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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/34065-8.txt b/34065-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..092a5a4 --- /dev/null +++ b/34065-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10175 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy +Bulstrode, by Marie Van Vorst + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode + +Author: Marie Van Vorst + +Illustrator: Alonzo Kimball + +Release Date: October 13, 2010 [EBook #34065] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMY BULSTRODE *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + +[Frontispiece: The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and +madame "_pour les enfants_"] + + + + + +The Sentimental + Adventures of + Jimmy Bulstrode + + + +BY + +MARIE VAN VORST + + + +With Illustrations by + +ALONZO KIMBALL + + + + +NEW YORK + +HURST & COMPANY + +PUBLISHERS + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY + +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + +Published March, 1908 + + + + +TO THE MEMORY + +OF + +H. E. TESCHEMACHER + + + + +CONTENTS + + +_THE FIRST ADVENTURE_ + +In which he buys a Christmas tree + + +_THE SECOND ADVENTURE_ + +In which he tries to buy a portrait + + +_THE THIRD ADVENTURE_ + +In which he finds there are some things which one cannot buy + + +_THE FOURTH ADVENTURE_ + +In which he makes three people happy + + +_THE FIFTH ADVENTURE_ + +In which he makes nobody happy at all + + +_THE SIXTH ADVENTURE_ + +In which he discards a knave and saves a queen + + +_THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE_ + +In which he becomes the possessor of a certain piece of property + + +_THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE_ + +In which he comes into his own + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +From drawings by ALONZO KIMBALL + + +_The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame "pour +les enfants"_ . . . . . . Frontispiece + +"_I only like him like a kind, kind friend_" + +_In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing_ + +"_I've had a telegram from my husband_" + + + + +THE FIRST ADVENTURE + + + +I + +IN WHICH HE BUYS A CHRISTMAS TREE + +There was never in the world a better fellow than Jimmy Bulstrode. If +he had been poorer his generosities would have ruined him over and over +again. He was always being taken in, was the recipient of hundreds of +begging letters, which he hired another soft-hearted person to read. +He offended charitable organizations by never passing a beggar's +outstretched hand without dropping a coin in it. He was altogether a +distressingly impracticable rich person, surrounded by people who +admired him for what he really was and by those who tried to squeeze +him for what he was worth! + +It was a general wonder to people who knew him slightly why Bulstrode +had never married. The gentleman himself knew the answer perfectly, +but it amused him to discuss the question in spite of the pain, as well +as for the pleasure that it caused him to consider--_the reason why_. + +Mary Falconer, the woman he loved, was the wife of a man of whom +Bulstrode could only think in pitiful contempt. But, thanks to an +element of chivalry in the character of the hero of this story the +years, as time went on, spread back of both the woman and the man in an +honorable series, of whose history neither one had any reason to be +ashamed. + +Nevertheless, it struck them both as rather humorous, after all, that +of the three concerned her husband should be the only renegade and, +notwithstanding, profit by the combined good faith of his wife and the +man who loved her. + +Oh, there was nothing easy in the task that Jimmy set for himself! And +it did not facilitate matters that Mary Falconer scarcely ever helped +him in the least! She was a beautiful woman, a tender woman, and there +were times when her friend felt that she cleverly and cruelly taunted +him with Puritanism and with his simple, old-fashioned ideas and +crystal clearness of vision, the _culte_ he had regarding marriage and +the sacred way in which he held bonds and vows. It was no help at all +to think she rebelled and jested at his reserve; that she did her best +to break it--and there were times when it was a brilliant siege. But +down in her heart she respected him, and as she saw around her the +domestic wrecks with which the matrimonial seas are encumbered, and +knew that her own craft promised to go safely through the storm, Mary +Falconer more than once had been grateful to the man. + +As far as Bulstrode himself was concerned, each year--there had been +ten of them--he found the situation becoming more difficult and +dangerous. Not only did the future appear to him impossible as things +were, but he began to hate his arid past. He was sometimes led to ask, +what, after all, was he getting out of his colossal sacrifice? The +only reward he wanted was the woman herself, and, unless her husband +died, she would never be his. Bulstrode had not found that he could +solve the problem, and now and then he let it go from sheer weariness +of heart. + + +In the face of the window of the drawing-room where Bulstrode sat on +this afternoon of an especial winter's day the storm cast wreaths of +snow that clung and froze, or dropped like feathers down against the +sill. The gentleman had his predilections even in New York, and in the +open fireplace the logs crumbled and disintegrated to ashen caves +wherein the palpitating jewels of the heat were held. Except for this +old-fashioned warmth, there was none other in the room, whose white +wainscoting and pillars, low ceilings and quaint chimney-piece, +characterized one of those agreeably proportioned houses still to be +found in lower New York around Washington Square. + +Bulstrode had received about half an hour ago a letter whose qualities +and suggestions were something disturbing to him: + + +"There is such a thing, believe me" (Mary Falconer wrote in the pages +which Bulstrode opened to read for the twentieth time), "as the _gloom_ +of Christmas, Jimmy. People won't frankly own to it. They're afraid +of seeming sour and crabbed. But don't you, who are so exquisitely apt +to feelings--to other people's feelings,--at once confess it? It +attacks the spinster in the bustling winter streets as she is elbowed +by some person, exuberantly a mother, and so arrogantly laden with +delicious-looking parcels that she is almost a personal Christmas tree +herself. I'm confident this 'gloom of Christmas' grips the wretched +little beings at toy-shop windows as they stand 'choosin'' their +never-to-be-realized toys. I'm sure it haunts the vagrant and the +homeless in a city fairly redolent of holly and dinners, and where the +array of other people's homes is terrifying. And, my dear friend, it +is so horribly subtle that no doubt it attacks others whose only grudge +is that their hearths are not built for Christmas trees or the hanging +of stockings. But these unfortunates are not saying anything aloud, +therefore we must not pry! + +"There's a jolly house-party on at the Van Schoolings'. We're to go +down to-morrow to Tuxedo and pass Christmas night, and you are, of +course, asked and wanted. Knowing your dread of these family +feasts--possibly from just such a ghost of the gloom--I was sure you +would refuse. But it's a wonderful place for a talk or two, and I +shall hope you will go--will come, not even follow, but go down with +me." + + +There was more of the letter--there always is more of women's letters. +Their minds and pens are so charmingly facile; there is nothing a woman +can do better than talk, except to write. + +Bulstrode smoked slowly, the pages between his fingers, his thoughts +travelling like wanderers towards a home from which a ban had kept them +aliens. His eyes drifted to the beginning of the letter. He wasn't +familiar with the homeless vagrant class. His charities to that part +of the population consisted in donations to established societies, and +haphazard giving called forth by a beggar's extended hand. + +If anybody may be immune to the melancholy of which his friend Mrs. +Falconer spoke, it should surely be this gentleman, smoking his cigar +before the fire. The unopened letters--there was a pile of them--would +have offered ample reason why. No one of the lot but bore some +testimony to the generous heart which, beneath dinner-jacket and behind +the screw-faced watch with the picture in the back of it, beat so +healthy and so well. + +But the bestowal of benefits, whilst it may beautify the giver, does +not always transform itself into the one benefit desired and console +the bestower! Bulstrode had a charming home. He was alone in it. He +had his clubs where bachelors like himself, more or less infected with +Christmas gloom, would be glad to greet him. He had his friends, many +of them, and their home circles were complete. His, by force of +circumstances, began and ended with himself, and as if triumphant to +have found so tempting a victim, the gloom came and possessed Bulstrode +as he sat and mused. + +But the decided sadness that stole across his face bore no relation, to +the season, to whose white mystery and holy beauty there was something +in his boyish, kindly heart that always responded. + +The sadness Mrs. Falconer's letter awakened would not sleep. What his +Christmas _might_ be...! He had only to order his motor, to call for +her and drive over the ferry; to sit beside her in the train, to drive +with her again across the wintry roads. He had but to see her, watch +her, talk with her, share with her the day and evening, to have his +Christmas as nearly what a feast should be as dreams could ask. The +whole festival was there: joy, good-will--peace? No. Not peace for +him or for her--not that; everything else, but not that. And he had +been travelling for five weary months in order to make himself keep for +her that peace a little longer. + +Bulstrode sighed here, lifted the letter where there was more of it to +his lips--held it out toward the fire as if the red jewels were to set +themselves around it, thought differently, and putting it back in its +envelope, thrust it in the pocket of his waistcoat. + +"Ruggles," he asked the servant who had come in, "you sent the despatch +to Tuxedo?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"There'll be later a note to send. I'll ring. Well, what is it?" + +"There's a person at the door, sir, who insists on seeing you." + +The servant's tone--one particularly jarring to the ears of a man who +had fellowship with more than one class of his kind--made the master +look sharply up. Ruggles was a new addition to the household, and +Bulstrode did not like him. + +"A person," Bulstrode repeated, quietly; "what sort of a person?" + +"A man, sir." + +"Not a gentleman? No," he nodded gently; "I see you do not think him +one. Yet that he is a man is in his favor. There are some gentlemen +who aren't men, you know. Let him in." + +In doing so Ruggles seemed to let in the night. Bulstrode had, in the +warmth of his fragrant room, forgotten that outside was the wintry +dark. Ruggles, in letting the man in, had the air of thrusting him in, +and shut the door behind the visitor with a click. + +The creature himself let in the cold; he seemed made of it. The snow +clung to his shoulders; his shoes, tied up with strings, were encrusted +with it. His coat, buttoned to his chin, frayed at the cuffs and +edges, was thin and weather-stained. He had a pale face, a royal +growth of beard--this was all Bulstrode had time to remark. He rose. + +"My servant says you want to see me. Come near the fire, won't you?" + +The visitor did not stir. Bewildered in the warmth of the room, he +stood far back on the edge of the thick rug. To all appearances he was +a bit of driftwood from the streets, one of the usual vagrant class who +haunt the saloons and park and steer from lockup to night-lodging, +until they finally steer themselves entirely off the face of history, +and the potter's field gathers them in. Nothing but his entrance into +this conventional room before this well-balanced member of decent +society was peculiar. + +As he still neither moved nor spoke, Bulstrode, approaching him, again +invited: "Come near the fire, won't you? and when you are warm tell me +what I can do for you." + +"It's the storm," murmured the man, and a half-human look came across +his face with his words. "I mean to say, it's this hellish storm +that's got in my throat and lungs. I can't speak--it's so warm here. +It will be better in a second. No, not near the fire; +thanks--chilblains." He looked down at his poor feet. + +The voice which the storm had beaten and thrashed to painful hoarseness +was entirely out of keeping with the man's appearance, and in +intonation, accent, and language was a shock to the hearer. + +"Don't stand back like that--come into the room." Bulstrode wheeled a +chair briskly about. "There; sit down and drink this; it's a mild +blend." + +"I'm very wet," said the man. "I'll drip on the rug." + +"Hang the rug!" + +The tramp drained the glass given him at one swallow merely; it +appeared to clear his throat and release his speech. He gathered his +rags together. + +"I beg pardon for forcing myself on you like this, but I fancy I +needn't tell you I'm desperate--desperate!" He held out his hand; it +shook like a pale ghost's. "I look it, I'm sure. I haven't eaten a +meal or slept in a bed for a fortnight. I've begged work and charity. +All day I've been shovelling snow, but I'm too weak to work now." + +He was being led to a chair. He sank in it. "Before they sent me to +the Island I decided to try a ruse. I went into a saloon and opened a +directory, and I said, 'The first name I put my finger upon I'll take +as good luck, and I'll go and see the person, man or woman. I opened +to James Thatcher Bulstrode, 9 Washington Square." He half smiled; the +pale, trembling hand was waving like a pitiful flag, a signal of +distress to catch the sight of some bark that might lend aid. "So I +came here. When there seemed actually to be some chance of my getting +in, why, my courage failed me. I don't expect you to believe my story +or to believe anything, except that I am desperate--desperate. It's +below zero to-night out there--infernally cold." He took the pin out +of the collar turned up around his neck and let his coat fall back. +Under it Bulstrode saw he wore a thin flannel shirt. The tramp +repeated to himself, as it were, "It's a bad storm." + +He looked up in a dazed fashion at his host as if for acceptance of his +remark. In the easy chair, half swathed in rags, pitiful in thinness, +dripping from shoes and clothes water that the storm had drenched into +him, he was a sorry object in the atmosphere of the well-ordered +conventional room. The heat and whiskey, the famine and exposure, cast +a film across his eyes and brain. He indistinctly saw his host pass +into the next room and shut the door behind him. + +"By Jove!" he murmured under his breath in wonder find dumb thanks for +the shelter. "By Jove!" The stimulant filtered agreeably through him; +more charitable than any element with which he had been lately +familiar, the fire's heat began to thaw the ice in his bones. He laid +his dripping hat on his knees, his thin hands folded themselves over +it, his eyes closed. For hours he had shuffled about the streets to +keep from freezing. At the charity organization they gave work he was +too weak to do; he had not eaten a substantial meal in so long that he +had forgotten the taste of food and had ceased to crave it. In the +soft light of lamp and fire he fell into a doze. Bulstrode, if he had +stolen softly in to look at his visitor, would have seen a man not over +thirty years of age, although want and dissipation added ten to his +appearance. He would have been quick to take note of the fine, +delicately cut face under the disfiguring beard, and of the slender, +emaciated body deformed by its rags. + +Possibly he did so noiselessly come in and stand by the unconscious +creature, but the sleeping vagabond, dreaming fitful, half-painful +things, was ignorant of the visitor. Finally across his mind's sharp +despair came a sense of warmth and comfort, and in its spell he awoke. + +A servant, not the one who had thrust him into the drawing-room, but +another with a friendly face, stood at his side, and in broken English +asked the guest of Bulstrode to follow him; and gathering his scattered +senses together and picking up his rags and what was left of himself, +the creature obeyed a summons which he supposed was to hale him again +into the winter streets. + + +It was some three hours later that Bulstrode in his dining-room +entertained his singular guest. + +"I have asked you to dine with me," he explained, with a certain +graciousness, as if he claimed, not gave, a favor, "as I'm all alone +to-night. It's Christmas eve, you know--or perhaps you've been more or +less glad to forget it?" + +The young man who took the chair indicated him was unrecognizable as +the stranger who had staggered into 9 Washington Square three or four +hours before. Turned out in spotless linen and a good suit that fitted +him fairly well, shaven face save for a mustache above his lip, bathed, +brushed, refreshed by nourishment and sleep and repose, he looked like +one who has been in the waters, possibly a long, long time; like one +who has drifted, been bruised, shattered, and beaten, but who has +nevertheless drifted to shore; and in spite of his borrowed clothes, +his scarred, haggard face, he looked like a gentleman, and Bulstrode +from the moment he spoke had recognized him as one. + +The food was a feast to the stranger, in spite of nourishment already +given him by Prosper. He restrained the ferocious hunger that woke at +sight and smell of the good things, forced himself not to cry out with +eagerness, not to tear and grasp the eatables off the plate, not to +devour like a beast. Every time he raised his eyes he met those of the +butler Ruggles, and as quickly the stranger looked away. The face of +the servant standing by the sideboard, back of him the white and +gleaming array of the Bulstrode family silver like piles of snow, was +for some reason or other not a pleasant face; the stranger did not +think it so. + +Once again seated in the room he had entered in his outcast state, a +cup of coffee at his hand, a cigar between his lips, the agreeable +atmosphere of the old room and its charming objects, the kindly look on +the face of his host, all swam before him. Looking frankly at +Bulstrode, he said, not without grace of manner: + +"I give it up. I can't--it's not to be made out or understood..." + +"Do you," interrupted the other, "feel equal to talking a little: to +telling me how it happens that you are wandering, as you seem to be? +For from the moment you first spoke----" + +The young man nodded. "I'm a gentleman. It's worse somehow--I don't +know why, but it is." + +Bulstrode thought out for him: "It's like remembering agreeable places +to which you feel you will never return. Only," he quickly offered, +"in your case you must, you know, go back." + +"No," said the young man, quietly. + +There was so much entire renunciation in what he said that the other +could not press it. + +"Better still, you can then go on?" + +The vagrant looked at his companion as if to say: "Since I've known +you--seen you--I have thought that I might." But he said nothing more, +and Bulstrode, reading a diffidence which did not displease him, +finished: + +"You shall go on, and I'll help you." + +The stranger bowed his head, and the wine sent the color up until his +cheeks took the flush of health. Remaining a little bent over, his +eyes on his feet clad in Bulstrode's shoes, he said: + +"I'm an Englishman. My family is everything that's decent and all +_that_, you know, and proud. We've first-rate traditions. I'm a +younger son, and I've always been a thorn in the family's side. I've +been a sort of vagabond from the first, but never as bad as they +thought or believed." + +He paused. His recital was painful to him. Bulstrode waited, then +knocking off the ash from his cigar, urged: + +"Tell me about it, tell me frankly; it will, you see, be a relief. We +can do better that way--if I know." + +The stranger looked up at him quickly, then leaning forward in his +chair, talked as it were to the carpet, and rapidly: + +"It's just a year ago. I'd been going it rather hard and got into +trouble more or less--lost at cards and the races, and been running up +a lot of bills. My father was awfully down on me. I'd gone home for +the holidays and had a talk with my father and asked him to pay up for +me just this once more. He refused, and we got very angry, both of us, +and separated in a rage. The house was full of people--a Christmas +ball and a tree. My father had, so it happened, quite a lot of money +in the house. I knew where it was--I had seen him count it and put it +away. That night for some reason the whole thing sickened me, in the +mess I was in, and I left and went up to London without even saying +good-by. In the course of the week my brother came and found me drunk +in my rooms. It seems that the money had been taken from my father's +safe, and they accused me." + +"But," interrupted Bulstrode, eagerly, "it was a simple thing to +exculpate yourself." + +Ignoring his remark, the other continued: "I have never seen my father +since that night." + +No amount of former deception can persuade a man that he is a lame +judge of character. The young Englishman's emaciated face, where eyes +spoiled by dissipation looked out at his companion, was to this +impulsive reader of humanity a good face. Bulstrode, however, saw what +he wanted to see in most people. Given a chance to study them, or +rather further to know them intimately, he might indeed have ended by +finding in some cases a few of the imagined qualities. Here misery was +evident, degradation as well, timidity, and hesitation,--but honesty? +Bulstrode fancied that its characters were not effaced, and he helped +the recital: + +"Since you so left your people?" + +"The steady go down!" acknowledged the other. "I worked my passage to +the States on a liner--I stoked..." + +"Any chap," encouraged the gentleman, "who can do that can pull +himself, I should say, out of a worse hole." + +"There's scarcely a bad habit I haven't had down in the hole with me," +confessed the other, "and they've held me there." + +They both remained for a few seconds without speaking, and the host's +eyes wandered to where, over his mantel-shelf, in a great gold frame +was the portrait of a lady done by Baker. A quaint young lady in her +early teens, with bare arms and frilled frock. She had Bulstrode's +eyes. By her side was the black muzzle of a great hound, on whose head +the little hand rested. Under the picture, from a silver bowl of +roses, came a fragrance that filled the room, and, close by stood a +photograph of another lady, very modern, very mocking, and very lovely. + +Bulstrode, delicately drawing inferences from the influences in his +life, and, if not consciously grateful, reflecting them charmingly, +broke the silence: + +"You must have formed some plan or other in your mind when you came to +my door? What, in the event of your being received, did you intend to +ask me to do?" + +The stranger lifted his head and his response was irrelevant: "It seems +a hundred years since I stood there in that storm and your man pulled +me in. I haven't seen a place like this for long, not the inside of +decent houses. When I left the ship I managed to get down with a chap +as far as Florida, where he had an orange-plantation, but the venture +fell through. I fancy the rest is as well forgotten. When I came in +here to-night I intended to ask you for a Christmas gift of money, and +I should have gone out and drunk myself to hell." + +"You spoke"--Bulstrode fetched him back--"of your father and your +brother; was there no one else?" + +The younger man looked up without reply. + +"There has been, then, no more kindly influence in your life--no +sister--no woman?" + +Bulstrode brought out the words; in his judgment they meant so very +much. He saw a change cross the other's face. + +"I fancy there are not many men who haven't had a woman in their lives +for good or bad," he said, with a short laugh. + +"Well," urged the gentleman, gently, "and for what was this woman?" + +As if he repelled the insistence, the young fellow stammered: + +"I say, this putting a fellow on the rack----" + +But Bulstrode leaned forward in his chair and rested his hand on his +companion's knee and pleaded: + +"Speak out frankly--frankly--I believe I shall understand; it will free +your heart to speak. This influence which to a man should be the +best--the best--what was it to you?" Bulstrode sat back and waited, +and the other man seemed quite lost in melancholy meditations for some +few seconds. Then Bulstrode put it: "For a young man, no matter how +wild, to leave his home under the misapprehension you claim:--for him +to make no effort to reinstate himself: with no attempt at justice: for +him to become a wanderer--there must be an extraordinary reason, almost +an improbable one----" + +"I don't ask you to hear," said the vagrant, quickly. + +"I wish to do so. It would have been a simple matter to exculpate +yourself--you had not the funds in your possession, had never had them. +You took no means to clear yourself?" + +"None." + +Bulstrode looked hard at the face his care had revealed to him: the +deep eyes, the neck, chin, the sensitive mouth--there was a certain +distinction about him in his borrowed clothes. + +"Where is the woman now?" + +"She married my brother--she is Lady Waring--my name," tardily +introduced the stranger, "is Cecil Waring." + +Bulstrode bowed. "Tell me something of her, in a word--in a word." + +"Well, she is always clever," said the young man, slowly, "always very +beautiful, and then very poor." + +"Yes," nodded Bulstrode. + +"She is like the rest of us--one of a fast wild set--a----" + +"A gambler?" Bulstrode helped the description. + +"She played," acknowledged the young man, "as the rest do--bridge." + +"Were you engaged to her, Waring?" + +"Yes," he slowly acknowledged, as if each word hurt him. + +"And did she believe you guilty?" + +"I think," said the other, with an inscrutable expression, "she could +not have done so." + +"But she let you go under suspicion?" + +"Yes." + +"Without a word of good faith, of comfort?" + +"Yes." + +"Did she know of your embarrassments?" + +"Too well." + +"You tell me she was poor and--possibly she had embarrassments of her +own?" + +"Possibly." + +Bulstrode came over to him. + +"Was she at the Christmas ball that night?" + +The young man rose as well, his eyes on his questioner's; the color had +all left his face--he appeared fascinated--then he shook himself and +unexpectedly laughed. + +"No," he said; "oh no." + +The older man bowed his head and replied, quite inaptly: + +"I understand!" + +He took a turn across the room. + +The few steps brought him in front of the mantel and the photograph of +the modern lady in her furs and close hat. He stood and met the fire +of her mocking eyes. + +"And you _believe_ him, Jimmy!" he could hear her say in her delicious +voice. + +"Yes," he mentally told her, "I believe him." + +"You think that to save a woman's name and honor he has become an +outcast on the face of the earth ... Jimmy!" + +He still gently replied to her: + +"Men who love, you know, have but one code--the woman and honor." + +Still mocking, but gentle as would have been the touch of the roses in +the bowl near the photograph, her voice told him, + +"Then he's worth saving, Jimmy." + +Worth saving ... he agreed, and turned to his guest. In doing so he +saw that Ruggles had come into the drawing-room to remove the +coffee-tray. + +"Beg pardon, sir, but you mentioned there would be a letter to send +shortly?" + +"By Jove! so I did!" exclaimed Bulstrode. "I beg your pardon; will you +excuse me while I write a line at the desk?" The line was an order to +the florist. + +For some reason the eyes of the Englishman had not quitted the butler's +face, and Ruggles, with cold insolence, had stared at him in turn. +Waring, albeit in another man's clothes, fed and seated before a +friendly hearth, and once again within the pale of his own class, had +regained something of his natural air and feeling of superiority. He +resented the servant's insolence, and his face was angrily flushed as +Bulstrode gave his orders, and the man left the room. + +"I must go away," he said, rather brusquely. "I can never thank you +for what you have done. I feel as if I had been in a dream." + +"Sit down." His companion ignored his words. "Sit down." + +"It's late." + +"For what, my friend?" + +"I must find some place to sleep." + +"You have found it," gently smiled Bulstrode. "Your room is prepared +for you here." Then he interrupted: "No thanks--no thanks. If what +you tell me is all I think it is, I'm proud to share my roof with you, +Waring." + +"Don't think well of me--don't!" blurted out the other. "You don't +know what a ruined vagabond I am. When you send me out to-morrow I +shall begin again; but let me tell you that although I've herded with +tramps and thieves, been in the hospital and lock-up, and worked in the +hell of a furnace in a ship's hold, nothing hurt me any more, not after +I left England--not after those days when I waited in Liverpool for a +word--for a sign--not after that, all you see the marks of now--nothing +hurts now but the memory. I'm immune." + +"You will feel differently--you will humanize." + +"Never!" exclaimed the tramp. + +"To-night," said Bulstrode, simply. + +Waring looked at him curiously. + +"What a wonderful man!" he half murmured. "I was led to you by fate: +you have forced me to lay my soul bare to you--and now..." + +"Let's look things in the face together," suggested the gentleman, +practically. "I have a ranch out West. A good piece of property. +It's in the hands of a clever Englishman and promises well. How would +you like to go out there and start anew? He'll give you a welcome, and +he's a first-rate business man. Will you go?" + +Waring had with his old habit thrust his hands in his pockets. He +stood well on his feet. Bulstrode remarked it. He looked meditatively +down between the soles of his shoes. + +"You mean to say you give me a chance--to--to----" + +"Begin anew, Waring." + +"I drink a great deal," said the young man. + +"You will swear off." + +"I've gambled away all the money I ever had." + +"You will be taking care of mine, and it will be a point of honor." + +"I'm under a cloud---- + +"Not in my eyes," said Bulstrode, stoutly. + +"--which I can never clear." + +Bulstrode made a dismissing gesture. + +"I should want the chap out there to know the truth." + +"The truth," caught his hearer, and the other as quickly interrupted: + +"To know under what circumstances I left my people." + +"No, that is unnecessary," said Bulstrode, firmly. "Nobody has any +right to your past. I don't know his. That's the beauty of the +plains--the freshness of them. It's a new start--a clean page." + +Still the guest hesitated. + +"I don't believe it's worth while. You see, I've batted about now so +much alone, with nobody near me but the lowest sort; I've given in so +long, with no care to do better, that I haven't any confidence in +myself. I don't want you to see me fail, sir,--I don't want to go back +on you." + +Bulstrode had heard very understandingly part of the man's word, part +of his excuse for his weakness. + +"That's it," he said, musingly. "Butting about alone. It's +that--loneliness--that's responsible for so many things." + +Looking up brightly as his friend whose derelict dangerous vessel, so +near to port and repair, was heading for the wide seas again, Bulstrode +wondered: "If such a thing could be that some friend, not too +uncongenial, could be found to go with you and stand as it were by +you--some friend who knew--who comprehended----" + +Waring laughed. "I haven't such a one." + +"Yes," said the older gentleman, "you have, and he will stand by you. +I'll go West with you myself to-morrow--on Christmas day. I need a +change. I want to get away for a little time." + +Waring drew back a step, for Bulstrode had risen. Cold Anglo-Saxon as +he was, the unprecedented miracle this gentleman presented made him +seem almost lunatic. He stared blankly. + +"It's simpler than it looks." Bulstrode attempted conventionally to +shear it of a little of its eccentricity. "There's every reason why I +should look after my property out there. I've never seen it at all." + +"I'm not worth such a goodness," Waring faltered, earnestly,--"not +worth it." + +"You will be." + +"Don't hope it." + +"I believe it," smiled the gentleman; "and at all events I'll stand by +you till you are--if you'll say the word." + +Waring, whose lips were trembling, repeated vaguely, "The _word_?" + +"Well," replied Bulstrode, "you might say those--they're as good +any--will you stand by _me_----?" + +Making the first hearty spontaneous gesture he had shown, the young man +seized the other's outstretched hand. "Yes," he breathed; "by Heaven! +I will!" + + +It was past midnight when Bulstrode, pushing open the curtains of his +bedroom, looked out on the frozen world of Washington Square, where of +tree and arch not an outline was visible under the disguising snow; and +above, in the sky swept clear of clouds by the strongest of winds, rode +the round full disk of the Christmas moon. + +The adoption of a vagrant, the quixotic decision he had taken to leave +New York on Christmas day, the plain facts of the outrageous folly his +impulsiveness led him to contemplate, had relegated his more worldly +plans to the background. Laying aside his waistcoat, he took out the +letter in whose contents he had been absorbed when Cecil Waring crossed +the threshold of his drawing-room. + +Well ... as he re-read at leisure her delightful plan for Christmas +day, he sighed that he could not do for them both better than to go two +thousand miles away! "Waring thinks himself a vagrant--and so, poor +chap, he has been; but there are vagrants of another kind." Jimmy +reflected he felt himself to be one of these others, and was led to +speculate if there were many outcasts like himself, and what +ultimately, if their courage was sufficient to keep them banished to +the end, would be the reward? + +"Since," he reflected, "there's only one thing I desire--and it's the +one thing forbidden--I fail sometimes to quite puzzle it out!" + +He had finished his preparations for the night and was about to turn +out the light, when, with his hand on the electric button, he paused, +for he distinctly heard from downstairs what sounded like a call--a cry. + +Taking his revolver from the top drawer, he went into the hall, to feel +a draft of icy air blow up the staircase, to see over the balusters the +open door of the dining-room and light within it, and to hear more +clearly the sounds that had come to him through closed doors declare +themselves to be scuffling--struggling--the half-cry of a muffled +voice--a fall, then Bulstrode started. + +"I'm coming," he declared, and ran down the stairs like a boy. + +On the dining-room floor, close to the window wide open to the icy +night, lay a man's form, and over him bent another man cruelly, with +all the animus of a bird of prey. + +The under man was Ruggles, Bulstrode's butler, his eyes starting from +their sockets, his mouth open, his color livid; he couldn't have called +out, for the other man had seized his necktie, twisted it tight as a +tourniquet around the man's gullet, and so kneeling with one knee on +his chest, Waring held the big man under. + +"I say," panted the young man, "can you lend a hand, sir? I've got +him, but I'm not strong enough to keep him." + +Bulstrode thought his servant's eyes rolled appealingly at him. He +cocked his revolver, holding it quietly, and asked coolly: + +"What's the matter with him that he needs to be kept?" + +"Would you sit on his chest, Mr. Bulstrode?" + +"No," said that gentleman. "I'll cover him so. What's the truth?" + +"I heard a queer noise," panted the Englishman, "and came out to see +what it was, and this fellow was just getting through the window. +There was another chap outside, but he got away. I caught this one +from the back, otherwise I could never have thrown him." + +"You're throttling him." + +"He deserves it." + +"Let him up." + +"Mr. Bulstrode...!" + +"Yes," said that gentleman, decidedly, "let him up." + +But Ruggles, released from the hand whose knuckles had ground +themselves into his windpipe, could not at once rise. The breath was +out of him, for he had been heavily struck in the stomach by a blow +from the fist of a man whose training in sport had delightfully +returned at need. + +Ruggles began to breathe like a porpoise, to grunt and pant and roll +over. He staggered to his feet, and with a string of imprecations +raised his fist at Waring, but as Bulstrode's revolver was entirely +ready to answer at command, he did not venture to leave the spot where +he stood. + +"Now," said his master, "when you get your tongue your story will be +just the same as Mr. Waring's. You found him getting away with the +silver. The probabilities are all with you, Ruggles. The police will +be here in just about five minutes. Ten to one the guilty man is known +to the officers. Now there's an overcoat and hat on the hat-rack in +the hall. I give both of you time to get away. There's the front door +and the window--which, by the way, you would better shut, Waring, as +it's a cold morning." + +Neither man moved. Without removing his eyes from the butler or +uncovering him, Bulstrode, by means of the messenger-call to the right +of the window, summoned the police. The metallic click of the button +sounded loud in the room. + +Ruggles shook his great hand high in air. + +"I'd--I'd----" + +"Never mind _that_," interrupted the householder. "The man who's +_going_ had better take his chance. There's one minute lost." + +During the next half-second the modern philanthropist breathed in +suspense. It was so on the cards that he might be obliged to apologize +to his antipathetic butler and find himself sentimentally sold by +Waring! + +But Ruggles it was who with a parting oath stepped to the +door--accelerating his pace as the daze began to pass a little from his +brain, and snatched the hat and coat, unlocked the front door, opened +it, looked quickly up and down the white streets, and then without a +word cut down the steps and across Washington Square, slowly at first, +and then on a run. + +Bulstrode turned to his visitor. + +"Come," he said, "let's go up to bed." + +"But," stammered the young man, "you're never going to let him go like +that?" + +"Yes, I am," confessed the unpractical gentleman. "I couldn't send a +man to jail on Christmas day." + +"But the police----?" + +"I shall tell them out of my window that it was a false alarm." + +Bulstrode shut and locked his door, and turning to Waring, laughed +delightedly. + +"I must tell you that when he let you in last night Ruggles did not +think you were a gentleman. He must have found out this morning that +you were very much of a man. It's astonishing where you got your +strength, though. He'd make two of you, and you're not fit in any way." + +He looked ghastly enough as Bulstrode spoke, and the gentleman put his +arm under the Englishman's. "I'll ring for the servants and have some +coffee made and fetched to your room. Lean on me." He helped the +vagabond upstairs. + +The New Yorker, whose sentimental follies were certainly a menace to +public safety and a premium to begging and vagabondage and crime, slept +well and late, and was awakened finally by the keen, bright ringing of +the telephone at his side. As he took up the receiver his whole face +illumined. + +"Merry Christmas, Jimmy!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"What _wonderful_ roses! Thanks a thousand times!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"But of course I knew! No other man in New York is sentimental enough +to have a woman awakened at eight o'clock by a bunch of flowers!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"Forgive you!" (It was clear that she did.) + + . . . . . . . . + +"Jimmy, what a day for Tuxedo, and what a shame I can't go!