"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 bête!" 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, là, là, once I was young like you, and Lucille, ma chérie, 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 Rhône 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 Rhône—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 Rhône 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 poupées, 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