BOOK I: BERNAY-SUR-MER

-- I --

THE HOUSE ON THE BLUFF

It was a wilder gust than any that had gone before. It tore along the

beach with maniacal fury; and, shrieking in a high, devilishly-gleeful

falsetto, while the joints of the little inn, rheumatic with age,

squeaked in its embrace, shook the Taverne du Bas Rhone much after the

fashion of a terrier shaking a rat. And with that gust, loosening the

dilapidated fastening on the casement, a window crashed inward,

shattering the pane against the wall.

"_Sacre bleu!_" shouted a man, springing smartly to his feet from his

seat at a small table as the rain lashed him. "What a dog of a night!"

Against the opposite wall, tilted back in a chair, Papa Fregeau, the

patron, a rotund, aproned little individual, stopped the humming of his

song.

"_Tiens!_" said he fatuously. "But it is worse than that, Alcide,

since it is bad for business--hah! Not a franc profit to-night--the

Bas Rhone is desolated." And he resumed his song:

"In Languedoc, where the wine flows free,

We drink to----"

"Hold your bibulous tongue, Jacques Fregeau, and get something with

which to fix that window before we are as wet inside as you!"--it was

Madame Fregeau, stout, middle-aged and rosy, already hurrying to the

aid of the first speaker, who was wrestling with the dismantled

fastening.

Usually the nightly resort of the little fishing village of

Bernay-sur-Mer, the Bas Rhone, inn, cabaret, tavern or cafe, as it was

variously styled, now held but two others in the room that was

habitually crowded to suffocation. One was a young man, sturdily

built, with a tanned, clean-cut face, smooth-shaven save for a small

black moustache, whose rumpled black hair straggled in pleasing

disarray over his forehead; the other was older, a man of forty, whose

skin was bronzed almost to blackness from the Mediterranean sun. Both

were in rough fishermen's dress, sitting at dominoes under the hanging

lamp in the centre of the room. On the table, pushed to one side, were

the remains of a simple meal of bread and cheese; and from the inside

of the loaf, the younger man, somewhat to the detriment of his own game

and to the advantage of his opponent, had plucked out a piece of the

soft bread, which he had kneaded between his fingers into a plastic

lump, and thereafter, with amazing skill and deftness, had been engaged

in moulding into little faces, and heads, and figures of various sorts,

as he played.

The older man spoke slowly now:

"It is twenty years since we have had the like--you do not remember

that, Jean? You were too young."

Jean Laparde, an amused smile lurking in his dark eyes as he watched

Jacques Fregeau waddle obediently to his wife's side, shook his head.

"I was on the _Etoile_ that night," said the other, pulling at his

beard. "The good God dealt hardly with us--we lost two when we

beached; but not so hardly as with the _Antoinette_--none came to shore

from her. It was a night just such as this."

"Ay, that is so," corroborated Papa Fregeau, removing his apron and

stuffing it into the broken window pane. "It is, after all, small

blame to any one that they stay indoors to-night and forget my profits."

"Profits!" ejaculated Madame Fregeau tartly. "You drink them all up!"

She shook her short skirts, damp from her skirmish with the storm, and

turned to Jean's companion at the table. "Pray the blessed Virgin,"

she said softly, crossing herself reverently, "that there be no boats

out to-night, Pierre Lachance."

"And God for pity on them if there are!" returned the fisherman. "But

there are none from Bernay-sur-Mer, that is sure." He played the last

domino before him with a little triumphant flourish. "Ah, Jean,

count--you are caught, my boy! It will teach you to pay more attention

to the game, and less to the waste of Madame Fregeau's good bread!"

"She is used to that!" smiled Jean Laparde good-naturedly, as he faced

his dominoes, disclosing the measure of his defeat, and, pushing back

his chair, stood up.

"But," protested the other, "you are not going! We will play again.

See, it is early, the clock has but just struck eight."

"Not to-night, Pierre," said Jean, laughing now, as he began to button

his jacket around his throat. "Play with Alcide there."

"Chut!" cried Madame Fregeau, bustling forward, her eyes twinkling.

"The little minx will not expect you a night like this--Marie-Louise is

too sensible a girl to be piqued for that. You are not going out

to-night, Jean, _ma foi_!"

"And why not?" asked Jean innocently. "Why not, Mother Fregeau? What

is a little wind, and a little rain, and a little walk along the beach?"

"But a night like this!" sighed Papa Fregeau dolorously, as he joined

the group, his forefinger laid facetiously against the side of his

stubby little nose. "_Nom d'un nom_! What constancy--what sublime

constancy!"

"Ah, you laugh at that, _mon petit bete_!" exclaimed Madame Fregeau

sharply, instantly changing front. "You are an old fool, Jacques

Fregeau!"

"But I was a young one once, _ma belle_--eh?" insinuated Jacques,

pinching his wife's plump cheek, and winking prodigiously at Jean

Laparde. "It is of that you are thinking, eh?"

"You are ridiculous!" declared Madame Fregeau, blushing and pushing him

away.

"You see, Jean?" said Jacques Fregeau plaintively, shrugging his

shoulders. "You see, eh, _mon gaillard_? You see what you are coming

to! Oh, _la, la_, once I was young like you, and Lucille, _ma cherie_,

here, was like--eh?--like Marie-Louise. You see, eh? You see what you

are coming to!"

There was a roar of laughter from the man at the table in the rear,

that was echoed in a guffaw by Pierre Lachance, as Jean, leaning

suddenly forward, caught Madame Fregeau's comely, motherly face between

his hands and kissed her on both cheeks.

"I'd ask for no better luck, Jacques!" he cried--and ran for the door.

Laughing, and with a wave of his hand back at the little group, he

opened the door, closed it behind him with a powerful wrench against

the wind; and then, outside, stood still for a moment, as though taken

utterly by surprise at the abandon of the night. He had not been out

before that day. Like all, or nearly all of Bernay-sur-Mer he had

remained snugly indoors--for what was a fisherman to do in weather like

that! Mend nets? Well, yes, he had mended nets. One must do that.

He shrugged his shoulders, making a wry grimace. Nets! But the night

was bad--much worse than he had imagined. And yet--yes--the storm was

at its height now, but the wind had changed--by morning, thank the

saints, it would be better.

It was black about him, inky black--all save a long, straggling,

twinkling line of lights from the cottage windows that bordered the

beach, and the dull yellow glow from the windows of the Bas Rhone at

his side. Around him a veritable bedlam seemed loosed--the wind, like

a horde of demons, shrieking, whistling and howling in unholy jubilee;

while heavier, more ominous, in a deeper roar came the booming of the

surf from where it broke upon the beach but little more than a hundred

yards in front of him.

Jean Laparde stood hesitant. It was quite true; Mother Fregeau had

been right! Marie-Louise would not expect him to-night, and it was a

good mile from the village to the house on the bluff, and yet--he

smiled a little, and suddenly, head down, struck out into the storm.

A flash of lightning, jagged, threw the night into a strange, tremulous

luminance--the headlands of the little bay; the mighty combers, shaking

their topped crests like manes, hurling themselves in impotent fury at

the shore, then spreading in thin creamy layers to lick up wide,

irregular patches of the beach; the sweep of the Mediterranean, so slow

to anger, but a tumbling rage of waters now as far as the eye could

reach; the whitewashed cottages; boats, dark objects without form or

shape, drawn far up on the sand; the pale, yellowish-green of the sward

stretching away behind the village; the road beneath his feet a pool of

mud--and then blackness again, utter, impenetrable, absolute.

Jean passed the last of the cottages--there were but four on that side

of the Bas Rhone--and kept on, following the curve of the beach toward

the eastern headland. But now, the lightness of spirit that had been

with him but a few moments before was gone, and a restlessness,

bordering on depression, took its place. What was it? The storm? No;

it could not very well be that, for it had come often to him before,

unbidden, unwelcomed, that same mood--even in the glorious sunlight,

even in the midst of song as he fished the blue, sparkling waters that,

more than anything else, had been his home ever since he could

remember. It seemed, and it was a very strange and absurd fancy, but

it was always the same, that a voice, wordless, without sound, talked

speciously to him, talked him into a state of discontent that robbed

him of all delight in his work, his environment and his surroundings,

and, arrived at that stage, would suddenly bid him peremptorily to

follow--and that was all. Follow! Where? He did not know. It made

him angry, but it did not in any way lighten the mood that was forced

upon him in spite of himself.

And now, as it always came, unsought and unexpected, this mood was upon

him again; and, as he plunged through the storm, drawing the collar of

his jacket more closely around his throat against the sheets of rain,

he fought with himself to shake it off. It was absurd. And why should

he be unhappy for something that was absurd? That was still more

absurd! He was not sick, there was nothing the matter with him. He

was strong--none was stronger than he, and he had matched himself

against them all in Bernay-sur-Mer. True, it was a hard life, and

there were not riches to be found in the nets--but there were

friends--he was rich in friends--all Bernay-sur-Mer was his friend.

There were the Fregeaus, with whom he had lived at the Bas Rhone for

over ten years now since his father had died. Madame Fregeau was a

mother to him, and Jacques was the biggest-hearted man in the whole

south of France. And, _mon Dieu_!--he began to smile now--there

were--should he name every family in the village?--even to the children

for whom he made the clay _poupees_, the dolls that in their play lives

were, in turn, veritable children to them? Ah, to be in ugly mind--it

was no less than a sin! There were candles to burn for that, and the

good Father Anton would have a word to say if he knew! And best of

all--there was Marie-Louise. There was none, none _pardieu_, in the

whole wide sweep of France like Marie-Louise, with her eyes like stars,

and her face fresh as the morning breeze across the sparkling waters,

and a figure so beautiful, so lithe, so strong! What charm to see

those young arms on the oars, the bosom heave, to feel the boat bound

forward under the stroke, and hear her laugh ring out with the pure joy

of life!

"Marie-Louise!" cried Jean Laparde aloud--and the wind seemed to catch

up the words and echo them in a triumphant shout: "Marie-Louise!"