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"You weren't going! You mean to say that you had refused?" + + . . . . . . . . + +"I don't understand--it's the connection--West?" + +"Why, ranches look after themselves. They always do. They go right +on. You don't _mean_ it, on Christmas day!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"I shouldn't care for your reasons. They're sure to be +ridiculous--unpractical--unnecessary--don't tell them to me." + +There was a pause, and then the voice, which had undergone a slight +change said: + +"Jack's ill again ... that's why I couldn't go to Tuxedo. I shall pass +the day here in town. I called up to tell you this--and to +suggest--but since you're going West..." + +Falconer's illnesses! How well Bulstrode knew them, and how well he +could see her alone in the familiar little drawing-room by a hearth not +built for a Christmas tree! He had promised Waring, "I'll stand by +you." It was a kind of vow--a real vow, and the poor tramp had lived +up to his. + +"Jimmy." There was a note he had never heard before; if a tone can be +a tear, it was one. + +He interrupted her. + + . . . . . . . . + +"How dear of you!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"But I haven't any Christmas tree!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"You'll fetch one? How _dear_ of you! We'll trim it--with your +roses--make it bloom. Come early and help me dress the tree." + + +Two hours later he opened the door into his breakfast-room with the +guiltiness of a truant boy. He wore culprit shame written all over his +face, and the young man who stood waiting for him in the window might +almost have read his friend's dejection in his embarrassed face. + +But Waring came eagerly forward, answered the season's greetings, and +said quickly: + +"Are you still in the same mind about the West, Mr. Bulstrode?" + +(Poor Bulstrode!) + +"I mean to say, sir, if you still feel like giving me this chance, I've +a favor to ask. Would you let me go _alone_?" + +Bulstrode gasped. + +"Since last night a lot has happened to me, not only since you've +befriended me, but since I tussled with that fellow here. I'd like a +chance to see what I can do alone. If you, as you so generously plan, +go with me, I shall feel watched--protected. It will weaken me more +than anything else. I suppose I shall go all to pieces, but I'd like +to try my strength. If I could suddenly master that chap with my fists +after months of dissipation----" + +Bulstrode finished for him: + +"You can master the rest." + +"Don't give me any extra money," pleaded the tramp, as if he foresaw +his friend's impulse. "Pay my ticket out West, if you will, and write +to the man who is there, and I'll start in." + +Bulstrode beamed on him. + +"You're a man," he assured him--"a man." + +"I may become one." + +"You're a fine fellow." + +"You'll trust me, then?" + +"Implicitly." + +"Then let me start to-day. I'm reckless--let me get away. I may get +off at the first station and pawn my clothes and drink and drink to a +lower hell than before--but let me try alone." + +"You shall go alone--and go to-day." + +Prosper came in with the coffee; he, too, was beaming, and the servants +below-stairs were all agog. Waring was a hero. + +"Prosper," said his master, in French, "will you, after you have served +breakfast, go out to the market quarters and see if you can discover +for me a medium-sized, very well-proportioned little Christmas tree? +Fetch it home with you." + +Waring smiled faintly. + +Bulstrode smiled too, and more comprehendingly, and Prosper smiled and +said: + +"Mais certainement, monsieur." + + + + +THE SECOND ADVENTURE + + + +II + +IN WHICH HE TRIES TO BUY A PORTRAIT + +Bulstrode was extremely fond of travel, and every now and then treated +himself to a season in London or Paris, and in the May following his +adventure with Waring he saw, from his apartments in the Hôtel Ritz, +from Boulevard, Bois, and the Champs Elysées, as much of the +maddeningly delicious Parisian springtime "as was good for him at his +age," so he said! It gave the feeling that he was a mere boy, and with +buoyant sensations astir in him, life had begun over again. + +Any morning between eleven and twelve Bulstrode might have been seen in +the Bois de Boulogne briskly walking along the Avenue des Acacias, his +well-filled chest thrown out, his step light and assured; cane in hand, +a boutonnière tinging the lapel of his coat; immaculate and fresh as a +rose, he exhaled good-humor, kindliness, and well-being. + +From their traps and motors charming women bowed and smiled, the _fine +fleur_ and the _beau monde_ greeted him cordially. + +"Regardez moi ce bon Bulstrode qui se promene," if it were a Frenchman, +or, "There's dear old Jimmy Bulstrode!" if he were recognized by a +compatriot. + +Bulstrode was rather slight of build, yet with an evident strength of +body that indicated a familiarity with exercise, a healthful habit of +sport and activity. His eyes, clear-sighted and strong, looked through +the medium of no glass happily and naïvely on the world. Many years +before his hair had begun to turn gray, and had not nearly finished the +process; it grew thickly, and was quite dark about his ears and on his +brow. Having gained experience and kept his youth, he was as rare and +delightful as fine wine--as inspiring as spring. It was his heart +(Mrs. Falconer said) that made him so, his good, gentle, generous +heart!--and she should know. His fastidiousness in point of dress, and +his good taste kept him close to elegance of attire. + +"You turn yourself out, Jimmy, on every occasion," she had said, "as if +you were on the point of meeting the woman you loved." And Bulstrode +had replied that such consistent hopefulness should certainly be +ultimately rewarded. + +He gave the impression of a man who in his youth starts out to take a +long and pleasant journey and finds the route easy, the taverns +agreeable, and the scenes all the guide-book promised. Midway--(he had +turned the page of forty)--midway, pausing to look back, Bulstrode saw +the experiences of his travels in their sunny valleys, full of goodly +memories, and the future, to his sweet hopefulness, promised to be a +pleasant journey to the end. + +During the time that he spent in Paris every pet charity in the +American colony took advantage of the philanthropic Mr. Bulstrode's +passing through the city, and came to him to be set upon its feet, and +every pretty woman with an interest, hobby, or scheme came as well to +this generous millionaire, told him about her fad and went away with a +donation. + +One ravishing May morning Bulstrode, taking his usual constitutional in +the Bois, paused at the end of the Avenue des Acacias to find it +deserted and attractively quiet; he sat down on a little bench the more +reposefully to enjoy the day and time. + +There are, fortunately, certain things which, unlike money, can be +shared only with certain people; and Bulstrode felt that the pleasure +of this spring day, the charm of the opposite wood-glades into which he +meditatively looked, the tranquil as well as the buoyant joy of life, +were among those personal things so delightful when shared--and which, +if too long enjoyed alone, bring (let it be scarcely whispered on this +bewildering May morning) something like sadness! + +Before his happier mood changed his attention was attracted by a woman +who came rapidly toward the avenue from a little alley at the side. He +looked up quickly at the feminine creature who so aptly appeared upon +his musings. She was young; her form in its simple dress assured him +this. He could not see her face, for it was covered by her hands. +Abruptly taking the opposite direction, she went over to a farther +seat, where she sat down, and when the young girl put her arms on the +back of the seat, her head upon her arms, and in the remoteness this +part of the avenue offered, cried without restraint, the kind-hearted +Bulstrode felt that it was too cruel to be true. + +But soft-hearted though he was, the gentleman was a worldling as well, +and that the outburst was a ruse more than suggested itself to him as +he went over to the lovely Niobe whose abundant fair hair sunned from +under her simple straw hat and from beneath whose frayed skirt showed a +worn little shoe. + +He spoke in French. + +"Pardon, madame, but you seem in great distress." + +The poor thing started violently, and as soon as she displayed her +pretty tearful face the American recognized in her a compatriot. She +waved him emphatically away. + +"Oh, please don't notice me--don't speak to me--I didn't see that +anybody was there." + +"I am an American, too: can't I do anything for you--won't you let me?" + +And he saw at once that she wanted to be left alone. She averted her +head determinedly. + +"No, no, please don't notice me. Please go away!" + +He had nothing to do but to obey her, and as he reluctantly did so a +smart pony-cart driven by a lady alone came briskly along and drew up, +for the occupant had recognized him. + +"Get in!" she rather commanded. "My dear Jimmy, how _nice_ to find you +here, and how nice to drive you at least as far as the entrance!" + +As the rebuffed philanthropist accepted he cast a ruthful glance at the +solitary figure on the bench. + +"Do you see that poor girl over there? She's an American, and in real +trouble." + +"My _dear_ Jimmy!" His companion's tone left him in no doubt as to her +scepticism. + +"Oh, I know, I know," he interrupted, "but she's not a fraud. She's +the real thing." + +They were already gayly whirling away from the sad little figure. + +"Did you make her cry?" + +"I? Certainly not." + +"Then let the man who did wipe her tears away!" + +But Bulstrode had seen the face of the girl, and he was haunted by it +all day until the Bois and its bright atmosphere became only the +setting for an unhappy woman, young and lovely, whom it had been +impossible for him to help. + +Somebody had said that Bulstrode should have his portrait done with his +hands in his pockets, and Mrs. Falconer had replied, "Or rather with +_other_ people's hands in his pockets!" + +The next afternoon he found himself part of a group of people who, out +of charity and curiosity, patronized the Western Artists' Exhibition in +the Rue Monsieur. + +Having made a ridiculously generous donation to the support of this +league at the request of a certain lovely lady, Bulstrode followed his +generosity by a personal effort, and with not much opposition on his +part permitted himself to be taken to the exhibition. + +He was not, in the ultra sense of the word, a _connaisseur_, but he +thought he knew a horror when he saw it! So he said, and on this +afternoon his eyes ached and his offended taste cried out before he had +patiently travelled half-way down the line of canvases. + +"My dear lady," he confided _sotto voce_ to his friend, "I feel more +inclined to establish a fund for sending all these young women back to +the _prairies_, if that's where they come from, than to aid in this +slaughter of public time and taste. _Why_ don't they stay at home--and +marry?" + +"That's a vulgar and limited point of view to take," his friend +reproached him. "Don't you acknowledge that a woman has many careers +instead of one? _You_ seem to be thoroughly enjoying your liberty! +What if I should ask you why _you_ don't stay at home, and marry?" + +Bulstrode looked at his guide comprehensively and smiled gently. His +response was irrelevant. "Look at this picture! It's too dreadful for +words." + +"Hush, you're not a judge. Here and there there is evidence of great +talent." + +They had drawn up before a portrait, and poor Bulstrode caught his +breath with a groan: + +"It's too awful! It's crime to encourage it." + +Mrs. Falconer tried to lead him on. + +"Well, this _is_ an unfortunate place to stop," she confessed. "That +portrait represents more tragedy than you can see." + +"It couldn't," murmured Bulstrode. + +"The poor girl who did it has struggled on here for two years, living +sometimes on a franc a day. Just fancy! She has been trying to get +orders so that she can stay on and study. Poor thing! The people who +are interested say that she's been near to desperation. She is awfully +proud, and won't take any assistance but orders. You can imagine +_they're_ not besieging her! She has come to her last cent, I believe, +and has to go home to Idaho." + +"Let her go, my dear friend." Bulstrode was earnest. "It's the best +thing she could possibly do!" + +His companion put her hand on his arm. + +"Please be quiet," she implored. "There she is, standing over by the +door. That rather pretty girl with the disorderly blonde hair." + +Bulstrode looked up--saw her--looked again, and exclaimed: + +"Is _that_ the girl? Do you know her? Present me, will you?" + +"Nonsense." She detained him. "How you go from hot to cold! _Why_ +should you want to meet her, pray?" + +"Oh," he evaded, "it's a curious study. I want to talk to her about +art, and if you don't present me I shall speak to her without an +introduction." + +Not many moments later Bulstrode was cornered in a dingy little room, +where tea that tasted like the infusion of a haystack was being served. +He had skilfully disassociated Miss Laura Desprey from her Bohemian +companions and placed her on a little divan, before which, with a +teacup in his hand, he stood. + +She wore the same dress, the same hat--and he did not doubt the same +shoes which characterized her miserable toilet when he had surprised +her childlike display of grief on a bench in the Bois. He had done +quite right in speaking to her, and he thanked his stars that she did +not in the least remember him. + +He thought with kind humor: "No wonder she cries if she paints like +that!" + +But it was not in a spirit of criticism that he bent his friendly eyes +on the Bohemian. He had the pleasure of seeing her plainly this time, +for the window back of her admitted a generous square of light against +which her blonde head framed itself, and her untidy hair was like a +dusty mesh of gold. She regarded the amiable gentleman out of eyes +child-like and purely blue. Under her round chin the edges of a black +bow tied loosely stood out like the wings of a butterfly. Her dress +was careless and poor, but she was grace in it and youth--"and what," +thought Bulstrode, "has one a right to expect more of any woman?" He +remembered her boots and shuddered. He remembered the one franc a day +and began his campaign. + +"I want so much to meet the painter of that portrait over there," he +began. + +Her face lightened. + +"Oh, did you like it?" + +"I think it's wonderful, perfectly wonderful!" + +A slow red crept up the thin contour of her cheek. She leaned forward! + +"Do you really mean that?" + +He said most seriously: + +"Yes, I can frankly say I haven't seen a portrait in a long time which +impressed me so much." + +His praise was not in Latin Quarter vernacular, and coming from a +Philistine, had only a certain value to the artist. But to a lonely +stranded girl the words were balm. Bulstrode, in his immaculate dress, +his conventional manner, was as foreign a person to the Bohemian +student as if he had been an inhabitant of another planet. Her speech +was brusque and quick, with a generous burr in her "rs" when she +replied. + +"I've studied at Julian's two years now. This was my Salon picture, +but it didn't get in." + +"If one can judge by those that _did_"--Bulstrode's tact was +delightful--"you should feel honorably refused. I suppose you are at +work on another portrait?" + +The face which his interest had brightened clouded. + +"No, I'm going home--to Idaho--I'm not painting any more." + +All the tragedy to a whole-souled Latin Quarter art student that this +implied was not revealed to Bulstrode, but, as it was, his sensitive +kindness felt so much already that it ached. He hastened toward his +goal with eagerness: + +"I'm so awfully sorry! Because, do you know, I was going to ask you if +you couldn't possibly paint my portrait?" It came from him on the spur +of the moment. His frank eyes met hers and might have quailed at his +hypocrisy, but the expression of joy on her face, eclipsing everything +else, dazzled him. + +She cried out impulsively: + +"Oh--goodness!" so loud that one or two tea-drinkers turned about. +After a second, having gained control and half as though she expected +some motive she did not understand: + +"But you never _heard_ of me before to-day! I don't believe you +_really_ liked that portrait over there so very much." + +With a candor that impressed her he assured her: "I give you my word of +honor I've never felt quite so about any portrait before." + +Here Miss Desprey had a cup of tea handed her by a vague-eyed girl who +stumbled over Bulstrode in her ministrations, much to her confusion. + +Laura Desprey drank her tea with avidity, put the cup down on the table +near, and leaning over to her patron, exclaimed: + +"I just _can't_ believe I've got an order!" + +Bulstrode affirmed smiling: "You have, and if you could arrange to stay +over for it--if it would," he delicately put, "be worth your while----" + +She said quietly: + +"Yes, it would be worth my while." + +A _distrait_ look passed over her face for a second, and Bulstrode saw +he was forgotten in, as he supposed, a painter's vision of an order and +its contingent technicalities. + +"I can begin at once." He lost no time. "I'm quite free." + +"But--I have no studio." + +"There must be studios to rent." + +Yes. She knew of one; she could secure it for a month. It would take +that time--she was a slow worker. + +"But we haven't discussed the price." Before so much poverty and +struggle--not that it was new to him, but clothed like this in beauty +it was rare and appealed to him--he was embarrassed by his riches. +"Now the price. I want," he meditated, "a full-length portrait, with a +great deal of background, just as handsome and expensive looking as you +can paint it." + +He exquisitely sacrificed himself and winced at his own words, and saw +her color with amusement and a little scorn, but he went on bravely: + +"Now for a man like me, Miss Desprey--I am sure you will know what I +mean--a man who has never been painted before--this picture will have +to cost me a lot of money. You see otherwise my friends would not +appreciate it." + +In the vulgarian he was making himself out to be his friends would not +have recognized the unpretentious Bulstrode. + +"Get the place, Miss Desprey, and let me come as soon as you can. All +this change of plans will give you extra expenses--I understand about +that! Every time I change my rooms it costs me a fortune. Now if you +will let me send you over a check for half payment on the picture, for, +let us say"--he made it as large as he dared and a quarter of what he +wanted. They were alone in the tea-room, the motley gathering had +weeded itself out. Miss Desprey turned pale. + +"No," she gasped; "I couldn't take anything like half so much for the +whole thing." + +Bulstrode said coldly: + +"I'm afraid I must insist, Miss Desprey; I couldn't order less than a +fifteen-hundred dollar portrait. It's the sum I have planned to pay +when I'm painted." + +"But a celebrated painter would paint it for that." + +Bulstrode smiled fatuously. + +"Can't a man pay for his fads? I want to be painted by the person who +did that portrait over there, Miss Desprey." + + +In a tiny studio--the dingy chrysalis of a Bohemian art +student--Bulstrode posed for his portrait. + +Each morning saw him set forth from the Ritz alert and debonaire in his +fastidious toilet---saw him cross the Place Vendôme, the bridge, and +lose his worldly figure in the lax nonchalant crowd of the Quarter +Latin. At the end of an alley as narrow and picturesque as a lane in a +colored print he knocked at a green door, and was admitted to the +studio by his protégée. In another second he had assumed his +prescribed position according to the pose, and Miss Desprey before her +easel began the _séance_. + +On these May days the glass roof admitted delightful gradations of +glory to the commonplace _atelier_. A few cheap casts, a few yards of +mustard-toned burlaps, some Botticelli and Manet photographs, a mangy +divan, and a couple of chairs were the furnishings. It had been +impossible for Bulstrode to pass indifferently the venders of flowers +in the festive, brilliant streets, and great bunches of _giroflé_, +hyacinths, and narcissi overflowed the earthenware pitchers and vases +with which the studio was plentifully supplied. The soft, sharp +fragrance rose above the shut-in odor of the _atelier_, and, while Miss +Desprey worked, her patron looked at her across waves of spring perfume. + +Her painting-dress, a garment of _beige_ linen, half belted in at the +waist and entirely covering her, made her to Bulstrode, from the crown +of her fair hair to the tip of her old tan shoes, seem all of one +color. He had taken tremendous interest in his pose, in the progress +of the work. He would have looked at the portrait every few moments, +but Miss Desprey refused him even a glimpse. He was to wait until all +manner of strange things took place on the canvas, till "schemes and +composition" were determined, "proper values" arrived at, and he +listened to her glib school terms with respect and a sanguine hope that +with the aid of such potent technicalities and his interest she might +be able to achieve this time something short of atrocious. + +He posed faithfully for Miss Desprey, and smiled at her with friendly +eyes whenever he caught anything more personal than the squinting +glance with which she professionally regarded him, putting him far away +or fetching him near, according to her art's requirements. They talked +in his rest, and he took pleasure in telling her how he enjoyed his +morning walks from his hôtel, how the outdoor life delighted him, and +how all the suburban gardens seemed to have been brought to Paris to +glow and blossom in the venders' carts or in little baskets on the +backs of women and boys, and how thoroughly well worth living he +thought life in Paris was. + +"There is," he finished, "nothing in the world which compares to the +Paris spring-time, I believe, but I have never been West. What is +spring like in Idaho?" + +Miss Desprey laughed, touched her ruffled hair with painty fingers, +blushed, and mused. + +"Oh, it's all right, I guess. There's a trolley-line in Centreville, +an electric plant and the oil works--no trees, no flowers, and the +people all look alike. So you see"--she had a dazzling way of shaking +her head, when her fine white teeth, her sunny dishevelled hair, her +bright cheeks and eyes seemed all to flash and chime together--"so you +see, spring in Centreville and _Paris_ isn't the same thing at all! +Things are beautiful everywhere," she assured him slowly as she +painted, "if you're happy--and I was very unhappy in Centreville, so I +thought I'd come away and try to have a career." She poured out a long +stream of _garance_ from the tube on to her palette. Bulstrode +watched, fascinated. + +"And here in Paris, are you--have you been happy here?" + +"Oh, dear no!" she laughed; "perfectly miserable. And it used to seem +as though it was cruel of the city to be so gay and happy when I +couldn't join in--" Bulstrode, remembering the one franc a day and the +very questionable inspiration her poor art could impart, understood; +his face was full of feeling--"until," she went slowly on, "lately." +She stepped behind the canvas and was lost to sight. "I've been +awfully happy in Paris for the first time. I do like beautiful +things--but I like beautiful people better--and you're +beautiful--beautiful." + +She finished with a blush and a smile. + +Bulstrode grew to think nothing at all about his portrait further than +fervently to hope it would not shock him beyond power to disguise. But +Miss Desprey was frightfully in earnest, and worked until her eyes +glowed with excitement and her cheeks burned. Strong and vigorous and +(Bulstrode over and over again said) "young, so young!" she never +evinced any signs of fatigue, but stood when his limbs trembled under +him and looked up radiant when he was ready to cry "_Grâce!_" In her +enthusiasm she would have given him two sittings a day, but this his +worldly relations would not permit. As she painted, painted, her head +on one side sometimes, sometimes thrown back, her eyes half closed, he +studied her with pleasure and delight. + +"What a pity she paints so dreadfully ill! What a pity she paints at +all! What difference, after all, does it make _what_ she does? She's +so pretty and feminine!" She was a clinging, sweet creature, and the +walk and the flower debauch he permitted himself, the long quiet hours +of companionship with this lovely girl in the _atelier_, illumined, +accentuated, and intensified Bulstrode's already fatuous appreciation +of the spring in Paris. + +During Bulstrode's artistic mornings there distilled itself into the +studio a magic to which he was not insensitive. Whether or not it came +with the flowers or with the delicate filtering of the sun through the +studio light, who can say, but as he stood in his assumed position of +_nonchalance_ he was more and more charmed by his painter. The spell +he naturally felt should, and for long indeed did, emanate from the +slender figure, lost at times behind her canvas, and at times +completely in his view. + +For years Bulstrode had been the victim of hope, or rather in this case +of intent, _to love again_--to love anew! Neither of these statements +is the correct way of putting it. He tried with good faith to prove +himself to be what was so generally claimed for him by his +friends--susceptible; alas, he knew better! + +As he meditatively studied the blonde young girl he spun for himself to +its end the idea of picking her up, carrying her off, marrying her, +shutting Idaho away definitely, and opening to her all that his wealth +and position could of life and the world. He grew tender at the +thought of her poor struggle, her insufficient art, her ambition. It +fascinated him to think of playing the good fairy, of touching her +gray, hard life to color and beauty, and as the beauty and the holy +intimacy of home occurred to him, and marriage, his thoughts wandered +as pilgrims whose feet stray back in the worn ways and find their own +old footprints there, ... and after a few moments Miss Desprey was like +to be farther away from his meditations than Centreville is from Paris, +and the personality of the dream-woman was another. Once Miss +Desprey's voice startled him out of such a reverie by bidding him, +"_Please_ take the pose, Mr. Bulstrode!" As he laughed and apologized +he caught her eyes fixed on him with, as he thought, a curious +expression of affection and sympathy--indeed, tears sprang to them. +She reddened and went furiously back to work. She was more personal +that day than she had yet been. She seemed, after having surprised his +absent-mindedness, to feel that she had a right to him--quite ordered +him about, and was almost petulant in her exactions of his positions. + +Her work evidently advanced to her satisfaction. + +As she stood elated before her easel, her hair in sunny disorder, her +eyes like stars, Bulstrode was conscious there was a change in her--she +was excited and tremulous. In her frayed dress, sagging at the edges, +her paint-smeared apron, her slender thumb through the hole in the +palette, she came over to him at the close of the sitting, started to +speak, faltered, and said: + +"You don't know what it means to me--all you have done. And I can't +ever tell you." + +"Oh, don't," he pleaded, "pray don't speak of it!" + +Miss Desprey, half radiant and half troubled, turned away as if she +were afraid of his eyes. + +"No, I won't try to tell you. I couldn't, I don't dare," she +whispered, and impulsively caught his hand and kissed it. + +When he had left the studio finally it was with a bewildering sense of +having kissed her hand--no, both of her hands! but one held her palette +and he _couldn't_ have kissed that one without having got paint on his +nose--perhaps he had! He was not at peace. + + +That same night a telegram brought him news to the effect that Miss +Desprey was ill and would not expect him to pose the following day; and +relieved that it was not required of him to resume immediately the +over-charged relations, he went back to his old habit, rudely broken +into by his artistic escapade, and walked far into the Bois. + +He thought with alarming persistency of Miss Desprey. He was +chivalrous with women, old-fashioned and clean-minded and +straight-lived. In the greatest, in the only passion of his life, he +had been a Chevalier Bayard, and he could look back upon no incidents +in which he had played the part which men of the world pride themselves +on playing well. Women were mysterious and wonderful to him. Because +of one he approached them all with a feeling not far from worship; and +he had no intention of doing a dishonorable thing. Puzzled, +self-accusing--although he did not quite know of what he was guilty--he +sat down as he had done several weeks before on the bench in the Avenue +des Acacias. With extraordinary promptness, as if arranged by a +scene-setter, a girl's figure came quickly out of a side alley. She +was young--her figure betrayed it. She went quickly over to a seat and +sat down. She was weeping and covered her face with her hands. +Bulstrode, this time without hesitation, went directly over to her: + +"My dear Miss Desprey----" + +She sprang up and displayed a face disfigured with weeping. + +"_You_!" she exclaimed with something like terror. "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" + +Her words shuddered in sobs. + +"Don't stay here! Why did you come? Please go--please." + +Bulstrode sat down beside her and took her hands. + +"I'm not going away--not until I know what your trouble is. You were +in distress when I first saw you here and you wouldn't let me help you +then. Now you can't refuse me. What is it?" + +He found she was clinging to his hands as she found voice enough to say: + +"No, I can't tell you. I couldn't ever tell you. It's not the same +trouble, it's a new one and worse. I guess it's the worst thing in the +world." + +Bulstrode was pitiless: + +"One that has come lately to you?" + +"Oh, yes!" + +She was weeping more quietly now. + +"Please leave me: please go, Mr. Bulstrode." + +"A trouble with which I have had anything to do?" + +She waited a long time, then faintly breathed: + +"Yes." + +The hand he firmly held was gloveless and cold--before he could say +anything further she drew it away from him and cried: + +"Oh, I ought never to have let you guess! You were so good and kind, +you meant to help me so, but it's been the worst help of all, only you +couldn't know that," she pleaded for him. "Please forgive me if I seem +ungrateful, but if I had known that I was going to suffer like this I +would have wished never to see you in the world." + +Bulstrode was trying to speak, but she wouldn't let him: + +"I never can see you again. Never! You mustn't come any more." + +But here she half caught her breath and sobbed with what seemed naïve +and adorable daring: + +"Unless you can help me through, Mr. Bulstrode--it is your fault, after +all." + +If this were a virtual throwing of herself into his arms, they were all +but open to her and the generous heart was all but ready "to see her +through." Bulstrode was about to do, and say, the one rash and +irrevocable perfect thing when at this minute fate again at the ring of +the curtain opportuned. The tap, tapping, of a pony's feet was heard +and a gay little cart came brightly along. Bulstrode saw it. He +sprang to his feet. It was close upon them. + +"You will let me come to-morrow?" he asked eagerly, + +"Oh, yes," she whispered; "yes, I shall count on you. I beg you will +come." + + +"Jimmy," said the lady severely as he accepted her invitation to get +into the cart, "this is the second wicked rendezvous I have +interrupted. I didn't know you were anything like this, and I've seen +that girl before, but I can't remember where." + +"Don't try," said Bulstrode. + +"And she was crying. Of course you made her cry." + +"Well," said Bulstrode desperately, "if I did, it's the first woman +that has ever cried for me." + + +As the reason why Bulstrode had never married was again in Paris, he +went up in the late afternoon to see her. + +The train of visitors who showed their appreciation of her by thronging +her doors had been turned away, but Bulstrode was admitted. The man +told him, "Mrs. Falconer will see you, sir," by which he had the +agreeably flattered feeling that she would see nobody else. + +When he was opposite her the room at once dwindled, contracted, as +invariably did every place in which they found themselves together, +into one small circle containing himself and one woman. Mrs. Falconer +said at once to Bulstrode: + +"Jimmy, you're in trouble--in one of your quandaries. What useless +good have you been doing, and who has been sharper than a serpent's +tooth to you?" + +Bulstrode's late companionship with youth had imparted to him a boyish +look. His friend narrowly observed him, and her charming face clouded +with one of those almost imperceptible _nuances_ that the faces of +those women wear who feel everything and by habit reveal nothing. + +"I'm not a victim." Bulstrode's tone was regretful. "One might say, +on the contrary, this time that I was possibly overpaid." + +"Yes?" + +"I haven't," he explained and regretted, "seen you for a long time." + +"I've been automobiling in Touraine." Mrs. Falconer gave him no +opportunity to be delinquent. + +"And I," he confessed, "have been posing for my portrait. Don't," he +pleaded, "laugh at me--it isn't for a miniature or a locket; it's +life-size, horribly life-size. I've had to stand, off and on with the +rests, three hours a day, and I've done so _every day for three weeks_." + +Mrs. Falconer regarded him with indulgent amusement. + +"It's your fault--you took me to see those awful school-girl paintings +and pointed out that poor young creature to me." And he was +interrupted by her exclamation: + +"Oh, how _dear_ of you, Jimmy! how sweet and kind and ridiculous! It +won't be fit to be seen." + +"Oh, never mind that," he waved; "no one need see it. I haven't--she +won't let me." + +He had accepted a cup of tea from the lady's hand; he drank it off and +sat down, holding the empty cup as if he held his fate. + +"Tell me," she urged, "all about it. It was just like you--any other +man would have found means to show charity, but you have shown +unselfish goodness, and that's the rarest thing in the world. Fancy +posing every day! How ghastly and how wonderful of you!" + +"No," he said slowly, "it wasn't any of these things. I wanted to do +it. It amused me at first, you see. But now I am a little +annoyed--rather bothered to tell the truth--He met her eyes with almost +an appeal in his. Mrs. Falconer was in kindness bound to help him. + +"Bothered? How, pray? With what part of it? You're not chivalrous +about it, are you? You're not by the way of feeling that you have +compromised her by posing?" + +"Oh, no, no," he hurried; "but I do feel, and I am frank to +acknowledge, that it was a mistake. Because--do you know--that for +some absurd reason I am afraid she has become fond of me." He blushed +like a boy. Mrs. Falconer said coldly: + +"Yes? Well, what of it?" + +"This--" Bulstrode's voice was quiet and determined--"if I am right I +shall marry her." + +Mrs. Falconer had the advantage over most women of completely +understanding the man with whom she dealt. She knew that to attempt to +turn from its just and generous source any intent of Mr. Bulstrode +would have been as futile as to attempt to turn a river from its parent +fountain. + +"You're quixotic, I know, but you're not demented, and you won't +certainly marry this nobody--whose fancies or love-affairs have not the +least importance. You won't ever see her again unless you are in love +with her yourself." + +Bulstrode interrupted her hastily: + +"Oh, yes, I shall." + +He got up and walked over to the window that looked down on Mrs. +Falconer's trim little garden. A couple of iron chairs and a table +stood under the trees. Early roses had begun to bloom in the beds +whose outlines were thick and dark with heart's-ease. Beyond the iron +rail of the high wall the distant rumble of Paris came to his ears. +Mrs. Falconer's voice behind him said: + +"She's a very pretty girl, and young enough to be your daughter." + +"No," he said quietly, "not by many years." + +As he turned about and came back to the lady the room seemed to have +grown darker and she to sit in the shadow. She leaned toward him, +laughing: + +"So you have come to announce at last the famous marriage of yours we +have so often planned together." + +Bulstrode stood looking down on her. + +"I feel myself responsible," he said gravely. "She was going home, and +by a mistaken impulse I came in and changed her plans. She is +perfectly alone and perfectly poor, and I am not going to add to her +perplexities. I have no one in the world to care what I do. I have no +ties and no duties." + +"No," said Mrs. Falconer; "you are wonderfully free." + +He said vehemently: + +"I am all of a sudden wonderfully miserable." + +He had been in the habit for years of suddenly leaving her without any +warning, and now he put out his hand and bade her good-by, and before +she could detain him had made one of many brusque exits from her +presence. + + +On the following day--a Sunday, as from his delightful apartments in +the Ritz he set forth for the studio, Bulstrode bade good-by to his +bachelor existence. He knew when he should next see the Place Vendôme +it would be with the eyes of an engaged man. His life hereafter was to +be shared by a "total stranger." So he pathetically put it, and his +sentimental yearning to share everything with a lovely woman had died a +sudden death. + +"There's no one in the world to care a rap what I do--really," he +reflected, "and in this case I have run up against it--that's the long +and the short of the matter--and I shall see it through." + +As he set out for Miss Desprey's along his favorite track he remarked +that the gala, festive character of Paris had entirely disappeared. +The season had gone back on him by several months, and the melancholy +of autumn and dreary winter cast a gloom over his boyish spirits. A +very slight rain was falling. Bulstrode began to feel a twinge of +rheumatism in his arm and as he irritably opened his umbrella his +spirits dropped beneath it and his brisk, springy walk sagged to +something resembling the gait of a middle-aged gentleman. But he urged +himself into a better mood, however, at the sight of a flower-shop +whose delicate wares huddled appealingly close to the window. He went +in and purchased an enormous bunch of--he hesitated--there were certain +flowers he _could_ not, would _not_ send! The selection his +sentimental reserve imposed therefore consisted of sweet-peas, +_giroflés_, and a big cluster of white roses, all very girlish and +virginal. His bridal offering in his hand, he took a cab and drove to +the other side of the river with lead at his good heart and, he almost +fancied, a lump in his throat. He paid the coachman, whose careless +spirits he envied, and slowly walked down the picturesque alley of +Impasse du Maine. + +"There isn't a man I know--not a man in the Somerset Club--who would be +as big a fool as this!" + +He had more than a mind to leave the flowers on the doorstep and run. +Bulstrode would have done so now that he was face to face with his +quixotic folly, but his cab had been heard as well as his steps on the +walk, and the door was opened by Miss Desprey herself. The girl's +colorless face, her eyes spoiled with tears, and a pretty, sad dignity, +which became her well, struck her friend with the sincerity and depth +of her grief, and as the good gentleman shook hands with her he +realized that less than ever in the world could he add a featherweight +of grief to the burden of this helpless creature. + +"My dearest child!" He lifted her hand to his lips. + +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode, I'm so glad you've come, I was so afraid you +wouldn't--after yesterday!" + +His arms were still full of white paper, roses, and sweet-peas. + +"Oh, don't give them to me, Mr. Bulstrode! Oh, why, did you bring +them? Oh, dear, what will you think of me?" She had possessed herself +of the flowers and with agitation and distress hastily thrust them, as +if she wanted to hide them, behind the draperies of the couch. +Bulstrode murmured something of whose import he was scarcely conscious. +As she came tearfully back to him she let him take her hands. He felt +that she clung to him. "It would have spoiled my life if you hadn't +come. I would have just gone and jumped in the Seine. I may yet. Oh, +you don't understand! It's been hard to be poor--I've been often +hungry--but this last thing was too much. When you found me yesterday +I didn't want to live any more." + +Bulstrode's kind clasp warmed the cold little hands. As tenderly as he +could he looked at her agitated prettiness. + +"Don't talk like that"--he tried for her first name and found it. +"Laura, you will let me make it all right, my dear? You will let me, +won't you? You shall never know another care if I can prevent it." + +She interrupted with hasty gratitude: + +"Nobody else can make it all right but you." + +He tried softly: + +"Did I, then, make it so very wrong?" + +She murmured, too overcome to trust herself to say much: + +"Yes!" + +She was standing close to him, and lifted her appealing face to his. +Her excitement communicated itself to him; he bent toward her about to +kiss her, when the door of the studio sharply opened, and before +Bulstrode could do more than swiftly draw back and leave Miss Desprey +free an exceedingly tall and able-bodied man entered without ceremony. + +The girl gave a cry, ran from Bulstrode, and, so to speak, threw +herself against the arms of the stranger, for there were none open to +receive her. + +"Oh, here's Mr. Bulstrode, Dan! I knew he'd come; and he'll tell +you--won't you, Mr. Bulstrode? Tell him, please, that I don't care +anything at all about you and you don't care anything about me.... +That you don't want to marry me or anything. Oh, please make him +believe it!" + +The poor gentleman's senses and brain whirling together made him giddy. +He felt as though he had just been whisked up from the edge of a +precipice over which he ridiculously dangled. Dan, who represented the +rescuer, was not prepossessing. He was the complete and unspoiled type +of Western youth; the girl herself was an imperfect and exquisite +hybrid. + +"I don't know that this gentleman can explain to me"--the young fellow +threw his boyish head back--"or that I care to hear him." + +She gave a cry, sharp and wounded. The sound touched the now normal, +thoroughly grateful patron, who had come out of his ordeal with as much +kindly sensibility as he went in. + +"Of course, my dear young lady"--he perfectly understood the +situation--"I will tell your friend the facts of our acquaintance. +That's what you want me to do, isn't it?" + +She was weeping and hanging on to the unyielding arm of her cross +lover, who glared at the intruding Bulstrode with a youthful jealousy +at which the older man smiled while he envied it. He pursued +impressively: + +"Miss Desprey has been painting my portrait for the past few weeks. I +gave her the order at the Art League; other than painter and sitter we +have no possible interest in each other--Mr.