss and whir of the racing screws lifting from the water; the swift infuriated response of the unfettered engines, chattering angrily, as it were, in wrath for the scurvy trick played upon them; the eternal dull, moaning throb, throb, throb from everywhere, that seemed finally to absorb these voices unto itself and stand as spokesman for them all. Strange noises--a medley of pain, of travail, of strain, human almost in its outcry, seeking relief from unendurable effort and distress.
For days and days they had talked like that, and Jean had listened--listened through the watches of the day and night, listened through the hours of his own toil and pain, and the cursings of the raw-boned, wizened apparition that came and went through the murky gloom of the bunker, and croaked continually like some ill-omened thing for coal, coal, coal, lifting a brutal fist at times to enforce the words. But, too, as he had listened, through the plaint of this strange medley had come the lilt, underlying all, of another refrain that all these voices seemed to sing--a refrain that found a deeper echo in his own soul, that seemed to make the kin between him and these inanimate things the closer, a refrain of hope, a refrain in which lay immortal happiness.
”In five days ... in three days ... in one day more we shall reach France, France, France--and the end of strife--France--and the end of strife.”
And now that refrain was changed again, and it made his heart leap, and he laughed out in pure joy, as he swept the great sweat beads from his forehead.
”To-day--to-day--_to-day_ we shall reach France--reach France--reach France!”
Over yonder through the murk of the dimly lighted bunker, through the swirling coal dust, another trimmer shovelled his barrow full of coal, and then the wheel _clacked, clacked_ over the steel deck plates, and steel rang against steel as the barrow was whipped over on its side to send its load tumbling down the chute to the boiler-room below--but Jean's own barrow lay idly for a moment beside the black, mountainous heap of coal, and his shovel hung idly in his hand.
”To-day--to-day! France, and the end of strife!”--how joyously the voices trilled in his ears! ”France, and life to begin anew!
France--and Marie-Louise! France, and--”
”You d.a.m.ned loafer!” snarled a voice beside him--and quick, with the words, a stinging blow fell upon Jean's face.
It was the raw-boned, wizened engineer--the man above all others who was responsible for his, Jean's, presence there in the bunker again on this return voyage to France--the man who had made of the voyage a living h.e.l.l. Marie-Louise's money, her attempt to pay his pa.s.sage back and save him from this had counted for nothing--against this man. Two trimmers had deserted almost on the hour of sailing--he, Jean, was lawful prey--a stowaway being deported--and there had been a vicious smirk of satisfaction on the man's face, reminiscent of Jean's unruliness that night on the outward voyage when he had been discovered, as the engineer had claimed him for one of the vacancies.
The shovel clanged on the steel plates of the deck as it dropped from Jean's hands. He whirled like a flash, and, grasping the engineer by the shoulders, lifted the other off his feet, and held him as powerless as in the clutch of an iron vise; held the other off at arms' length in his mighty strength to wriggle impotently; held the other there--and laughed out with that wondrous surge of joy that was upon him.
”I will not hurt you!” cried Jean--and laughed in a big, glad way. ”I am too happy! See, I will not hurt you! I am too happy! Do you know what it is to be happy? To love everything--to have your heart singing, singing all the time! Ah, if you could but know! But, go now--for see, I will not hurt you! I am too happy!”--and laughing again, he released the man.
The engineer stood for an instant gazing at Jean. Happy! This great giant of a man, in torn clothes, the sweat rolling furrows down the grime-smeared face--this man, a stowaway on the voyage out--this man, deported from America--this man, forced to work here on the voyage back, who was to be treated, and had been treated like a dog--this man--_happy_! Happy! Was the man mad? The engineer, muttering in his amazement, wondering and dazed and awed at the strength that had made of him a puny thing, edged away, and disappeared in the gloom.
Two little incandescents burned yellow from the stanchions overhead--there was no other light. There was nothing but the choking swirl of the coal dust, the rasp of the shovels, the clack of the barrow wheels, the clang as they were dumped--and the voices that told of France, and life, and love, and joy again.
”To-day--to-day!”--how the words rang in his heart and soul and mind like some silver-throated clarion call!
To-day, when the sh.o.r.es of France should loom in sight, the last of all barriers between Marie-Louise and himself would be swept away forever.
There, on Ellis Island, they had kept him and Marie-Louise apart; and here on the s.h.i.+p again, the same s.h.i.+p that had brought them out--”guests” of the company that was forced by the government to return them to France--they had seen each other little. For, though it had not been as on the outward voyage when he was held a prisoner and closely watched even when he was off duty, and though he was now at least as free as any of the crew, it had only been at odd moments s.n.a.t.c.hed here and there, usually in the early morning hours while it was still dark and he had gone off watch to the steerage deck, and she had come up from below to meet him, that he had seen Marie-Louise--that was all, the very little when their souls cried out for so much, that they had been together.
But what did it matter now? To-day--to-day all that was to be ended!
To-day--how his heart leaped, and his being thrilled at the thought!--to-day they were to be together for always, to-day was to know the fulfilment of their love.