It was gone--that mood. And now, with the village well behind him, the

lights blotted out and seeming to have left him isolated even from

human proximity, another came--and he stood still--and this time it was

the storm. And something within him, without will or volition of his,

spontaneous, leapt out in consonance with the wild grandeur of the

night to revel in it, atune with the Titanic magnificence of the

spectacle, as one who gazes upon a splendid canvas and, innate in

appreciation, is lost in the conception to which the master brush has

given life. And so he stood there for a long time immovable, his

shoulders thrust a little forward, the rain streaming from his face,

his eyes afire, wrapt, lost in the clashing elements before him--and

fancy came. The play of the lightning was more vivid now, and the

coast line took on changing shapes, as though seeking by new and

swiftly conceived formations to foil and combat and thrust back and

parry the furious attack of the breakers that hurled themselves onward

in their mad, never-ending charge; while behind again, in sudden

apparitions, like spectre battalions massed in reserve, the white

cottages appeared for an instant, and then, as though seeking a more

strategic position, vanished utterly, until a flame-tongue crackling

across the heavens searched them out again, laying their position bare

once more; and the headlands, vanguards where the fight was hottest,

were lost in a smother of spume and spray, like the smoke of battle

swirling over them--and it was battle, and the thunder of the surf was

the thunder of belching cannon, and the shriek of the wind was the

shriek of hurtling shells. It was battle--and some consciousness

inborn in Jean Laparde awakened and filled him with understanding, and

in the terror; and dismay and awe and strife and fierce elation was the

great allegory of life, and suddenly he knew a lowly reverence for Him

who had depicted this, and a joy, full of a strange indefinable

yearning, in the divine genius of its execution.

"It is the great art of the _bon Dieu_," said Jean simply.

And after a little while he went forward on his way again.

The road led upward now in a gentle slope toward higher land, though

still following the line of the beach. Near the extremity of the

headland was the cottage that the village always called the "house on

the bluff," and in a moment now he should be able to see the light.

There was always a light there every night, in good weather and in

stormy--and never in fourteen years had it been otherwise, not since

the night that Marie-Louise's father, the brother of old Gaston

Bernier, steering for the headland in a gale had miscalculated his

position and been drowned on the Perigeau Reef. From that day it had

become a religion with Gaston, a sacred rite, that light; and, in time,

it had become an institution in Bernay-sur-Mer--not a fisherman in the

village now but steered by it, not one but that, failing to sight it,

would have taken it for granted that he was off his course and would

have put about, braving even the wildest weather, until he had picked

it up.

The light! Jean smiled to himself. He was very wet, but he had found

a most wonderful joy in the storm--and, besides, what did a little

wetting matter? In a few minutes now Marie-Louise would cry out in

delight at seeing him, and he would fling off his drenched jacket and

pull up a chair to the stove beside old Gaston, and they would light

their pipes, and Marie-Louise would prepare the spiced wine, and--he

halted as though stunned.

He had reached the big rock where the road made its second turn and ran

directly to the house--and there was no light. It was the exact spot

from which he should first be able to see it--a hundred times, on a

hundred nights, he had looked for it, and found it there--by the

turning at the big rock. He dashed the rain from his face with a sweep

of his hand, and strained his eyes into the blackness. There was

nothing there--only the blackness. He reached out mechanically and

touched the rock, as though to assure himself that it was there--and

then he laughed a little unnaturally. There must be some mistake--for

fourteen years that light had burned in the window, and it could be

seen from this point on the road--there must be some mistake. Perhaps

just another step would bring it into view!

And then, as he moved forward, something cold gripped at Jean's heart.

There was no mistake--the light was out for the first time in fourteen

years! The light that old Gaston had never failed to burn since the

night his brother died, the light that had become a part of the man

himself--was out! Was he ill--sick? Why, then, had Marie-Louise not

lighted it? She had done it before, often and often before. But now

neither one nor the other had lighted it, and they, just the two of

them, were the only occupants of the house--Marie-Louise and her old

uncle. Just the two of them--and the light was out!

Jean was running now, smashing his way along the road through the

clayey mud and water, splashing it to his knees, buffeting against the

wind; and, with every step, the sense of dread that had settled upon

him grew heavier. It was no ordinary thing this! Old Gaston would

have lighted the lamp while there remained strength in his body to do

it; it was a sacred trust that he had imposed upon himself which had

grown more inviolable as the years had crept upon him and he had grown

older. It brought fear to Jean, and the greater stab at the thought of

Marie-Louise. Things were wrong--and what was wrong with one was wrong

with both. Was it not Marie-Louise who polished the great lamp chimney

so zealously every morning and filled the big, dinted brass bowl of the

lamp with oil; and was it not Marie-Louise who watched with

affectionate understanding each evening as her uncle lighted it?

A shadowy mass, the house, loomed suddenly out of the darkness before

him. It seemed to give him added speed, and in another moment he was

at the door--and the door was open, wide open, blown inward with the

wind.

"Marie-Louise!" he shouted, as he rushed inside. "Gaston! Gaston!"

And again: "Marie-Louise!"

There was no answer--no sound but the shriek of wind, the groaning of

the house timbers in travail with the storm. He pushed the door shut

behind him, and something like a sob came from Jean's lips--and then he

shouted once more.

Still there was no answer.

He felt his way to the kitchen, and across the kitchen to the shelf by

the rear wall, found a candle, and lighted it. He held the flame above

his head, sweeping the light about him, and, discovering nothing, ran

back into the front room--and, with a low cry, stood still. On the

floor the great lamp lay broken, the chimney shattered into splinters.

He stared at it in a frightened, almost superstitious way. The great

lamp broken! Did it mean that--no, no, it could not mean that! It was

the wind that had blown it there in bursting in the door. See, there

was no disorder anywhere! He ran into Gaston's room. Nothing!

Nothing anywhere to indicate that anything had happened--and yet,

apparently, the house was empty--and that was enough! Out? They had

gone out somewhere, even in the storm, on some homely errand, to pay a

visit perhaps? Impossible! With the lamp for the first time in

fourteen years unlighted, and broken now upon the floor? It was

impossible! While Gaston Bernier lived the light would burn!

He climbed the stairs and stood on the threshold of the little attic

room, the flickering candle playing timorously with the darker shadows

where the roof in its sharp angle spread into an inverted V. It was

the first time he had ever looked into that room. It was

Marie-Louise's room. It was all white, scrupulously white, from the

bare floor to the patched quilt on the little bed. There was a

freshness, a sweetness about it that seemed to personify Marie-Louise,

to fill the room with her--and it swept him now with a sudden numbing

agony, and his face, wet with the rain that dripped from the hair

straggling over his forehead, showed grey and set as it glistened

curiously in the yellow, sputtering candle light.

And then, half mad with anxiety, the sure, intuitive knowledge of

disaster upon him, he rushed downstairs again; and, hurriedly

exchanging his candle for a lantern, went out into the night.

A search around the house revealed no more than within. He ran then

down the path to the beach, to where, well up under the protection of

the low bluff and away from the reach of the highest tide, old Gaston

stored his boats and fishing gear. And there, as Jean flashed his

lantern around him, a low, strained cry, for the second time, came from

his lips. Three boats old Gaston owned--who should know better than

he, Jean Laparde, who fished with the other season after season!--but

of the three boats only two were there upon the beach.

As a man wounded then and dazed with his hurt, Jean stood there. They

had gone--out into that--Marie-Louise and old Gaston--and they had not

come back. It was not true--it was beyond belief! No; it was not

true--something only had happened to the boat--no man in Bernay-sur-Mer

would have been so mad as to have ventured out!

Far to the south the heavens opened in a burst of flame, and,

travelling far and fast, a zigzag tongue of lightning, like the

venomous thrust of a serpent's fang, leaped across the skies. It

lighted up the beach, and, further out over the waters, a quarter of a

mile away, played upon the smother of spray that like a shroud flung

itself over the Perigeau Reef--and the cry that came from Jean Laparde

was wild, hoarse-throated now. What was that he had seen!

It was dark again out there. He swung his lantern, signalling

frantically--then, holding it high and rigid, waited for the next flash.

It came.

"Marie-Louise," he whispered through white lips.

Far out on the extremity of the reef, a figure stood silhouetted

against the spray for an instant--and blackness fell again.

-- II --

THE KEEPERS OF THE LIGHT

For a moment's space Jean stood there measuring, as it were, the sweep

of waters, as one might measure the strength of some antagonist thrust

suddenly upon him--and then, turning, he ran back to the boats, and

began to drag one down the beach.

No man in all Bernay-sur-Mer would dare to venture out. He had said

that himself--but there was no thought of that now. Marie-Louise was

on the Perigeau Reef. He was strong, strong as a young bull, and he

tugged now at the heavy boat with the added nervous strength of a man

near mad with desperation, heaving it swiftly across the sand. At high

tide even in calm weather the Perigeau was awash--in storm, far better

to plunge into the water than to be pounded to death upon those

_diable_ rocks, lifted up and pounded upon the rocks, and lifted up and

pounded again, when the water should be high. At ten o'clock it would

be full tide. Thanks to the _bon Dieu_ it was not eight o'clock when

the water would be at its height, or else--

"_Sacre nom d'un nom, d'un nom_"--Jean was grinding words from between

his teeth. They came utterly without volition, utterly meaningless,

utterly spontaneous from the brain afire.

It was the lee of the headland, and it was the mercy of the _Sainte

Vierge_ that it was so; otherwise, _bapteme de bapteme_! no boat could

live where a fish would drown. But it was the smoother water of a

mill-race--in with the tide, out with the tide--between the headland

and the Perigeau it was like that.

With a wrench, Jean swung the boat around--he had been dragging it by

the stern--and, at the water's edge now, the dying efforts of a spent

and broken wave wrapped and curled around the bow in creamy foam.

Then, racing up the beach once more to the shelter of the bluff, he

knelt there to plant his lantern in the sand, ballasting it securely

with rocks, flung his jacket down beside it, and ran back to the

water's edge again.

He shoved the boat further out until it was half afloat, shipped the

oars--and waited, steadying the craft with an iron grip on the

gunwales. A wave lifted her, the water swirled around his knees,

seethed behind him, rushed back hissing sharply in its retreat--and

Jean, bending, shoved with all his strength, as he sprang aboard.

The boat shot out on the receding wave, and, as he flung himself upon

the seat, smashed into the next oncoming breaker, wavered, half turned,

righted under a mighty tug at the oars, engulfed herself in a sheet of

spray--and slid onward down into the bubbling hollow.

None in Bernay-sur-Mer was a better boatman than Jean Laparde, and

Bernay-sur-Mer in that respect held its head above all Languedoc; for

at the water fetes now for three years had not Jean Laparde secured to

it the coveted _prix_! But to-night it was a different race that lay

before him.

For a little way, while the lee of the headland held, a child almost,

once the boat was free of the broken surf on the beach, might have held

the craft to her course--but only for that little way. For fifty yards

perhaps the boat leapt forward, straight as an arrow, heading well

above the Perigeau Reef--and then suddenly the lighted lantern on the

beach seemed to travel seaward at an incredible speed, as the onrush of

tide, wind and sea through the narrows caught the boat, twisted it like

a cork, and, high-borne on a wave-crest, hurled it along past the

shoreline toward the lower end of the bay--and the twinkling lantern

was blotted out from sight. Tight-lipped, his muscles cracking with

the strain, Jean forced the boat around again, and the tough oars bent

under his strokes.