----" + +"Gregs," snapped the stranger, "Daniel Gregs!" + +The slender creature, whose eyes never left the stolid, uncompromising +face, repeated eagerly: + +"_No possible interest_--Dan--none! He doesn't care anything about me +at all! You heard what he said, didn't you? I only like him like a +kind, kind friend." + +[Illustration: "I only like him like a kind, kind friend"] + +Her voice, soft as a flower, caressed and pleaded with the passionate +tenderness of a woman who feels that an inadvertent word may keep for +her or lose for her the man she adores. + +"My dear man," exclaimed Bulstrode in great irritation, "you ought to +be ashamed to let her cry like that! Can't you _understand_--don't you +see?" + +"No," shortly caught up the other, "I don't! I've come here from South +Africa, where I'm prospecting some mines for a company at Centreville, +and I heard she was poor and unhappy, and I hurried up my things so I +could come to Paris and marry her and take her with me, and here I find +her painting every day alone with a rich man, her place all fixed up +with flowers, and a thousand dollars in the bank"--his cheek +reddened--"I don't like it! And that's all there is to it!" he +finished shortly. + +"No, my friend," said the other severely, "there's a great deal more. +If, from what you say, and the way you speak, you wish me to understand +you have a real interest in Miss Desprey, you can follow me when I say +that I came here and found her a lonely, forsaken girl, obliged to +return to Idaho when she didn't want to go, without any money or any +friends. May I ask you why, if there was any one in the world who +cared for her, she should be left so deserted?" + +The girl here turned her face from her lover to her champion. + +"Don't please blame Dan for that. He was so poor, too. He didn't have +anything when he went to South Africa; it was just a chance if he would +succeed. And he was working for me, so that he could get married." + +Gregs interrupted: + +"I don't owe this gentleman any explanation!" + +"No," accepted the other gently, "perhaps not, but you mustn't, on the +other hand, refuse to hear mine. Be reasonable. Why _shouldn't_ Miss +Desprey have an order for a portrait?" + +Gregs, over the golden head against his arm, looked at Bulstrode: + +"_She_ can't paint!" His tone was gentler. "Laura can't paint, and +you know it!" + +"Dan!" she whispered; "how cruel you are to me!" + +And here the desperate Bulstrode broke in: + +"He is, indeed, Miss Desprey, cruel and unjust, and I frankly ask leave +to tell him so. You don't deserve the girl, Mr. Gregs, if she's yours, +as she seems to be." + +But the girl clung closer, as if she still feared Bulstrode might try +to rescue her. + +"That's all right," frowned the miner. "I am no better and no worse +than any man about his girl, and I'm going to know _just where I +stand_!" + +The gentleman's reply was caustic. "I should be inclined to say you'd +find it hard to be in a better place." + +Laura Desprey had wound her arms around Mr. Gregs. Bulstrode held out +his hand. She couldn't take it, nor could her lover. With arrogant +obstinacy he had folded his arms across his chest. + +"Come, can't we be friends?" urged the amiable gentleman. "I seem to +have made trouble when I only wanted to be friendly. Let me set it +right before I go. I am lunching in Versailles, and I have to take the +noon train from the Gare Montparnasse." + +But Daniel Gregs did not unbend to the affable proposition. Miss +Desprey said: + +"When you saw me yesterday in the park, Mr. Bulstrode, Dan had just +come back the day before. I was putting the flowers you sent me in +fresh water when he came in on me all of a sudden. Oh, it was so +splendid at first! I was _so_ happy--until he asked all about you, and +then he grew so angry and said unless you could explain to him a lot of +things he would go away and never see me again, and when you found me I +was crying because I thought he had left me forever. I hadn't seen him +for two years, and if you hadn't helped me to stay on here I should +have had to go to Idaho, and I wouldn't have seen him at all. You +ought to _thank_ him, Dan." + +Bulstrode interrupted: + +"Indeed, Mr. Gregs, you should, you know!--you should thank me; come, +be generous." + +Dan relaxed his grim humor a little. + +"When I get through with this South African business I'm going back to +Centreville, and if I ever get her out of this Paris _she'll_ never see +it again!" + +"Dan," she breathed, "I don't want to. Centreville is good enough for +me." + +(Centreville! The horrible environment he was to have snatched her +from. Bulstrode smiled softly.) + +"But this money," pursued the dogged lover, returning to his grudge. +"You've got to take it back, Mr. Bulstrode. No picture on earth is +worth a thousand dollars, and certainly not Laura's." + +"Oh, Dan!" she exclaimed. + +But her friend said firmly: "The portrait is mine. Come, don't be +foolish. If Miss Desprey is willing to marry you and go out to Idaho, +take the money and buy her some pretty clothes and things." + +Here the girl herself interrupted excitedly: + +"No, no! We couldn't take it. I don't want any new clothes. If Dan +doesn't care how shabby I am, I don't. I don't want anything in the +world but just to go with Dan." + +At this sweet tenderness Dan's face entirely changed, his arms +unfolded; he put them around her. + +"That's all right, little girl." His tone thrilled through Bulstrode +more than the woman's tears had done. He understood why she wanted to +go to him, and how she could be drawn. He had at times in his life +lost money, and sometimes heavily, and he had never felt poor before. +In the same words, but in a vastly different tone, Dan Gregs held out +his hand to Bulstrode. + +"That's all right, sir. When a fellow travels thousands and thousands +of miles to get his girl and hasn't much more than his car fare and he +runs up against another fellow who has got the rocks and all and who he +thinks is sweet on his girl, it makes him crazy--just crazy!" + +"I see"--Bulstrode sympathetically understood--"and I don't at all +wonder." + +They were all three shaking hands together and Bulstrode said: + +"Would you believe it, I haven't seen my portrait, Miss Desprey." + +Dan Gregs grinned. + +"Don't," he said, "don't look at it. It's what made all the trouble. +When I saw it yesterday and Laura told me it had drawn a thousand +dollars--why I said 'there isn't a man living who would give you fifty +cents for it.' That made her mad at first. Then she told me you +thought she was a great portrait-painter, and I knew you must be sweet +on her. I'm fond of her all right, but I decided that you were bound +to have her and didn't care how you dealt your cards, and I thought I'd +clear out." + +His face fell and threatened to cloud over, but it cleared again as +with the remembrance of his doubts came the actual sense of the woman +whose face was hidden on his breast, and he lightly touched the dusty +golden hair. + +When in a few seconds Bulstrode took leave of them, Miss Desprey, in +her dingy painting-dress, seemed completely swallowed up in the embrace +of the big Dan Gregs. From where he stood by the door Bulstrode could +see the white corner of his _fiançailles_ bouquet sticking out from the +draperies of the couch. The paper was open and in the heat of the warm +little _atelier_ the fresh odor of the pungent flowers came strongly on +the air. + +Bulstrode as he said good-by seemed to say it--and to look at the +lovers--through a haze of perfume--a perfume that, like the most +precious things in the world, pervades and affects, suggests and +impresses, while its existence is unseen, unknown to the world. + + +Once in his train, he had been able to catch it at the Invalides after +all, Jimmy drew a long breath and settled back into himself, for, he +had been, poor dear, during the past three weeks, in another man's +shoes and profiting by another man's identity. It was perfectly +heavenly to feel that he had been liberated by the merciful providence +which takes care to provide the right lover for the right place. He +couldn't be too grateful for the miracle which saved him from a +sacrifice alongside of which Abraham's would have been a jest indeed. + +The June morning was warm and through the open car window, as the train +went comfortably along, the perfume of the country came into him where +he sat. Opposite, a pair of lovers frankly and naturally showed their +annoyance at the third person's intrusion, and Bulstrode, +sympathetically turned himself about and became absorbed in Suburban +Paris. His heart beat high at the fact of his deliverance. His +gratitude was sincere--moreover, his thoughts were of an agreeable +trend, and he was able to forget everybody else within twelve miles. +Secure in his impersonality and in the indifference of his broad +unseeing back, the lovers kissed and held hands. + +Bulstrode wandered slowly up from the Versailles station to the Hôtel +des Reservoirs, crossed the broad square of the Palace Court, found the +pink and yellow façade more mellow and perfect than ever, and toward +twelve-thirty strolled into the yard of the old hostelry. Breakfast +had been set for twelve-thirty, but his host was not there. + +"Ah--mais, bon jour, Monsieur Bulstrode!" The proprietor knew and +appreciated this client greatly. + +Monsieur Falconer, it seemed, had been called suddenly to Paris.... +Yes--well--there were, now and then, in the course of life, bits of +news that could be borne with fortitude. "And Madame has also been +called to Paris?" + +"Mais non!" Madame had a few minutes since gone out in the Park, the +proprietor thought she would not be very far away. + +Bulstrode thanked him, and crossed over to the hedge and the gateway +and through it to the Palace Gardens. On all sides the paths stretched +broad and inviting toward the various alleys, and upon the terrace to +his left there shone a thousand flowers in June abundance. The +gentleman chose the first path that opened, and went carelessly down +it, and in a few moments the pretty ring of an embowered circle spread +before him, but, although there was an inviting marble bench under a +big tree at one side, and several eighteenth century marbles on their +pedestals, illuminated by the bland eighteenth century smile, there was +not a living woman in sight to make him, the visitor, welcome! He went +a little further along and found another felicitous, harmonious circle, +where a small fountain threw its jets on the June air. At the sound of +the water Bulstrode remembered that the Grands Eaux were to play on +this afternoon at Versailles. + +"Ah, _that_ is why they especially wanted me to come out to-day," he +decided. + +On the other side of the fountain, the vivid white of her summer dress +making a flash like moonlight on the obscurity of the woods, a lady was +standing looking across at Mr. Bulstrode. + +"Hush!" she said; "come over softly, Jimmy; there is a timid third +party here." + +On a branch at her side, where an oriole sat, his head thrown back, his +throat swelling, there was a little stir and flutter of leaves, for +although the lady had put her finger to her lips, her voice broke the +spell, and a bit of yellow flashed through the trees. + +"I don't believe _he_ will ever forgive you!" she cried; "you spoiled +his solo, but I'll forgive you. What brought you out to Versailles +to-day?" + +"The fountains," Bulstrode told her; "I have never seen them play. +Then, too--there are certain places to which, when I am asked to +luncheon, I always go." + +"That's quite true," she accepted; "you _were_ invited!--but, to be +perfectly frank, I did not expect you, so your coming on this occasion +has only the pleasure of a surprise. As a rule, I hate them. My +husband informed me that he would telephone you to meet him in Paris, +but I think he must have forgotten you, Jimmy." + +She was taking him in from his fresh panama to his boots, and she +apparently found an air of festivity about him. + +"Was it," she asked, "in honor of the fountains' playing that you have +made yourself so beautiful?" + +Bulstrode took the boutonnière out of his coat lapel and handed it to +her. "Can't you pin it in somewhere?" Mrs. Falconer laughed and +thrust the carnation into her bodice. + +"I dressed to-day, more or less," Mr. Bulstrode confessed, "in order to +attend--well, what shall I call it--a betrothal? That's a good +old-fashioned word." + +"Oh!" exclaimed the lady, "a _fiançailles_?" + +"Yes." + +The two had wandered slowly along, out of the Bosquet towards the +canals. + +"They make a great deal of these functions in France," Mrs. Falconer +said. + +Her companion agreed. "They made a great deal, rather more than usual, +out of this one." And his tone was so suggestive that his companion +looked up at him quickly. + +"Who _are_ your mysterious lovers?" she asked, "are they French? Do I +know them?" + +"They are not in the least mysterious," Bulstrode assured her. "I +never saw anything less complex and more simple. They are Americans." + +She seemed now to understand that she was to hear of "one of Jimmy's +adventures," as she called his dashes in other people's affairs. + +"I hope, Jimmy, in this case, that you have pulled the affair off to +your credit, and that if you have made a match the creatures will be +grateful to you for once! And, by the way," she bethought; "whatever +has happened to the pretty girl whom you were quixotic enough to think +you had to marry?" + +"The last time I saw her she appeared to be in the best of +circumstances," Bulstrode answered cheerfully. "In point of fact--it +was, singularly enough, to _her_ engagement party that I went to-day!" + +And Mrs. Falconer now showed real interest and feeling. "No! how +delightful. So she is really off your hands, Jimmy. Well, that is too +good to be true. There's one at least whom you don't have to marry, +Jimmy!" + +"Oh, they grow beautifully less," he agreed. + +Mrs. Falconer smiled softly. + +"They are narrowing down every year," Jimmy went on; "when I am about +sixty the number will be reduced, I dare say, to the proper quantity." + +"What a goose you are," she said jestingly. "What a tease and a bother +you are, Jimmy Bulstrode; _I'll_ find you a proper wife!" + +He accepted warmly. "Do, do! I leave myself quite in your hands." + +His companion extended him her hand as she spoke, and after lifting it +to his lips, Bulstrode drew it through his arm. It was clothed in a +glove of pale coffee-color suede. It was a soft, dear hand, and rested +as if it were at home on Bulstrode's gray sleeve. Side by side the two +friends walked slowly out toward the broader avenues leading to the +canals. The sky was faintly blue, touched with the edges of some +drifting cloud, like dashes of foam. The trees about them lifted dark +velvet masses and the air was sweet with the scent of the woods and +flowers. + +"Isn't this the most beautiful garden in the world?" murmured Mrs. +Falconer. "Isn't it _too_ beautiful!" + +"Very," he incorrectly and vaguely answered. And the lady went on to +say how brilliant she found the place with the suggestions and memories +of the past royal times, whilst Bulstrode said nothing at all, because +he did not want to tell her that Versailles and the charming alleys, +and France, and the great big world, from limit to limit, was full of +no ghosts to him, but of just one woman. + + + + +THE THIRD ADVENTURE + + + +III + +IN WHICH HE FINDS THERE ARE SOME THINGS WHICH ONE CANNOT BUY + +After not a great deal of hesitation, toward the middle of a warm June, +Bulstrode permitted himself to become the proprietor of a palace: not +an inhabitant of the ordinary dwelling modelled after some old-world +wonder, wherein American millionaires choose to spend their leisure in +their own country--but of a real traditional palace, in whose charming +rooms no object was younger than Bulstrode's great-grandfather, and +where the enchanting women of the Fragonards and Nattiers almost made +him, as he mused upon them, lose sight for a moment of a living lady. + +On the very first day he went over the Hôtel Montensier from _grenier_ +to _caves_, Jimmy Bulstrode gave in, and accepted the Duc de +Montensier's proposition to "fetch his traps for a few months to the +hôtel and turn Parisian." He was in the heart of Paris, yet all around +him, shut in by high walls, was a garden, to which the terraces of the +house gave in flights of marble steps. When his friend suggested that +Bulstrode turn Parisian, Jimmy laughed. "Do you think," he had asked, +"that a chap born in Providence, educated in Harvard, and, if +cosmopolitan, thoroughly American from start to finish, could, _mon +cher_, turn Parisian?" And the Duc had assured him that he did not +think Bulstrode had a "Latin eyelash," and that he needn't be at all +afraid to try his luck at what a French house would do for him! "Why, +your coat alone--the cut of it--" Montensier had laughed, "speaks of +Poole with a Boston compromise! + +The Duc had been in the United States--moreover, the Frenchman had +plans of his own and he wanted very much to go to Newport and leave his +house in the care of Jimmy Bulstrode. Whether the Puritan in him led +Bulstrode to excuse to himself his enjoyment of so much luxury, at any +rate he apologized, saying that nobody could expect a man with a love +of the beautiful, and who had more or less a desire to shut himself up +and to shut himself away for a time, to refuse. + +The Falconers were off somewhere _en auto_. He had thought they had +gone through Spain. It was pretty hot to do such a thing, however, and +he did not really know. He wanted very much to be able not to let +himself follow them, and he knew that there was little chance of his +reaching such stoicism unless he began by not finding out where they +were going! So he shut himself up with the books which the library +offered and gave many charming little dinners and parties on his +terraces in the bland summer nights, and tried with all his might and +main to forget the flight of a certain motor over the fair white roads +and, above all, to nerve himself up to refuse an invitation for the +middle of July. + +Directly opposite the white façade of the Montensiers' hôtel was a +hostelry for beggars, for domestics without places; for poor +professors; for actors with no stages but the last; for laborers with +no labor; in short, for the riff-raff of the population, for those who +no longer hold the dignity of profession or pay rent for a term. +Sometimes Bulstrode would look out at the tenement, whose windows in +this season were wide open; and the general aspect indicated that +dislocated fortunes flourished. In one window, pirouetting or dancing +in it, calling out of it, leaning perilously over the sill of it, was a +child--as far as Bulstrode could decide, a creature of about six years +of age. She was too small to see much of, but all he saw was activity, +gesticulation, and perpetual motion. When the day was hot she fanned +herself with a bit of paper. She called far out to the wine-merchant's +wife, who sat with her family before the shop while her pretty children +played in the gutter. + + +In Paris, when the weather climbs to eighty, Parisians count themselves +in the tropics and the people, who lived apparently out of doors +altogether, wore a melted, disheartened air. But the De Montensier +garden, full of roses and heliotrope, watered and refreshed by the +fountains' delightful falling, was a retreat not to be surpassed by +many suburbs. Bulstrode gave little dinners on the terrace; little +suppers after the theatre, when rooms and garden were lighted with +fairy lanterns, and his chef outdid his traditions to please his +American master. + +One day as the American sat smoking on the terrace with nothing more +disturbing than the drip of the fountain and the remote murmur of Paris +to break his reverie, Prosper, his confidential man, made a tentative +appearance. + +"Would m'sieu, _who is so good_, see a young lady?" + +His master smiled as he rose, instinctively at the words "jeune +demoiselle," throwing away his cigar. + +"Pardon, m'sieu, I thought it might amuse m'sieu--" and Prosper stepped +back. + +Bulstrode had been intently thinking of the caravansary opposite him, +and he now saw that part of the _hôtel meublé_ had come across the +street; he recognized it immediately for the smallest part. Before him +stood the ridiculous and pathetic figure of a dirty little girl in +rags, tatters, and furbelows, her legs clad in red silk stockings +evidently intended for fuller, shapelier limbs; her feet slipped about +in pattens. She had on a woman's bodice, a long flounced skirt pinned +up to keep her from tripping. Her head was adorned by a torn straw +hat, also contrived and created for the coquetry of maturity. + +"Monsieur is so good," she began in a flute-like voice. "I have come +to thank monsieur with all my heart." + +Bulstrode looked toward Prosper for enlightenment, but that individual +had cleverly disappeared. + +"To thank me, my child? But for what?" + +"Why, for the eggs and butter and sugar that monsieur was so good as to +send me. I have made the cake. It is beautiful! Monsieur le +cuisinier of this house baked it for me. It is perhaps a little +flat--but that was because I got tired stirring. See--it says--" She +had, so he now saw, a book under her arm; letting fall a fold of her +cumbersome dress with both hands and opening a filthy cook-book, she +laid it on the table, bending over it. "It says stir briskly half an +hour." (Her "rs" rolled in her throat like tiny cannons in a rosy +hollow.) "Quelle idée! It was _too_ stupid! Half an hour! I just +mixed it round once or twice and then--voila! it has white on the top +and shall have a candle." + +"So you've made a cake?" he said kindly. "I'm sure it's a good one." + +She nodded brightly. "It is for that I came to thank monsieur and to +ask if he would accept a piece of it." + +Poor Bulstrode, with dreadful suspicion, looked to see part of the +horror immediately offered for his degustation. "I don't, my dear, +understand. Why should you thank _me_--what had I to do with it?" + +Her gesture was delightful. "But for monsieur it would not exist; for +butter, eggs, and flour. Monsieur Prosper, when he gave them, said it +was of the kindness of '_Monsieur Balstro_.'" + +(Oh, Prosper! "I have corrupted _him_," his master thought. "He is as +bad as I am!") + +"Well, I'm very glad indeed," and he said it heartily. "But what did +you especially want to make it for--with the one candle? That means +one year old. Who's birthday may it then be?" + +"It is the birthday of maman." She shut the book, and as she did so +raised her great black eyes, which dirt and neglect could not spoil. +There was in her appearance so little suggestion of maternal care that +Bulstrode nearly incredulously asked, "Your mother? And what, then, +does your mother do?" + +"She's a fish," informed the child tranquilly. And Bulstrode, although +startled, could believe it. It too perfectly accounted for the +cold-blooded indifference to this offspring. Not even a mermaid could +have been guilty of so little care for her child. Still, he repeated: + +"A fish?" + +"Oui, a devil-fish in the aquarium at Bostock's. Oh, que c'est beau!" +she clasped her little hands. "Maman wears a costume of red--quite a +small, thin dress," she described eagerly. "And it is all spangles, +like fire when she dives into the water. I have been; the waiter at +the café downstairs took me. I screamed. I thought maman was drowned. +But no--she comes up always!" The child threw her head back and lifted +her eyes in ecstasy. "C'est magnifique!" + +"What is your mother's name?" + +"Mademoiselle Lascaze." + +"And yours?" + +"Simone." + +"What do you do all day, Simone?" + +"I wash and cook and sew and play--I have much to do--oh, much." She +assumed an important air. "The bad air of the room makes maman ill, so +she's out--'to breathe,' she says--and she locks me safely in. I play +Bostock and dive like maman. And sometimes"--she lowered her voice, +and looking back to see if they were alone--confided, "I cry." + +"Ah!" sympathized Bulstrode. + +"But, yes," she insisted, "when maman forgets to come home, and the +night is so black; then the seamstress next door knocks on the wall, +and I knock back for company." + +"I see," he understood gently, "for company." + +He rang for Prosper. "You will conduct mademoiselle home, Prosper, and +give her everything she needs for her kitchen always." + +"Yes, monsieur; I knew that monsieur would----" + +At sight of Prosper the mite gathered up her voluminous skirts and bade +her new friend a cordial good-by. + +From the corrupted Prosper Bulstrode extracted what he wished to know +concerning the child. + +"It is of a scandalousness, monsieur! Four nights of the seven the +poor little object is alone. The mother appears to have money enough, +she pays her rent regularly, and there is therefore nothing to do. She +sometimes even fetches her companions home with her, and Simone, when +she is not making sport for them, is tied to a chair to keep her from +falling off in her sleep." + +Bulstrode expressed himself strongly, violently for him, went to see a +lawyer and a charitable French countess and found out that so long as +the mother did not actually ill-treat the child she could not be +replaced by any other guardian. + +"Mon cher ami," said the spirituelle lady, "leave the fish to her +deviltry, and her child in her care. We are _fin de race_, if you +like, and in direct opposition to your American progressive schemes, +but we have a tradition that the family is sacred, and that, however +bad it may be, a child is better off in its home than elsewhere. You +will find it difficult to replace a mother by a _machine_ or an +_institution_, believe me." + +And Bulstrode at the words felt a new sense of failure in +philanthropies, and his benevolence seemed pure dilletantism. What was +he likely to accomplish in the case of this child? Nothing more than +the momentary pleasure a few toys and a few hours of play could secure. +"And yet," as he mused he philosophically put it to himself, "isn't it, +after all, about the sum total any of us get out of destiny?" + +In New York he would have quite known how to proceed in order to help +the child, but in the face of French law and strong family prejudice he +came up against a stone wall. + +"I'm no sort of a real benefactor," he remorsefully acceded, "and I +don't believe I'm fit to be trusted alone with the poor." + +Nevertheless he did not relinquish his idea entirely, and confided +Simone to Prosper's sympathetic care and that of an emotional +maid-servant, with the result that a cleaning woman penetrated by hook +or crook into the room of "the fish" and treated it to more _aqua pura_ +than the piscatory individual had cognizance of outside of the aquarium. + +The gentleman in this particular charity was surprised to find how +simple it sometimes is to do good. In this case no one had come to him +with a petition or a demand; on the contrary, a note of undeserved +thanks had, with the strange little creature, been presented to him. +It was so pleasantly easy to help a child! There were no _arrières +pensées_--not that they would have troubled him, but there were none; +there were no wire-pullings, no time infringements, no suggestion or +criticism, no--he believed--expectations. Everything he could do was +so annoyingly little! The charwoman cleaned, Simone had a complete +wardrobe, the larder was full, and there remained nothing but toys to +buy. The little thing was so womanly and capable--he had seen it and +marvelled in their interviews at her age and accomplishments--her hands +were so apt and almost creative, that toys seemed inadequate. She took +her benefits charmingly; rushed over at the least provocation to pour +out her gratitude, and Bulstrode, who hated thanks, liked these. +Childhood, if it had been for sale on the Boulevard, even that he would +have bought Simone if he could! As it was, he found himself pausing +before a series of shops other than chemisièrs--florists, and +jewellers'--shops where diminutive objects were displayed--and one +afternoon had been standing ridiculously long in front of a certain +window on the Rue de Rivoli when he was accosted by an agreeable and +familiar voice. + +"Jimmy! It isn't possible! don't tell me it has come so cruelly +_soon_?" + +The gentleman gave a violent, but an entirely happy start. Well, there +were rewards then for people who didn't follow speeding motors through +France! She was back and in Paris. + +"What--has come so soon?" he asked. + +Mrs. Falconer, on her way from a hat shop in her automobile, stopped by +his side. + +"Why, your second childhood, my dear man. Do you know what shop you +are standing before?" + +Bulstrode seemed to be perfectly aware of his dotage and to delight in +it. Behind the big window pane there was a bright and very juvenile +display. + +Ships sailed there; dolls hung gaudily and smilingly aloft; giant +parti-colored balls rounded out their harlequin sides; tiny dishes for +pygmy festivals were piled with delicious carrots and artichokes on +little white, blue-rimmed platters. + +"Have you a moment to spare?" Bulstrode asked her. + +"I have bought all my hats," she replied; "after that a woman's time +hangs heavy on her hands." + +"Ah!" he was as radiant as she had the genius for making him. "Come, +then, in with me and help me choose a _doll_." + +It was not the first purchase during the course of a long friendship +which Bulstrode had made with this charming woman by his side, but for +some reason he enjoyed it more than former errands. The bachelor and +the childless woman were hard to please and their choice consumed an +unconscionable time. As they lingered, the amiable shopman pressed +various toys on monsieur and madame "_pour les enfants_," and the lady, +finally depositing her friend with his parcels at the door of his +hôtel, realized as she drove away that she knew nothing of the child +for whom the purchases had been made. On her way up the Champs Elysées +she smiled softly. "It's what you _share_," she mused, "what you give +of _yourself--with_ yourself--_that's_ charity! Jimmy gives himself. +I wonder who his new love is?" + +Bulstrode, in order to share what should be his "new love's" ecstasy at +first sight of the miraculous toy, sent for Simone. The Rue de Rivoli +doll, on a small chair designed for diminutive ladies of the eighteenth +century or for the king's dwarfs, held out stiff but cordial arms and +was naturally, to a child, the first and sole object of the +drawing-room. + +"_Monsieur!_" + +"For you, Simone." + +"_Monsieur!_" + +She said nothing else as she clasped her hands, and the color rushed +into her face, but she felt the doll, touched reverently its feet, +hair, dress, incontinently forgot Bulstrode, and quite suddenly, +passionately, caught the image of life to her heart. Just over its +blonde head, for it was nearly as large as herself, she met the +gentleman's eyes. + +"It's my child! I've prayed for it always, always! I've never had a +doll, a _bébé_, m'sieu." + +The tea-table with cakes and chocolate called them all too soon and, as +Prosper served, the fountains sang, the heat stole through the garden +and called up agreeable odors of sod and roses, the late afternoon sky +spread its expanse over the terrace of the hôtel, where, perfectly +happy both of them, animated by as gentle and harmless pleasure as any +two in Paris that day, the child of the people and an American +gentleman chatted over their tea. + +Bulstrode, being an original, erratic, and reckless giver of alms, +quite by this time knew that, more than often, for him to give was, if +not to regret, to have at least misgivings whether in the hands of some +colder, less poetic person his money would not have accomplished more +good. In the case of Simone he had, as usual, happily gone on with +abandon, relegating any remorse to a future which he hoped would never +arrive. + + +But the middle of July did come and with it came poor Jimmy's exquisite +temptation. A telephone helped it dreadfully. There was something so +wonderful in the fact that in a couple of hours he could, if he would, +let himself reach the side of the lovely voice which called to him over +the wires. And being nothing but a human man, he threw all his good +resolves to the wind, and went down and stayed three days at +Fontainebleau. + +Out under the sky, where the elastic earth sprang softly beneath her +feet and the embowered forests were sifted through with gold, Mary +Falconer finally asked him, "And your doll, Jimmy? Have you broken her +yet?" Bulstrode felt a guilty twinge, for he had not once thought of +the little girl, nor did Mrs. Falconer's mention of her bring the +subject near enough for Bulstrode to tell her the pretty story. He had +other things to say, and many things not to say, and this, as it always +did when he was with his lady, kept him very absorbed and occupied. On +this occasion he forgot all about little Simone. + +The night of his return Paris was _en fête_ and in no sense impatient +to reach his lonely house--for it seemed to him this night the +loneliest house in the world--he walked without haste up town along the +quays. + +It was hard to forget that not fifty miles away he had left the cool +forests, their tempting roads, their alluring alleys. He had forgotten +that it was the annual celebration and that at this late hour the +_fête_ would be in full swing, and as he strolled meditating along the +Seine the spirit of the gay populace--good-humor, reckless pleasure, +and the _joie de vivre_--poured itself out around him like cordial, +like a generous gift from an over-charged horn of cheer. In his gray +clothes, modish panama, a little white rose plucked by a dear hand from +the trellis at Fontainebleau still in his buttonhole, Bulstrode +scarcely remarked the crowds or heard the music as he passed outdoor +dancing stands and was jostled by a dancing throng. + +His own street, as he approached it, welcomed him with a strong odor of +onions and fried potatoes; it had apparently turned itself out of doors +and all of the houses seemed to have emptied themselves into the narrow +alley. A hurdy-gurdy playing before the _hôtel meublê_ tinkled and +jangled in the centre of a crowd of merry-makers, and the metallic +melody and wild ascending octaves were the first sounds Bulstrode +consciously heard since he left Fontainebleau. + +In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing like a mad child, +hair, arms, and feet flying; her voice, thin and piercing, every now +and then above the rattle of the hand-organ, cried out the lines of a +popular song whose meaning on her lips was particularly horrifying. +The wine-shop family encircled her, encoring her vociferously. As she +paused for breath the light from over the shop-door shone on her +excited little face. + +[Illustration: In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing] + +"I tired! Mon Dieu, que non! I could dance till morning. Play again, +monsieur l'organiste. Play again." + +Bulstrode, on the crowd's edge, watched her, and for once in his +philanthropic history made no attempt to rescue. As Prosper let his +master in he said: + +"It's a shame, isn't it, monsieur? The people over there have let her +run quite crazy. The poor little thing! Heaven knows where the mother +is!" + +Of which celestial knowledge Bulstrode had his doubts. It was close to +twelve, and dismissing Prosper for the night, he took his cigar out on +the terrace and to what solitude his garden might extend. Before long +the noise of the music subsided, the people, tired out with hours of +festivity, dispersed, and the alley settled into quiet. From the +distance now and then came the soft, dull explosion of fireworks, the +rumble and roar of Paris was a little accelerated; otherwise the +silence about Bulstrode's garden grew and deepened as the night +advanced. + +It was rare for him to allow himself to be the object of his own +personal consideration, or that indeed he at all thought of himself, +and when he did the man he had long ignored had his revenge and made +him pay up old scores. + +On the late afternoon of this very day he was to have walked for miles +through the Fontainebleau woods with Mrs. Falconer, and instead he had +fled. Pleading a sudden summons to Paris, he left Fontainebleau. + +It was well past four o'clock when he at last threw his cigar away and +rose. He had been musing all night in his chair. + +A sudden gust of noise blew down the quiet little street, the sound of +loud singing and the shrill staccato of a woman's laugh. By the time +the revellers had passed his house and the hubbub had died away, +Bulstrode, with an idea at length of going up to his room, walked +across the salon and prepared to extinguish the electricity, but the +sound of some one tapping without caught his ear, and going over to the +window that gave on the street, he looked out. From end to end the +alley was deserted except for the figure of a woman. As he saw in the +ruddy light of early morning she huddled against the threshold of the +_hôtel meublé_--knocking persistently at the door. The tattered gauze +of her dress, whose bold _decolletée_ left her neck and shoulders bare, +a garland of roses on the bandeaux of her black hair, she epitomized +the carnival just come to its end--its exhaustion, its excess, spent at +length, surfeited, knocking for entrance at last to rest. Bulstrode, +as he remarked the sinuous figure that swayed as the woman stood, +exclaimed to himself with illumination: "Why, she's the _fish_, of +course! Simone's mother! And this is the state in which she goes to +the miserable child!" + +As, knocking at intervals, the object leaned there a few moments +longer, evidently scarcely able to stand, his pity wakened and he +slowly left the window, shut in its blinds, and crossed his +ante-chamber, where the artificial light of electricity was met by the +full sunshine of the breaking day streaming in through the open window +of his terrace. Not entirely sure of his motive or to what excess of +folly it might lead him, he nevertheless opened wide his front door, +only to see that the woman on the opposite street had gone. She had +been let in. With a glance of relief up and down the street where the +_confetti_ in disks of lilac and yellow and red lay in dirty piles or +swam on the flushing gutters that sparkled in the light, Bulstrode shot +to his door on the Parisian world and after a _nuit blanche_ went +upstairs to his rooms. + + +And there had intensely come to him during the period of his dressing +the next morning after a tardy wakening the idea of taking the child, +of--he was certain it could be done--buying the mother off. He would, +in short, if he could, legally adopt the Parisian _gamine_ for his own. +It would give him a distinct interest, and life was empty for want of +one; this, in a manner, however short of perfect, would supply the need +of a loving living creature in his environment and would--his thrill at +the idea proved to him how lonely he had been--give him companionship +and a responsibility of a tender, personal sort. He could make a home +at last for a child. Men are more paternal than they are credited with +being, and Bulstrode directly foresaw delightful _causeries_ in the +future with--(he knew many women)--_with one woman_ whose pretty taste, +whose wit and humor, should counsel him in his new rôle. Mrs. Falconer +would dress Simone--her hand should be wonderfully in it all. +Bulstrode had let his fancy linger over the scheme. Certainly, during +the hour in which he spun his fanciful plan, there was not one bar to +its execution. Nor did there come to him any hint of its intrinsic +sterility, or the idea that it was possibly an excuse for the +interweaving of another interest more closely with his life--no idea +that he was simply strengthening an old bond, or by means of this +little tug pushing a mighty vessel nearer port. + +He almost happily mused until a nursery grew out of thin air, a child's +little garments lay on a chair, and festivities, whose charm is of the +most mysterious, illuminated his reverie. Bulstrode, even without the +shudder of the climatician, contemplated the rigors of his own country, +for a rosy room grew out of his dream, fire-lit and fragrant with fir +and holly, and in the centre shone The Tree, whose shiny globes and +marvels were reflected till they danced in a child's eyes. + +There had been an hour earlier the quick, brusque dash of a French +thunder-storm, and the cooled air came refreshingly from the garden as +Bulstrode stood out on the terrace before going into the noonday +breakfast. Prosper, fetching his master's coffee at nine o'clock, had +been informed that they were leaving Paris that day and received +instructions as to the setting in order of the hôtel before returning +it to its proprietor. Where his wanderings were to take him Bulstrode +had not as yet made up his mind. It, after all, mattered so very +little what a bachelor did with his leisure! It was the height of the +season along the seacoast and a dozen places brilliantly beckoned; +there were tri-weekly boats to the country, where he should most +properly be. + +"There is," he with recurrent leeway to his inclinations reflected, +"always plenty of time to decide what one does not want to do!" + +As he glanced at the little breakfast spread temptingly there for him +on the terrace he was arrested by the sound of French voices in quick, +agitated discussion, and looked up to see the unceremonious entrance of +quite a little band of people who had in point of fact penetrated his +seclusion. In a second of time a group was before him and he +remembered afterward that certain figures in a twinkling assumed +familiar shapes: the wine-shop keeper, his wife, one or two other +patrons of the hôtel; but in the centre--he was sure of her!--pale and +staring, stood little Simone, her big doll clasped in her arms. + +Before the gentleman could ask their errand Madame Branchard, eager to +tell it, pushed forward. Bulstrode afterward, when he thought of the +scene, could always distinctly see her important red face, sleek, oily +hair, and in spite of summer heat the crocheted shawl over her cotton +gown. + +"We decided at once to address to monsieur, who is so good"--(he was +growing accustomed to the formula) "to monsieur who has been so like a +father to the poor little thing. Not but that we are ready ourselves +to do all we can for her--she is so sweet, so intelligent!" + +"The sweet, intelligent child" appeared, as Bulstrode's pitying gaze, +never leaving her, saw, to have shrunk overnight. In their midst she +stood of a ridiculous smallness, her big doll nearly hiding her and +over its blonde head Simone's eyes peered pathetically into, as it +were, a vague and terrifying world. Bulstrode asked shortly in the +face of the theatrical prelude: + +"What is this all about? What have you come to tell me?" + +"Ah, monsieur!" Madame Branchard's voice, particularly suited to +retailing the tragedies of the streets, quavered. "There has been a +_malheur_--it is too horrible--the mother!" + +"Stop!" Bulstrode put out his hand. "Simone!" + +The little thing dragged herself to him with a new timidity, as though +she believed him in league with the world against her. + +"Come," he encouraged, "come out here on the terrace, where you have so +often played with your doll, and don't be frightened, _mon enfant_; +everything will be all right." + +When he had so settled her in the smallest of chairs he went back to +the other bit of Paris street-life which had seethed in to him. + +Madame Branchard, whom his manner had reduced to, for her, marvellous +quiet and ease, approached impressively and lowered her voice as deeply +as it would fall. + +"Mademoiselle Lascaze, whom monsieur knows has been my tenant for +months past, is dead--dead, monsieur!" + +Bulstrode echoed, "Dead?" and his first thought was: "It was not she, +then, whom I saw striving for entrance this morning. Ah, poor +creature! Drowned?" + +"Monsieur then knows?" + +Knows--how should he know? He had thought of the aquarium and her +often repeated feat. + +"Monsieur is right, she is drowned; but it is not the aquarium--it is +the Seine. It appears," the wine-merchant's wife went on, "that last +night she made _la fête_ in the streets. We over here lock up, well, +at a decent hour, as monsieur will understand. Those who are in stay, +those who are out--well, monsieur will understand----" + +Yes, he understood. Would she go on? + +"Mademoiselle Lascaze had evidently lost her key of entry--so it +appears. We have this story from her comrades, a bad lot, like +herself. She tried to get in about five o'clock--they left her +knocking at the door. She must then have wandered the streets for an +hour, for it was six when they met her again by chance quite by the +Pont des Arts. They all had something to drink and started across the +river, when the poor thing offered to give an exhibition of her circus +feat and, before anyone could stop her, had dived off the bridge into +the Seine." + +He had, then, seen her knocking there in the dawn, and if he had +hastened a little--not held conventionally back---- + +"It is all _en règle_," assured Madame Branchard. "As my husband will +tell monsieur, he has been to the morgue to identify her." + +The wine-merchant now at his cue, nodded impressively. "Mais oui, I +assure monsieur she was quite natural--and she was une belle femme tout +le même----" + +His wife glanced at him scornfully. "She was a bad mother, and all the +house will tell you so. Many times, monsieur, I have gone in with my +pass-key and taken the poor little thing downstairs in my arms to give +her all the supper she would have had, and many a time, on cold nights, +when there was not a stick of fire in their room, and the woman +abroad--many a time I have had her sleep in our bed with us--my husband +will tell monsieur." + +The wine-merchant nodded assent. "She speaks the truth, monsieur." + +Bulstrode found presence of mind to wonder. "I suppose Mademoiselle +Lascaze left debts?" + +The husband and wife exchanged glances. + +"_En vérité_, monsieur," confessed Madame Branchard, "she has left a +few, but they are small and not significant; a hundred francs will +cover them. It is not for our pockets we are come to monsieur." + +Here the sentimentality having been disposed of by the woman, the +husband broke in: + +"It is like this, Monsieur Balstro" (Bulstrode saw how intimately the +_hôtel meublé_ knew him): "In a few moments even the authorities will +be here to take charge of the woman's effects and Simone will become +the property of the State. She has no relatives, as Monsieur will +understand. Thinking, therefore, that monsieur, _who is so good_, +might for some reason care to take an interest in the child's +future----" + +Branchard coughed and paused. Having given Mr. Bulstrode ample time to +speak, to show some signs of life and of his usual quick benevolence, +and being greeted with nothing other than quiet, meditative silence, +the merchant shrugged and comprehensively relinquished suppositions and +hopes in one large gesture. + +"In which case" (evidently that of taking for granted that Bulstrode +was less good than they had supposed), "in that case we shall put in a +plea ourselves for Simone and adopt her." + +Madame's voice, now in full and customary volume, expressed frankly +_her_ goodness. "We have five children and our means are modest, +but"--and she put it sublimely--"_one is not a mother for nothing_." + +Her tirade, however, was quite lost on Bulstrode, who was occupied with +his own projects of benevolence. Turning to this contingent of the +_hôtel meublé_ a back scarcely more imperturbable than his face had +been, he went out of the room to the terrace, where Simone sat just as +he had left her. She was, on her low chair, so tiny that in order more +nearly than ever before to approach her little point of view, to come +into her little sphere, Bulstrode knelt down on one knee. + +"Don't look so frightened, my child. Nothing will harm you--I assure +you of that; don't you"--he called her loyally to answer--"don't you +believe me, Simone?" + +The little thing drew in a struggling breath and whispered: "Oui, +m'sieu." + +"Good!" He was smiling at her and had taken her ice-cold, dirty, +little hands. "You are fond of me, Simone--you like a little M'sieu +Balstro'?" + +"Oh," she caught at her frightened voice and more clearly whispered, +"oh, oui, m'sieu!" + +"Bien encore!" + +He wanted tactfully to break the ice which shock and terror had formed +around the poor little heart, and yet not to prolong the moment. + +"_Voyons_," he said to her lightly, as if he were only to bid her come +and play in his garden, and not ask her to decide her destiny. +"_Voyons_, how would you like to come and live with me? to have toys +and pretty clothes and good things to eat--to be"--the bachelor put it +bravely--"to be _my_ little girl. How, Simone, would you like it?" + +If further startled she was humanized by his warmth, which was melting +her; her breast heaved, her lips trembled, and she asked: "Et +puis--maman?" + +Here Madame Branchard, in whom all feelings were subordinate to +curiosity and motherhood, had approached until she stood directly +behind the two on the terrace. Tears had sprung to her eyes and she +sniffled and wiped them frankly away with her hand. + +Bulstrode, singularly relieved by her appearance, turned and asked her, +"What does she then know?" + +"Nothing, m'sieur, nothing at all." + +Simone got up on her feet and her big doll fell with a crash on the +marble of the terrace and broke in a dozen pieces, but the catastrophe +did not touch her. + +"And maman?" she repeated. "Where is she? She did not come home last +night?" + +Bulstrode had descended to one knee in order to approach her, but +Madame Branchard got down on both knees and tenderly put her arms +around the child. + +"Look, ma petite--your mother has gone away forever to a beautiful +country, and she has left you here to be a good girl and do whatever +this kind gentleman says. Will you go to be his little girl? He will +give you everything in the world." She closed with this magnificent +promise, whose breadth and wealth no child-mind could grasp. In order +to give her more complete liberty in which to make her decision the +wine-merchant's wife, after kissing her, set her free. + +Simone made no audible reflection of wonder at her seeming desertion, +no exhibition of distress, no melodramatic outburst of grief or +surprise. She stood silent, absorbed, desolate, and ashamed, twisting +in and out between her frail little fingers the fringe of Madame +Branchard's black shawl. + +"Or," brightly continued the good woman, "you can come home with me and +play with Marie and Jeannette and have what we have. You can be my +little girl, as you will--it is for you to decide--chez moi, or with +this bon monsieur." + +Was it fair of them--thus to lay on her six years the burden of her own +destiny? + +Simone raised her head; her cheeks had reddened a little at Madame +Branchard's last words. She was unable to grasp the benefits that +Bulstrode's magnificence offered, but she knew Marie and Jeannette--she +knew the hands of Madame Branchard could tuck one in at night, and how +warm and soft was the bosom on which she had already wept her little +griefs. There were many beautiful things in the world, but Simone just +then only wanted one. Madame Branchard was not _her_ mother--but she +was still _a_ mother! Simone whispered so low that only the woman +heard: + +"I will go with you." + + +Prosper having embarked on a sea of indiscretion, went through the day +consistently. With a love of the melodramatic in his Latin temperament +he had admitted the _hôtel meublé sans cérémonie_: and late that +afternoon he gave entrance to another group of quite a different order, +and without formality ushered the lady and her friends to the terrace, +where the solitary inhabitant of another man's house was taking a +farewell beverage before leaving Paris. + +"We have caught you in time, Jimmy!" Mrs. Falconer made a virtue of it. +"If you are absconding with the Montensier treasures, then let me show +Molly and the Marquis at least what has been left behind." + +His bags and boxes in the hall, his automobile at the door, and +Bulstrode himself in travelling trim, it looked very much like a +flight, indeed. Miss Molly and the Marquis, it transpired, were able +to explore for themselves and to find in the gallery and salons +pictures and objects of interest to excuse a prolonged absence. + +"They're engaged," Mrs. Falconer explained to her host. "Isn't it +ridiculous? As you know, she hasn't a cent in the world, and his +family are not in the secret, but Molly and De Presle-Vaulx _are_, and +_I_ am, and I brought them off in pity for a spin to Paris." + +The apparition of the lady, whose mocking beauty had a fresh charm +every time he saw her--her worldly wisdom and her keen +reasonableness--made, as he stood talking with her, his past debauch in +philanthropies seem especially grotesque. With a long breath of joy at +the sight of her Bulstrode also realized how wonderfully separated from +her the introduction of another life into his environment would have +made him. + +"Your garden is a waste," the lady criticised, "dusty and dull. I +don't wonder you're getting away. Fontainebleau, too, was only a +_faute de mieux_, and I have left it. One should get really far away +at this season. It's the time when only the persons who are actually +bred in its stones can stay in Paris--certainly the birds of passage +may now, if ever, fly." + +"We are going to Trouville," she said; "we are all going to motor +through Normandy. Won't you come--won't you come?" He shook his head. + +Mrs. Falconer looked across the terrace to where a little chair had +been overturned, and on the floor by its side lay a broken doll. + +"Jimmy!" she laughed in triumph at the sight. "You _have_ broken your +doll!" + +Bulstrode said: "Yes, beyond repair, and I don't want another." Then +in a few words, briefly, a little impatient, and still smarting under +the child's defection, he gave her the story. + +Listening, absorbed, her charming eyes on him or at one moment turned +suspiciously away, the lady heard him to the end, and at the end said +softly: + +"Jimmy, my poor Jimmy! What have you nearly done! What _would_ people +have thought? Not that it matters in the least--it's what people _do_ +that counts--but oh, I tremble for your next folly!" + +"It might"--he spoke with something like bitterness--"be less harmless +and leave me less alone." + +She had finished a glass of iced tea, put her goblet down on the tray +and rose, coming over to where Bulstrode stood; she lightly laid her +hand on his arm. + +"You are, then, so very lonely? So lonely that you would be capable of +doing this foolish thing? Oh, you would have found, as I have found, +that it is those things which come into our lives, not those which we +by force _take_, which mean all we want them to mean! This wasn't +_your child_!" Mrs. Falconer's face softened as he had never seen it. +"Nor yet is she the child of some woman you love. Believe me, it would +have made you far lonelier if it so happened--if you should ever come +to love--if you ever had loved----" + +Bulstrode interrupted her abruptly: + +"Yes, in that case I should no doubt be glad that Simone had gone back +on me." He waited silent for a second, and then continued gently, "I +_am_ glad, very glad indeed!" + + + + +THE FOURTH ADVENTURE + + + +IV + +IN WHICH HE MAKES THREE PEOPLE HAPPY + +There were times when Bulstrode decided that he never could see the +woman he loved any more: there were times when he felt he must follow +her to the ends of the world, just in order to assure himself that she +was alive and serene. Such is the gentleman's character and point of +view, that she must always be serene, no matter what his own troubled +emotions might be. + +He had the extraordinary idea that he could not himself be happy or +make a woman happy over the dishonor of another man. It was +old-fashioned and unworldly of Bulstrode: still, that was the way he +was constituted. + +It was on one of the imperious occasions when he felt as if he must +follow her to the ends of the earth, that he steered his craft toward a +little town on the edge of the Norman coast, to a very fashionable bit +of France--Trouville. As soon as he understood that Mrs. Falconer was +to be in Normandy for the race week, he packed his things and ran down +and put up at the Hôtel de Paris. On this occasion the gentleman +followed so fast that he overleaped his goal, and arrived at the +watering-place before the others appeared. Bulstrode took his own +rooms, and in response to a telegram, engaged the Falconers' +apartments. He liked the way the little salon gave on the heavenly +blue sea, and with a nice fancy to make it something more home-like for +his friend to begin with, he filled it with flowers ... ran what +lengths he dared in putting a few rare vases and several pieces of old +Italian damask here and there. + +"Falconer," he consoled himself, "will be too taken up with his horses +to notice the _inside_ of anything but a stable! And I shall tell the +others that the hôtel proprietor is a collector: most of these Norman +innkeepers are collectors." And, as his idea grew, he went to greater +lengths, with the curiosity shops on either side the Rue de Paris to +tempt him. The result was that when Mrs. Falconer came, she found the +hôtel room wonderfully mellow and harmonious, and as a woman who revels +in beauty she responded to its charm. She was delighted, her eyes +sparkled, her cheeks glowed. And Jimmy Bulstrode had a moment of high +happiness as she looked at him and touched with her pretty hands the +flowers he had himself arranged. It was a delightful moment, a moment +that was much to him. + +The Falconers arrived with the usual lot of servants and motors and, +moreover, with a racing outfit, for Falconer had decided to enter his +English filly, Bonjour, for the events of August. There was also with +them a Miss Molly Malines and a young sprig of nobility, the Marquis de +Presle-Vaulx, to whom Bulstrode was a trifle paternal. + +"He can't, at least, be after Molly's _millions_," he reflected; "he +can't, at any rate, be a _fortune_ hunter, for the girl's face is the +only fortune she has!" + +On a bright and beautiful morning, the first of all the days for many +weeks--for Bulstrode reckoned his calendar in broken bits, beginning a +New Year each time he saw his lady again--a bright and beautiful +morning he walked out at the fashionable hour of noon and turned into +the Rue de Paris. + +The eyes of many women followed Bulstrode. + +Being an early riser, he had already taken a brisk walk over the +cliffs, had swum out beyond the buoys, and now in his flannels, his +panama, a gay rose in the lapel of his coat, amongst the many +debonnaire and pleasing people who filled the little fishing town, his +was a distinguished figure. He trusted very much to instinct to +discover his friend, and after a few moments found her at the extreme +end of the street which the papers of Paris tell you is "the most +worldly and fashionable in any part of the Continent, during race week +at Trouville." Mary Falconer was of course dressed in the very height +of the mode. She looked up and saw Bulstrode before he saw her, but +she could wait until he made his leisurely way down to her side. She +waited for him a great deal. He did not know how much, but then her +point of view and her feelings have never come into the history. It +amused her to make him her many clever little bits of speech, for he +was so appreciative of everything she said, and looking up at him now +as he approached she said: "These people never seem to have anything to +do, do they? Leisure is like money: to enjoy thoroughly either money +or leisure one should only have a little of each. Now for us +good-for-nothings who have no occupation it doesn't make much +difference what we do or where we do it!" + +The lady's camp-stool had been set down at the end of the street. +Those who are not promenading opened little _chaises pliantes_ and +watched from their little seats. Mrs. Falconer sat facing the ocean, +or what was visible of it between the bathing tents. Pagodas gay with +children's shovels and bright pails, striped bonbons and the sea of +muslins, ribbons and feathers and sunshades of the midsummer crowd. +All the capitals of Europe had poured themselves into Trouville, and +the resort overflowed with beauty and fashion. + +'"It's perfectly bewitching," Bulstrode said to her, "perfectly +bewitching, and it makes one feel as though there were nothing but +pleasure in the world." + +She wore a white dress and her hat was bright with flowers. She opened +her rose-lined parasol over her head. + +"Jimmy," she said abruptly, and brought his eyes to hers like a flash, +for he had been looking over the scene, "do you know I begin to see +where the innkeeper found his rare treasures; _there are a great many +other things_ that suggest them in this little street!" + +Bulstrode replied, "You don't want him to take them away, do you?" + +She shook her head. "No," she said slowly, "they have been a great +pleasure, but I don't want to _buy_ them from him, either." + +"I don't _think_ he'd sell them," Bulstrode was certain of it, "they're +extremely precious in his eyes." + +"I'm a good judge of works of art, however," she said after a moment, +"that is to say, I know a good thing when I see it. There was a little +picture in one of the shops back of me that I would have given a lot to +own." + +Her friend exclaimed: "Are you going to buy it! That is to say, will +Falconer buy it for you?" + +"My dear soul--with his horse running to-morrow! At any rate, the +bijou is already bought above my head. I went in yesterday to see what +was the least they would take for it, and found the Prince Pollona, the +Englishman who buys for the Wallace Collection, and somebody who, they +tell me, was the Rockefeller of St. Petersburg. Well, my little +picture was what they all wanted, and you can imagine that _I_ retired +from the running...! But I tell you this," she said, "only to show you +how very good my taste is, and so that you may rely on my selections." + +Bulstrode smiled in a way that said he thought he might rely on her, +but still he asked rather quizzically, "Well, what are you going to +recommend to me _now_?" + +The lady at the moment, not having anything in mind, looked suddenly +up, gave him whimsically: + +"Molly and her Marquis." + +The two young people with Jack Falconer were coming slowly along the +Rue de Paris toward them. The grace of the girl, her freshness under +her wide hat where flowers and ribbons danced and blended; the radiant +pleasure she exhaled, the swing of her dress, her youth, expressed so +happily the joy of life, recommended themselves easily in a flash.... + +"Oh, _Molly_--she's perfect!" + +"And the Marquis?" + +"He is perfectly in _love_," ... Bulstrode allowed him so much. + +"My dear friend, remember I know my _objets d'art_." + +"Oh, as an _objet d'art_...!" + +Bulstrode took the young man in: his white immaculateness, his +boutonnière, his panama--(not less than forty dollars a straw, as Jimmy +knew) his monocle. + +"As an _objet d'art_," he further conceded to her, "he's perfect, too!" + +"As an _homme de race_," said the American lady eagerly, with the true +Republican appreciation of blood and title, "as an _homme du monde_, as +a..." + +"Title?" he finished for her. "Oh, the Presle-Vaulx are all right! +I'll grant him a perfect title, sound as a bell, first Crusade--_Léonce +de Presle-Vaulx main droite, or sur azur--Pour toi seule_. It's a good +old tradition--a good old name." + +She scented his lack of sympathy. "Oh, I'll stand for him, Jimmy. I +know the _pâte_, as they say. I know the ring and the tone; and you +must, at my valuation, take him." + +"Molly, dear lady, has done the taking." Bulstrode lifted his hat as +the trio came up. "And what, after all, can we--the rest of us do?" + +"The rest of them" watched the young couple with mingled emotions: Mary +Falconer with all the romance in her, and in spite of unusual cool +reasonableness she had a feminine share--Jimmy with the sympathy of a +kindly nature, a certain sting of jealousy at the decidedly perfect +completeness of young love, and with a singularly wide-awake practical +common sense for an impulsive gentleman whose pleasure in life is to +pour into people's hands the things they most long for and cannot +without him ever hope to enjoy! + + +Bulstrode, although owning his share of horse-flesh and a proper number +of automobiles and keeping, for the best part of the time, a yacht out +of commission, was a sport only in a certain sense of the word. The +people who liked him best and who were themselves able to judge, said +he was a "dead game sport," but Jimmy smiled at this and knew that the +human element interested him in life above all, and that he only cared +for amusements as they helped others to enjoy. He was backing +Falconer's horse, although he felt certain the winnings would go to the +Rothschild's gelding. On the afternoon, however, when De Presle-Vaulx +came up to him in the Casino and said: "On what are you going to put +your money, Monsieur?" Bulstrode looked at him thoughtfully. He had +stood by the young man the night before at baccarat and seen him lose +enough to keep a little family of Trouville fisherfolk for a year. + +"Are you going to play the races, Marquis?" + +"But naturally!" ... + +De Presle-Vaulx had an attractive frankness, and his smile +was--Bulstrode understood what a girl would think about it! + +"... But of course! One doesn't come to Trouville in _la grande +semaine_ not to play!" + +He put his hand cordially on Bulstrode's arm. + +"Entre nous," he said, "I don't believe Falconer's horse has a chance +against Rothschild's Grimace. And you?" + +"Oh, I shall back Jack Falconer's mare," the older man replied. + +The Marquis played with his moustache. "She doesn't stand a show." + +Bulstrode was walking slowly down the grand staircase by his +companion's side. "And you will back Grimace?" He ignored the young +man's prognostication. + +De Presle-Vaulx said ingenuously: "_I_? Oh, seriously, I'm not +betting. I lost at baccarat last night, and I haven't a sou for the +race." + +He looked boyish and regretful. The American put his hand in his +pocket and took out his portefeuille. + +"Let me," he suggested pleasantly, "be your banker." + +The light dry rustle of French bank-notes came agreeably from between +his fingers. + +The young man hesitated, then put out his hand. + +"A thousand thanks, Monsieur, you are too good--I _will_ back Grimace, +and after the race----" + +Jimmy handed him the notes to choose from. + +At the stair foot stood Molly and Mrs. Falconer. + +"We went this afternoon to see Jack's horse," Miss Malines said to the +Marquis. Whatever she said, no matter how general, she said to +him--others might gather what they could. "Bon Jour's a beauty--a +dear, and as fit as possible. Oh, she's in great form! Jack's crazy +about her, and so is the jockey. I know Bon Jour will win! I'm going +to put twenty-five francs on her to-morrow." + +Mary Falconer smiled radiantly. "And you, Jimmy," she took for +granted, "are of course betting on the favorite?" + +"If you mean Grimace--" his tone was indifferent--"no, I shall back +your husband's horse." + +"_Jimmy_!" Her tone changed, and her expression as well. + +De Presle-Vaulx saw it, and he knew what women's voices can mean. He +was a Frenchman, and he understood what a slow, delicious flush, a +darkening of the eyes, a sharp note in the voice can signify of +feeling--as well as of gratitude, surprise and a little scorn. There +was all this in Mary Falconer's exclamation and her face. + +"And Maurice!" Molly said, "of course, you're doing the same?" + +The Marquis met his fiancée's clear eyes, her girlish enthusiasm and +her confidence. He bit his lip, shrugged, hesitated, looked at +Bulstrode, at Molly, and laughed. The presence of the others and the +custom of his country made it only a pretty courtesy--he lifted Molly's +hand to his lips. + +"Of course--_chère Mademoiselle_, I am backing Bon Jour with all my +heart, _cela va sans dire_!" + +Miss Malines regarded her friend with a pretty grimace and a smile. + +As they walked along together all four, Bulstrode said to himself: + +"He's a sport, a true sport--that's five thousand francs to the bad. +He was game, however, he's a good sport and, better yet, he's a true +lover!" + +Whether or not Mary Falconer really had an exalted idea of the merits +of Bon Jour, or whether she thoroughly understood the situation, how +was her friend to know? + +Falconer adored the horse, and the lady showed in the matter, as in +everything else, a fine loyalty to her husband, which was undoubtedly +one of the reasons why--but this is going too deeply into the domain of +Bulstrode's feelings, which, since he keeps them honorably sealed, it +is unworthy to surprise even in the interest of psychology. + +Bulstrode saw that his friend was pleased: her color, her mounting +spirits at dinner, showed it. She spoke with interest of the races, +and with confidence greater than she had hitherto evinced in the +fortunes of her husband's racer--indeed she talked horse to Molly's +edification, her husband's delight, and Bulstrode's admiration. All +this--the sense that the party was, so to speak, with him--put Jack +Falconer in the best of spirits, and the unruffled course of the +dinner, and, above all, the humor of the elder of the two ladies, quite +repaid Jimmy Bulstrode for the sure loss of his stakes. + +"Does she really think that I have faith in the horse?" he +wondered---meeting her charming eyes over the glass of champagne she +was drinking. They did not answer in text his question, but their glow +and the light of content in them answered for him other questions which +were perhaps of greater interest. + +She was not unhappy. All his life, since his acquaintance with her, it +had been his aim, in so far as he could aid it, that she should not be +unhappy. His idea of affection was that in all cases it should bring +to the object--joy. In his own life these things which brought him, no +matter how pleasant they might be, the after taste of regret and misery +he strove with all his manliness to tear out: "and surely," he so +argued, "if my presence in her life cause her for one moment anything +but peace, it would be better that we had never looked into each +other's eyes." + +There was nothing especially buoyant, in the attitude of the young +Marquis! His inclination to feminine will had cost him--he was so +familiar with the turf and the next day's programme to feel sure--five +thousand francs, which he had not the means to pay. + + +Later in the evening, very much later, indeed well on to one o'clock, +Bulstrode, wandering through the baccarat rooms--for no other purpose, +it would be said from his indifferent air, than to study types--saw +Maurice de Presle-Vaulx just leaving the Casino. + +Bulstrode's air was as friendly and as naïve as though he had not a +pretty clear idea of just how the tide of events was fluctuating toward +misfortune in the case of this young nobleman. + +"What do you say," he suggested, "to getting something to drink or eat? +What do you say to a piece of _perdreau_ and some champagne?" + +The Frenchman followed the older man, who in contrast to his pallor +looked the picture of health and spirits. Bulstrode cheerily led him +to a small table in the corner of the restaurant, where they sat +opposite one another, and for a little time applied themselves in +silence to the light supper served them. + +The Marquis drank more than he ate, and Bulstrode dutifully finished +the game and toast, quite glad, in truth, to break the fast of a long +evening which he had spent in the close rooms: for no other reason than +unseen, to befriend--and unasked, to chaperone Molly's lover. Finally, +when he felt that the right moment to say something had come, he smiled +at the young man, and said frankly: + +"Voyons, mon ami, don't you feel that you can talk to me a little more +freely than you could possibly to even so kind and charming a friend as +Mrs. Falconer? We are not of the same race, perhaps, but then under +certain circumstances such distinctions are not important. How do +you"--he handled the words as though in presenting them to the young +man he was afraid they might prick him--"How do _you_ now stand?--I +mean to say, the luck has been rather against you, I'm afraid." + +Bulstrode would never be so near forty again, and De Presle-Vaulx was a +spoiled child--at all events, all that could be spoiled in him had been +taken care of by his mother, and in his own way he had spoiled a large +part of what remained. He looked up smartly, for he had been following +the pattern of the table-cloth. If the frankness of the other +threatened to offend him, as he met the kind eyes of the American he +found nothing there that could do otherwise than please him. He +shrugged with his national habit, then threw out his hands without +making any verbal reply, but his smile and his gesture comprehended so +much that Bulstrode intelligently exclaimed: + +"Oh, but you don't mean to _say_----?" + +"I have not, monsieur, much to lose," the scion of an old house replied +simply. "We have the reputation of being poor; but to-night and last +night have quite 'wiped me out,' as you say in America. Je suis ruiné." + +Bulstrode lit his cigar. De Presle-Vaulx took from his pocket one of +his own cigarettes and puffed at it gently. Bulstrode smoked silently, +and thought of the young man without looking at him. He liked him, and +did not understand him at all: not at all! He supposed, that with his +different traditions, his Puritanism, his New World point of view, he +could _never_ understand him, but he would enjoy trying to do so, for +aside from the quality of spoiled boy, there was something of the man +in De Presle-Vaulx to which the New Englander extremely responded. + +His next remark was impersonal: + +"Bon Jour, then, you think is not likely----?" + +"_Mon cher Monsieur_! ... She is not even mentioned for place! Even in +the event of her winning," De Presle-Vaulx was gloomy, "I should be +able to discharge my debt to you and nothing more." Again he looked up +quickly. "I shall, of course, be quite able to discharge _that_; I +only mean to say that _en somme_, I am _roulé completément roulé_." + +"What, then, are you going to do?" + +De Presle-Vaulx looked at the end of his cigarette as though he took +counsel from it, and said measuredly: + +"There is, in my position, but one thing possible for a man to do." + +"You mean to say, marry, make a rich marriage?" + +The Marquis flashed at him: + +"A month ago, yes! that would have been the one way out of my +embarrassment: but I am no longer in the market. It is the other +alternative." + +Bulstrode in no case caring to hear put in words a tragically +disagreeable means of solving the problems of debt and love, and having +less faith in this extravagant, explosive alternative than in the +_marriage de convenance_, did not urge the Frenchman further. He +simply brought out--his quiet eyes fixed on the other: + +"And the little girl?--Molly--Miss Malines?