There were two ways to the Perigeau Reef--he had thought of both of

them. One, to go down in the shelter of the headland to the lower end

of the bay, circuit the shore-line there until he was free of the

mill-race through the narrows, then pull straight out for the

Perigeau--only, the _bon Dieu_ knew well, no man was strong enough for

that; it was too far, for the bay on this side, deeper than on the

other side of the headland by Bernay-sur-Mer, extended inward for

nearly two miles, and to pull back that distance against the full force

of the storm--only a madman would try it, and no boat would live! The

other way was the only chance--the quarter mile across the narrows.

A quarter mile! He pulled on and on, minute after minute that were as

endless periods of time; and whether he was making progress or losing

it he did not know, only that with each minute his strength was being

taxed to the utmost, until it seemed to be ebbing from him, until his

arms in their sockets caused him brutal pain. And it was all like a

black veil that wrapped itself about him now, blacker than it had ever

been before that night--the loss of that tiny guiding light he had left

upon the beach seemed to make it so, and seemed to try to rob him of

his courage because it was gone. The never-ending roar of buffeting

sea and surf was in his ears until his head rang with the sound--the

waves pounded his boat and tossed it like a chip upon their crests, and

slopped aboard and sloshed at his feet--and they thundered upon the

shore, and upon the headland, and they were mocking at him. The

lightning came again--it lighted up the house upon the bluff and with

bitter dismay he saw that, too, was sweeping seaward--it flickered a

ghostly radiance upon dancing shore shapes--it played upon a tumbling

wall of water, onrushing, towering above his head from where the boat

quivered in the trough far down below. And at sight of this, like a

madman, Jean Laparde pulled then--up--up--up--the crest was curling,

snarling its vengeance before it broke--and then it seethed away in a

great trail of murmuring foam that lapped at the boat's sides and crept

in over the gunwales. And there were many more like that, so many that

they were countless--and they never stopped--and they were stronger

than he--and there was always another--and each was greater than the

one before--and he sobbed at last in utter weakness over the oars.

Marie-Louise, Gaston, the Perigeau, all were living before him in a

daze now--the brain became subordinate to the bodily exhaustion. There

was only a jumbled medley of hell and death and eternal struggle around

him, and a subconsciousness that for him too the end had come--the good

Father Anton would say a requiem mass for him--and Bernay-sur-Mer would

tell its children that Jean would never make any more of the clay

_poupees_ for them--and the children would cry--and it was all very

droll.

He pulled on, mechanically, doggedly. His face was wrinkled where the

muscles twisted in pain, drops that were not rain nor spray stood out

in great beads upon his forehead, his back seemed breaking, his arms

useless things that writhed with the strain upon them.

Wild thoughts came to him. Why should he struggle there against the

pitiless strength that was greater than his, until he could no longer

even meet the waves with the bow of his boat, until they would turn him

over and over and afterwards roll him upon the shore, where Papa

Fregeau, perhaps, would find him! See, it would be a very easy matter

to stop while he had yet a little strength left to guide the boat--and

run with the waves--and it would rest him--and by the time he got to

the shore he would be quite strong enough again to fight his way

through the breakers. His lips moved, teeth working over them, biting

into them, tinging them with blood. It came out of this hell and these

storm devils around him, that thought! Marie-Louise was waiting, was

she not, upon the Perigeau--and when the tide was high and the sea was

calm one could row over the Perigeau, and sometimes see a _dragonet_,

with the beautiful blue and yellow marking on its white scaleless body,

looking for food in the rock crevices out of its curious eyes that were

in the top of its head!

A flicker of light! Yes--yes--the lantern! He was abreast of it

again. The good God had not deserted him! He was still strong--there

was iron in his arms again--the torture of pulling was gone. He could

feel the boat lift now to the stroke.

He pulled, taking his breath in catchy sobs. The boat swept downward

into a great trough, rose again, trembling, balancing on the next

crest--and the light had disappeared. A cry gurgled from Jean's

throat, impotent, full of anguish. It was an hallucination, a torture

of the devil! No! There it was once more--he caught it on the next

rise, and each succeeding one now. And he, not it now, was making

headway seaward. He was across the tide-race, it was the Madonna who

had prayed for him! and in another little while, soon now, just as soon

as the lantern showed a little further astern, he would get the lee of

the Perigeau itself--it would be broken water, but it would be like a

child's effort then. And that!--what was that!

"Jean!"--it came ringing down with the wind, a brave, strong voice.

"_Jean!_"

It was Marie-Louise! His strength was the strength of a god again. He

shot a hurried glance over his shoulder--it was done--but one had need

for care that the boat should not thrash itself to pieces on the rocks.

Yes; he saw her now--like a dark, wind-swept wraith.

"To the right, Jean--there is landing to the right!" she called.

"Ay!" he shouted back; and, standing, swung in the boat.

The bow touched the edge of the rocks, grated, pounded, receded, and

came on again--there was no beach here--only the vicious swirl and chop

of the back-eddy. But as the keel touched again, Jean sprang over into

the water; and as he sprang, a figure from the rocks rushed in waist

deep to grasp the boat's gunwale on the other side--and across the bow,

very close to him, Marie-Louise's white face was framed in the night.

It was very dark, he could not see her features distinctly, but he had

never seen Marie-Louise look like that before--it was not that her face

was aged, nothing, _bon Dieu_! could take the springtime from that

face, but it was very tired, and frightened, and glad, and full of

grief.

"Jean, ah, Jean, you--" the wind carried away her words. Then she

shouted louder, a curious break, like a half sob, in her voice. "Uncle

Gaston is hurt--very, very badly hurt. He is up there a little way on

the reef. You must carry him. And if you hurry, Jean, I can hold the

boat."

"Gaston--hurt!" he cried in dismay. "You are sure then you can hold

the boat, and--"

"Yes, yes, if you hurry, Jean--he is there, a few yards back, a little

to the left."

"Guard yourself then that it does not pull you off your feet!" he

cautioned anxiously, and began to scramble from the water and up the

slippery, weeded rocks.

And then, a few yards back on the ledge, as she had said, just out of

the reach of the spray that lashed the windward side of the Perigeau,

he came upon an outstretched form--and, kneeling, called the other's

name:

"Gaston! It is I--Jean Laparde!" He bent closer--one could not hear

for the _diable_ wind! "Gaston!" There was only a low moaning--the

man was unconscious. "_'Cre nom d'une forte peine!_" muttered Jean,

with a sinking heart, and picked up the other tenderly in his arms.

But it was not easy, that little way back to the boat. Burdened now,

the wind behind his back sent him staggering forward before he could

find footing, and ten times in the dozen steps he lurched, slipped and

all but fell before, close to the boat again, he laid Gaston down upon

the rocks.

"We must bale out the boat, Marie-Louise," he shouted, wading quickly

into the water; "or with what we take in on the way back she will not

ride. See, I will hold it while you bale--it will be easier for you."

She answered something as she set instantly to work, but her words were

lost in the storm. And Jean, through the darkness, as he gripped at

the boat, watched her, his mind a sea of turmoil like the turmoil of

the sea about him. Gaston was hurt--yes, very badly hurt, it would

seem--how had it happened?--how had they come, Marie-Louise and Gaston,

to be upon the Perigeau?--and he, who had given up hope, who had

thought to perish out there in that crossing, he, too, was on the

Perigeau--the way to get back was to run straight in with the bay--it

would not be so hard if they could out-race the waves--if the waves

came in over the stern it would be to swamp and--God had been very good

to let them live and--

Marie-Louise's hand closed over his on the gunwale.

"It is done, Jean--what I could do," she said. "I will hold the boat

again while you lift Uncle Gaston in."

And suddenly Jean's heart was very full.

"Marie-Louise, Marie-Louise!" he said hoarsely--and while her hands

grasped the rocking boat, his crept around the wet shoulders for an

instant, and to her face, and turned the face upward to his, and, in

that wild revelry of storm, kissed her; and with a choked sob he went

from her then and picked up the unconscious form upon the rocks.

And so they started back.

There was no sweep of tide to battle with now--the waves bore them high

and shot them onward, shoreward; and the storm was wings to them. But

there was danger yet; on the top of the crests it was like a pivot,

each one threatening to whirl them broadside and capsize them on the

breathless rush down the steep slope that yawned below--that, and the

fear that the downward rush, breathless as it was, would not be fast

enough to escape the crest itself, which, following them always,

hanging over them like hesitant doom far up above, trembling, twisting,

writhing, might break in a seething torrent and, sweeping over them,

engulf them. It was not so hard now, the way back, there was not the

pitiless current that numbed the soul because the body was so frail;

but all the craft Jean knew, all the strength that was his was in play

again.

The boat swept onward. Marie-Louise was crouched in the stern

supporting Gaston's head upon her lap. Jean could not see her face.

When he dared take his eyes for an instant from the racing waves behind

her, he looked at her, but he could not see her face--it was bent

always over Gaston's head. And a fear grew heavy in Jean's heart--the

old fisherman had not moved since he, Jean, had found the other on the

reef. Once he shouted at Marie-Louise, shouted out the fear that was

upon him--but she only shook her head.

The rain had stopped--he noticed the fact with a strange shock of

surprise--surprise that he had not noticed it before, as though it were

something extraneous to his surroundings. And then he remembered that

as he had stood outside the Bas Rhone he had seen that the wind had

changed, and had told himself that by morning it would be better

weather. He glanced above him. The storm wrack was still there; but

it was broken now, and the low, flying clouds seemed thinner--yes, by

morning it would be bright sunshine, and of the storm only the heavy

sea would be left.

He gave his eyes to the tumbling waters again--and, suddenly, with a

great cry, began to pull until it seemed his arms must break. Roaring

behind them, a giant wave was on the point of breaking--closer it

came--closer--he yelled to Marie-Louise:

"Hold fast, Marie-Louise! Hold fast!"

And then it was upon them.

For a moment it was a vortex--a white, swirling flood of water churned

to lather. It hid the stern of the boat, hid Marie-Louise and Gaston

at her feet, as it poured upon them--and the boat, lifted high up, hung

dizzily for an instant, poised as on the edge of an abyss, then the

wave rolled under them, and the boat swept on in its wake, the shipped

water rushing now this way now that in the bottom.

It was an escape! The blessed saints still had them in their keeping!