----" + +He gave him three chances to think of the pretty child, and for the +first De Presle-Vaulx's expression changed. He had with a nonchalance +submitted to the discussion of his fortune and his fate, but now he +distinctly showed dignity. + +"Don't, I beg of you, _speak_ of Mademoiselle Malines!" and then he +said more gently, "mille pardons, mon cher ami!" + +Bulstrode smoked his Garcia meditatively. He had not attempted the +solving of other people's questions, had not played the good fairy for +a long time. He had the hazy feeling--such as he often experienced +just before stepping into the mysterious excitement of doing some good +deed, of undergoing the effects of a narcotic which put to sleep reason +and practical common-sense, and left alive only a desire to befriend. +In this case, determined not again to be the victim of sentimentality, +determined for once to unite common sense and common humanity, he +forcibly dissipated the haze and said: + +"Your family! I have, as you know, understood from Mrs. Falconer, the +facts of the case. You must not be formal with me." He smiled +delightfully. "I am an American; you know we have all sorts of +barbarous privileges. We rush in quite where the older races fear to +tread ... and Molly Malines' father is an old friend of mine." + +(Mr. Bulstrode did not say what kind of an old friend! or even allow +himself to remember the I.O.U.s and loans that his bankers had made to +the visionary, good-humored, sanguine, unfortunate stockbroker.) + +"Your family--how do they take the idea of your marriage to a poor +American?" + +De Presle-Vaulx pushed his coffee cup aside, leaned his arms on the +table, bent over, and said with more confidence: + +"Oh, they are entirely opposed to it. That's one reason, to be quite +frank with you, why I have been so reckless." + +He added: "My mother has refused her consent, and I can never hope to +alter my father's attitude. I have their letters to-day as well as +telegrams from Presle-Vaulxoron--they bid me 'come home immediately,' +and so far as my people are concerned, their refusal puts an end to the +affair!" + +There was a mixture of amusement and reproach in Bulstrode's tone--"and +you have found nothing better to do than to throw away at baccarat what +money you had, and have found no other solution for the future than +to...?" he eyed the young man keenly, and a proper severity came into +his expression. "Nonsense," he said, and repeated the word with more +indulgence: "nonsense, _mon ami_!" + +His reproof was borne: + +"We are an old race, M. Bulstrode----" + +Bulstrode had heard this allocution before. It gave lee-way to so +much; permitted so much; excused so much! + +"... I don't need to tell you our traditions, or recall our customs. +You of course know them. If I marry without my parents' consent I +shall probably, during my mother's lifetime, never see her again, and I +am her only son. It means that I sever all relations with my people." + +Bulstrode knocked the ash off his cigar and said thoughtfully: + +"It's too bad! A choice, if there _is_ one, is always too bad. There +should in real things _be_ no choice. As soon as such a contingent +arises, it proves that neither thing is really worth while! When a man +loves a woman there can be no choice. My dear friend, when a +_man_"--he paused--"loves--there is nothing in the world _but the +woman_." + +The Marquis looked at the fine face of the elder man. Years had, with +their gentle history, and kindly records, touched Jimmy Bulstrode +lightly. Every experience made him better to look at; "like a good +picture," Mrs. Falconer had said, "painted by a master, and only +growing more splendid." Nothing of the worldliness of the roué marked +his expression. His memories were clear and honorable, and the +Frenchman experienced a sensation of surprise and also one of +enlightenment as he looked at him and responded to his expression. He +had never seen any one quite like this man of the world, could not +think of his prototype in France. + +He repeated: + +"Nothing but the woman in the world--? Honor--" Bulstrode quickly +added, "and the woman--they are synonymous." + +In watching his companion he wondered in how much of a tangle the +Frenchman's mind was, and just how deep his feet were sunk in the +meshes of conventionality and tradition, and decided: "Oh, is it too +much to believe that he could----!" + +As if in answer to his thoughts, De Presle-Vaulx spoke in the simplest +manner possible: + +"J'aime Molly." + +Quite surprised at the simplicity, Bulstrode beamed on him and waited. + +Then the other added: + +"But I can't ask any woman to share poverty and debts, and I have no +way of making a living; I'm not bred for it." + +"You are not an invalid?" + +"On the contrary." + +"You can work." + +De Presle-Vaulx smiled: "I am afraid not! No De Presle-Vaulx has done +a stroke of work in three hundred years." + +"It's time, then"--Bulstrode was tart--"that you broke the record. Why +don't you?" He said as though suddenly illumined--"make me your +banker, draw on me for whatever sum you will, and since you have faith +in her and are so well supported by the public opinion--bet on Grimace. +I believe, with you, that he is sure to win. You would recoup much of +your loss here." + +De Presle-Vaulx pushed back his chair and exclaimed: "Monsieur!" + +"Oh," shrugged Bulstrode, "a woman's caprice, my dear fellow! A +foolish little whim of a girl! You can't be expected to mix sport and +flirtation to the tune of two or three thousand dollars." + +He smiled deceptively. + +The young man laughed bitterly: + +"So that is something of what you think of me? for I see you are not +serious! It's a folly, of course, a sentimental folly," he met +Bulstrode's eyes that silently accused him of a like--"but only a man +in love knows what sentimental follies are worth! There is"--the young +man was suddenly serious, "a sort of prodigality in love only +understood by certain temperaments, certain races: it may be +degenerate: I suppose it is, and to push it quite to the last phase, +is, of course, cowardly, certainly very weak, and men like you, +Monsieur, will deem it so." + +"You mean--?" and now Bulstrode's tone urged him to make himself clear. + +"I mean," said De Presle-Vaulx firmly, "rather than renounce this woman +I adore I will without doubt--(given the tangle in which the whole +matter is!...") and he could not for the life of him put his intention +into words. He smiled nevertheless unmistakably. Bulstrode leaned +across the table and put his hand on the other's arm. + +"Then you don't love her well enough not to break her heart? Or well +enough to live a commonplace life for her?" + +"I don't know how to do it." + +"Well," said Bulstrode, "I have run upon quite a good many hard +moments, perhaps some, in their way, as difficult as this, and I have +never thought of getting out of the muddle. Perhaps it _is_ a +question, as you say, of temperament and race. I am inclined also to +think, stubbornly, that it is a question of the quality of the love +that one has for the woman. You won't think it impertinent of me, my +dear friend,"--and his tone was such that no one could have thought it +impertinent--"you won't, I am sure, take it amiss if we talk this over +to-morrow, and if I try to show you something that means _life_, +instead of what you plan." + + +"You know you as good as stood for De Presle-Vaulx." + +Bulstrode held Mrs. Falconer's parasol, her fan, as well as a gold bag +purse full of louis, a handkerchief and his own cane and field-glass. +For the lady, standing on a chair the better to see the race-track, was +applauding with enthusiasm the result of the first handicap. She had +placed a bet on a horse called Plum-Branch "from a feeling of +sentiment," as she said, because she had, that day, quite by chance, +selected a hat with a decorative plum-branch amongst other garnitures. + +"I am _standing_, certainly, Jimmy," she replied to his remark, "and to +the peril of my high heels!-- _There_, I've won! and won't you, like an +angel, go and cash my bets?--give me the purse, you might have your +hand picked! You can put my winnings in your pocket; they're not so +enormous." + +During his absence she watched the scene around her with animation. +The spotless day, if one might so call it, when the sky and the turf +and the whole world looked as though washed clean, and nature, seen in +the warm sunlight, seemed to palpitate and flutter in the wind that +gently stirred ends of ribbon or tips of plumes, and set the fragrance +of the country air astir. Back of the lady the tribune was like a +floral display: here and there a corner red as roses, there a mass of +lily-white dresses enlivened by pink and blue parasols, and the green +_pesage_ stretched between the spectators and the race-track in bands +of emerald, whilst across it promenaded or stood in groups those +interested in the races. Mrs. Falconer acknowledged a friend here and +there, glanced affectionately over to where Molly and the Marquis, +seated near, fixed their attention on the race-course, where the +winner, flying his blue ribbon, cantered triumphantly around the track. + +One of a little group Falconer, the worse for many cocktails, stood by +the railing, talking familiarly with his jockey, whilst Bon Jour, +blanketed to the eyes, was being led up and down the outside track +alongside of her rival, Rothschild's Grimace. + +Bulstrode returning, gave his friend a handful of gold, which she put +into her purse, and he repeated: "You remember that you stood, as it +were, for De Presle-Vaulx?" + +"I do," she said, "if you think the race-course is the place to take me +to account for anything so serious, I do remember, and I do stand. +What is the trouble that he needs me?" + +"He needs," Bulstrode was serious, "a good many things, it seems to me, +in order to get firmly on the plane where he should be!" + +"And that is----?" + +"On his feet, my dear friend." + +"Well, he is head over heels in love," she nodded, "but when he finally +lands I think you will find Maurice perfectly perpendicular." + +"He won't," returned the other, "at all events, land in the bosom of +his family." + +"No?"--she looked away from the race-course and laughed--"you mean to +say, Jimmy, has he heard, then?" + +"I mean to say that _they_ are quite clear in their minds about his +marriage! They seem to have all the firmness that the young man lacks. +Tell me," he asked his friend, "just what do you know about the matter? +What happened that you so strongly took up his cause with Molly? You +have not told me yet." + +She relinquished the interests of the moment to those of the +sentimental question. + +"It seems," she said, lowering her tone, "that they have been secretly +engaged for a year. Nothing that an American girl can do would +surprise me, but you can imagine that I was overwhelmed at his part in +the matter. When Molly joined me in Fontainebleau, De Presle-Vaulx +promptly followed, and I naturally obliged her to tell me everything. +I was dismayed at the lack of _tenue_ he had shown. I had a plain talk +with him. He said that he had first met Molly at some dance or other +in the American colony, I don't know where; that he understood that +American girls disposed of their own lives; that he loved her and +wanted to marry her, and that he was only waiting to gain the consent +of his family before writing to her father. He seemed delighted to +talk with me and perfectly conventional in his feelings. He further +told me that his parents until now knew nothing, that he had not been +able to tear himself away from Molly long enough to go down to the +country where they were and see them. I forced him to write at once; +exacted myself that until he received their answer there should be +nothing between Molly and him but the merest distant acquaintance. I +did not know that he had heard from the Marquise or his father. You +seemed to have suddenly entirely gained his confidence and taken my +place." She looked over at the young couple. "Poor Molly!" she +exclaimed. "He has not, I should say, told her: she looks so happy and +so serene! It's of course only a question of _dot_, otherwise there +could be no possible objection. She is perfectly beautiful, the +sweetest creature in the world; and she is a born Marquise!" + +Bulstrode interrupted her impatiently: + +"It would be more to the purpose if he were a born bread-winner and she +were a dairy-maid!" + +"Jimmy, how vulgar you are!" + +"Very--" he was wonderfully sarcastic for him--"money is a very vulgar +thing, my dear friend; it's as vulgar as air and bread and butter. It +is like all other clean, decent vulgarity, it can be abused, but it's +necessary to life." + +Mrs. Falconer opened her eyes wide on this new Bulstrode. + +"Why, what has happened to you?" + +He made a comprehensive gesture: "Oh, I am always supporting a family!" +he said with an amusing attempt at irritability. "I am always +supporting a family that is not mine, that does not sit at my +hearthstone or at my table. I am always marrying other people to some +one else, and dressing other people's children!" + +He finished with a laugh: "There, No. 5 is up! Aren't you interested +in this race?" + +Mrs. Falconer and Bulstrode had walked a little from where the young +couple chattered indifferent to everything but each other. + +"No; I am only interested in what you are saying. What have you +planned to do or thought out for them, Jimmy? What do your rebellious +phrases imply? _Are_ you really going to make a home for----?" + +Bulstrode said stubbornly. "No! I am going to show him how to make +one for himself." + +He stopped short where he stood: he had resumed the care of her +parasol, her fan, and purse. + +Her face, as she took in his exposition of his plan for the +regeneration of a decayed nobility, was inscrutable. Instead of +exclaiming, she stopped to speak a moment to some people who passed, +shook hands with the owner of the favorite, and when they were once +again alone said to her friend: + +"Isn't it too delightful! the whole scene? I mean to say, how +perfectly they do it all. How thoroughly gay it is, how debonnair, +graceful, and _bien compris_. Look at the wonderful color of the +_pesage_, and the life of the whole thing! These Latin most thoroughly +understand the art of living. You scarcely ever see a care-worn face +in France. Look at Jack now! Did you ever see such anxiety as he +represents? If Bon Jour is beaten I don't know _what_ will become of +him. What shall I do with him?" + +Bulstrode's interest on this subject was tepid. + +"Oh, he'll be all right!" he said indifferently. "Take him to the +Dublin Horse Fair." + +And then as though she had not capriciously left the other topic, Mrs. +Falconer asked: + +"Just what _is_ your plan for Molly and her Marquis? May I not know?" + +And Bulstrode who had never in any way thought out a plan or scheduled +a scheme for the wise distribution of the good he intended to do, +educated now, so he fondly hoped, by his failures, wiser, he was proud +to believe, by several sharp lessons--with no little confidence and +something of pride, said to his companion: + +"I have a ranch out West, you know; a little property I took for a bad +debt once. It has turned out to be a great and good piece of luck. +That time I was fortunate--" (his tone, was congratulatory and Mrs. +Falconer smiled prettily). "I now need a second overseer again--a man +of brains, good temper, and physical endurance, who can keep accounts. +Experience isn't at all necessary. There's my Englishman there, my +Christmas tramp, you recall; he'll show De Presle-Vaulx his duties. +It's a good enough berth for any determined chap who has his way to +make and an ideal to work for. I purpose to send this Frenchman out on +a salary and to see what stuff he's made of. After a year or two, with +good sense and push, he will be in a position to ask any girl to be his +wife. I'll raise his salary, and if Molly is the girl I take her for, +she will help him there." + +"And his family, Jimmy?" + +"Damn his family!" risked the aroused Bulstrode. + +Mrs. Falconer laughed. + +"Really! It is casual of you! but you don't know them and can't! But +they can quite spoil the whole thing as far as Molly is concerned. His +tradition and race, his home and all it means to him--why you can't +roughly run against all the old conventions like that, my dear man!" + +"Well," said the ruthless gentleman, "then he can go and feed on their +charity, can take to his flesh-pots and give up the girl. She is far +too good for any foreign fortune-hunter anyway. You spoil a man, all +of you. You'd prefer a disreputable roué to a cowboy with money in his +pocket and a heart." + +"Would it then prove to you De Presle-Vaulx's heart if he threw over +his family and went West?" + +"Yes," said the other quickly. "It would prove he loves the girl." + +"You forget his mother." + +Bulstrode fumed. + +"I have not the honor to forget her; I don't know the Marquise de +Presle-Vaulx." + +"I do," interrupted his friend. "She is a charming, gentle old dear; +narrow, if you call it so, clear-headed and delightful. She adores her +only son, and thinks quite properly that his name, his estates, +beautiful if mortgaged, are a fair exchange for an American _dot_. +Maurice de Presle-Vaulx, after all, does not go poverty-stricken to the +woman he marries. There are not so many ways to live after one is +twenty-five, and to uproot this scion of an old race, to exact such a +sacrifice----" + +"It would make a man of him." + +"He is one already. There are all kinds, I need not tell you so." + +"He is head over heels in debt." + +Mrs. Falconer laughed again. + +"We make him out an acrobat between us." + +"He gambles on borrowed money." + +"You mean that you have forced him to borrow from you? He will pay +what he owes, I am sure of him." + +Bulstrode wheeled and scrutinized her, and said with the natural +asperity of a man who is bored by a woman's too generous championship +of another man: + +"You stand for him warmly." + +Mrs. Falconer, reading him, said quickly: + +"Oh, I know him thoroughly! He has the faults of his race, but as an +individual he is the right sort." + +With their pretty habit, her cheeks had grown red in the course of the +discussion. + +"Please give me my parasol; it's awfully hot here." + +He opened it for her and she held its rosy lining against the sun. + +Mr. Falconer, who from the rail had been observing, through the haze +formed by countless cocktails, the figure of his wife in her white +dress, as well as the figure of her faithful squire, here came +swaggering up to them both. He was never jealous, but Mr. Bulstrode's +uniform courtesy and attention to the woman neglected by her husband +often piqued him to attention. As he drew near, Mrs. Falconer asked +quickly: + +"And the Marquis, Jimmy? What do you suppose he will say to your Wild +West scheme?" + +Bulstrode smiled. + +"Oh, you women understand us even when we are stupid mysteries to +ourselves! Tell me, how will he take this?" + +"He will refuse." The lady was quick in her decision. "He cannot in +consistence do otherwise. He will consider your plan provincial and +Yankee, and he will consider, what you ignore, that it will kill his +mother. If he cannot marry Molly with the family consent in proper +French fashion he will naturally give her up. But first of all, my +dear Jimmy, he will put _you_ in your place!" + +Bulstrode cast a fatherly glance to where the young people sat talking +together: the Marquis in gray clothes of the latest London make, a +white rose in his button-hole, and monocle in his eye, a figure more +unlike the traditional cowboy one could scarcely conceive. + +"Your taste is good, ma chere amie," his voice was delighted. "Your +instinct as a connoisseur is faultless; but you are not quite sure of +your _objet d'art_ this time." He nodded kindly at the Parisian--"He's +all right! he's a true sport, a lover and a man. De Presle-Vaulx knows +my Wild West scheme and has accepted." + + +Molly had put twenty-five francs on Bon Jour and expected to win it. +The money Bulstrode played would have bought a very handsome present +for his lady, and he felt as if he were making an anonymous gift to the +woman he loved. + +At the ringing of the bell Falconer left his post by the railing and +came up and joined the little group of his friends just below the Grand +Stand. He lit a cigar, threw down the match furiously, smoked +furiously, and nerved himself for the strain. + +Nodding toward the betting contingent he muttered: "They're sheep. +They're all betting on the favorite naturally. Bon Jour wasn't +mentioned for place even, poor little girl!" + +The ignored little racer had ambled around the field, her jockey in +crimson and white, doubled up upon her back after the manner of his +profession. Bon Jour was as golden red as a young chestnut; she had +four white feet that twinkled on the fragrant turf whose odors of +crushed blades and green blades, of earth and the distant smell of the +sea went to her pretty head. She threw it up eagerly as her disputants +filled the field. There were nine horses scheduled, but only five +qualified. The Rothschild gelding, an English gray, and two others +named for probable places. + +"She's cool as a rose," murmured Bon Jour's owner, "and just look at +her form, will you!" + +It was charming, and already the American's horse was attracting +attention. + +Molly, with De Presle-Vaulx's aid, rose on her chair, from which her +excitement threatened at any moment to precipitate her. + +"Oh, Maurice--of course she'll win. Isn't she a _dear_? How much +shall I make on twenty-five francs?" + +Bulstrode smiled. + +"A frightful amount! There are twenty to one up on her, Molly." + +The girl mentally calculated, exclaimed with pleasure and, with +sparkling eyes, watched the lining-up of the racers. Neck to neck they +stood, a splendid showing of satin and shine from fetlock to forelock, +equine beauty enough to gladden a sporting man's heart, and all five +were away before Miss Malines was even sure which one was the great +Grimace. + +From the first the favorite's nose was to the good. His shapely body +followed, and when the horses came in sight again beyond the right-hand +hedge, he had put four lengths between himself and the others. The +winner of the Grand Prix had all the field with him. But the gray +gelding who strained at Grimace's flanks had no staying powers, +although he was backed as strongly for place as was Grimace to win; as +he fell back Bon Jour began to attract notice. + +Bulstrode and De Presle-Vaulx exchanged glances over the absorbed +figure of Jack Falconer. "She may yet win place," murmured the younger +man. + +As they came up the wide turf sweep that lay like an emerald sea +crested by the dark waves of the hedges, as the horses rocked like +ships over the obstacle--Bon Jour closely followed the favorite. + +At the moment Miss Malines cried: "Oh, a jockey's off! Oh, Jack, it's +Bon Jour! She's _thrown_ her jockey! I see the red and white." + +But Falconer biting his cigar fiercely, laughed in scorn. "She's +thrown _them_ all right. She's left them all _behind_ her--see!" he +pointed, "there are only three running." And, indeed, as they came +again in sight, one of the horses was seen to be wandering loose about +the course, and another cantered nonchalantly some hundred yards behind. + +"She's not even trying," murmured her enchanted owner. "She's cool as +a rose." + +The cries which had named the Rothschild gelding from the start were +now mingled, and Bon Jour, flying around the emerald course, might have +heard her name for the first on the public lips. She was running +gracefully, her head even with the favorite's saddle and the English +gray was a far-off third. Bon Jour was pressing to fame. + +At the last hurdle as they appeared flying in full sight of the Grand +Stand it was evident the pretty creature had made her better good. The +horses leapt simultaneously and came down on all fours, with Grimace to +the rear, and amongst the frantic acclamation with which the public is +always ready to greet the surprise of unlooked-for merit, Bon Jour +passed Grimace by half a metre at the goal. Jack Falconer was an +interesting figure on the turf; his horse was worth twenty thousand +pounds. + + +Several hours later, Bulstrode, early in the salon, walked up and down +waiting the arrival of the ladies. He had paid downstairs a hundred +francs for the privilege of dining in the window of the restaurant, +because Mrs. Falconer chanced to remark that one saw the room better +from that point. And the head waiter even after this monstrous tip +said if "_ces dames_" were late there would be no possibility to keep +this gilt-edged table for them. It was the night of the year at +Trouville: Boldi and his Hungarians played to five hundred people in +the dining-room. + +Bulstrode looked at the clock; they had yet ten minutes' grace. + +Extremely satisfied with himself, with Bon Jour, above all with the +French Marquis--he felt a glow of affection for the whole French nation. + +"How we misjudge them!" he mused; "how we accuse them of clinging to +their families' apron strings, of being bad colonists; call them +hearthstone huggers, degenerates; and declare that they lack nerve and +force to rescue themselves from degeneration! And here without +hesitation this young man----" At this moment the salon door opened, +and one of the ladies he had been expecting came in, the youngest one, +Miss Molly Malines, in a tulle dress, an enormous white hat, a light +scarf over her shoulders, and the remains of recent tears on her face. + +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" she exclaimed, half putting out her hand and +drawing it back again, as she bit her lips: "I thought I should find +Mary here; I wanted to see her first to _cry_ with! but of course it is +you I _should_ see and not cry with!" + +She gave a little gasp and put her handkerchief to her eyes to his +consternation; then to his relief controlled herself. + +"Maurice has just told me _everything_," she repeated the word with +much the same desperation that De Presle-Vaulx had put into a gesture +which to Bulstrode had signified ruin. + +"He's too wonderful! too _glorious_, Mr. Bulstrode, isn't he? I loved +him before, but I _adore_ him now! He's glorious. I never heard +anything so terrible and so silly!" + +Bright tears sprang to brighter eyes, and she dashed them away. + +("She's adorable") he was obliged to acknowledge it. + +"Why, how could you be so cruel; yes, I will say it, so cruel, so hard, +so brutal?" + +"_Brutal_?"--he fairly whispered the word in his surprise. + +"Why, fancy Maurice in the West, in the dreadful Western life, in that +climate----!" + +"Why, it is the Garden of Eden," murmured Bulstrode. + +"Oh, I mean to say with cattle and cowboys." + +"Come," interrupted her father's friend, practically, "you don't know +what you are talking about, Molly. You don't talk like an American +girl. They've spoiled De Presle-Vaulx, and this will make a man of +him!" + +Miss Malines called out in scorn: + +"_A man of him_! What do you think he is? He's the finest man I ever +saw. You don't know him. Just because he has a title and his mother +spoils him, and because he has been a little reckless in debts and +things, you throw him over as you do all the French race without +knowing them!" + +Her tears had dried and her cheeks flamed. + +"Why, Maurice has served three years as a common soldier in the +Madagascar Army; and _that's_ no cinch! Cuba's a joke to it. He's had +the fever and marched with it. He's slept all night with no covering +but the clothes he had worn for weeks. He's eaten bread and drunk +dirty water. He's been a soldier three years. The way I came to know +him was at Dinard where he swam out into the sea to save a fisherman +who couldn't swim, and all the town was out in the storm to welcome +him! They carried him up the streets in their arms--" she waited a +minute to steady her voice--"He's been two years exploring in Abyssinia +with a native caravan--no white man near him, he's the youngest man +wearing the Legion d'Honneur in France. _And you want to send him out +to make a cowboy of him in the American West to turn him into a man_!" + +Mr. Bulstrode had never heard such impressive youthful scorn. Molly +threw back her pretty head and laughed. + +"Do you know many cowboys who have been three years a soldier; +travelled through unexplored countries; written a book that was crowned +by an academy? Well, I don't!" she said boldly. "Of course I like his +title, of course I am proud of his traditions. They're fine! And it +is no dishonor to love his château and his Paris hôtel, and I'd love +his mother, too--if she'd let me. But I adore Maurice _as he is_, and +he's man enough for me!" + +The floor seemed to quiver under poor Bulstrode, who could scarcely see +distinctly the lovely excited face as he ventured timidly: + +"I didn't know all these things, Molly." + +She was still unpitying. + +"Of course not! Americans never do know. They only _judge_. You +didn't think Maurice would tell you all his good points! He doesn't +think they are anything. He only sees the fact that he has debts and +that we are both poor and his family won't give their consent." + +Mr. Bulstrode smiled and said: + +"He is naturally forced to see these things, my dear child." + +The girl softened at his tone and said more gently: + +"Well, they are terrible facts, of course. It only means that my heart +is broken, but it doesn't mean that I will consent to your plan, or to +his plan, Mr. Bulstrode. I won't make him break his mother's heart and +ruin his career for me." + +The gentleman came up and took her hands: his voice was very gentle: + +"What, then, will you do?" + +"Oh, wait," she said with less spirit. "Wait until his mother +consents, or until she dies...." She began to hang her head. Her +eulogy of her lover over, only the dry facts of the present remained. +She had no more enthusiasm with which to animate her voice. + +Here Mrs. Falconer and the Marquis opened the door, and started back as +the animated picture of beauty being consoled by kindness met their +view. + +"Oh, come along in!" cried the girl cheerily. "I have just been +ballyragging Mr. Bulstrode!" + +De Presle-Vaulx came eagerly forward: + +"Don't listen to her, Monsieur! Molly's tired out after so much +success." + +The startled benefactor looked doubtfully from her to the young man. + +"And you?" + +"Oh, I?" shrugged De Presle-Vaulx, "I'm already half cowboy!" + +Mary Falconer put her arm round Molly's waist, drew her to her, "and +Molly is more than half Marquise." + +"Mr. Bulstrode," again cried the girl impetuously. "_Please_ reason +with him! He's horribly obstinate. You have put this dreadful idea in +his head; now please tell him how _ridiculous_ it is. If he goes West +and spoils his career and breaks with his family, I'll never marry him! +As it is, I will wait for ever!" + +"But my dear child!" Mary Falconer was determined to have the whole +thing out before them, "you don't seem to get it into your head that +you have neither of you a sou, and Maurice can never earn any money in +France." + +Miss Malines, to whom money meant that she drew on her father, the +extravagant stockbroker whose seat even in the Stock Exchange was +mortgaged, and who had not ten thousand dollars' capital in the +world--lost countenance here at the cruel and vulgar introduction of +the commodity on which life turns. She sighed, her lips trembled, and +she capitulated: + +"Oh, if that's really true ... as I suppose it is----" + +Bulstrode watched her, she had grown pale--she drew a deep breath, and, +looking up, not at her lover, but at the elder man, said softly: + +"Why, I guess I'll have to give him quite up then." + +But here De Presle-Vaulx made an exclamation, and before them all took +Molly in his arms: + +"No," he said tenderly, "never, never! _That_ the last of all! Mr. +Bulstrode is right. I must work for you, and I will. We'll both go +West together. Couldn't you? Wouldn't you come with me?" + +... "And your mother?" asked the girl. + +"Nothing--" De Presle-Vaulx whispered, "nothing, counts but _you_." + +Over their heads Bulstrode met his friend's eye, and in his were--he +could not help it--triumph, keen delight, and in hers there was anger +at him and tears. + +At this moment the waiter put his head in at the door and implored +Monsieur to come down if he wanted the seat in the window. + +"Oh, we're coming!" Mrs. Falconer cried impatiently. "Molly, there's +some eau-de-cologne on the table. Put it on your eyes. Don't be long +or we'll lose our place. The West will keep!" + +She went out of the door and Bulstrode followed her. In the hall she +said tartly: + +"Well, I hope you're satisfied! I never saw a more perfect inquisitor. +Why didn't you live at the time of the Spanish persecution?" + +He ignored her scathing question: + +"I am satisfied," he said happily, "with both of them; they're bricks." + +The lady made no reply as she rustled along by his side to the elevator. + +From the floors below came the clear, bright sound of the Hungarian +music in an American cake-walk and the odor of cigars and wines and the +distinct suggestion of good things to eat came tempting their nostrils. + +As Bulstrode followed the brilliant woman, a sense of defeat came over +him and with less conviction he repeated: + +"I _am_ satisfied, but you, my friend, are not." + +"Oh," shrugged Mary Falconer desperately, "you know _I've_ no right to +think, or feel, or criticise! I never pretend to run people's lives or +to act the benefactor or to take the place of Fate." + +The light danced and sparkled on the jet in her black dress, on the +jewels on her neck. Under her black feather-hat her face, brilliant +and glowing, seemed for once to be defiant to him, her handsome eyes +were dark with displeasure. + +The poor fellow could never recall having caused a cloud to ruffle her +face before in his life. It was not like her. Her tenderness for a +second had gone. He could not live without that, he knew it, what ever +else he must forego. + +He said, with some sadness, "I suppose you're right: if one can buy +even _a honeymoon_ for another couple he shouldn't lose the +opportunity." + +She looked up at him quickly. They had reached the ground floor--they +had left the elevator and they stood side by side in the hall. The +lady had a very trifle softened, not very much, still he noticed the +change and was duly grateful. + +"We must wait here," she said, "for the others to come down. I can't +let Molly go in alone, and I don't know where my husband is; I haven't +seen him all day." + +Bulstrode continued spiritlessly: "Molly, if you remember, begged me to +tell De Presle-Vaulx how 'perfectly ridiculous' my scheme for the Wild +West is. I will tell him this--you will coach me,--there'll be some +pleasure in that, at least! and then I'll find out for what sum the +Marquise de Presle-Vaulx will sell her son. I'll buy him," he said, +"for Molly, and of course," he brought it out quite simply, "I shall +_dot_ the girl." + +And then the lady stepped back and looked at him. He felt, before that +she had merely swept him with her eyes; now she looked at him. She +cried his name out--"Jimmy!"--that was all. + +But in the exclamation, in the change of her mobile face, in the lovely +gesture that her hand made, as if it would have gone to his, Bulstrode +was forced to feel himself eminently, gloriously repaid, and it is not +too much to say that he did. + + + + +THE FIFTH ADVENTURE + + + +V + +IN WHICH HE MAKES NOBODY HAPPY AT ALL + +Bulstrode stood before the entrance of the Hôtel de Paris bidding his +friends good-night. Watching them, at least one of them, enter in +under the shelter of the glass pavilion, he considered how much more +lonely he was at that special moment than he could remember having been +before. Of course he had bidden Mary Falconer good-night a hundred +dozen times in the course of his life, but it seemed to come with a +more sublime significance than ever how he gave her up every time he +said good-by and how he was himself left alone. And yet, had Mrs. +Falconer been asked, she would have said that she never found her +friend more cold and more constrained. In his correct evening dress +with the flower she herself had given him in his buttonhole, his panama +in his hand, he had been absorbed in her beauty, in the grace of her +dark dress, bright with scintillating ornaments--her big feathered hat +under which her face was more lovely, more alluring than ever; and +nothing in his eyes told the woman what he thought and felt. + +She touched his arm, saying: + +"Look, Jimmy." + +"Isn't that the lovely woman we've so often remarked? See, she's all +alone, how curious! She's going over to the Casino to play, I suppose. +_What_ can have happened to the man who has been with her all this +time? Where is the Prince Pollona?" + +As Bulstrode turned his head in the direction indicated, through the +trees passed along the figure of a slender woman, trailing her thin +gown over the pebbles and the grass. She disappeared in the lighted +doorway of the Casino. + +"You're quite bearish to-night," Mrs. Falconer said reproachfully, +"quite a bear. I believe you're angry! Dear Jimmy, you may, I +promise, carry out all your philanthropies without my interference; I +won't even criticise or tease. I promise you next time you shall go +sweetly and serenely on your foolish way!" + +"Oh," he got out with effort, "I believe I've suddenly grown awfully +selfish, for I find I'm so ridiculous as only to want things for +myself----" + +(When he stopped she did not help him but, instead, persisted gently +with the wicked feminine way she had of urging him, tempting him on.) + +"What, then, what do you wish? Can't you tell me?" + +He laughed almost roughly and said, "No, it's a secret, and I'm one of +those unusual creatures who can keep a secret." + +The woman's face changed. He saw the shadow that crossed it. "Come," +she sighed, "you must bid me good-night..." + +And at this moment he had seen Jack Falconer emerge from a still more +shadowy corner, a cigar between his teeth. Drawing his wife's arm +through his, Falconer nodded to the other man and said they had all +better be going up. Bulstrode noted bitterly the satisfaction on +Falconer's bestial, indulgent face and the content that man felt with +himself this evening, his triumph at the race's termination. His horse +had won the stakes and was famous, his wife had been called to-day the +loveliest woman in Trouville, and not for the first time Bulstrode +suffered from it, the proprietorship with which Falconer considered his +wife. For the smallest part of a second he fancied that the woman drew +away, half turned away, looked toward him; and in dread that he might, +if he met her eyes, see some look like appeal, Bulstrode avoided +meeting her glance. He saw them pass under the glass roof of the hôtel +leaving him standing alone. + +The deserted lover waited until they had disappeared; then, turning +abruptly, vaguely in search of human beings with whom he might exchange +a word should he feel inclined to talk, dreading the deserted gardens +ami finding his own rooms the dreariest prospect of all, he went into +the Casino with the intention of waiting for the Frenchman who he +thought more than likely would come and join him there. The Marquis +failing him, Bulstrode chose a place not far from the table where the +lovely woman, that Mrs. Falconer and himself had remarked, seated +herself before the game. + +Bulstrode's sense of desolation and loneliness would not leave him. If +his luck had been bad, the excitement of the sport might have brought +him some sensation; but, on the contrary, he won. "Only," he said +humorously, as he gathered up his winnings, "only unlucky in love!" + +It was well on in the night when he thrust his last roll of bank notes +into his pocket. He had beaten the bank; he had raked up and stuffed +away a small fortune. As he wandered out through the deserted rooms, +he noted, bent over the table, her head in her hand, the woman who, in +spite of his sincere absorption in Mary Falconer, had, like a +temptation, crossed his mind when he first came into the Casino. No +one disturbed her, and she had remained in this dejected posture for +some time. This one amongst the many women in Trouville, Bulstrode and +his friends had remarked for several days. She had first appeared +alone; made a discreet _début_ on the beach, passed through the Rue de +Paris and kept away from the more public parts of the town. Later she +had been joined by a man well known in the world, the Prince Pollona, +who was travelling incognito. The woman's beauty and manner were such +that her actual standing was a mooted question; it had even been +remarked that she was the princess herself incognita, but that they all +knew to be impossible. + +Before the official who waited to see the last players leave the +_salle_ could speak to her, she rose of her own accord, gathering her +silken cloak about her, and went quickly from the gambling room. Once +on the stairway, however, her footsteps halted and she went slowly down +as if reluctant to leave the shelter of the brightly lighted +apartments. Bulstrode following her, observed her closely; tall, very +slender, with a fine carriage and a lovely blonde head set on the most +graceful of necks, older than Molly and younger than Mrs. Falconer, she +was quite as _comme il faut_. All along she had worn a collar and rope +of pearls which had excited Molly's enthusiasm. To-night she was +denuded of her jewels; her neck was bare. Bulstrode remarked this as +he walked behind in full view of the soft adorable _nuque_ below the +curls of the girl's fair hair. She trailed her dress slowly through +the garden walks, her white figure in the darkness escaping from him a +little as the trees made an avenue for her. But Bulstrode distinctly +felt that he was expected to follow. Whether or not he might intrude +he did not ask, as he came along, surprised however to see her actually +stop short within a few feet of him. Under the full light of one of +the big lamps, she stood motionless, her arms by her side, her chin +raised. Now that he was quite