Jean sucked in his breath. A foot nearer when the wave had broken,

and, instead of the few bucketsful they had taken, the boat would have

filled! And now Marie-Louise, already baling at the water, cried out

to him.

"See! It was a mercy!"--her voice rang with a glad uplift. "It was

sent by the _bon Dieu_, that wave! It has brought life to Uncle

Gaston!"

It was true. The deluge of water had, temporarily at least, restored

the old fisherman to consciousness, for he raised himself up now, and

Jean heard him speak.

After that, time marked no definite passing for Jean. Occasionally he

heard Marie-Louise's voice as she spoke to her uncle; and occasionally

he heard the old fisherman reply--but that was all. In nearer the

shore, where the current rushing through the narrows had lost its

potency, he edged the boat across the heavy sea, gained the comparative

calm under the lee of the headland, and began to work back to the upper

end--it was easier that way, difficult and slow as the progress was,

than to land and carry old Gaston along the beach. An hour? It might

have been that--or two--or half an hour--when he and Marie-Louise, in

the water beside him again, and close by where the lantern under the

bluff still burned as he had left it, were dragging the boat free from

the breakers and up upon the sand.

And then, while Marie-Louise ran for the lantern, Jean leaned over into

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.

"Rene--Rene, my brother--the light is out, Rene--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 sur!_" 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

cursed 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 _misere_, 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 Rene, my brother, Marie-Louise's father, was drowned on the

Perigeau. I swore that night that through neither God nor devil should

another lose his life as Rene had--and for fourteen years I burned the

light, and laughed at the Perigeau as it gnawed its teeth in the

storms." He stopped, and touched his lips with the tip of his tongue.

"It is the hand of God," he whispered hoarsely, "The light is out--and

it is the Perigeau again."

Jean pulled the chair closer to the bed, and took one of Gaston's hands.

"It means nothing that, Gaston," he said, trying to control his voice.

"It is bad to think such thoughts--and of what good are they? You must

not think of that. Tell me what happened, how you and Marie-Louise

came to be out there to-night."

Gaston lay quiet for a little while--so long that Jean thought the

other had not heard the question. Then the old fisherman spoke again.

"Marie-Louise will tell you. I have other things to say, and I have

not strength enough for all. It is hard to talk. Give me the cognac

again, Jean."

He drank almost greedily this time, and, as Jean held up his head that

he might do so the more readily, the grim old lips and unflinching eyes

smiled back their thanks.

"Listen to me well, Jean," he went on earnestly. "Marie-Louise is very

dear to me. I love the little girl. All her life she has lived with

me--for two years after she was born in this house here, her mother and

Rene and I--and two years more with Rene and I--and then, after that,

it was just Marie-Louise and I alone. She had no one else--and I had

no one else. I have taught her as the _bon Dieu_ has shown me the way

to teach her to be a true daughter of France--to love God and be never

afraid. Jean"--he reached out his other hand suddenly and clasped it

over Jean's--"do you love Marie-Louise?"

"Yes," said Jean simply.

"She will be alone now," said Gaston, and his eyes filled. "She is a

good girl, Jean. She is pure and innocent, and her heart is so full of

love, there was never such love as hers, and she is so gay and bright

like the flowers and like the birds--and happy--and sorrow has not come

to her." He stopped once more, and the grey eyes searched Jean's face

as though they would read to the other's soul. "Jean," he asked again,

"do you love Marie-Louise?"

Jean's lips were quivering now.

"Yes," he answered. "You know I love her."

The old fisherman lay back, silent, still for a moment, but he kept

pressing Jean's hand. When he spoke again, it seemed that it was with

more of an effort.

"This house, the land, the boats, the nets, they are hers--it is her

_dot_. But it is not of that, I fear--it is not of that--" his voice

died away. Again he was silent; and then, suddenly, raising himself on

his elbow: "Jean," he asked for the third time, almost fiercely now,

"do you love Marie-Louise?"

"But yes, Gaston," said Jean gently. "I have loved her all my life."

"Yes; it is so," Gaston muttered slowly. "I give her to you then,

Jean--she is a gift to you from the sea--from the sea to-night. She

loves you, Jean--she has told me so. You will be good to her, Jean?"

The tears were in Jean's eyes.

"Gaston, can you ask it?" he cried out brokenly.

"Ay!" said Gaston, and his voice rang out in a strange, stern note, and

his form, as he lifted himself up once more, seemed to possess again

its old rugged strength. "Ay--I do more than ask it. Swear it, Jean!

To a dying man and in God's presence, see, there is a crucifix there,

swear that you will guard her and that you will let no harm come to

her."

"I swear it, Gaston," said Jean, in a choking voice.

"It is well, then," Gaston murmured--and lay back upon the bed.

For a little while, Jean, dim-eyed, watched the other, a hundred

reminiscences of their work together stabbing at his heart, and then he

rose and began to remove what he could of the old fisherman's clothing.

"I will not touch the wound, Gaston," he said; "but the boots, _mon

brave_, and--"

Gaston did not answer. He appeared to have sunk into a semi-stupor,

from which even the removal of his clothes did not arouse him. Jean

pulled a blanket up around the other's form, and sat down again in the

chair.

Once, as Gaston muttered, Jean leaned forward toward the other.

"It is destiny--the Perigeau--the light is out--Rene, it is--" The

words trailed off into incoherency.

The minutes passed. Occasionally, with a spoon now, Jean poured a few

drops of brandy between Gaston's lips; otherwise, he sat there, his

head in his hands, tight-lipped, staring at the floor. Outside, that

vicious howl of wind seemed to have died away--perhaps it was hushed

because old Gaston was like this--Marie-Louise had been gone a long

time--presently she and Father Anton would be back, and--

He looked up to find Gaston's eyes open and fixed upon him feverishly,

the lips struggling to say something.

"What is it, Gaston?" he asked.

"The light, Jean," Gaston whispered. "It is--for--the last time. Go

and--light--the--great lamp."

"Yes, Gaston," Jean answered, and went from the room--but at the door

he covered his face with his hands, and his shoulders shook like a

child whose heart is broken, as his feet in that outer room crunched on

the shattered glass of the lamp that would never burn again. He dashed

the tears from his eyes, and for a moment stared unseeingly before him,

then turned and went back to Gaston's side again in the inner room.

Gaston's eyes searched his face eagerly.

"It burns?" he cried out.

"It burns," said Jean steadily.

And Gaston smiled, and the stupor fell upon him again.

And then after a long time Jean heard footsteps without, then the

opening of the front door--and then it seemed to Jean that a

benediction had fallen upon the room.

Framed in the doorway, a little worn black bag in his hand, his

_soutane_ splashed high with mud though it was caught up now around his

waist with a cord, stood Father Anton, the beloved of all

Bernay-sur-Mer. And, as he stood there and the kindly blue eyes

searched the figure on the bed, the fine old face, under its crown of

silver hair, grew very grave--and without moving from his position he

beckoned to Jean.

"Jean, my son," he said softly, "make our little Marie-Louise here put

on dry clothing. I will be a little while with Gaston alone."

Marie-Louise was standing behind the priest. Father Anton stepped

aside for Jean to pass--and then the door dosed quietly.

"Jean!"--she caught his arm. "Jean tell me!"

Jean did not answer--there were no words with which to answer her.

"Oh, Jean!" she said--and a little sob broke her voice.

"Go and put on dry things, Marie-Louise," he said.

"No--not now," she answered. "Give me your hand."

They stood there in the darkness. He felt her hand tremble. Neither

spoke. Father Anton's voice, in a low, constant murmur, came to them

now.

Her hand tightened.

"I know," she said. "It is the Sacrament."

"He said he had taught you to be never afraid," said Jean.

Her hand tightened again.

It was a long while. And then the door behind them opened, and Father

Anton came between them, and drew Marie-Louise's head to his bosom and

stroked her hair, and placed his other arm around Jean's shoulders--and

for a moment he stood like that--and then he drew them to the window.

"See, my children," he said gently, "there are the stars, and there is

peace after the storm. It is so with sorrow, for out of the blackness

of grief God brings us comfort in His own good pleasure. He has called

Gaston home."

-- II --

THE BEACON

It was half clay, half mud; but out of it one could fashion the little

_poupees_, the dolls for the children. They would not last very long,

it was true; but then one fashioned them quickly, and there was delight

in making them.

Jean dug a piece of the clay with his sheaf knife, leaned over from the

bank of the little creek, and moistened it in the water. He dug

another, moistened that, moulded the two together--and Marie-Louise

smiled at him a little tremulously, as their eyes met.

The tears were very near to those brave dark eyes since three days ago.

Jean mechanically added a third piece of clay to the other two. Much

had happened in those three days--all Bernay-sur-Mer seemed changed

since that afternoon when Gaston, so Marie-Louise had told him, seeing

a boat adrift and fearing there might be some one in it, had tried

during a lull in the storm to reach it with her assistance, and an oar

had broken, and the tide on the ebb had driven them close to the

Perigeau where they had swamped, and somehow Gaston had been flung upon

the outer edges of the reef, and the boat, sodden, weighted, following,

had crushed him against the rocks.

Jean looked at Marie-Louise again. She was all in black now--she and

good Mother Fregeau had made the dress between them for the church that

morning, when Father Anton had said the mass for Gaston. But

Marie-Louise was not looking at him--her elbows were on the ground, her

chin was cupped in her hands, and the long black lashes veiled her

eyes. She had not told him any more of the story--Jean could picture

that for himself. How many times must she have risked her life to have

pulled Gaston to the rocks higher up upon the reef! A daughter of

France, Gaston had called her. _Bon Dieu_, but she was that, with her

courage and her strength! One would not think the strength was there,

but then the black dress did not cling like the wet clothes that other

night to show the litheness of the rounded limbs.

His fingers began to work into the clay, unnaturally diffident and

hesitant at first, not with the deft certainty of their custom, but as

though groping tentatively for something that was curiously intangible,

that eluded them. Marie-Louise, as she had been that night, was living

before him again--the lines of her form so full of grace and so

beautiful, so full of the virility of her young womanhood, the shapely

head, the hair streaming in abandon about her shoulders--and it was

like and yet not like that great bronze statue so often in his dreams,

imaginary and yet so real, that was set in the midst of that great city

in a great square. And then suddenly, strangely, of their own

volition, it seemed, his fingers, where they had been hesitant before,

began now to work with a sure swiftness.

His eyes were drinking in the contour of Marie-Louise's face in a rapt,

eager, subconscious way. There was something deeper there than the

mere prettiness of feature, something that was impressing itself in an

absorbing, insistent way upon him. Her face made him think of the face

of that statue--there was a hint of masculinity that brought with it no

coarseness, nor robbed it of its sweetness or its charm, but like that

massive face of bronze that towered high, that people with uplifted

heads stood and gazed upon, that none passed by without a pause,

stamped it with calm fearlessness; and courage and resolve outshone all

else and alone was dominant there.