near her he found her more lovely than +he had even imagined. + +He went up directly to her and, without asking how she might take his +interference, said: "You cannot remain here alone, Madame, the gardens +are deserted. What can I do for you?" + +As he so spoke in his kind voice the woman lifted her head and looked +full at him; Bulstrode was surprised at her words and more particularly +at her voice. + +"You--" she breathed, "you?" + +Taking it for granted that for some reason or other it might be him +more than any other man, Bulstrode went on. "You seem more or less to +be in trouble, if I may say so. Won't you please let me be of some +service to you--let me at least see you out of these gloomy gardens?" + +But the woman, whose face had flushed, exclaimed: "Oh, no, no! Please +don't bother; please leave me. I want to be alone." And, as she +spoke, she turned and went away from him some few steps. + +Jimmy Bulstrode never knew what impulse made him spring forward and +with one sudden gesture dash from her hand what it held. But the +little object fell some distance away, hard down in the grass, to be +found the next morning by the guardians of the place and considered as +a relic of the fortunes of Casino hazard. + +"Heavens!" exclaimed the gentleman, and he caught in his hand the +slender wrist from which he had just dashed the weapon. "My good God! +You poor child, why, why----" and he could go no further. The woman's +face, although moved, was singularly tranquil for the face of a woman +on the verge of self-destruction. + +"Won't you leave me," she whispered and Bulstrode, gathering himself +together, said firmly: + +"Leave you? Not now, certainly, not for anything in the world. And +you must let me take you home." + +After a few moments' silence in which she bit her lip and apparently +controlled a burst of hysterical weeping, the young woman accepted his +offer and very lightly put her hand on his arm. "You may, if you +like," she consented, "take me home, as you call it. I am staying at +the Hôtel des Roches Noires." + +From the Casino gardens through the silent town without exchanging one +word with her--for he saw she wished to be silent--Jimmy took the lady, +as he called it, home. Once in the big corridor of the vast hôtel, +into whose impersonal shelter they entered as the only late comers, he +stood for a second before bidding her good-night, whilst the porter +eyed them, scarcely with curiosity, so used was he to late entrances of +this kind which he imagined he fully understood. + +"Good-night--" Bulstrode started and at once cut himself short, for he +did not really intend to say it then--he had not spoken to her and he +knew he would never leave her until at least he was sure she would not +take her life before the next morning. + +The girl extended her hand, her beautiful face was gray. "Will you +not," she asked, "come up with me to my drawing-room? I am quite +alone." + +Bulstrode bowed and without hesitation followed her up the stairs to +the conventional suite of hôtel rooms, where, in the little salon, +trunks stood about in the evident indications of hasty packing. + +The girl threw her gloves, her handkerchief and her soft silken cloak +on the table. She then seated herself in a corner of the sofa by an +open dressing-bag and Bulstrode, at her invitation, took a chair +opposite. He scarcely knew how to begin his conversation with her, but +he determined at once to go toward what he believed to be the most +crying need. + +"You lost to-night," he said. "I saw it. As it happened, I was lucky. +I have no need of money, none." He had drawn from his pocket piles of +louis; he took out from his wallet a roll of notes. + +He saw, too, as well as the look of passion and admiration, that her +face was familiar, at least that there was about it something that +suggested remembrance. + +"This," she said, "is a fortune!" Her accent was British and her voice +very soft and sweet. "It is quite a large fortune, isn't it? My debts +here are small. I have not fifty pounds in the world," she said +smiling, "I work for my living, too. I have been extravagant, for I +had really made a lot of money, but lately I've thrown everything away. +Yesterday my pearls were sold, and my jewels went last week; the races +and the Casino did the rest! This would make me quite rich." + +"Work for her living!" Bulstrode thought, with a pang as he looked at +her. "Heavens, poor dear!" A thousand questions came to his lips, but +he asked her none. He was mastering the feelings her personality, her +trouble, and the night, aroused. He also decided to go at once, while +there was still time. + +"It is very droll that this money should have come from _you;_" she +repeated "from you," with the insistence on the pronoun that he had +before remarked as strange. "Even now you don't know me, do you? +Don't you know who I am?" + +"No," Bulstrode wondered, "and yet I have certainly seen you before, +but save as I have noticed and admired you here, I don't _think_ I know +you. Should I?" + +"You _have_ seen me then here?" she caught delighted, "you have +actually noticed me? You said 'admire'; did you perhaps find something +in me to like?" + +"Who," he said with sincerity, "could help himself! Of course I've +seen you and remarked you with your friend." + +Here she bit her lip and put up her hand. "Oh, please," she frowned, +"Oh, please!" + +Bulstrode, surprised at her accents of distress, murmured an excuse and +said he was much at fault, he should remember. But here the girl +smiled. "Well, it is not exactly a duty to know me; my name is not +quite unknown. I play in 'The Shining Lights Company,' 'The Warren +Company,' I am Felicia Warren--_now_, haven't you seen me play!" + +He was sorry, very, very sorry that he had not! Oh, but he knew her +name and her success; they were famous. He wished he could have +assured her that he had admired her before the footlights ...! + +Felicia Warren's eyes strayed down at the table on which the money was +so alluringly spread. + +"I've been touring in Australia and the Colonies, still I go now and +then to the Continent, though I am almost always in London." She +paused, then regarded him fully with her great blue eyes. "Don't you +remember, Mr. Bulstrode, a great many years ago when you took a +shooting-box in Glousceshire? Don't you remember...?" + +Staring at her, trying to place the image which was now taking form, he +did; he _did_ remember it and she? + +"There was a mill there on the place. Rugby Doan was the miller, he is +the miller still." Didn't Mr. Bulstrode remember that Doan had a +daughter? She had been fifteen years old then, she had ambitions, she +was altogether a ridiculous and silly little thing; didn't he remember? + +Bulstrode was silent. + +The gentleman, Mr. Bulstrode, took a strong liking to Doan; he gave him +the money to educate his daughter. Oh, dear me, such a generous lot of +money! Then, as the girl was extraordinarily silly (she had ambitions) +she went on the stage. Her father never forgave her; poor father! She +had never seen him since. "Mr. Bulstrode, don't you remember Felicia +Doan?--I am the miller's daughter." + +Bulstrode extended his hand. He wanted to say: "My poor child, my poor +little girl," but Miss Warren's dignity forbade it. "No wonder your +face was familiar," he said quietly; "no wonder! How I wish I might +have seen you play, but we must do something to make your father look +at things in a reasonable way. What can we do?" + +The girl shook her head. "Nothing" she said absently, "oh, nothing. +You know what an English yeoman is! or perhaps you don't! My greatest +kindness is to keep away from the Mill on the Rose" ... + +But Felicia Warren was not thinking of Glousceshire or of her father. +Still looking down at the money on the table, not even toward her +newly-found friend, she went on, "It is not half as curious, our +meeting here, as one might think. I knew you were here when I came and +I have watched you every day with--with your friend." A slight +expression of amusement crossed her face as, looking up, she caught his +puzzled expression. "Ah, you wonder about it!" she laughed gently. +Coming a little nearer to him, she went on: "You see, you have been my +benefactor, haven't you?" + +(Bulstrode wondered in just how far he _had_ been beneficent!) "It's +natural I should remember you with gratitude, isn't it? Thanks to you +I have made my name." Her pride was touching. "You've made it +possible for me to know the world, to know life and to realize my +career. And now," she emphasized, "you've come to save my life and +afterward give me a little fortune." Here she again pointed to the +money. "My father took your money for years, Mr. Bulstrode, but _this, +this_ must all go back. You must take it back soon--not that it could +really tempt me, but it hurts me to see it there." + +Bulstrode, more wretched than he had yet been in his philanthropic +failures stared at her helplessly. This blind beneficence, this gift +made to the miller in a moment of enthusiasm had produced--how could he +otherwise believe--fatal results? Here was this delicate creature in +the fastest place in Europe, deserted by a man who had brought her +here--on the verge of suicide. + +Whilst speaking, Felicia Warren gathered up the gold and notes and she +was thrusting the money into his hand. + +"Please, please be reasonable," he pleaded. "You must let me help you. +There isn't any question of delicacy in the situation where you find +yourself to-night. If ever a man should be a woman's friend, I should +be that friend to you, and you must let me. Don't refuse. Money is +such a little thing, such a stupid little thing." + +Miss Warren shook her head obstinately. "Oh, that depends! I've +worked so hard that money often seems to me everything. Indeed, I +thought so to-night when I had not a sou! I shall think so to-morrow +when they seize my trunks for the hôtel bill." + +"Seize your trunks!" he exclaimed. "Why--you don't mean to say----?" + +The actress blushed crimson. "Oh, of course you thought otherwise," +she said, throwing up her pretty head. "I pay for my own livelihood, +Mr. Bulstrode," she told him proudly, "I pay for _everything_ I have +and wear and eat and do. Don't feel badly at misunderstanding," she +comforted him sweetly--"You have nothing to apologize for. Why should +you or anyone think otherwise? But I don't care in the least what +people say or think; that is, _I only care what one person says_." + +With some of his gold in her palm and some of his bills in her hands, +Felicia Warren put both her hands on Bulstrode's arm. "No," she said +softly, "_I only care what one person thinks_. Can't you see that you +mustn't give me this?" + +"No," he persisted doggedly, charmed by her beyond his reason and angry +to find that she would not let him help her in the way he wished, "I do +_not_ see! You must let me help you, you shall not be driven to +desperation." + +"Driven to desperation!" her expression seemed to say. Yes, so she had +been, but not through financial anxieties. + +"Why, I had rather starve than take your money. I could far sooner +have taken it from poor Pollona; and he left me so dreadfully angry +this morning." + +For a second neither spoke. He saw the soft mobile face touched to its +finest. Felicia's eyes were violet and large, and their expression at +the moment pierced him with its appeal. + +"Don't you see?" she whispered. Her voice broke here. Her hands +trembled on his arm, some of the gold rattled on the floor and rolled +under the divan. She swayed and Bulstrode caught her. + +"... Ever since you came to the mill," she whispered, +"ever--since--you--came--to--the--mill." + +Before Bulstrode had time to realize what she said, or the fact that +his arm was about her, she had rushed across the room, thrown open the +window and gone out on the balcony. Left alone with what her words +implied, Bulstrode watched her go. + +The clock on the mantel pointed to three and through the open window +came the long, rushing sound of the sea on the beach. The day was +breaking and Bulstrode could see the white figure of Felicia Warren +between the lighted room and the dawn. + +He told himself that there was no reason why he should look upon her as +anything but an adventuress--and a very clever one--a very dangerous +one. But, at all events, there _was_ no doubt that she was Felicia +Doan. She refused his money, and she told him that she loved him. But +Jimmy Bulstrode, man of the world as he was, did not reason at all +along those lines. Whether because he was vain, as most men are, or +because he was susceptible as he always told himself he was, he +believed what she said. More than once during the week at Trouville, +when she should have been absorbed in Polonna, Bulstrode had caught her +eyes fastened upon himself and as soon as she had met his own she had +turned hers away. He had no difficulty now in recalling the Mill on +the Rose, or the lovely bit of country where his shooting-box had held +him captive for nearly the whole hunting season. Nor had he any +difficulty in recalling the miller and his pretty daughter. Felicia +even then had been a wonder of good looks, and very intelligent and +mature. He could even see her as a child more plainly than he could +recall the woman who had just left him. She had been a pretty, +romantic girl and--she had deeply charmed him. He had walked with her +under the willows; he had told her many things; he had gone boating +with her on the Rose; he had tramped with her along the English lanes. +Of course he had been wrong. He had known it at the time--he had known +it. And perhaps one reason why he never reverted willingly to the days +spent with the girl was because his conscience had not left him free. +The money given to Doan, Bulstrode had always felt, was a sort of +recompense for hours of pleasure to which he had no right. Even at the +time he had feared that he had disturbed the girl's peace, and because +he had not wished to disturb his own, he had given up his lease and +left the place. Twelve years! Well, they had altered her enormously, +and her life had altered her and her experiences, and she was a very +charming creature. She was, in a measure, his very own work--almost +his creation. He had helped her to change her station, to alter her +life. What had she become? + +Bulstrode's reflections consumed twenty minutes by the clock. He had +smoked a cigarette and walked up and down the deserted room, passing +many times the table where his gold lay scattered. + +Finally--he did not dare to trust himself to go out to her--he called +her name, Felicia Warren's name, gently, and she came directly in. + +Whilst alone on the balcony she had wept. Bulstrode could see the +trace on her cheeks and she was paler even than when he had struck the +pistol from her hand in the gardens of the Casino. She came over to +where he stood and said: + +"It's not a ruse, Mr. Bulstrode. Girls like me always have ideals. It +is fame with some, money with others, dress and a social craze for a +lot of them. But with me, ever since you came it has been +YOU--everything you said to me twelve years ago I have remembered. +Silly as it seems, I could almost tell the very words. I have seen a +lot of men since, too many," she said, "and known them too well. But I +have never seen anybody like you." + +Bulstrode tried to stop her. + +"But no," she pleaded, "let me go on. I've dreamed I might grow great, +and that some day you would see me play and that I should play so well +that you would go crazy about me! I have thought this really, and I +have lived for it, really--until--until----" + +As he did not question her or interrupt, she went on: + +"I said it was an ideal. Thinking of you and what I'd like to grow for +you kept me, in spite of everything--and I fancy you know in my +profession what that means--good." + +Here Felicia Warren met his eyes frankly with the same look of entire +innocence with which she might have met his eyes under the willows near +her father's mill. + +"I've been so horribly afraid that when you _did_ come there might be +heaps of things you would not like that I have been awfully hard on +myself, awfully!" + +She was lacing and unlacing her slender fingers as she talked. + +"I went to Paris this spring because I saw that you were there, and +after passing you several times in the Bois and seeing that as far as I +could judge you were just the same as you had been, I took a new +courage hoping, waiting, for you, and being the best I knew. It seems +awfully queer to hear a woman talk like this to a man," she understood +it herself--"but you see I am used to speaking in public and I suppose +it is easier for me than for most women." + +Bulstrode, more eager than anything else to know what her life had +really been, surprised and incredulous at everything she said, broke in +here: + +"But this--this man?" + +"Oh, Pollona," she replied, "has been there for years, for years. He +has loved me ever since I first made my _début_ and he follows me +everywhere like a dog. I have never looked at any of them, until this +week." + +With a sigh as if she renounced all her dreams, she said: "I grew tired +of my romantic folly. I was ill and nervous and could not play any +more, and that was dreadful. So, when Pollona came to me in Paris this +spring, I gave him a sort of promise. I told him that I was going to +Trouville for the Grande Semaine, that I would think things over and +that I would send him word." + +She picked up her handkerchief from the table where it lay beside her +gloves and her cloak and twisted the delicate object in her hands, +whose whiteness and transparency Bulstrode remarked. They were clever +hands, and showed her temperament and showed also singular breeding for +one born in the state of life from which she had come. + +"Well," she said shortly, "as you have seen, I gave in--I gave in at +last." + +"Why," Bulstrode asked abruptly, "did he leave you?" + +But instead of answering him, the girl said: "But you don't ask me why +I sent for him to come?" + +He was silent. + +Here she hid her face and through her fingers he could see the red rise +all along her cheek. Her attitude, and more what she implied than what +she said, and what he thought and feared, made the situation too much +for him. With a slight exclamation he put his arm about her and drew +her to him. As she rested against him he could feel her relax, hear +her sigh deeply. But, as he bent over her, she besought him to let her +go, to set her free, and he obeyed at once. + +"There," she said, "don't do that again--don't! Pollona left me +because he was jealous of you." + +But at this, in sheer unbelief, her hearer exclaimed: "Oh, my dear +girl!" + +"Oh, yes," she nodded, "when he found that I did not love him, that I +could never love him, he forced me to tell him the truth. Oh, don't be +afraid," she said, as though she anticipated his anger, "you are in no +wise connected with it. He thinks of me as a romantic, foolish girl. +He has laughed at me, tried to shake my faith, to destroy my ideal, but +at least he was honest enough to believe me; and that is all I asked of +him." + +Not for a moment did Bulstrode feel that she was weaving a web for him. +There was something about her so sincere and simple, she was so fragile +and fine and fair, there was so much of distinction in all she did and +said that it put her well nigh, one might say touchingly, apart from +the class to which she belonged. Her art and her knocking about, +instead of coarsening her, had refined her. She looked like a bit of +ivory, worn by experience, and struggle, to a fine polish; there was a +brilliance about her and he understood and felt, he instinctively saw +and knew, that she was unspoiled. + +It took him some half second to pull himself together. Then to turn +her thoughts from him, his from her, if he might, he questioned: + +"What sort of a man is Prince Pollona?" + +"Oh," she cried warmly, "the best! a kind, good, honorable friend. He +deserves something better than the horrors I have put him through, poor +dear!" + +"He seemed very devoted to you," Bulstrode said, "if one could judge." + +Not without pride she admitted that he was, and that the Prince had +always wanted to marry her. "I might have married him," she repeated, +"easily a score of times. But how it appears to interest you----" she +said jealously. + +"Only as he interests you," replied Bulstrode, "and what you tell me is +a great satisfaction. To be the Princess Pollona is an honor that many +women would be glad to have conferred upon them." Felicia Warren's +good looks were undeniable, her _genre_ was exquisite, and Bulstrode, +again with no effort, believed all she said. Princes had married far +less royal-looking women, of far more humble antecedents than Felicia +Warren. + +"Oh, his rank didn't dazzle me," she murmured absently, "they seem all +alike, and when they find out that I am not a certain kind they ask me +to marry them... But if I could only get back to the Mill on the Rose, +Mr. Bulstrode! If I might again see it as I used, if I could see you +there as I used to see you--walk by your side; row with you on the +river; if I could hear the wheel again as I used to hear it, then"--her +voice was delicious, a very note of the river of which she spoke. Oh, +she must act well, there was no doubt about that; no wonder she had +been a success: "If I might walk there with you--titles, even my art +and all the rest"--she did not apparently dare to look at him as she +spoke, but fixed her eyes across the room as if she saw back twelve +years into ----shire ... "if I could _only, only_ go back again with +you!" + +In spite of himself, carried away by her voice, Bulstrode said: + +"You shall, you shall go back with me!" + +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she gave a little cry and caught his hand, +steadying herself by the act. + +"Wait," he murmured, "wait, let me think it all out." And, as she had +done, Bulstrode walked over to the window, to the balcony where the +fresh air met his face, where the breath from the sea fanned him, +blended with the scent of the meadow. Before Bulstrode the first +reflection of the morning lay like silver on the sea. + +When he finally went back into the room, Felicia Warren had not moved. +Just as he left her, she sat, deep back into the divan, leaning on her +hand, with something like the glory of a dream on her face. Standing +in front of her, he said slowly: + +"I'm entirely free. No one in the world depends upon me. I have no +tie, or bond to my life. I have freedom and money. So far--if what +you say is all true, don't start so, for I believe it, every word--so +far, I have spoiled your life." + +But the girl shook her head. + +"Oh, no, _you haven't_," she assured him. "We make our own lives, I +expect, and I told you that I could remember everything you ever said +to me in the past--you never lied to me, and you were never anything +but kind and dear. I've been a fool, a fool!" + +Sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they +had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room +around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like +a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had +at last drifted along the shore to his feet. Unhappy and deserted, she +reached the very tenderest part of Bulstrode's nature. Cost him what +it would, he must save her. + +But, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose +and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder: + +"You must go _now_: that is what I ask you to do. I have seemed, and +indeed I have thrown myself upon your mercy; but, in reality, I don't +do any such thing. You will soon forget me, as you have been able to +do all these years. The table is full of your money. I am poor, and +yet I don't take it. Doesn't _that_ prove a little my good faith? +Doesn't it? Only think of me as the most romantic dreamer you ever +saw, and of nothing more. Oh, _no_," she breathed softly, "_no_, a +thousand times...! + +"I've answered your question before you've asked it! No, I couldn't; +no woman who wants love is content with pity. I would rather starve +than take money from you although I have lived on your money for years. +I would rather be unhappy than take what you could offer me for love. +You mustn't speak; you mustn't ask me. The temptation is very great, +you know, and it _might_ wreck me. No, Mr. Bulstrode, and the reason +why I say it is because I've seen." + +"'I've seen?'" he repeated her words. "You've seen, but what do you +mean--what have you seen?" + +"I'm going to tell you why I sent for Prince Pollona, although you +don't ask me. I came to Trouville alone. I saw you; I've watched you +with your friends." Bulstrode accepted quietly. "The two young people +are engaged to be married and the other two are husband and +wife--well...?" + +A spasm of pain crossed Felicia Warren's face and she put what she had +to say with singular delicacy for an actress who had risen from the +people. + +"I know," she said, "I understand, but when I saw you, I knew that +there was no hope for any other woman who loved you--and I gave you up +then. I sent for Pollona." + +The introduction of even so little into the room as the suggestion of +the woman he loved, startled Bulstrode as nothing else under the +circumstances could have done. It struck him like a lash. He was +disenchanted, and he more quietly considered the girl whose confession +and whose beauty had made him nearly disloyal. + +Felicia Warren, as though she took it in her own hands and, mistress of +herself, knew how much she could take and what she could deny herself, +laid her hand on his arm. + +"You can do nothing at all, just as you have always done--and I--I can +learn to forget. But I have refused your money to-night," she said +piteously, "haven't I? and I am penniless; I have refused more too; +perhaps what no woman who loves could refuse as well. Don't you think +that there is something due me? Answer me this? Tell me. You _do_ +love her, you _do_?" + +As she leaned against him, the years seemed to fall away and to leave +her a girl again, nothing more than a child he had known. He took her +face between his hands and looked into it as one might look into a +well. He saw nothing but his own reflection there. + +"God knows," he said deeply, "I could not willingly pain a living +creature, and to think that I should have made you suffer, have made a +woman suffer for years. Let me do all I can, my dear, let me--let me!" + +"You love her?" she persisted. + +His hands dropped to his side. "With all my soul," he said, "with all +my soul!" He thought she would sink to the floor, but instead she +caught fast hold of the table on which his money lay. She leaned on it +heavily, refusing his aid. He took one of the girl's cold hands in his. + +"Listen, listen! Let me say a word. How do you think it makes a man +feel to hear what you have told me to-night? to see you as you are, to +grow to know you in such a short--in such a terrible way, and in a few +hours to grow to know you so well, to find you dear, desirable, and +then to leave you, as you tell me I must leave you. I can't do it; I +have never been so miserable in my life, and if I find I am entirely +helpless to serve you I can never get over the regret." + +Felicia Warren turned a little. + +"I have found you near disaster," Bulstrode urged, "I must and will see +you to the shore. If you utterly refuse to let me take care of you as +I can and will, will you then," he hesitated, then brought it +out--"Will _you marry_ Prince Pollona?" + +She drew from him with a cry, and by what he said she seemed to have +gained sudden strength. + +"My God!" she breathed, "You ask me _that_? Oh, it proves, it proves +how less than nothing I am..." + +Bulstrode saw he could not, must not undeceive her. + +"If you wish me to do _that_," she cried. "Oh, how dreadfully, how +cruelly, it breaks my dream!" + +Bulstrode said authoritatively, "Listen! listen for one moment." + +The eyes of the girl were dark with defiance; she brushed her hair off +her brow with the back of her hand and stared straight before her. + +"--Otherwise," said Bulstrode, "I will remain here; I shall not leave +these rooms till morning and you will then be forced to marry me, and +since you think as you do, since I have told you my secret, ruin +perhaps three lives." + +He had her at bay, and for a brief second, he thought she would accept +his menace. But then in a sudden her anger vanished and her face +softened. + +"You know," she said, "that, loving you as I do, whatever you tell me +to do, I must. But let me go on with my career. Let me work, let me +work, and be free!" + +He said decidedly, "No! You must be protected from yourself; you must +have some one with you who will take care of you as I cannot do. You +must do this for me. Is Pollona distasteful to you?" he pursued, "do +you _hate_ him?" + +She made an indifferent shrug of her shoulders. + +Bulstrode was watching her face keenly, and after a second said, "No, +you do not hate him. You sent for him to come to you here. He was the +one to whom you turned, Felicia; turn to him now." + +As she wavered and hesitated, he insisted, coming close to her: + +"You have an ideal, you told me--well we can't get on without them. +Your ideal has helped you, hasn't it? It seems pretty well to have +stood by you. I have one too, you must understand that, and I ask you +to help me to keep it secret now." + +"Why, what do you mean?" she questioned breathlessly. + +"I mean," he said gravely, "that I am a very lonely man. My days are +absolutely desolate excepting for those things that I can put into +them. I have nothing in my life and I am not meant for such a lot. I +am not meant for that! Such an existence has bitter temptations for +every man, and although I have never seen you before, possibly my fate +and Pollona's rest to-night with you." + +Felicia Warren turned her great eyes with a sort of wonder to him. +They rested on him with a tenderness that he could not long have borne. + +"You must not remain unmarried," he said, "you must not." + +Without answering him she went slowly over to her little desk. She +wrote a few seconds there and came back and handed to him a little slip +of paper. + +"When the telegraph office opens to-day, will you send this dispatch +for me? It will fetch Prince Pollona to me no matter where he may be. +I have asked him to meet me in Paris and I will take the morning train +from here myself." + +She turned to the table on which his money lay and taking a roll of +notes said, "I will pay up everything I owe here. I think I have given +you every proof, every proof." + +Bulstrode made no advance towards her. He saw how she struggled with +her emotion. He let her get herself in hand. Finally, with more +composure, she spoke again: + +"I play next month in London. Will you come to see me play?" + +"Oh, many times." + +"No," Felicia Warren murmured, "only once, and after that I shall never +see you again." + +He would have protested, but she repeated, "never again," with such +intensity that he bowed his head and he found that her decision brought +a pang whose sharpness he wondered would last how long. + +He had started, with her last words, toward the door and she followed +him over to it. There, detaining him by her hand, she asked softly: +"Does she, too, love you as much as this?" + +Bulstrode hesitated; then said, "I do not know." + +"Not know?" cried the girl, "you don't know?" + +It was with the greatest difficulty that Bulstrode could at any time +bring to his lips even the name of the woman he loved. At this moment +the vision of her as he had seen her lately on her husband's arm going +in under the pavilion of the hôtel crossed his mind with a cruel +despair and cruel disgust. A sense of his solitude, of his defrauded +life, rushed over him as he looked into the eyes of this woman who +loved him. + +"No," he said intensely, "I do not know, I do not know. I have a code +of honor a million years old, but I live up to it. She is a wife, I +have never told her that I love her." + +The girl's incredulity and surprise were great. It showed in the smile +which, something like happiness, crossed her lips. She drew a long +breath; she held his eyes with hers, then she laid both her arms around +his neck and Bulstrode bent and kissed her. He held her for one moment +and his heart, if it beat for another woman, beat hard and fast and its +pulse ran through her own. Then Felicia heard the door close and the +footsteps of the man died away. + +It was seven o'clock when Bulstrode found himself out in the streets. +The fresh air in a keen, salt wind poured over him. Down on the beach, +for a couple of francs he bribed an attendant to open a bath-house for +him, and a few moments later, shivering a little in the keen air, he +could have been seen running down to the sea, and in a few moments more +his strong swift strokes had carried him far out into the waters which +the summer sun even at this early hour was fast turning into blue. + + +When Jimmy came to himself, he found that without either seeing Mrs. +Falconer again or having even bidden a decent good-bye or godspeed to +his fiancée, he was back again in Paris. He had run away. Well, that +wasn't any new thing, he was always at it. Paris, in the month of +August, gave him a hot, desolate welcome, and it was with difficulty +that he could find a lawyer who would help him down to bedrock and put +in motion the business of winding up the affairs of Molly and her +Marquis. + +De Presle-Vaulx came to town and found his champion there and brought +him many messages from the ladies as well as a letter which Bulstrode +put in his pocket to read down in the country at the château of +Vaulxgoron in the seclusion of his own room. + +Bulstrode played the part of the "American Uncle" to perfection. He +let the old Marquis beat him at backgammon; he wandered all over the +property with the Marquise. He bought the young man for Molly Malines +and closed up his beneficent affairs in a very decent manner indeed, +but on the night when Mrs. Falconer and Miss Malines should have +arrived at the château, Bulstrode ran away again. From then on he +became a wandering Jew. He ran up to Norway, fished a little, then +took a motor and some people, who did not know any one whom he had ever +known, and drove them through Italy. He continued to travel a little +longer, working his way northward until finally--so he put it--dusty as +"Dusty Dog Dingo," tired as "Tired Dog Dingo," Bulstrode found himself +in London, drew a deep breath and capitulated. + + + + +THE SIXTH ADVENTURE + + + +VI + +IN WHICH HE DISCARDS A KNAVE AND SAVES A QUEEN + +The morning he left for Westboro' Castle, Bulstrode remembers as being +the most beautiful of days; it came to him like a golden gift of +unrivalled loveliness as it broke and showered sunlight over England. + +"The very crannies of the island," he smiled at his own conceit, "must +filter out this gold to the sea." + +England lay like a viking's cup full to the brim of sunlight; +especially entrancing because unusual in the British calendar, and +enchanting to the American gentleman because it absolutely accorded +with his own mood. + +It was middle November, and yet there was not--so it seemed as one +looked at yellow and copper luxuriance--a leaf lost from the suave +harmony of the trees. Farms, tiled and thatched, basked in summery +warmth, forest, hedge and copse, full-foliaged and abundant, shone out +in copper and bronze, and the air's stillness, the patient +tranquillity, enfolding the land, made it seem expectantly to wait for +some sudden wind that should ultimately cast devastation through the +forests. + +On leaving his ship at Plymouth the day before, Bulstrode found amongst +other letters in his mail the Duke of Westboro's invitation for a +week's shooting in the west of England: "There were sure to be heaps of +people Jimmy would know"--and Bulstrode eagerly read the subjoined list +of names until he saw in a flash the name of the One Woman in the +World. He at once telegraphed his acceptance. + +The following afternoon he threw his evening papers and overcoat into a +first-class carriage whilst the guard placed his valise and +dressing-case in the rack. + +As there had been several minutes to starting time, he had not +immediately taken his seat, but had stood smoking by the side of his +carriage. He might, and did, doubtless, pass with others of the well +set-up, well-looking men travelling on that day, for an Englishman, but +closer observation showed his attire to be distinguished by that +personal note which marks the cosmopolitan whose taste has been more or +less tempted by certain fantasies of other countries. Bulstrode's +clothes were brown, his gloves, cravat, and boots all in the same color +scheme--one mentions a man's dress only on rare occasions, as on this +certain day one has been led to mention the weather. That a man is +perfectly turned out should, like the weather, be taken for granted. +Bulstrode on this day, travelling as he was towards a goal, towards the +one person he wanted above all to see, had spent some unusual thought +on his toilet. At all events, on passing a florist's in Piccadilly, +after giving his order for flowers to be boxed and expressed to +Westboro', he had selected a tiny reddish-brown chrysanthemum which now +covered the button-hole of his coat's lapel; it created a distinctive +scheme of color. In point of fact it caught the eye of the lady who, +hurrying from the waiting-room towards the Westboro' express, caught +sight of the American and started. It appeared as if she would speak +to him, half advanced, thought better of it, and said to the guard, who +was about to fasten a placard on the window of a carriage: + +"Please---just a second--won't you, guard?" + +The bell rang, and Bulstrode found himself helping the lady into his +own compartment. The guard shut the door, which closed with the +customary soft thick sound of a lock setting, and pasted over the +window the exclusive and forbidding paper--RESERVED. + +Then it was in his corner by the window, once chimney pots and suburbs +left behind, that the traveller to Westboro' watched the landscape with +the pale, transparent smoke from the little farms floating like veils +across the golden atmosphere; the slow winding streams between +low-bushed, rosy shores, and red-tinged thickets; the flocks of rooks +across fields long harvested: the flocks of sheep on the gently +swelling downs. + +"England, England," he murmured, as if it were a refrain in whose +melody he found much charm, as if his traditions of insular forebears +might in some way be recalled in the word, as if it spoke more than a +chance traveller's appreciation for the melodious countryside. + +He had letters, read them, and put his correspondence aside, then +comfortably settling himself in his corner, began to construct for +himself a picture of Westboro', whose lines and architecture he knew +from photographs, although he had never been there. It was agreeable +to him as he mused to fancy himself for the first time with Mrs. +Falconer in England, in the country they preferred to all the others in +the Old World. They were in sympathy with English life and manners, +and here, if (oh, of course, a world of "ifs")--here no doubt they +would both choose to live when abroad, were there any choice for them +of mutual life. + +Westboro' is Elizabethan and of vast proportions. The house would +naturally be very full--how much of the time would they discover for +themselves? There would decidedly be occasions. Mary Falconer did not +hunt, and although Jimmy Bulstrode could recall having postulated that +"there are only two real occupations for a real man--to kill and to +love," he also knew what precedence he himself gave, and how little the +sportsmen of Westboro' would have cause to fear his concurrence if by +lucky chance in more or less of solitude he should find his lady there. + +It was months since he had seen Mrs. Falconer--months. It had been a +long exile. Each time that he started out to run away, it was just +that--running away--it was with a curious wonder whether or not on his +return he should not find a change. Time and absence--above all, time, +worked extraordinary infidelities in other people. Why should they two +believe themselves immune? The long months might have altered _her_. +The mischief was yet to be seen. But when in the list of noble names +he had in his hand, his eyes fell upon the single prefix--_Mrs._--and +found it followed by _The Name_, if he had not sincerely known before, +his pulse at sight of the written words told Jimmy that he had not, at +all events, changed! + +Thinking at this point to light a cigarette, he became at the second +mindful of the other passenger in his carriage and that they were +alone. As he looked across towards the lady who had unwound her dark +veil, he observed that she was herself smoking, holding the cigarette +in her hand as with head turned from him she scanned the landscape +through the window of the compartment. + +He saw with a little start of pleasure what a delight she gave to the +eye, tastefully dressed as she too was, in leaf brown from head to +foot, with the slightest indication of forest green at buttons and hem +of her dress. Her hat, with its drooping feathers, fell rather low +over her wonderful hair, bronze in its reflections. Indeed, the lady +blended well with the November landscape, and as she apparently was not +conscious of her companion, he enjoyed the harmonious note she made to +the full. + +"What scope," he mused, "what scope they all have--and how prettily +they most of them know it! So just to sit and be a thing of beauty; +with head half-drooping, and eyelash meditative, one hand ungloved, and +such a perfectly lovely hand...! (It held the half-smoked cigarette, +but his taste was not offended.) He thought her a whim too debonnaire +for a Parisian of the best world, and of _that_ she most distinctly +was--Austrian more than likely. Every woman has her history--only when +she is part of several has she a past. What had this woman so to +meditate upon? She turned and he met her eyes. + +"You have naturally waited for me to speak first," she said with a +gracious gesture of her bare hand. "And _I_ was waiting till you +should have finished your letters! I, too, have wanted to think." + +Her familiar address, perfectly courteous and made in a pleasant voice, +with a very slight accent, was a surprise to her companion, who +mechanically lifted his hat as he bowed to her across the narrow +distance between their seats. + +"The guard," she smiled, "came very near putting the placard on the +other window! But I think we are now quite sure to be alone!" She +pointed to the seat opposite. "Sit there," she more commanded than +permitted, "we can talk better and I can watch your kind face, which +always looks as if you understood--and I shall be able to please you +better--perhaps to make you not unkind to me." + +He obeyed, taking the place indicated without hesitation, and as he sat +facing her, he saw her to be one of the most beautiful women he had +ever seen. There was at once something dazzling about her--and at the +same time familiar... He had surely met her, and not long ago. Where? +And how stupid of him to have forgotten! Or had he only seen her +photograph and remarked her as a celebrity whose type of looks had +pleased him? But no, she knew him: that was clear. He met her +friendly eyes, where liking was evident as well as the suggestion of +something akin to an appeal. Bulstrode was greatly intrigued. + +"Unkind?" he repeated vaguely. "But why should you think that? Please +me?"