Marie-Louise sat up suddenly from the ground and turned toward him, her

brows gathered in a pretty, puzzled way.

"Why do you look at me like that, Jean?" she demanded abruptly. "And

what are you doing there? It is not the doll you promised to make for

little Ninon Lachance--it is much too big." She leaned forward. "What

are you making?"

"_Ma foi_!" Jean muttered, with a little start--and stared at the lump

of clay. "I--I do not know."

"Well, then," said Marie-Louise gravely, "don't do any more. I want to

talk to you, Jean."

"How, not do any more!" protested Jean whimsically. "Was it not you

who said, 'We will go to the creek this afternoon and make _poupees_'?

And look"--he jerked his hand toward a large basket on the ground

beside him--"to do that I shall perhaps not keep my promise to meet the

_Lucille_ when she comes in and bring a panier of fish to Jacques

Fregeau at the Bas Rhone. And now you say, 'Don't do any more'!"

"Yes; I know," admitted Marie-Louise. "But I want to talk to you.

Listen, Jean. To-morrow Mother Fregeau must go back to the Bas Rhone.

She has been too long away in her kindness now. You know how she came

to me the next morning after Uncle Gaston died, and put her arms around

me and has stayed ever since."

Jean shifted the lump of clay a little away from Marie-Louise, but his

fingers still worked on.

"She has a heart of gold," asserted Jean. "Who should know any better

than I, who have lived with her all these years?"

Marie-Louise's eyes travelled slowly in a half tender, half pensive way

over Jean. His coat was off; the loose shirt was open at the neck

displaying the muscular shoulders, and the sleeves were rolled up over

the brown, tanned arms; the powerful hands, powerful for all their

long, slim, tapering fingers, worked on and on; the black hair

clustered truantly, as it always did, over the broad, high forehead.

She had known Jean all her life, as many years as she could remember,

and her love for him was very deep. It had come to seem her life, that

love; and each night in her prayers she had asked the _bon Dieu_ to

bless and take care of Jean, and to make her a good wife to him when

that time should come. It was so great, that love, that sometimes it

frightened her--somehow it was frightening her now, for there was a

side to Jean that, well as she knew him, she felt intuitively she had

never been able to understand.

She spoke abruptly again, a little absently.

"I do not know yet what I am to do. There is the house, and Father

Anton says I must not live there alone."

"But, no!" agreed Jean. "Of course not! That is what I say, too. It

is all the more reason why we should not wait any longer, you and I,

Marie-Louise."

A tinge of colour crept shyly into Marie-Louise's face, as she shook

her head.

"No; we must wait, Jean. It is too soon after--after poor Uncle

Gaston."

"But it was Gaston's wish, that," persisted Jean gently. "Have I not

told you what he said, _petite_?"

Again Marie-Louise shook her head.

"But one is sad for all that," she answered. "And to go to the church,

Jean, when one is sad, when one should go so happy! Oh, I want to be

happy then, Jean. I do not want to think of anything that day but only

you, Jean--and sing, and there must be sunshine and fete. But now, for

a little while, it is Uncle Gaston. You do not think that wrong?"

"No," said Jean slowly, "it is not wrong, and I understand; but then,

too, Gaston would understand, for it was his wish."

Marie-Louise bent forward with a strange little impulsive movement.

"That is twice you have said that, Jean," she said. "I--I almost wish

Uncle Gaston had not said what he did to you that night. Jean, it--it

is not what he said, nor what you said to him. That must not make any

difference. Never, never, Jean! One does not marry for that--it is

only if there is love."

"_Mais, 'cre nom_!" exclaimed Jean, suddenly setting aside his clay and

catching Marie-Louise's face between his hands. "Why do you talk like

that? What queer fancies are in that little head? Now, tell me"--he

kissed her lips, while the blood rushed crimson to her cheeks--"tell

me, is that not answer enough? And have we not loved each other long

before that night, and does not all Bernay-sur-Mer know that it will

dance at the _noces_?"

"Yes," whispered Marie-Louise, a little breathlessly.

"Ah, then," said Jean tenderly, "you must not talk like that. What,

Marie-Louise, if I should say to myself, 'now perhaps Marie-Louise has

not loved me all these years, and--'"

She drew hurriedly away.

"Don't, Jean!" she said quickly. "It hurts, that! I love you so much

that sometimes I am afraid. And to-day I am afraid. I do not know

why. And sometimes it is so different. That night on the reef when I

thought that soon the rocks would be covered and that there was no help

for Uncle Gaston and myself, and that no one could come to us even if

we were seen, I saw your lantern and the _bon Dieu_ told me it was you

and I had no more fear. I was so sure then--so sure then. Oh, Jean,

you must be very good to me to-day. It--it was so hard"--the dark eyes

were swimming now with tears--"to say good-bye to Uncle Gaston.

Perhaps it is that that is making me feel so strangely. But sometimes

it seems as though it could never be, the great happiness for you and

me, it is so great to think about that--that it frightens me. And I

have wanted to talk to you about it, Jean, often and often. Does it

make you very glad and happy, too, to think of just you and me together

here, and our home, and the fishing, and--and years and years of it?"

"But, yes; of course!" smiled Jean; and, picking up the clay again,

began to scrape at it with his knife.

"But are you sure, Jean?"--there was a little tremor in her voice. "I

do not mean so much that you are sure you love me, but that you are

sure you would always be happy to stay here in Bernay-sur-Mer. You are

not like the other men."

"How not like them?" Jean demanded, surveying in an absorbed sort of

way the little clay figure that was taking on rough outline now. "How

not like them?"

"Well--that!"--Marie-Louise pointed at the clay in his hands. "That,

for one thing--that you are always playing with, that it seems you

cannot put aside for an instant, even though I asked you to a moment

ago. You are always making the _poupees_, and if not the _poupees_

with mud and dirt, then you must waste the inside of Mother Fregeau's

loaves that she bakes herself, or steal the dough before it reaches the

oven to keep your fingers busy making little faces and droll things out

of it."

Jean looked up to stare at Marie-Louise a little perplexedly.

"_Mais, zut_!" he exclaimed. "And what of that! And if I amuse myself

that way, what of that? It is nothing!"

"Nevertheless," Marie-Louise insisted, nodding her head earnestly, "it

is true what I have said--that you are not like the other men in

Bernay-sur-Mer. Do you think that I have not watched you, Jean? And

have you not said little things to show that you grow tired of the

fishing?"

"But that is true of everybody," Jean protested. "Does not Father

Anton say that all the world is poor because there is none in it who is

contented? And if I grumble sometimes, do not all the others do the

same? Pierre Lachance will swear to you twice every hour that the

fishing is a dog's life."

She shook her head.

"It is different," she said. "You are not Pierre Lachance, Jean, and I

want you to be happy all your life--that is what I ask the _bon Dieu_

for always in my prayers. And I do not know why these thoughts come,

and I do not understand them, only I know that they are there."

"Then--_voila_! We will drive them away, and they must never come

back!" Jean burst out, half gaily, half gravely. "See, now,

Marie-Louise"--he caught her hand in both of his, putting aside the

lump of clay again--"it is true that sometimes I am like that, and I do

not understand either; but one must take things as they are, is that

not so?"

She nodded--a little doubtfully.

"Well, then," cried Jean, "why should I not be happy here? Have I not

you, and is that not most of all? And as for the rest, do I not do

well with the fishing? Is there any who does better? Do they not

speak of the luck of Jean Laparde? _'Cre nom_! Different from the

others! Who is a fisherman if it is not I, who have been a fisherman

all my life? And of what good is it to wish for anything else? What

else, even if I wanted to, could I do? I do not know anything else but

the boats and the nets. Is it not so, Marie-Louise?"

"Y-yes," she said, and her eyes lifted to meet his.

"And happy!" he went on. "Ah, Marie-Louise, with those bright eyes of

yours that belong all to me, who could be anything but happy? _Tiens_!

You are to be my little wife, and Bernay-sur-Mer and the blue water is

to be our home, and we will fish together, and you shall sing all day

in the boat, and--well, what more is there to ask for?"

"Oh, Jean!"--she was smiling now.

"There, you see!" said Jean, and burst out laughing. "Marie-Louise is

herself again, and--_pouf_!--the blue devils are blown away. And now

wait until I have finished this, and I will show you something"--he

picked up the clay once more. "Only you must not look until it is

done."

"Mustn't I? Oh!"--with a little _moue_ of resignation. "Well, then,

hurry, Jean," she commanded, and cupped her chin in her hands again,

her elbows propped upon the ground.

It was playfully that Jean turned his back upon her, hiding his work,

but as his fingers began again to draw and model the clay and his knife

to chisel it, the smile went slowly from his face and his lips grew

firmly closed. It was strange that Marie-Louise should have known! It

was true, the fishing grew irksome too often now; for those moods, like

the mood in the storm, came very often, much more often than they had

been wont to do. He had laughed at her, but that was only to pretend,

to chase the sadness away and make her eyes shine again. It was true,

too, as he had told her, that one must take things as they were.

Whether he wanted to fish or not, he must fish--_voila_! How else

could one make the _sous_ with which to live?

Oh, yes, he had laughed to make her laugh; but now, _pardieu_! it was

bringing that mood upon himself. Where was that great city and that

great square, and what was that great statue before which the people

stood rapt and spellbound, and why should it come so often to his

thoughts and be so real as though it were a very truth and not some

queer imagination of his brain? There were wonderful things in the

face of that bronze figure. He leaned a little forward toward the clay

before him, his lips half parted now, his fingers seeming to tingle

with a life, throbbing, palpitant, that was all their own, that was

apart from him entirely, for they possessed a power of movement and a

purpose that he had nothing to do with. He became absorbed in his

work, lost in it. Time passed.

"Jean," Marie-Louise called out, "let me see it now."

"Wait!" he said almost harshly. "Wait! Wait! Wait!"

"_Jean_!"--it was a hurt little cry.

He did not hear her. There was something at the base of that statue of

his dreams that always troubled him, that the people always pointed at

as they gazed; but he had never been able to make out what it was there

at the base of the statue. It was very strange that he was never able

to see that, when he could see the figure of the woman with the

wonderful face so plainly!

He worked on and on. There were neither hours nor minutes--the

afternoon deepened. There was no creek, no Marie-Louise, no

Bernay-sur-Mer, nothing--only those dreams and the little clay figure

in his hands.