--and his graciousness did not fall short of her own--"But why +should you...?" + +"Oh, true," she interrupted him, "quite true. There is no reason +why--" and she made a rather petulant gesture--"yet every woman wants +to please, and none of us relishes being judged. Never mind, however, +don't think of me as a _person_--just let me talk to you frankly, be +myself for once with someone if I can." + +Jimmy Bulstrode gathered himself together and sat back in his corner. +She was very lovely at it, this being herself. Gallantry would not let +him bluntly tell her that she had made a mistake. A second more would +clear the matter and would be quite soon enough, for him at least, to +find that they were total strangers. Unless, indeed, he had met her +and forgotten it. They had possibly held some conversation together in +a London drawing-room. But how could he have been such a boor as to +forget her? She was neither a crook nor a mad woman--she might be an +adventuress; if so, she was an unusual one. He glanced at her luggage +as if it might help him--a dark-covered dressing-case, bundle of furs, +and rugs--new, everything new. Her left hand was bare of rings, she +clasped it with her gloved fellow and said warmly: + +"I can't believe it possible that you came, actually came, and that we +have so smoothly met! I can't believe nothing has hitched or missed, +or that everything is so cleverly planned and arranged for me, and +least of all I can believe that it should be _you_ who are so sublimely +doing this." + +"Ah--" But here Bulstrode tardily started up. _He_ doing it all? At +least if he was, then he must, if nothing else--know! He smiled at her +with a pleasant sense of being in the secret and with indulgent +amusement at her mistake. + +"I think--you made a mistake," he began it with commonplaceness, but +his gesture softened the words. + +But the lady made a little annoyed "tchk" with her tongue against her +teeth, and threw up her head with an impatient toss, an intensely +foreign way of dismissing his interpolation. + +"Don't, in pity's sake, talk like this," she exclaimed. "_Mistake_? +Who under the blue heavens _doesn't_ make them--Certa! Haven't you, +yourself, in spite of your moral, spotless life, haven't even _you_ +made them?" + +"How," flushed the naïve gentleman, on the sudden betrayed into a +mental frankness of self-approval near to conceit, "how does _she_ know +me so well?" + +"Who is there," his companion gave him the question in a challenging +tone "to tell each other and every one of us what is or will be a +mistake in his life? Where were everyone's eyes when I married?--Why +didn't someone tell me then that my marriage was a hideous mistake? As +for the rest of it..." she turned away for a second towards the window, +and Bulstrode saw how the hot blood had mounted and her eyes had +changed when after a moment she came back to him again. She put out +towards him a beseeching hand: "_You_ above all men, who are faithful +to an ideal, must not give me old platitudes!" + +Bulstrode's head reeled. He felt like a man who after a narcotic finds +his brain suddenly alight and real things grow strange. He wanted to +rub his eyes. She appeared singularly to appreciate his daze. + +"It is as strange to me as it is to you, to find myself here with a man +to whom I have never spoken before--to be under his protection, and to +talk with him like this; and yet I have seen you so often, I have +watched you in the distance, and long since I singled you out as the +one man in whom I could fancy confiding--the one man to whom I could +give a sacred trust." + +With these words the incognita drew herself up, and her manner, with +amazing swiftness, changed from a childlike confidence to a dignity not +without a certain rigidness, and as Bulstrode remarked this, he also +noticed that she was very young, and he was conscious in her of a +something he had never quite met in a woman before--an extreme dignity, +an ultra poise, an assurance.--Who was she?--And whom did she take him +to be? With every turn of the fast wheels of the express it was +growing more difficult to explain. She would more keenly feel the fact +that he had not cut her frankness short--he had no right to her +confidences even though she took their mutual knowledge of each other +for granted. + +"When," he ventured it delicately--"did you last see me?" It was bold, +but it did perfectly. + +"Oh, an age ago, isn't it? You were last on the Continent I think in +August at Trouville, during La Grande Semaine." + +Ah, he reflected, _of course_! _That_ was where, amongst so many other +celebrities and beauties, she had attracted his attention. But his +rapid mental calculations of those seven days could reveal to him no +woman's face but one. He found himself even in this unique moment +recalling the time following hard on Molly's formal engagement to her +Marquis ... and those days were amongst the brightest in his life. No, +there had been no foreign element at Trouville for him in the dazzle +and freedom of that worldly fortnight--for Jimmy Bulstrode, in all the +scene she summoned up, there was but one woman. He came back with a +start to the other. + +"Then yesterday, as you passed our table at the Carlton, and it seemed +as if heaven had sent you to us to help us--at least so we both felt." + +And Bulstrode doubtfully smiled and, now determined, broke in, or would +have done so, but she waved him imperiously. + +"Your mind," she spoke indulgently, "is on the wrong side to-day. Try +to think only of the happiness towards which I am going so rapidly, so +rapidly." Then, as she with her word glanced out of the window, she +cried: "Oh, what if something should happen to the train--what if some +horrible delay----" + +And he shook himself to action. + +"My dear lady," he began gravely, "you must hear me. You have made and +are making a great mistake. I am certainly not the man..." + +"I _command_ you, sir," she flashed out at him--"surely you will not +disobey me--you will not make me think as well that I am making a +mistake in you." + +"Ah, but that," he gasped, and caught her words gratefully, "is just +the point." + +She smiled. "Please...! Let me judge! Only don't condemn me. Only +be glad you can so marvellously help a human soul to happiness--can so +generously lend yourself for these few hours to aid in my escape." + +She was escaping! Well, he had nearly guessed it! The new luggage +alone was an indication. Unless her mania was for taking strangers to +be intimate friends, she wasn't fleeing a madhouse! From what did she +so determinedly run?--and how in heaven's name was he helping her? Did +she think he was going to marry her? Into what tangle had the man he +was unwittingly impersonating got himself--and in default of his +appearing on the scene in what would his absence involve poor Bulstrode? + +He took off his hat and put it down on the seat--thus his fine head was +fully revealed to the lady's view. + +"I do not know you," he said determinedly. "You do not know me, but +you seem bent on not acknowledging this fact or permitting me to state +it." + +But even this plain statement did him no good, for she said, quite +agreeing with him: + +"If I had ever spoken with you--been near you before, I would not be +here now. You see it is just your _impersonality_--your _having_ no +connection with anything in my life that makes it possible! But why," +she exclaimed impatiently, "do you spend these few hours with me in +this meaningless warfare? You should, it seems, take the honor more +graciously, and since you are here, have consented to be here, show me +a little kindness. Since, after all, willingly or not, you are in +effect nobly helping me to do what I am doing." + +And this brought him wonderfully up to the question of what was he +doing? What was he supposed to be furthering here? It was his +expression, no doubt, that made her ask with curious aptness: "Just how +much _do_ you know?" + +The poor gentleman threw out his hands desperately. "You can't think +how in the dark I am! How beyond words mystified." + +"How droll!" she laughed sweetly, "and how amusing and all the more +beautiful and like you, to be, in spite of yourself, here. You see we +have switched off--just as you said we would do." + +So they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his +feet. He looked out: it was a fast express, a through train--the first +stop should have been Westboro' Abbey. + +"Yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you +arranged so cleverly!--and the Westboro' people will go on without us." + +Would they indeed! Lucky people, but not if he could prevent it. But +his attention to the train's procedure had come too late. + +He opened the window and looked out. They stood at the side of a +switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the +far distance Bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train. He +drew in his head and quietly asked his companion: + +"What has happened to us, do you know?" + +She laughed deliciously. "Know? Why, of course, I do. You're +delightful! Of course I have followed every step of the plan--the +special for Dover picks us up here in three-quarters of an hour, +doesn't it? We make the boat for Calais, and there Gela meets me and +_your_ mission is done!" + +The gentleman opposite her listened quietly, and before speaking waited +a second, staring down at her, his hands in his pockets: there they +touched a little coin which he always carried: a coin that opened at a +sacred point to discover to his eyes alone a picture of a woman as +lovely as this woman, as human, and one whom he had good cause to +suppose loved another man than her husband. The woman opposite him was +escaping from her husband. _That_ was what she was doing! He who had +striven for fifteen years to prevent the like in the life of the one +woman of all, now appeared to be helping this poor thing to the same +thing. He did not believe he was to be waylaid and robbed, or that any +trick had been played upon him. The only thing he did _not_ believe +was that the woman knew him! Before, however, brushing the delusion +aside, he asked, his candid eyes upon her: "And my mission being so +done, what then becomes of you?" + +The shrug of her shoulders was neither an indication of indifference +nor a pretty desperation! it rather was a relinquishing of herself +wholly to Fate--an abandon. + +"What becomes of a happy woman who goes with the man she loves?" + +"Her Fate," said her companion, "has no single history. She is most +often disillusioned, many times tragic, and always disgraceful." + +"Ah, hush," she said angrily, "you presume too far. If you only +intended to lecture me--to condemn me--why did you come?" + +At this sincerely humorous challenge Bulstrode smiled. + +"I did not, to be quite accurate, come," he said, "and I assure you I +am here against my will. You refuse to listen to me; you turn my +efforts to put things straight against me--and now." + +The handsome creature gave him a flash from angry eyes. + +"Your Excellency is scarcely polite. But I understand. Even my rank +doesn't protect me: and although your old friendship for Gela did +overcome your scruples, and our letters did touch you--still we should +have remembered that you are, above all else, the King's friend." + +Bulstrode fell a step back. Before he could take in the curious honors +that were being thrust upon him, the lady went hotly on: + +"You know how indulgent of me the King has been: how he adores me +still, how blind he is, and you pity him and have no mercy for me." + +Here, for she, too, had left her seat, she went over to the compartment +window and turning her back full on Bulstrode, stood looking out, and +she thus gave him time and he took it, not to consider his part of the +affair, but, as if it had been suddenly revealed to him by her words, +the woman's part in it. After all it was scarcely important whom, in +error, she believed him to be. In a strange fashion, through some +trick of resemblance, he was here and in her confidence in another's +stead--impersonating some man who, in spite of the reputation for +goodness and honor accredited him by this lady, would scarcely, +Bulstrode felt confident, be as scrupulous regarding the adventure as +he himself was fast becoming. The woman--the woman was all that +mattered. She was a Queen then? A Queen! And he had so naïvely +ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of +_lèse-majesté_--that she, poor thing, attributed his _sans gêne_ to her +fallen state! + +Kings and Queens, poor dears, how human they are! What royalty could +she be? And what King's friend was he so closely supposed to be? The +King's friend--well, so he was--so he must be in spite of his quick +pity for the lovely creature--in spite of chivalry and the trust she +displayed. But to be practical: what in half an hour could he hope to +accomplish--how could he keep a determined woman from wrecking her life? + +His mind flew to Paddington, and his first sight of the lady on the +platform. There had been near the hour two trains for Westboro', one +of them a local which left London some few minutes later than the +Western express. _That_ later train, no doubt of it, would fetch the +real accomplice to the eloping lady. Bulstrode argued that, should he +declare himself to the Queen at this point for a total stranger, the +revelation would plunge her in despair, anger and frighten her, and +lose him his cause--There was, in view of the cause, he now felt and +nerved himself to the deception, nothing to do but to assume his rôle +in earnest and play it as well as he might. He had never sat alone in +a travelling carriage and hobnobbed with a Queen, but he gracefully +made his try at the proper address: "Your Majesty," he began, and she +whirled quickly round, pleasure on her face. + +"Oh, Gresthaven!" she exclaimed with touching gratitude, extending her +hand. "Thanks, mon ami! I shall not have my title long, and I shall, +I suppose, miss it with other things." + +Bulstrode, with her naming of him, knew at length who he was, and +recalled his supposed likeness to a certain Lord Almouth +Gresthaven--famous explorer, traveller and diplomat, cosmopolitan in +his tastes and a dabbler in the politics of other and less significant +countries than his own. In accepting his new personality, the American +winced a little as he bowed over the royal little hand and kissed it. + +"Your Majesty will miss many things indeed," he said gravely--"your +kingdom, your people, and the King--the King," he repeated, dwelling on +the word, "who, as you say, loves you." + +"My good friend," the lady made a little _moue_--"I know everything you +would say. You can't suppose I haven't thought of it all? To be so +far on my way must I not have carefully considered every step? One is, +after all, a woman--and I am a woman in love." + +"One word then," pleaded her unwilling imposter--"one word. Have you +also asked yourself: what chance for happiness a woman can possibly +hope for with a man who allows her to make the sacrifice you are about +to make?" + +If his words were straws before the wind to the woman, his simplicity +was impressive to her. "It has seemed to me," Jimmy Bulstrode said, +"that there is a great distinction between love and passion--and that +however great his passion for her, a man should supremely--_supremely +love_ the woman he singles out of all the world." + +The Queen of Poltavia looked at the gentleman before her, who stood +very straight, his head alone bent, his clear fine eyes fixed upon her +own. + +"Love!" she repeated softly, "how well you say the word." + +A slight flush stole up the American's cheek. + +"Supreme love," he ventured to continue, "means protection to the +woman...." + +Here the Queen made an impatient gesture as though she shook away the +impression his tone made. + +"My dear Gresthaven," she exclaimed, "love means above all else +happiness! One is happy with one person and miserable with another. +It's all a lottery and unless our plans miscarry I am going towards the +greatest happiness in the world. But come"--She altered her tone to +one of practical command--"Let us address ourselves to our flight. You +have your train schedule of course? The Dover train is due here at +4:50 and it only waits for the taking on of our carriage." As she +looked up at him she saw the trouble in his face, and a solicitude for +her to which she was unaccustomed. + +"Mon cher ami," she said quizzically, "what, may I ask, since your +scruples are so great, ever led you to accept this mission....?" + +"Frankly," he eagerly answered, and was honest in it, "the hope, the +desire that I might...." + +"Persuade a woman in love against her heart?" she smiled, and so +sweetly, so convincingly, and so reasonably, he was for an instant all +on her side. + +"I see my folly, your Majesty." + +"There's nothing but _force majeure_, Gresthaven...." + +"Yes" ... he admitted reluctantly. "Let me go out now and see to our +manoeuvres here." He was able to open the door which a passing guard +had unlocked unobserved.... + +The innocent royalty let him pass, thanking him with a smile, and saw +him go down the track toward the little squat station, with the guards. + + +Bulstrode, whose mind as he walked along was busy with train schedules, +recalled, nevertheless, the Duke's letter, which he still had in his +letter case, and he took it from his pocket and re-read it. + +"... We are to have over the week-end a dash of royalty. Carmen-Magda, +the Queen of the petty kingdom of Poltavia." (This mention of the +Westboro' guests had quite escaped Bulstrode's mind in his +contemplation of the last page of the Duke's note.... "We are to have +a compatriot of your own, a Mrs. Jack Falconer.") And royalty being +very relative to the unsnobbish American, he had simply transferred the +title (with possibly a possessive pronoun before it) to the other lady! +He smiled as he reflected that the Westboro' express was destined to +arrive at the Abbey without either the royal guest or Mr. James +Thatcher Bulstrode. But more to the point, more instantly absorbing +was the fact, that within ten minutes the slow train from London to +Westboro' would arrive at Radleigh Bucks, the little station before +which he now stood, and from it, undoubtedly, would descend the real +Lord Gresthaven. If Jimmy needed encouragement in his self-imposed +rôle of Master of Fate, if he needed to forget the ardor and the +determination of the little Queen, if he needed to forget how, in +youth, he had cordially hated those interfering people who, on +horseback and in chaises, tore after flying lovers to waylay them at +Gretna Green--he found his stimulus in recalling that he was "the +King's friend." + +"It's after all something of a distinction," he mused, entertained by +the idea, "a sort of royal _noblesse oblige_--and since the poor dear +herself has so made me out to be, given King the precedence, how could +I, in the cause of gallantry, have proceeded otherwise! It's this +diabolical little brown chrysanthemum," he mentally laid the fault +there. "It is evidently a telling mark. People in books are always +meeting unknowns who are to wear a red flower in the right lapel of the +coat".... and he had unintentionally gone over into a romance--and his +_triste_ part in it was that of an unsympathetic spoiler of a romance. + +As after a prolonged parley with the station officials he walked +leisurely back to his carriage, his wallet grown very thin indeed and +his honest heart suffering many sincere pangs at the contemplation of +his conduct altogether, he argued: "She is absurdly young--she will, +after a little, go back to her allegiance (he put it so), and I don't +take much stock in that barbaric Gela anyway, he probably is a +Hungarian band-master or a handsome ticket-agent, a plebian creature +whose very remoteness from her own life has fascinated her." + +Bulstrode, not quite sure just whom he was supposed to be by the train +people, found himself bowed and escorted back to the carriage which had +been turned and manipulated and side-tracked--reswitched and displaced, +till even its own locomotive and train of cars would have been at a +loss to find it. He had the sense of being a traitor, brute, imposter, +and Providence all in one--which combination of qualities was +sufficient to explain his embarrassment and his nervous manner when he +at length rejoined the Queen. + +There was a slight transformation in the lady whose dressing bag had +aided, evidently, a brisk toilet. Under her chin flowered out a snowy +bow of tulle, and she had swathed herself in the thick veil she had +worn when first boarding the train. Indicating her disguise to +Bulstrode, she said with her pretty accent: "I think it well to be +thus." And he agreed that it was well. + +His own agitation as the other train rushed in, slowed and halted, was +scarcely less than hers, indeed perhaps greater, for Carmen-Magda, pale +and quiet, her handsome brown eyes fixed on the window-pane, gave no +sign of life, until after a series of jerks, jolts and bumps, they +slowly but certainly became part of a moving train, once more +undertaking its journey. Then Bulstrode, who stood determinedly in the +window, filled it up on the station side, giving her no chance to look +out had she wished to do so, nor did he think it needful to tell the +Queen what he saw: A distinguished-looking man in rough brown clothes, +and oh, the curious coincidence: a reddish-brown chrysanthemum in his +buttonhole. His Striking Resemblance was accompanied by another +gentleman--short and stout with military mustaches, and swarthy +complexion. The two men were gesticulating wildly together, and as the +train pulled away from them, Bulstrode turned about and faced the +little Queen. + +She had again lifted her veil, and he thought her pallor natural; in +the momentary excitement her large eyes were fastened upon him with a +touching confidence that nearly made the soft-hearted imposter regret +the boldest act of his history. + +"Are you sure," she asked him softly, "that this is the right train?" + +The coquetry of her bow of snowy tulle, the debonnaire costume of brown +and green, her gray hat with its feathers, were pathetic to him--her +attire contrasted sadly with her pale face. She was to him like a +wilful child. Not more, he decided for the sixth time, than twenty +years old. She was like a paper queen out of a child's fairy book, all +but her anxious face. "She regrets," he joyfully caught at the thought +to arm himself and give himself right. "Poor little thing, she already +regrets." + +Leaning forward, he suggested kindly: + +"Can't your Majesty rest a little?" + +As he spoke the hypocrite knew that in less time than it would take to +settle her they would bump into the station at Westboro' Abbey. + +But Carmen-Magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she was +_en route_ for her plebian Gela. She leaned over and picked up one of +the illustrated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages, +reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph +displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a +military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin. She +held it out to Bulstrode and said: + +"It's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the +King?" + +Bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on +his face. + +"Yes, it is good of the King, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much +animation. It was strikingly so, he could with truth say it. + +Gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the King par +excellence--the King seemed to have many friends---and the poor little +woman opposite--with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence +in a stranger--her madder confidence in Lord Almouth Gresthaven--where +were _her_ friends? Jimmy leaned to her, and Mrs. Falconer could have +told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that +Jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of +his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined +to help in spite of themselves." + +"Your Majesty has done me great honor," Bulstrode said. "You have said +I was the King's friend, I should like instead to be _your_ friend. +Women need friends ... even queens. Would it be too vast a presumption +if I should from henceforth feel myself to be...." He waited and +dared--"Carmen-Magda's friend?" + +His innocent lèse-majesté, coupled with the tone he used, reached the +woman in her---not to speak of his personal charm. + +"Didn't I imply friendship when I chose you for this mission?" she said. + +He winced. "Of course--but I mean from now on----" + +She nodded sweetly. "_Cela va sans dire_, Gresthaven." + +"Don't call me so," he interrupted, "say _friend_, to please me." + +She laughed. + +"You are too amusing. I will say it for you then in Poltavian. It's a +sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with +the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she +knighted him. It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to +ask her: + +"What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you +had arranged he should do--he should betray you--should have warned +your husband and have gone so far _as to fetch the King to waylay you +and stop your flight_!" + +But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition +with a word of disbelief. + +"Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?" + +She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis +were real to her at last: + +"He would be the most despicable traitor in the world." + +Bulstrode pursued: "What--would you think of Gresthaven--if in order to +save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter +your decision--he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as +surely betraying your good faith?" + +Here she looked keenly through him--read him--then waited a second +before intensely exclaiming: + +"Gresthaven--_what have you done_?" + +His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him. He did +not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all +women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over +admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in +their own minds. + +"Oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matter _what_ reason, she had only +changed her _own_ mind!" + +"In five minutes," he said bravely--"your Majesty will be at Westboro' +Abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which +followed us from London." + +With a smothered cry the Queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window +and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to +her in what part of England she was. Bulstrode had put his hand out +before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open +window. + +"Oh," she cried furiously, shrinking back from him, "how have you dared +... dared?" + +... "To save your Majesty? Well, it _was_ hard!" he acknowledged +practically. "Harder than you will ever believe. I may say that no +decision was ever more difficult to make. To be so trusted by you, and +to feel myself a double-dyed villain wasn't agreeable, but the issue +was a warrant for any treachery." + +"Great heavens!" she exclaimed. "Who made _you_ judge of my actions, +who gave _you_ leave to decide my fate, what a fool I was to trust +you--what a fool! You have spoiled my life!" she accused him--"You +have taken from me everything in the world." + +If she had been alone he knew she would have wept, and he kept his face +turned from her for some few seconds. "I have certainly established a +precedent for myself," he mused with humor. "_I_ can never run away +with a woman now--never." + +Small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk +it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing. +She spoke, he supposed, in Poltavian, for he could not follow the +meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise +among the incoherences that she called him friend! + +As the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and +sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more +ventured to speak. + +"I am not the cold-blooded traitor I seem, believe me," he tried to +plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at Redleigh Bucks I +was miserable to think I had, as it seems, betrayed your Majesty. But +when as we came up to the station I saw the King on the platform----" + +She stopped short in front of him: "The King!" she exclaimed +incredulously. + +Bulstrode nodded in a matter-of-fact way as if stray kings on +mid-country platforms were the common occurrence of his travelling +experiences. + +"He had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to +attach your carriage to the Dover express had been attempted, you would +have been stopped by your husband himself. As it is you are simply +going where you are expected to go--to Westboro' Castle." + +This dénouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no +place for ecstatics. She sat down in front of Bulstrode and repeated, +dazed:-- + +"The _King_! The King had followed me! He had been warned then, but +by whom? You above all did not....?" + +"Oh no!" He was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this +disloyalty. "I had nothing to do with it. The King had come on with +the man who had played your Majesty false all along, the man who is +indeed more the King's friend than he is Carmen-Magda's." + +And sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him +say: "I mean Lord Almouth Gresthaven." + +She murmured some words in Poltavian, then besought: "Why, why do you +play with me?" The tears started to her eyes. + +"Lord Gresthaven," Bulstrode hurried now to his confession--"has +plainly betrayed you. Either he failed to meet you as planned, or else +he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your +husband--at all events, both he and the King took the slow train." + +"But _you_," she interrupted, staring at him--"You are not Lord +Gresthaven?" + +"No," he said quietly, "no, I am an American, nothing more than a +friend and guest of the Duke of Westboro'. I tried over and over again +to tell you this, but you would not hear me and I finally accepted the +rôle you gave me with the firm intention of taking you with me to +Westboro' Castle. My name is James Thatcher Bulstrode, I am from +Boston, in the United States." Bulstrode thus tardily introduced +himself. + +And Jimmy, not pretending ever to have counted greatly on the favor of +princes, was nevertheless taken aback. Not that he had any +preconceived notion of what Carmen-Magda would do--when she eventually +knew. He had been too absorbed in his mission, its entanglements, and +his climax. He may have been prepared for some exhibition of scorn, +but he more than likely looked for a social and commonplace ending to +their ride, but for what Carmen-Magda did he was entirely unprepared. + +As if in his declaration of himself and his identity he had taken a +sponge and quite wiped himself off the slate, the Queen, after +speechlessly staring at him for a few moments, quietly removed her +attention from him altogether. She took from a little bag at her wrist +a rouge stick with which she carefully touched her lips; from a tiny +gold box she lightly dusted her cheeks with powder; she adjusted her +tulle bow and her veil and then sat serenely back waiting until the +train should arrive at her forced destination. + +Although, one might say, unused to the manners of royalty, Jimmy was +dumbfounded; the beautiful woman in forest-brown clothes picked out +with hunting green had become as strange to him as in the first moment +when she attracted his attention some few miles beyond London. That +she should be angry at his interference he could admit, but that she +should not be grateful to be saved from her husband's wrath he did not +understand. Was he too plebeian for her to notice? He, of course, did +not speak to her again, nor did she break the singular silence, and for +some reason he did not even care to ask her forgiveness. Finally, he +decided that she was thinking solely of Gela, the man at the other end +of the route who would wait for her in vain, and when this sentimental +view of the case occurred to him, he would have felt _de trop_ had he +not seen how completely he was ignored. + +They flashed past the last miles of wooded valley and hillside. +Westboro' was very soft in line and very mellow in the evening light. +The landscape, through a half-mist, was as brown and green as the dress +of the beautiful silent woman in the opposite corner of the travelling +carriage. + +Bulstrode, looking at her rather timidly, felt as if he were in a dream. + +At Westboro' Abbey the guard unlocked the compartment door and +Bulstrode, who got out first, helped the Queen of Poltavia to descend. +As she put foot to the ground she said, half leaning on the arm he +gave: "I thank you--very much indeed." + +He caught the few words eagerly, and was fatuous enough to fancy that +she meant something more than the common courteous acknowledgment of a +man's help from a travelling carriage. + +The station was deserted. The express having arrived some half hour +before without them, there had evidently been no preparation made to +meet this train. + +Surrounded by her luggage, her brand new luggage, the Queen waited on +the side of the station that faced the open country, whilst Bulstrode +made inquiries about telephoning or getting word to the castle. + +At this juncture, down the lane, between red thickets and golden +hedges, a smart dog-cart tooled along driven by a lady. She waved a +welcoming hand. + +"Jimmy," she said as she drove up and leaned out and nodded to him, "I +knew you'd miss the express, you're so absent-minded about trains; and +who could be expected to distinguish between a 3.50 and a 3.53? So, as +you see, I drove down on the chance." + +He had not greeted her in words. The long afternoon, the romantic +extravagant episode, of which he had been unwillingly a part, made this +woman seem so real. He felt as if from a burlesque extravaganza he had +come out into the fresh air; their eyes had met and Mrs. Falconer did +not miss any other greeting. + +"That lady," he then said, "whom you see standing on the edge of the +platform surrounded by her luggage, like a shipwrecked being on a +desert island, is the Queen of Poltavia." + +"Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Falconer. + +"Yes," he said indifferently, "we came down from London together." + +"Why, the whole castle is in a state about her. A coach and postillion +went to fetch her at the express. Telegrams are flying all over the +country. Why did she take a local--and with you--Jimmy?" + +"Perhaps she is absent-minded about trains as well," he smiled, "at all +events here she certainly is and it will be charming of you to drive +her up." + +"But I don't know her!" + +"Oh," he shrugged, "one doesn't exactly _know_ queens, I don't know her +either, but that wouldn't prevent my doing her a service. I am sure +she'd rather be driven up to a cup of tea and a fire by an American +than stand here waiting for a postilion and four. It will be nice of +you to speak to her," he suggested, and stepped back. + +Gathering up her reins, Mrs. Falconer whisked her horse about and drove +up to the lady's side. Bulstrode, from a little distance, watched her +graceful inclination and heard her lovely voice. He saw Carmen-Magda +lift her disguising veil, displaying her dark, foreign face. Slowly +going up to the dog-cart's side, together with the groom's help, he +bestowed the Queen's belongings in the trap. + +"I will walk on slowly up the road," he suggested, "and most possibly +you will send back for me." + +"Oh, I'll drive back myself." She was quite certain about it. As he +helped the Queen into the dog-cart, as she leaned on his supporting +hand, she said: + +"Thank you, thank you very much indeed." And he was so vain as to +fancy that into tone and words Carmen-Magda put more warmth, more of +meaning, than a woman usually puts into the phrase of recognition of a +man's helping hand. He could not, moreover, have sworn that at the end +of the sentence was not murmured a word in a foreign tongue which might +in Poltavian mean "friend," but as he did not understand the language +of the country he could not be sure. + +As he watched the trap up the hedged lanes out of sight, he rubbed his +eyes as if he were not certain whether or not he had not dozed and +dreamed in his compartment on the slow train from London.... But at +any rate he had the delightful heavenly certainty that this was +Westboro' of an Indian summer afternoon--and that of the two women who +had just driven up the lane out of sight, one at least was adorably +real. + + + + +THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE + + + +VII + +IN WHICH HE BECOMES THE POSSESSOR OF A CERTAIN PIECE OF PROPERTY + +As Bulstrode stood in the window of his room at Westboro' Castle, his +face turned toward