And then Marie-Louise, her face a little white, timidly touched his arm.

"Jean!" she said hesitantly.

Her voice roused him. It seemed as though he was awakened from a

sleep. He brushed the hair back from his eyes, and looked around.

"_Mon Dieu_," he said, "but that was, strange!" And then he smiled,

still a little dazed, and lifted around the clay figure for her to see.

"I do not know if it is finished," he said, staring at it; "but perhaps

I could do no better with it even if I worked longer."

Marie-Louise's eyes, puzzled, anxious, on Jean's face, shifted to the

little clay figure--and their expression changed instantly.

"But, Jean!" she cried, clasping her hands. "But, Jean, that is not a

_poupee_ you have made there. It--it will never do at all! Ninon

Lachance would break the arms off at the first minute, and it is too

_charmante_ for that. Oh, but, Jean, it--it is _adorable_!"

Jean was inspecting the figure in a curiously abstracted way, as though

he had never seen it before, turning his head now to this side, now to

that, and turning the clay around and around in his hands to examine it

from all angles, while a heightened colour crept into his face and dyed

his cheeks. It was a small figure, hardly a foot and a half in

height--the figure of a fisherwoman, barefooted, in short skirts, the

clothes as though windswept clinging close around her limbs, her arms

stretched out as to the sea. He laughed a little unnaturally.

"Well, then, since it will not do for Ninon Lachance, and you like it,

Marie-Louise," he said a little self-consciously; "it is for you."

"For me--Jean? Really for me?" she asked happily.

"And why not?" said Jean. "Since it _is_ you."

"Me!"--she looked at him in a prettily bewildered way.

"But, yes," said Jean, holding the figure off at arm's length. "See,

it is a beacon--the welcome of the fisherman home from the sea. And

are you not that, Marie-Louise, and will you not stand on the shore at

evening and hold out your arms for me as I pull home in the boat? Are

you not the beacon, Marie-Louise--for me?"

Her hand stole over one of his and pressed it, but it was a moment

before she spoke.

"I will pray to the _bon Dieu_ to make me that, Jean--always," she said

softly.

He drew her close to him.

"It is the luck of Jean Laparde!" he whispered tenderly.

They sat for a little time in silence--then Jean sprang sharply to his

feet.

"_Ma foi_, Marie-Louise!" he called out in sudden consternation,

glancing at the sun. "I did not know we had been here so long." He

picked up the little clay figure hastily, placed it in the basket,

threw his coat, that was on the ground, over it, and, swinging the

basket to the crook of his arm, held out his hand to Marie-Louise.

"Come, _petite_, we will hurry back."

It was not far across the fields and down the little rise to the road

that paralleled the beach; and in some five minutes, walking quickly,

they came out upon the road itself by the turn near the rough wooden

bridge that crossed the creek halfway between the eastern headland and

the white, clustering cottages of Bernay-sur-Mer. But here, for all

their hurry, they paused suddenly of one accord, looking at each other

questioningly, as voices reached them from the direction of the bridge

which, still hidden from their view, was just around the bend of the

road ahead.

* * * * *

"But, my dear"--it was a man speaking, his tone a sort of tolerant

protest--"I am sure it is just the place we have been looking for. It

is quiet here."

"Quiet!"--it was a woman's voice this time, in a wealth of irony. "It

is stagnation! There isn't a single thing alive here--even the sea is

dead! It is enough to give one the blues for the rest of one's life!

And the accommodations at that unspeakable tavern are absolutely

appalling. I can't imagine what you are dreaming of to want to stay

another minute! I'm quite sure there are lots of other places that

will furnish all the rest and quiet required, and where, at the same

time, we can at least be comfortable. Anyway, I'm not going to stay

here!"

"But, Myrna, you--"

"There is some one coming," said the girl.

* * * * *

Jean and Marie-Louise were walking forward again.

"What are they saying, Jean?" asked Marie-Louise.

Jean shook his head.

"I do not know," he answered. "It is English. See! There they are!"

An elderly, well-dressed man, grey-haired, clean-shaven, a little

stout, with a wholesomely good-natured, ruddy face, was leaning against

the railing of the bridge; and beside him, digging at the planks with

the tip of her parasol, stood a girl in dainty white, her head bent

forward, her face hidden under the wide brim of a picture hat.

Jean's eyes, attracted as by a magnet, passed over the man and fixed

upon the girl. At Nice, at Monte Carlo, so they said, one saw many

such as she; but Bernay-sur-Mer was neither Nice nor Monte Carlo, and

he had never seen a woman gowned like that before. _'Cre nom_, what

exquisite harmony of line and poise! If she would but look up! _Bon

Dieu_, but it would be a desecration of the picture if she were not

gloriously pretty!

The gentleman, nodding pleasantly, greeted them as they approached.

"Good afternoon!" he said smilingly, in French.

The girl had raised her head, grey eyes sweeping Marie-Louise with well

bred indifference--and Jean was staring at her.

"_Bon jour, m'sieu_!"--he spoke mechanically, lifted his cap

mechanically.

His eyes had not left the girl's face. He could not take his eyes from

her face. It was a wonderful face, a beautiful face, and something in

it thrilled him and bade him feast his eyes upon it to drink in its

beauty. And, his head thrown back exposing the bare rugged neck, the

broad, sturdy shoulders unconsciously squared a little, the fine, dark

eyes wide with admiration and a strange, keen appraisement, the

splendid physique, the strength, the power and vigour of young manhood

outstanding in face and form, he gazed at her. And her eyes, from

Marie-Louise, met his, and from them faded their expression of

indifference, and into them came something Jean could not define, only

that as the blood rushed suddenly unbidden to his face and he felt it

hot upon his cheeks, he saw the colour ebb from hers to a queer

whiteness--and then her hat hid her face again--and he had passed by.

It was as though his veins were running fire. He glanced at

Marie-Louise. Shyly diffident in the presence of strangers, her head

was lowered. She had seen nothing. Seen nothing! Seen what? He did

not know. His blood was tingling, his brain was confusion.

He walked on, hurrying unconsciously.

It was Marie-Louise who spoke.

"They are of the _grand monde_," she said in a sort of wondering

excitement, when they were out of ear-shot.

"Yes," said Jean absently.

"And English or American."

"Yes," said Jean.

"But the rich people do not come to Bernay-sur-Mer where there is no

amusement for them," she submitted with a puzzled air. "I wonder what

they are going to do here?"

Jean's eyes were on the road. He did not raise them.

"Who knows!" said Jean Laparde.

-- IV --

STRANGERS WITHIN THE GATES

"Until to-morrow"--the words kept echoing in Jean's ears, as he hurried

now on his way back to the Bas Rhone. "Until to-morrow"--Marie-Louise

had called to him, as he had left the house on the bluff after taking

her home. Well, what was there unusual in that! Though he went often,

he did not go to see Marie-Louise every evening, and it was not the

first time she had ever said it. Why should he be vaguely conscious of

a sort of relief that she had said "until to-morrow" on this particular

occasion? It was a very strange way to feel--but then his mind was in

the most curiously jumbled state! That meeting at the bridge of less

than half an hour ago obsessed him. Where had they come from, these

strangers? How long were they going to stay? Or, perhaps--an

unaccountable dismay suddenly seized him--perhaps they had already

gone! But Papa Fregeau, of course, would know all that--therefore,

naturally, he was impatient to reach the Bas Rhone and Papa Fregeau.

The empty basket on his arm, for Marie-Louise had taken the beacon and

he had forgotten all about Papa Fregeau's fish, Jean paused as he

reached the bridge. It was here that look had passed between them. He

would never forget that. It meant nothing--he was not a fool--it could

mean nothing. It was only a look, only an instant in which those grey

eyes had met his--but he would never forget it!

He hurried on again.

Perhaps he had imagined that expression, that flash, that spark, that

something that was impellingly magnetic in those grey eyes. No, he had

not imagined it; he had felt it, known it, sensed it. In that one

instant something had passed between them that in all his life he would

never forget--it had left him like a man adrift on a shoreless sea with

the startling wonder of it. She was of the _grand monde_--Marie-Louise

had said it. And he was a fisherman. She could have no interest in a

fisherman; and what interest could a fisherman--bah, it was pitifully

laughable! But it was not laughable! If he could only define that

look! It was as if--_bon Dieu_, what was it!--as if she were a woman

and he were a man. Yes; it was that! It was only for a moment, by now

she would have forgotten it; but for that moment it had been that.

Only, whereas she would have forgotten, with him it remained. It was

curious--her form was even more like that dream statue than was

Marie-Louise's. If by any chance she should already have gone! The

thought, recurring, brought once more that twinge of dismay. Was it

strange that he should want to see her again! True, she would never

look at him like that a second time, she had been off her guard for

that little instant when there had been no _grand monde_ and no

fisherman, but she was still the same beautiful woman, glorious in form

and face--and the allurement of her presence was like some rare,

exquisite fragrance stealing upon the senses, enslaving them.

And now, as he approached the little village, and passed the first

cottage, with the Bas Rhone in sight beyond, he found himself eagerly

searching the beach, the single street for sign of her. But there was

no sign. Everything about the village was as it always was every early

evening in Bernay-sur-Mer, when it was summer and the light held late.

Strewn out along the beach, the men were at work upon their boats and

nets; the children played about the doorways; through the open doors

one could see the women busy over the evening meal--nothing else! And

surely there would have been some stir of excitement if the strangers

were still there, at least amongst the children--it was an event, that,

to Bernay-sur-Mer. They had gone then, evidently!

Jean's eyes lifted from a fruitless sweep of the beach to fix on the

figure of Papa Fregeau emerging on the run from the Bas Rhone.

"The fish, Jean! The fish!" the fat little man called out breathlessly.

"The fish?" repeated Jean--and then, a little sheepishly, stared into

the empty basket.

Papa Fregeau, who had reached Jean's side, was staring into it too.

"Yes--the fish! The fish!" he shouted. "Where are the fish you

promised to bring back?"

And then Jean laughed.

"Why," said Jean, "I--I think I must have forgotten them."

Papa Fregeau was excited. He began to dance up and down, his fat

paunch shaking like jelly.

"Idiot! Imbecile!" he stormed. "Have I not had trouble enough without

this! _Sacre bleu de misericorde_! What an afternoon! And you

laugh--_bete_, that you are! And now what shall I do?"

"Do?" said Jean---and stopped laughing. "What is the matter?"

"Matter!" spluttered the patron of the Bas Rhone. "Matter! Have I not

told you what is the matter? The fish!"

"Yes, but a few fish," said Jean, eyeing the other in a half puzzled

way. "What are a few fish that you--"

"You do not understand!"--Papa Fregeau was still dancing up and down as

he kept step with Jean, who had now started on again toward the Bas

Rhone. "Listen! They are Americans of Paris, they say! They arrive

in an automobile this afternoon--mademoiselle and her father, the maid

and the chauffeur. It is fine, they stop at the Bas Rhone and engage

rooms. Excellent! Nothing could be better. There is profit in that.

I carry the trunks, the valises, a multitude of effects that are

strapped all over the automobile to the rooms, and am on the point of

sending for Mother Fregeau at Marie-Louise's. _Sapristi_--I do not

pretend to be a cook! They start out for a walk, the mademoiselle and

her father--and the mademoiselle, before they are out of sight from the

window, returns to say that they will not stay, that I shall repack

everything on that accursed car in readiness for their departure on the

return from their walk. _Tourment de Satan_!--very good, I repack it.

And now you bring no fish!"

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 glass of cognac and tossed it off.

"See! Listen!" he went on excitedly, replenishing his glass. "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 glass.

"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 glass 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 mass 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 passed 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

assault, this beautiful American girl! There was a certain element of

intimacy, an air of proprietorship 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 snatched 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."

Yes, certainly, she carried things by assault this American girl. She

bubbled with life and vivacity. And he was to walk with her now to

Father Anton's--half an hour ago he would as soon have dreamed of

possessing a fortune! It was incredible! It must be a marvellous

world that, where she came from--but no, even the women of her world

could not be like her! The suppleness of her form, it was divine; the

carriage, the poise, the smile--it was intoxication, it went to the

senses!

"I am mad! It is as though--as though I were drunk with wine!" Jean

muttered--and followed her across the room.

"Now where is this Father Anton of yours?"--as Jean joined her outside

the tavern.

"There," said Jean, and pointed along the street. "Do you see the

church--behind the second cottage? Well, it is there--just on the

other side."

She nodded--and Jean, glancing at her, found that she was not looking

in that direction at all. Instead, she seemed wholly engaged in

watching a boat start shoreward, as it pulled away from the side of a

smack anchored out in the bay. Father Anton might have been the last

thing that concerned her. Jean's eyes, a little puzzled, followed

hers. When he looked up again, the grey eyes were laughing at him.

"Is it quite safe out there?" she asked, waving her hand.

"Safe?" repeated Jean, in a bewildered way.

"Stupid!" she cried merrily. "Yes, of course--safe! If I am to stay

here, I cannot lie all day upon the beach and do nothing. You have a

boat, haven't you, Jean?"

"But, yes," said Jean.

"Then I am quite sure it will be safe," she decided. "I must have a

boat, and, of course, a boatman. You will be the boatman, Jean. Oh, I

really believe that, after all, Bernay-sur-Mer will be possible. There

will be places where we can go, little excursions, and heaps of things

like that. There, that is settled! And now I am more eager than ever

to see Father Anton."

Yes; it was settled! It was phrase of hers, that! To have demurred

would have been as impossible as to have said no. And, besides, he had

no wish to either demur or refuse. It seemed as though he were hurried

forward captive into some strange, unknown land of enchantment. It

staggered him, bewildered him, lured him, fired his imagination--and

there was no desire to rouse himself from what seemed like a wonderful

dream. No woman that he had ever seen, or imagined was like her. To

spend a day where he could feast his eyes upon her!--and did she not

now talk of many days! Even a fisherman might lift his eyes as high as

that--since she gave him leave. Afterwards, she would go away again;

but, _bon Dieu_, one could at least live in the present! It would be

something to remember! Her eyes were on him again. He felt them

studying him. Her hand brushed his arm. There was a faint, enticing

fragrance of violets in the air about her.

"You are not very gallant, Jean!" she laughed out. "Aren't you pleased

with the suggestion; or would you rather--fish?"

They had reached the church, and turned.

"I was thinking," said Jean, with unconscious naivete, "that I was

afraid Father Anton would not know of any place."

She looked at him quickly, a flash in the grey eyes--then the lids

lowered. The next instant she was pointing ahead of her.

"But there!" she cried out. "There is Monsieur le Cure's house, is it

not?" She clapped her hands in sudden delight. "Why, it is a

play-house, only a make-believe one! And how pretty!"

Behind the church was a little garden, full-flowered; a little white

fence; a little white gate; and, at the end of the garden, a little

cottage, smaller than any, where none were large, in Bernay-sur-Mer,

and which was white in colour, too, if one might hazard a guess for the

vines that grew over it, covering it, submerging it, clothing it in a

clinging mass of green, until only the little stubby chimney peeked

shyly out from the centre of the slanting roof.

"Yes," said Jean; "and there is Father Anton himself."

A bare-headed, silver-haired form in rusty black _soutane_, a watering

pot in hand, was bending over a bed of dahlias; but at the sound of

their approach the priest put down the watering pot, and came hurriedly

toward them to the gate.

"Ah, Jean, my son!" he cried out heartily--and bowed with old-fashioned

courtliness to Jean's companion. "I heard there were strangers in

Bernay-sur-Mer, mademoiselle; but that they had gone on again. You are

very welcome. Won't you come in?"

She leaned upon the gate, smiling--and shook her head.

"No, thank you, Monsieur le Cure. I must not stay long, or my father

will be wondering what could have become of me. The truth is, that

I--we are in trouble, and Jean here has brought me to you."

"Trouble!" exclaimed Father Anton anxiously, and his face grew suddenly

grave.

She shook her head again, and laughed.

"Oh, it is not serious! You see--but I must introduce myself. I am

Myrna Bliss. My father is Henry Bliss--I wonder if you have ever heard

of him? We have lived for years and years in Paris."

Father Anton was genuinely embarrassed.

"I--I am afraid I never have," he admitted.

"Oh, well," she cried gaily, "you mustn't feel badly about it. His is

entirely a reflected glory--that is what I tell him. Art! Everything

is art with him, painting, sculpture, literature; and, as he can do

neither one nor the other himself, he endows a school for this, or a

_societe_ for that, and money exists for only one reason--the

advancement of art. And since he calls Paris the home of art, we live

in Paris. But now I am prattling like a school girl"--she laughed

infectiously.

The cure's old face wrinkled into smiles.

"It is very interesting, mademoiselle," he said. "And here in

Bernay-sur-Mer I fear we know too little of such things." He reached

across the fence and laid his hand affectionately on Jean's shoulder.

"But it is not quite all our fault, is it, Jean? The _sous_ come hard

with the fishing, and we do not have much time for anything outside our

own little world. I should greatly like to talk with monsieur, your

father. Is it possible that you are to stay a little while here?"

"If we do"--the girl's face was a picture of roguish merriment--"you

will not be able to escape him, I promise you, Monsieur le Cure--so

beware! But that is our trouble. My father is on what he calls a

little holiday--it is really that he needs rest and quiet. For a man

of his age, what with his own affairs and his 'art,' he is far too

active. Very well. Bernay-sur-Mer is ideal, only--except--Monsieur le

Cure, I am sure, will understand--except the Bas Rhone."

"Ah, the Bas Rhone!" said Father Anton. "It is that, then--the Bas

Rhone?"

"Exactly!" she smiled. "And so Jean has brought me to you to suggest

something else for us."

Father Anton joined his finger tips thoughtfully.

"Yes; I see," he said. "My good friends, the Fregeaus, would do all in

their power for you, they are most excellent people; but, yes--h'm--I

see. It is a cafe much more than an inn, and for a cafe it answers

very well; and, after all, it is not their fault that there are not

proper accommodations for guests. Yes; I am afraid the accommodations

must be very inadequate. But you see, mademoiselle"--Father Anton's

voice had a quaint, gentle note of pleading--"we are quite off the main

road, and it is rare that a stranger stops in Bernay-sur-Mer, and since

they are poor they could not afford, even if they had the money, to

make an investment that would bring no return. But something

else--h'm! Truly, mademoiselle, I do not know--there is certainly no

other place to board."

"Well, a little furnished cottage then," she suggested. "I have my own

maid, and, if there were some one else to help a little, nothing would

suit us better. Now, Monsieur le Cure, you are not going to be so

heartless as to tell me there are no cottages either!"

For a moment Father Anton did not answer--then his face broke suddenly

into smiles.

"But, no, mademoiselle," he declared quickly, nodding his head

delightedly at Jean, "I shall tell you nothing of the sort. One might

say it was almost providential. Nothing could be better! And the

finest cottage in Bernay-sur-Mer, too! Mademoiselle and her father

will be charmed with it--and all day I have been worrying about what to

do with Marie-Louise. Would it not be just the thing, Jean?"

"_Ma foi_!" gasped Jean in surprise, staring from one to the other.

"The house on the bluff?"

"And what else?" said Father Anton enthusiastically. "Listen,

mademoiselle; I will explain to you. It is the house out there on the

headland, where Gaston Bernier lived with his niece, Marie-Louise.

Three days ago in the great storm _le pauvre_ Gaston was hurt, and that

night he died. Marie-Louise can no longer live there alone--it is not

right for a young girl. I thought to bring her here to live with me

and my old housekeeper; but now she can rent the house to you, and can

help with the work for she is a very good cook."

"Father Anton, you are a treasure!" cried Myrna Bliss vivaciously. "We

will take the house. And the rent? Would, say, two hundred francs a

month be right?"

"Two hundred francs?" repeated Father Anton incredulously, his eyes

widening.

"Yes; and another hundred for Marie-Louise."

Three hundred francs! It was not a large sum of money--it was a

fortune! Father Anton, in his years of ministry at Bernay-sur-Mer,

could not remember ever having seen a sum like that all at one time;

also, it was out of all proportion to what he would have thought

Marie-Louise should demand. The good cure's face was a picture with

its mingled emotions--he was torn between a desire that this good

fortune should come to Marie-Louise, and a fear in his honest heart

that he should be privy to the crime of extortion!

Myrna Bliss laughed at him merrily.

"Then that is settled!" she announced. "Three hundred francs. There

is nothing more to be said. The only question is, will Marie-Louise

let us have the house?"

"Mademoiselle," said the old priest, his eyes twinkling, "may I say

it?--you are charming! As for the arrangements, have no fear. I would

go this evening, only I have some sick to visit. But very early in the

morning I will see Marie-Louise, and by the time mademoiselle and her

father have had breakfast the house will be at their disposal."

She reached her hand across the gate to thank Father Anton and bid the

cure good evening--but Jean no longer heard a word. His mind seemed to

be clashing discordantly; his thoughts in dissension, in open hostility

one to another. She was to live in the house on the bluff.

Marie-Louise was to stay there, too. One moment he saw no objection to

the plan; the next moment, for a thousand vague, fragmentary reasons,

that in their entire thousand would not form a single concrete whole

that he could grasp, he did not like it at all.

He answered Father Anton's "_au revoir_" mechanically, as they started

back for the Bas Rhone. She was in a hurry now, all life, all

excitement--half running.

"Did I not tell you, Jean, that I would find just what I wanted?" she

called out in gay spirits.

She had told him nothing of the sort.

"Yes," said Jean.

They reached the Bas Rhone, and there, in the doorway, she turned.

"I must find my father, and tell him," she said. There was a smile, a

flash of the grey eyes, a glint from the bronze-crowned head, a quick

little impetuous pressure on his arm, a laugh soft and musical as the

rippling of a brook; and then: "Until to-morrow, Jean."

And she was gone.

Until to-morrow! The words were strangely familiar. Papa Fregeau was

hurrying through the cafe. Jean turned away. He had no wish to talk

to Papa Fregeau--or any one else. He walked down to the beach--and his

eyes, across the bay, fixed on the headland. Yes, that was it! Until

to-morrow--that was what Marie-Louise had said--until to-morrow.

He went on along the beach, his brain feverishly chaotic. She had been

like a vision, a glorious vision, suddenly gone, as she had stood there

in the doorway. Her name was Myrna Bliss. Why not, since Father Anton

could not go that night, why not go to Marie-Louise himself and tell

her about the house? Yes; he would do that.

He crossed the beach to the road again, and started on--walking

rapidly. As he neared the little bridge, his pace slowed. At the

bridge he halted. Perhaps it would be better not to go--it would be

better left to Father Anton, that!

"_Sacre bleu_!" cried Jean suddenly aloud. "What is the matter with

me? What has happened?"

But he went no further along the road; for, after a moment, he turned,

retracing his steps slowly toward Bernay-sur-Mer.

And so that night Jean did not go to Marie-Louise. But there, at the

house on the bluff, later on, Marie-Louise, after Mother Fregeau had

gone to bed, took the beacon that Jean had made and placed it upon the

table in the front room where, before, that other beacon, the great

lamp, had stood. And for a long time she sat before it, her elbows on

the table, now looking at the little clay figure, now staring through

the window to the headland's point where sometimes she could see the

surf splash silver white in the moonlight. It had been a happy

afternoon in many ways; but there was something that would not let it

be all happiness, for there was confusion in her thoughts. The house

was lonely now, and Uncle Gaston had gone; it did not seem true, it did

not seem that it could be he would not open that door again and come

thumping in with the nets over his shoulders and the wooden floats

bumping on the floor--and the tears unbidden filled her eyes. And her

talk with Jean somehow had not satisfied her, had not dispelled that

intuition that troubled her, for all that he had laughed at her for it;

and they had not, after all, settled what she was to do now that Uncle

Gaston was gone, for, instead of talking more about it, Jean had

forgotten all about her for ever so long while he had worked at the

little clay figure.

Her eyes, from the window, fastened on the beacon with its open,

outstretched arms--and, suddenly, confusion went and great tenderness

came. He had made it for her, and he had said that--that it _was_ her.

"Jean's beacon," she said softly.

And presently she went upstairs to the little attic room, and

undressed, and blew out the candle; and, in her white night-robe, the

black hair streaming over her shoulders, the moonlight upon her, she

knelt beside the bed.

"Make me that, _mon Pere_," she whispered; "make me that--Jean's beacon

all through my life."

-- V --

"WHO IS JEAN LAPARDE?"

The mattress was of straw--and the straw had probably been garnered in

a previous generation, if not in a prehistoric age! It was so old that

it was a shifting, lumpy mass of brittle chaff, whose individual units

at unexpected moments punctured the ticking and, nettle-wise, stuck

through the coarse sheet. It was not comfortable. It had not been

comfortable all night. Truly, the best that could be said for the Bas

Rhone was that, as Father Anton in his gentle way had taken pains to

make it clear, its proprietors were well-intentioned--and that was a

source of comfort only as far as it went!

Myrna Bliss wriggled drowsily into another position--and a moment later

wriggled back into the old one. Then she opened her eyes, and stared

about her. The morning sun was streaming in through the window. She

observed this with sleepy amazement. After all then, she must have

slept more than she had imagined, in spite of the awful bed.

The _lap-lap-lap_ of the sea came to her. In through the open window

floated the voices of children at play in the street; from down on the

beach the sound of men's voices, shouting and calling cheerily to each

other, reached her; from below stairs some sort of a family reunion

appeared to be in progress. She could hear that absurd Papa Fregeau

talking as though he were a soda-water bottle with the cork suddenly

exploded!

"Ah, _mignonne--cherie_! You are back! You will go away no more--not

for a day! I have been in despair! It is the Americans! I have been

miserable! _Tiens, embrasse-moi_, my little Lucille!"

There was the commotion of a playful struggle, then the resounding

smack of a kiss--and then a woman's voice.

"Such a simpleton as you are, _mon_ Jacques!"--it was as though one

were talking to a child. "So they have put you in despair, these

Americans! Well, then, I am back. And listen!"--importantly. "What

do you think?"

"Think?" cried Papa Fregeau excitedly. "But I do not think!"

"That is true," was the response; "so I will tell you. They are going

away this morning."

"_Merci_!" exclaimed Papa Fregeau fervently. "I am very glad!"

"They are going to Marie-Louise's."

"To Marie-Louise's!"--incredulously. "You tell me that they are going

to Marie-Louise's?"

"Yes; to Marie-Louise's, stupid! Father Anton came an hour ago to make

the arrangements. They are to rent the house, and Marie-Louise is to

remain there _en domestique_. Now what have you to say to that?"

"_Mon Dieu_!" ejaculated Papa Fregeau, with intense earnestness. "That

I am sorry for Marie-Louise!"

Myrna Bliss laughed softly, delightedly to herself--and then, with a

sudden little gasp, sat bolt upright in bed. The whole thing,

everything since yesterday afternoon had been inconceivably

preposterous--and she herself preposterous most of all! If her father

ever heard the truth of it, what a scene there would be!

She got out of bed impulsively, walked to the window, and leaned her

elbows on the sill, her brows gathered in a perplexed little frown.

Just what had happened anyway? She had decided ten minutes after they

had arrived in Bernay-sur-Mer that she would die of ennui if she stayed

there. They had started for a walk, she and her father, and, without

saying anything to him, she had turned back and taken it upon herself

to inform this fat, effervescent little hotel proprietor that they

would go on that afternoon. She had intended, during the walk, to tell

her father what she had done, and, in fact, had told him; and then on

her return after that--yes, that meeting on the bridge--she had

countermanded her orders, and not only countermanded them but had even

rented a cottage! Her father had seen nothing extraordinary in it,

which was natural enough--since he left all travelling arrangements to

her. Indeed, on the contrary, as Bernay-sur-Mer had seemed to appeal

to him, he had been rather taken with the idea--if perhaps a trifle

sceptical as to the success of the housekeeping plan. In a word, if

the discovery of what she believed to be suitable accommodations had

induced her to change her mind and stay in Bernay-sur-Mer, it was

perfectly satisfactory to him. The brows smoothed out. As far as her

father was concerned, that was all there was to it. She had been the

practical manager ever since her mother had died five years before.

The brows puckered up again. Her father would never give it a second

thought, he would never for an instant imagine there was any ulterior

motive for what she had done. How could he--when the real reason was

so utterly absurd, ridiculous and unheard of! Fancy! What would that

select and ultra-exclusive set in Paris say? What if it ever came to

the ears of New York! Myrna Bliss to bury herself alive in a little

Mediterranean village that was probably not even on the map, and all at

a glance from the eyes of a--fisherman! They wouldn't believe it. Who

would believe it! It was unimaginable!

Dainty little fingers reached up and drummed with their pink tips on

the window pane; the pucker became more pronounced. Well, she _had_

done it, nevertheless. And why was it so absurd, so ridiculous, so

impossible after all? She would do exactly the same thing over again

without an instant's hesitation. It was quite true the man was a

fisherman--but he did not _look_ like a fisherman. He was magnificent!

It was not ridiculous at all--it was piquantly delightful. Neither was

it so absurdly impossible--if she did not stay in Bernay-sur-Mer, it

would only be to choose some other place equally as tiresome--and

without even a "fisherman" to compensate for it. What a face the man

had! It was not merely handsome, it was--well, it was the prototype of

what the artist coterie that buzzed around her father day and night was

forever attempting to give expression to, but which, until now, she had

never believed could exist in real life. He would be a refreshing

change this astounding man-creature, this Jean Laparde, after the vapid

attentions of the vapid men who made up her life in the social whirl of

Paris--Count von Heirlich and Lord Barnvegh, for examples, out of a

host of satellites who were constantly at her heels, because, of

course, she was an heiress; and whose attentions she endured because,

of course, some day she must marry, and because, of course again, to

marry anything less than a title, a name, fame, was quite out of the

question. As for that, no one expected anything but a brilliant match

for her--and certainly she expected nothing less for herself. What a

pity that they were not like Jean Laparde, those men of her world!

The fingers, from the window pane, tossed back a truant coil of hair;

the white shoulders lifted in a little shrug. Paris--New York! That

was all the world she knew. New York once a year--Paris the rest of

the time. Expatriates--for art! That's what they were! Art--her

father was obsessed with it. It was a mania with him; it was the last

thing in the world that interested her. As a matter of fact, she

couldn't seem to think of anything that particularly interested her.

One tired quickly enough of the social merry-go-round--after a season

it became inane. One surely had the right to amuse one's self with a

new sensation--if one could find it! The man had the physique of a

young god. A fisherman--well, what of it? He was splendid. He was

more than splendid. Even the crude dress seemed to enhance him. It

was a face that had made her catch her breath in that long second when

their eyes had met. Yes, of course--why not admit it?--he interested

her. He was rugged, he was strong, and above all he was supremely a

man. Of course, it was only a matter of a week, a month, the time they

chose to stay there; but it would be a decided novelty while it lasted.

She laughed suddenly aloud--a low, rippling little laugh. Actually the

man was already her slave! Imagine a man like that her slave!

Certainly it would be a new sensation. What a strange thrill it had

given her when she had first caught sight of him on the bridge the

afternoon before. Well, why shouldn't it have done so--a fisherman

with a face like that? It was amazing! Think of finding such a man in

such a situation! Was it any wonder that she had thrilled--even if he

were only a fisherman? In Paris, of course, she could not have done

what she had done, it would have been quite out of the question, there

were the conventions--but then in Paris one didn't see men like that!