the country, it seemed to beckon him. It called him +from the park's end where suave and smooth the curving downs met the +preciser contour of the eastern field; from hedges holding snugly in +the roadways, the roads themselves running off on pleasant excursions +to townships whose names are suggestive of romance, whose gentle +beauties have mellowed with the ages which give them value and leave +them perfect. + +With the sweetness of a bell, with the invitingness of a beckoning +hand, the English countryside summoned the gentleman to come out to it, +to explore and penetrate for himself. He gazed charmed and entranced +at the expanse of rippling meadow where, enclosed by the curtains of +soft old trees, the thatch of the eaves lifted their breast to the sun +and mist, and chimneys black with immemorial fires indicated the farms +of Westboro', rich, homely and respectable, as they left upon the +landscape harmonious color and history of thrift. To the east was the +dim suggestion of the little town, and some few miles in a hollow lay +the farmlands known as The Dials, and each second growing more +distinctly visible in the deepening light rose the towers of Penhaven +Abbey. + +At the Duke's urging, Bulstrode had been led to stop on at Westboro' +Castle after the house party had dissolved at the end of their week's +sojourn; and there had since been many long tramps across country, with +the dogs at his heels and by his side the Duke, for the time diverted +from his semi-melancholy, semi-egotistical cynicism, and transformed +into an enthusiastic sport. + +The Duke of Westboro' was a _désenchanté_, more truly speaking a victim +of other peoples' temperaments. There were, however, not a few little +scores in the character of moral delinquencies which at least, so he +felt, he had been called upon quite fully to discharge. + +The American man gave himself over to his host, and from the time +Westboro' put out a bait of "Oh, you're decidedly not turning in at +this hour, old man?" he flanked the Duke on the opposite side of the +fireplace in the East Library, there after coffee to wear away half the +night. During the following fortnight, Bulstrode found that he had +tallied up with his friend very closely the scores of the last few +miserable years. + +Westboro's friendship with him dated back some ten years. Bulstrode +had first known the Englishman at Newport where, then not a young man, +he had come obviously and frankly in search of an American wife. The +search was unusual in that it was not for money, but, as Westboro' put +it, for type and race. His mother had been an American. He had adored +her, and wanted an American mother for his children. The woman +herself--and how Bulstrode saw it as he followed the deserted husband's +narrative--the woman had been a secondary thing. He recalled easily +the summary and conventional courtship and the vulgar brilliance of the +wedding. He had been one of Westboro's ushers, and his smaller part of +the affair left him with the distressing idea that he had assisted at a +sacrifice. + +It would be euphemistic to say that Westboro' poured out his heart to +Bulstrode; Englishmen do not have such refreshments. Little by little, +rather in short curt phrases, a cynical word whose mocking fellow only +followed after some moments' silence--little by little, whilst the +smoky wreaths of the men's cigars veiled their confidences, the Duke +slowly told the story of ten years of married life. In this intimacy +he disclosed the history of the separation which formed at the moment +the subject of general public comment. Jimmy was relieved when the +moment came that the Duke thought opportune to say: + +"There, old chap, you have the whole story! It's this cursed tradition +of marriage, and you're a lucky fellow to be free. I have never spoken +to any one before--you know it. I don't need to tell you so, but you +were in, as it were, at the start, and what do you think of the finish?" + +Bulstrode reserved his opinion. + +Westboro' Castle had been built in the sixteenth century by a lover of +the Virgin Queen. The stones were paved with memories. In the Picture +Hall the ardent gentleman three hundred years before had for one sole +hour entertained Elizabeth at a feast. She left him, obdurate and +unyielding, and he went crazy and followed the royal coach to the park +gate, weeping, his hands before his face; and there on the ground, his +fair curls torn, and the dust from the departing vehicles alone of the +glory that touched him, his people found him. + +"How they prate of inequality, and of the crime of grafting the +American rose on these old stalks," Bulstrode mused. The beauty of +Frances, Duchess of Westboro', he had himself been one of the first to +concede; a portrait of her by Lehnbach did not to his eyes do her +justice. The fresh purity of her type had not been seized by the +German. She would be an ideal Duchess, he had said of her when the +mission of Westboro' to America had been bruited, and Westboro' had +thought: "She's a strong, fine woman, and will bear me beautiful +children." + +She had borne him two. Bulstrode, in passing through the house, had +seen the low gates at the doors of two sunny rooms, the toys spread as +they had been lain. His own were the only apartments in that wing of +the castle, and the silence at the end of the hall was never broken. +When Westboro' had come to this part of his narrative, he had waited +quiet so long that his companion had naturally taken the evening to be +at its end. The Duke had thrown his cigar away, and lifting from the +table near him a leather case, opened it and handed over to Bulstrode +the photograph of two little bare-legged boys in sailor clothes. They +stood hand in hand, a pretty pair. Looking at it, and gently turning +it over on the other side, Bulstrode read: + +"Frederick Cecil John Edward, Marquis of Wotherington, three years old. +Guy Perceval, Lord Feversham, aged two years." + +Westboro's voice had a dull sound as he took the case from his friend's +hand. + +"They are Westboro's I think, neck and crop. Scarlet fever--in three +days, Bulstrode--both in three days." + +And that had been all. + +Bulstrode had left the Duke and gone up-stairs. On the other side of +his cheerful rooms the empty nurseries in the ghostly moonlight held +their doors wide open as if to welcome at the low gates those bright +heads if they should come. + +Jimmy, whose sentimentality consisted in his acting immediately when +anything was to be done, mixed a whiskey and soda from the array of +drinks that always exists at an Anglo-Saxon's elbow, and after a turn +or two in his dressing-room brought practically out: + +"It's ridiculous! Sheer nonsense. There should be children here. The +woman is selfish and puritanical, and the man is no lover--_that's_ +what's the matter! But Westboro' certainly loves her in his big, cold, +affectionate way." Jimmy smiled at his own fashion of putting it. And +how any woman, with a mind and common-sense, could help loving +Westboro' Castle and countryside, as well as Cecil, tenth Duke of the +line, the American visitor failed to see. + +As the Duke of Westboro' thought of the members of his recent house +party--the women of it passed before his mental mirror. There were +several images of an American lady whose frocks and hats, whose wit and +grace, whose dark beauty had made her stay at Westboro' brilliant and +memorable. Possibly the remembrance of Mrs. Falconer, one night at +dinner, was what most persistently lingered in the Duke's mind. She +had sat on his left in a gown he remembered as becoming, and her jewels +had shone like fire on her bosom. He had particularly remarked them in +thinking of the idle jewels of his own house, left behind by the flight +of the Duchess. Mary Falconer had been more brilliant than her +ornaments, and Westboro' had thoroughly enjoyed his guest. He had +asked this woman especially because she charmed him; without forming +the reason he had a latent hope that she might do more than charm. He +wanted to forget and to be eased from the haunting memory that stung +and never soothed. From his first tête-a-tête with Mrs. Falconer he +had at once seen that there was nothing there for him. + +Bulstrode had said that Westboro' was not a lover. Reserved as far as +all feeling was concerned, he had made no advances to the beautiful +American, but contented himself with watching her. She could not be in +love with her brutish husband who, out of the week spent at Westboro' +was visible only two days. Then Bulstrode had come. Pictures of the +two talking in the long twilights, riding together, walking on the +terrace side by side, came vividly to Westboro's recollection. + +"That," he decided, "is a real flesh-and-blood woman, the kind of woman +I should have married. Bulstrode is a lucky devil." + + +"A chap," Westboro' said to Jimmy in a mild unpretentious mood of +philosophy, "is, of course, a husband; more naturally than people give +him credit for, a father; but first of all--and that's what so few +women take into consideration--_he is a man_." + +The Duke had fallen into the habit of breaking through the silences +when each man, following his own thoughts, would forget the other. And +remarks such as these his companion knew, referred in sense and detail +to the long talks whose intenser personalities had ceased. + +This day Westboro' brought out his little paragraph as, between the +hedges of a lowland lane, the two rode at a walk after a long hard +canter from Penhaven, some eight miles behind them on the hill. On +either side the top of the thorn was veiled with rime. Down the +hedge's thickness from his seat on his horse, Bulstrode could look into +the dark tangled interstices of the thicket and its delicious browns +and greens. Into the thorns here and there dried leaves had fallen, +and from the hedge as well as from the country, clouded and gray with +mist, came a sharpened sweetness; a blended smell of fields over which +early winter had passed; a smell of woods over which the fires cast +smoky veils. In the freshness and with the eager exercise, Bulstrode's +cheeks had reddened. He sat his horse well, and his enjoyment of life, +his ease with it, his charming spirit, shone in the face he turned to +the Duke. For some miles given over to the sympathetic task of +managing his horse, he had enjoyed like a boy, and during the ride had +thought of nothing but the physical delight of the open air and the +motion. + +"Yes," he returned to his friend's remark, "as far as any point of +interest goes, we may grant you that we began as men. I mean to say +that monkeys aren't useful in one's deductions for emotional +hypotheses, at any rate. I'll grant you for our use that we were men +to begin with." + +"Damn it all," said his host, "aren't we just as much so to-day, for +all our civilization?" + +"Well, we don't primarily knock on the head a woman whose physique has +pleased us, and carry her off while she's unconscious." + +"It might in some cases be a good thing if we did," Westboro' growled. + +Bulstrode ran his hand along the silky neck of his horse, from whose +nostrils smoke came in little puffs that met the moisture of the air. + +"Oh, we're not, you know, so awfully far away from our instincts in +anything, old man! There isn't any cast-iron rule about feelings. +They depend on the individual." + +"Oh, you've never married," Westboro' tried frankly to irritate him, +"and you can't, you know----" + +The sweet temper of the other accepted the Duke's scorn. "I'm not +married, or very theoretical about it, either. One can only, after +all, have his own point of view." + +"We're not, I expect, fair to the women," the Duke generously +acknowledged. "We look for so much in them. We expect them to be so +much." + +"A wife," Bulstrode completed for him, "a mother, a friend." + +And Westboro' finished it. "For them and for other men. And a +mistress." + +And here Bulstrode took him up for the first time with a note of +challenge in his voice. + +"And what, my dear man, did you intend that the Duchess should take you +for? No, I mean to say, quite man to man, given that any woman could +or does contain all the qualities you so temperately ask?" + +Westboro' smiled at the first curtness he had ever heard in his +friend's voice. + +"Oh, you know, we men don't fuss about ourselves." + +"You married her at eighteen," Bulstrode said. "You made her a +Duchess. You had already lived a life and she was a child beside you +in experience. You required motherhood of her, and in return...." + +"Well," Westboro' turned about in his saddle and faced his earnest +friend. "What then, in your opinion, might I have been?" + +"You might have been from the start," Bulstrode said it shortly, "a +lover. It's not a bad rôle. We Anglo-Saxons have no sentimental +education. Our puritanism makes us half the time timid at courtship +and love." + +The gentlemen rode a little on with slackened rein. Westboro's +eyeglass cord was almost motionless as he stared out between his +horse's ears down the lane. + +"Perhaps, after all," he fetched it out slowly, "there's something in +what you say." + +Whether or not there was any truth in Bulstrode's commonplace remark, +it lingered in his host's mind all day. It gave him, for the first +time, a link to follow--an idea--and the Duke, entirely unused to +analysis, accustomed to act if not on impulse, certainly according to +his will and pleasure without concession, harked back in a groping, +touching fashion like an awkward boy looking for a lost treasure, +upsetting, as he went, old haunts, turning over things for years not +brought to the light of day. And it took him all the afternoon and a +good part of the evening to reach the place where he thought he had +lost originally his joy. Unlike the happier boy, he could not seize +his bliss once recovered, and stow it away; it was only remembrance +that brought him back, and with a tightening heart as he realized once +more the form and quality of his lost happiness--there he must leave it +and see it fade again into the past. + + +Jimmy gave his host a chance to follow his absorbed reflections. He +effaced himself, and behind a book whose lightness of touch made him +agreeably forget the heavier hand of current and daily events, he sat +in his dressing-room reading "The Vicar of Wakefield." + +When Westboro' came in to him Jimmy looked up and quoted aloud: "When +lovely woman stoops to folly and finds at length that men betray...." + +"Oh, they console themselves quickly," Westboro' finished. "Don't +fancy anything else, my dear fellow, they console themselves." + +"They may pretend to do so." + +"They succeed." + +Westboro' took the little book from his friend's hand and shut it +firmly as if afraid that the rest of the verse might slip out and +refute him. + +"Bulstrode, she consoles herself, she is perfectly happy." + +"How are you then so sure?" + +"Oh, I hear of her in Paris." The Duke's features contracted. "She's +contriving to pass her time--to pass her time." + +Bulstrode leaned over towards his friend and, for Westboro' sat +opposite him, he put his hand on the Duke's knee. + +"You must certainly go to her." + +Westboro' stroked his moustache before he answered: + +"Not if I never see her again." + +"You should decidedly go to her." + +The other shook his head. "Not if it meant twice the hell it is now." + +"Why not?" + +"I went to her once. I may say twice," he slowly said, "since we +separated." And as he stopped speaking Bulstrode could only imagine +what the result had been. + +"I don't think I'm a Westboro' really, for I couldn't follow any +woman's carriage puling like a schoolboy as my ancestor did. There's a +great deal of my mother's blood in me, and it's a different blend." + +Bulstrode's eyes were on the little book between the Duke's +aristocratic hands. + +"She has, I grant you, a lot to forgive; but she quite well knows all +the blame I acknowledge, quite well. I don't believe I'm any worse +than the run of mankind, and whether I am or not, I've made all the +amends I can and I have nothing more to say." + +His eyeglass had dropped; his face looked worn; he showed his age more +than a happier man would have done at his years His mood of thinking it +out by himself continued for so long that Bulstrode finally asked: + +"What, if I may be so near you as to question, do you mean, old chap, +to do?" + +Westboro' had it all laid out for himself--his ready answer showed it. + +"You say I'm not a lover," he reminded his friend; "no doubt you're +right, but I'm an affectionate chap, at any rate, I can't bear this--" +He looked about hopelessly. The words were forced out by the high mark +of his unhappiness: "--this infernal solitude. Even when a good +comrade like yourself is in it, the house seems to speak to me from the +empty rooms in this wing." (Bulstrode knew he was thinking of the +nurseries with the low latches and little gates.) "I can't stand it. +When I get out of England and abroad the place fetches me back again +like a magnet. I'm a home-keeping sort of man, and I want my home." + +His friend gently urged in the silence: "Well?" + +"I shall wait," the Duke went on with the plan he had been forced to +make out for himself. "I shall hold on, keep along a bit, and then--_I +shall go to the other woman_." And the Duke, as he raised his eyes to +his companion, fixed his glass firmly and felt that he challenged in +every way Bulstrode's disapproval. "The Duchess will get her +divorce--it goes without saying--will get her divorce. Why she has not +already done so I can't imagine." + +As Westboro' appeared inclined to leave the subject there, Bulstrode +pressed him further: "And then?" + +"I fancy I shall marry the other woman." + +Bulstrode started. The complexion of the idea was so foreign to him +that he could not for a moment let himself think that he understood it. + +"You will," he said, "marry one woman whilst you distinctly love +another?" + +The Duke nodded. "Love," he reflected, "I begin to believe I don't +know anything about. It must, of course, suppose some sort of return. +If, as you say, I love another woman, I'm not made of the stuff that +can go along doing so without anything on her side." + +The dressing clock at the bedside on the little stand chimed the hour. +It was two o'clock. The Duke of Westboro' rose. + +"You must think me a colossal ass, my dear friend, but if it had not +been for your awfully good companionship and your kindness, I dare say +that by now I should have already made some sort of fatal blunder." + +At the door Bulstrode put his hand on his friend's arm, and, as though +nothing in the conversation apart from the Duchess had any real +significance, he said simply: + +"You are then, in sum, simply waiting...?" + +"Oh, yes," agreed the other rather blankly. And the other man knew +that he had been told only half the thought in his friend's mind. + +"She may get a divorce at any time, you know, quite easily, without my +taking any further steps." + +"Oh, I see perfectly," Jimmy accepted; and as the door closed after his +host, he said, almost aloud: "He thinks, then, there is half a chance +that the Duchess will return." And wondering very much how far a woman +is willing to sacrifice herself for a man, granted that she loves him, +he did not finish his phrase. + + +The next day Bulstrode, no longer able to resist the beckoning country, +went out, as it were, to it as if he said "Here I am--what will you do +with me?" + +If Glousceshire could, for a while, make him forget the problems he had +been housed with, brush him up a bit, he thought it would be a good +thing. Therefore, when his horse came up to the door he threw himself +on the animal in a nervous haste to be gone, and setting off in the +direction of Penhaven, obeyed its summons at last. + +Westboro' had run up to London for overnight, and Bulstrode, at the +Duke's something more than invitation, a sort of appeal, was to stay +indefinitely on. It must be confessed that he rather selfishly looked +forward to the course of an untroubled afternoon, to an evening amongst +the books whose files had tempted him for days. + +But the pity of all he had sympathetically been closeted with was great +in his mind. Whereas his native delicacy and slow judgment had led him +to keep silent until now towards his host, it was in no wise because +Jimmy had not quite made up his mind that he would not spare Westboro' +at all when the moment, if it ever came, should present itself for him +to speak. + +As he rode along he thought of the Duchess naturally in Paris, +surrounded by a train of ardent admirers; she had them always, +everywhere. She was disillusioned, of course, probably angry, piqued, +and unfortunately she had been betrayed; and he shrugged with a gentle +desperation as he made a mental picture of the last scene: the +inevitable divorce, the wrecking of another household, +unless--unless--one of them loved sufficiently to save the situation. + +His thoughts came to a standstill as his horse stopped short before a +gate: his riding had fetched him up before it. The mare stretched out +her long neck, set free by a relaxing rein; she sniffed the latch and +put her head over the wicket, and the rider saw that they had come +across fields, and were at the entrance of a deserted property. The +gate gave access to a forest road where the thick underbrush was +untidy, and on whose walk the piles of leaves lay as they had fallen. +He could see no farther in, and thinking to come at the end upon a +forsaken garden, the precincts of an untenanted country house, he +leaned down, tried the gate which fairly swung into his hand, and the +mare passed through. There was the delicious intimacy about the woods +which the sense of coming alone and unexpectedly upon the old and +forsaken gives the traveller. He is a discoverer of secrets, a +legitimate spy upon stories which he flatters himself he is the first +to read. He becomes intimate with another man's past, and as he must +necessarily, in all ignorance, tell himself his own tales, indiscretion +may be said to be a doubtful quantity. + +A bit back in the bare brown woods he saw the flash of a marble pillar; +it shone white and clear in the setting of russet and against the boles +of the trees. A little farther away gleamed another figure on its base +of fluted marble, and still farther along, leaf-overlaid and thus +effaced, he could discern the contour of a sunken garden. The place +grew more pretentious as he slowly picked his way, and he was +unprepared for coming suddenly onto a gravel path from which he thought +the leaves had been blown away. Here Bulstrode dismounted, and, with +the bridle over his arm, walked towards the path's end, pleasantly +interested, and now, as he thought it should by this do, the house +struck on him through an archway contrived by the training of old trees +over a circle of stone. The house broke on him in the shape of an +Elizabethan manse; long and old with soft rose-color of brick in +places, and the color of a faded leaf in others where the dampness had +soaked in and had, through countless mid-summer suns, been burned out +again. Before the windows flashed the red of bright curtains. The +house was distinctly, and he thought it seemed happily, occupied. He +stopped where he stood by the arch, a little confused and a little +balked in his romantic treat, and not the less feeling himself an +intruder. But before he could turn his horse and unobtrusively lead +her back the way they had come, the house's occupant, no doubt she who +gave it the air of being so happily tenanted, had come out with a +garden hat on her head, a pair of garden shears in her hands, and with +the precision of intention, turned sharply towards the arched forest +walk, and in this way squarely upon Bulstrode. + +The surprise to him was, without doubt, the greater, for she knew him +at once, and he for a second did not recognize her. Her extreme +English air--the straw hat tied under her chin and the face it framed, +so decidedly altered, bewildered him. His first greeting, mentally, +before he spoke aloud to her, was masculine. "Why, her beauty! What +in heaven's name had she done with it?" + +"_What_ are you doing here?" + +They both asked it at once, and the lady having lived so long in an +insular country was adept in its possibilities of great hospitality as +well as of freezing out an unwelcome visitor. She froze the poor +gentleman and then, touched by his utter bewilderment and his innocence +of wilful intrusion, she smiled more humanly. + +"Won't you, since you _are_ here, Mr. Bulstrode, come in and have a cup +of tea?" + +She at once followed their mutual question by saying: "As for being +here, you will admit that given the part of the country it is, no one +has a better right!" + +"Oh, I'll admit anything you like," he laughed, "if you'll only admit +us. You see we are two." + +The lady came up to him in a more friendly manner; she gave him her +hand and she really smiled beautifully. Then she put her hand on the +nose of the horse, with the touch one has for familiar things. + +"She's a perfect dear, isn't she--a dear. So you are riding her then? +Well, you'll find her easy to tie, she stands well. There's nothing +she can spoil, that's the charm of such an old, tumble-down place." + +As Bulstrode followed after the trailing dress just touching the gravel +with a rustling sound, he had the feeling of being suddenly, +willy-nilly, taken and put into the heart of a story book. He smiled. +"Well, I've done the first chapter and now I've got to go on in the +book, I suppose, whether I want to be here or not, to the end." + +"I thought I was making a voyage of discovery," he told her as they sat +in the low room before a fire and before her table and tea cups. "I +fancied I was the only person within miles round. I expect no one has +a right to be so bold, but I really didn't dream the place was lived +in, as, of course, you know." + +"Drink your tea," she bade, "and eat your toast before I make you tell +me if you have come to see me as a messenger." + +"And if I have?" + +It was delicious tea, and the American of her had somehow found cream +for it, which, un-English luxury, the American in him fully +appreciated. The liquid in the blue-and-white cups was pale as saffron +and the toast was a feather. + +"At five o'clock there's nothing like it in the world," he breathed. +"I didn't hope for this to-day. I had recklessly thrown five o'clock +over, for I'm alone at the castle." He drank his tea, finished, and +with a sigh. Then he said: "I can actually venture to ask you for +another cup, for I am nobody's messenger or envoy, my dear, nobody's. +I'm just an indiscreet, humdrum individual who has been too charmingly +rewarded for an intrusion. You saw my surprise, didn't you? And I'm +not very clever at putting on things." + +The Duchess tacitly accepted, it is to be supposed, for she made him a +second cup of tea, slowly. + +"You don't know that I've been thinking about you all day," he said, +"and I can frankly say that I've been making a very different picture +of you indeed." + +She took no notice whatsoever of his personality. + +"You are in England, then," she said rather formally. "I never think +of my own country people as being here. I always think of Americans as +being in the States, men above all, for they fit so badly in the +English atmosphere, don't they? It's always incongruous to me to hear +their "r's" and "a's" rattling about in this soft language. It's +horrid of me to speak so. You, of course, are out of the category. +But as you stood there, with Banshee's nose over your shoulder you +fitted quite beautifully in with everything. I don't believe I should +mind you, ever, anywhere, and yet I more naturally think of you at +Newport, don't you see?" + +Her companion cried: "Oh, no, I'm in England, and you can't alter the +fact, at least if you can, please don't; for Newport on the fifteenth +of December, and with no such tea or fire----" + +"Oh," she permitted, "you may stay. I said you fitted--only----" + +Bulstrode interposed: "Don't at least for a few moments entertain any +'buts' and 'onlys'--they are nearly as bad as those magical travelling +trunks that would transport me to the United States. It is so--let me +say--neutral in this place, I should think I might remain. I don't +know why you are here or with whom, nor for how long, or for how deep, +but it is singularly perfect to have found you." + +His hostess had left her seat behind the table, and taking a chair by +the fireside where Bulstrode was sitting, undid the ribbons of her +garden hat and let the basket-like object fall on the floor. + +"You must promise me, first of all, that you will not say you have seen +me. Otherwise I shall leave here to-morrow and nobody shall ever again +know where I am." + +However her command might conflict with what was in his mind, he was +obliged to give her his word. He had no right not to do so. + +"And nothing," she said, "must make you break this promise, Mr. +Bulstrode. I know how good you are, and how you do all sorts of +Quixotic funny things, but in this case please--please----" + +"Mind my own business?" he nodded. "I will, Duchess, I will." + +She looked at him steadily a moment and seemed satisfied, for she +relaxed the tensity of her manner, which was the first Americanism she +had displayed, and in her pretty soft drawl asked him, with less +perfunctory interest than her words implied: "You are at Westboro'?" + +"Yes, since the twenty-fifth." + +"And you're staying on?" + +"I seem to be more or less of a fixture--until the holidays, I expect." + +"Lucky you," she breathed, and at his expression of candid surprise she +half laughed. "Oh, I mean as far as the castle goes--isn't it really +too delightful?" + +He was able to say honestly: "Quite the most beautiful house I have +ever seen." + +"Yes, I think so too," she nodded. "It's not so important as many +others but it's more perfect, more like a home." + +Bulstrode sat back in his chair and tried to make her forget him. +Between the fire and the shadow he wanted to watch her face from which +he now saw that the beauty he remembered had not faded but had been +transformed. She was beautiful in another way: the brilliant, blooming +girl, fully blown at eighteen, with the dazzling charm of health, no +longer existed in the Duchess of Westboro'. She had refined very much +indeed. The aggressive bearing of the American princess had been +replaced by the colder, more serene hauteur of the English Duchess. +She was evidently a very proud woman, the arch of her brows said so, +and the line of her lips. All her lines were sharper and finer. Her +color, and he could not, as he studied her, quite regret it; her color +was quite gone. Her pallor made her more delicate, and her eyes--it +was in them that Bulstrode thought he saw the greatest change of all; +they were now fixed upon him, there was something melancholy in their +profound and deeply circled gray. + +"What rooms will they have given you?" she asked after a moment. +Then--"Wait," she commanded, "I know. The south wing, the Henry IV. +rooms that look into the gardens. I always gave those to the men. +There's something extremely homelike about them, don't you think so? +And have you ever seen anything like those winter roses in that court? +Did any bloom this year? The trellis runs up along the terrace +balustrade--or possibly you don't care for flowers? Of course you +wouldn't as a girl does." + +A _girl_--with that face and those eyes? Why, she must have been +talking back ten years. Bulstrode drew a breath. + +"I know the roses you mean. It would be difficult to forget them. +Your gardener takes such pride in them. For some reason they are never +gathered; they fall as they hang. The gardener, it so happened, told +me so." + +She was looking at him with an intensity almost painful, but she said +nothing further, and after a moment more Bulstrode replied to another +question. + +"As it happens I don't occupy the Henry IV. rooms. I have mine quite +on the other side of the castle. Don't they call them the 'West +Rooms'?" + +She caught her breath a little, but she was in splendid training with +all her years of English life behind her. Her face, nevertheless, +showed how well she knew those rooms, without the added note in her +voice as she said: + +"Oh, those West Rooms--you have those." + +And in the quiet that fell as her eyes sought the fire, he quite knew +how her thoughts travelled down the hall to the open nursery doors with +their waiting gates. Whatever were her reasons for being here, +Bulstrode saw that he had surprised her in a moment of sadness, and +that his visit in spite of his indiscretion, was not wholly unwelcome. +But in the sudden way coming upon some one connected with her own life, +she had been completely taken unawares, and her lapse into something +like sentiment was short. Even as he looked at her she hardened. + +"You have naturally not asked me anything, Mr. Bulstrode," she said, +coldly enough now, "and more naturally still I have no explanations to +give. By to-morrow I may be gone. I may live here for the rest of my +life. I never leave my garden, I am quite unknown to the people about. +If any one in Westboro' learns that I am here I shall leave at once. +You will not come again. It is discourteous to say so--to ask it." + +He had risen from his chair. + +"Oh, but it's quite, quite dark. However will you manage?" + +"We'll pick our way back well enough," he assured her. "The distance +to the road is nothing, and from here on it runs straight to the abbey." + +The Duchess followed him slowly to the door, and there she asked +abruptly: "Is Westboro' to be down all winter? I didn't know it. I +thought he was out of England or I should not have come here at all." + +"Oh," Bulstrode answered, "he's too restless to be long anywhere. I +expect he'll pack up and be off before we know it. He's away just now +at any rate, and I'm kicking my heels up there quite alone. I'm not to +return--ever?" he ventured. "You may so fully trust me that--" and he +saw that she hesitated and pursued, "I shall ride up to the little gate +again, and if it is unlatched...." + +"Oh, don't count on it," she advised him, "don't--it's against all my +plans." + +Somebody in the shape of a lad had unfastened the mare, and preceded +Bulstrode on foot with a lantern, by whose flicker, with much delicate +caution and pretended shyness, Banshee picked her way to the road, +through the woods which Bulstrode an hour before had fancied led into a +deserted garden. + + +"You see," he put it to her delicacy to understand, "it's scarcely, in +a way, fair to him--I feel it so at least. It gives me the sensation +of knowing more than he does in his own house about that which +presumably should be Westboro's secret." + +"You mean to say,"--the Duchess pinned him down, "that you'll give me +away because of one of those peculiar crises of honor that makes a +person betray a trust in order to salve his conscience?" + + +Bulstrode had come again faithfully, making the pilgrimage to the +forest road, and he was not surprised that it should have finally +turned out so that one day the gate yielded to his touch, and he found +the Duchess if not waiting for him, distinctly there. During their +delightful little talks--and they had been so--not once had the name of +Bulstrode's host been mentioned; and if the lady had a curiosity +concerning her lord and once master, she did not display it to the +visitor. + +"I mean to say," Bulstrode replied in answer to her challenge which was +fiery, "that I really don't want to play false to Westboro', more false +than I shall in the course of events be forced to be. Of course, your +secret--I need not say so--is entirely safe. But the Duke comes back +in a day or two, and rather than face him with this silence which you +have imposed upon me I am going back to London before he returns." + +The sewing she had chosen to finger--a Duchess, and an American one at +that, is not expected to do more--lay at her feet. By her side was a +basket of considerable proportions, and it was full to the brim with +linen: the very fine white stuff overflowed from the basket like snow. +The Duchess of Westboro's handiwork had already caught the eye of her +guest. And now, as her long hands and her long finger, tipped by its +golden thimble, handled her sewing, Bulstrode watched her interestedly +and found great loveliness in her bending face. + +"I didn't think any of you knew how to sew," he mused aloud. + +"Any of us!" she smiled. "Do you, by that, mean American Duchesses? +Or do you mean women who have left their husbands? Or in just what +class do you think of me, regarding your last remark?" + +She folded up her work and dropped her thimble in the nest of snow. +Bulstrode acknowledged that his conclusion, whatever it had been, was +wrong. + +"When I married," the Duchess said, "I was the best four-in-hand whip +for a woman in my set. I don't think I am a keen needlewoman, really, +and I know then I didn't recognize a needle by sight. When my little +boys were born I sent to Paris for everything they wore, and I can +remember that I didn't even know for what the little clothes were +intended, many of them, when they came home in my first son's layette. +I have learned to sew since I came here to The Dials. I've been three +months here, now, and I really must have proved a clever pupil, for I +assure you that they tell me I have made some pretty things." As she +spoke she held up the seam she ran, and Bulstrode, who himself +confessed to not knowing a needle by sight, was forced to peer over the +seam and endeavor to find her tiny stitches. He exclaimed: + +"Three months! You must have been terribly dull!" + +"No." + +"You are known," he said, "throughout the countryside--not that I've +been making inquiries, but in spite of myself I have heard--as a +stranger, presumably a Frenchwoman, a widow who will probably buy The +Dials." + +"Oh, I shall never buy the place," she assured him, and then abruptly: +"Had you been free to speak of me, what would you have told Westboro'?" + +He waited a second, then answered her lightly, but with a feeling which +she did not mistake: "I should have asked him to come and see you run +up that seam." + +"He would not have come." + +Remembering very clearly how determined Westboro's decision had been, +he did not affirm to the lady his belief that Westboro' would in +reality have flown to her. + +At the door, later, she bade him good-bye and appeared to gather her +courage together, and, with a lapse into a simplicity so entire that +she seemed only Frances Denby and to possess no more of title or +distinction than any lovely woman, she said to him: + +"Mr. Bulstrode, please don't leave the castle." + +"Oh, I couldn't sit opposite my friend at dinner, I couldn't meet his +eyes now, my dear child." + +The Duchess touched his arm. "It's sweet of you to call me so. You +are really as young as I am, and certainly I feel an age beyond you. +Please stay." + +The pleasure which his visits had been to her had brought something of +an animation and interest to her cold face. Dressed in a dark and +simple gown, her fur stole about her neck, she had this afternoon +followed him out of the house into the garden and walked slowly along +by his side towards the gate. + +"Of all the people in the world one would choose you, I think, to be +the friend of..." She caught herself up. "I mean to say, can't you +forget those stupid little ideas of honor and friendship and all that?" +She put it beautifully. "I, of course, will give up seeing you," she +renounced, "but it will be a world of comfort just to feel that you are +there." + +As he did not at once succumb to her blandishments, she asked point +blank: + +"Promise me to stop on." + +"I at least won't go without letting you know of it." + +"Without my permission?" + +"I won't say that." + +"But I'm sure that you mean it," she nodded happily, "and you're _such_ +a help." + +She was so affectionate as she bade him good-bye, that only at the +little road did he begin to wonder just what help he was. Was he +aiding her to detective poor Westboro'? Was he adding an air of +protection to some feminine treachery? + +"Oh, no," he decided; "she's incapable of any thing of the sort. But I +must clear out;" and he decided that at once, so soon as Westboro' +should be at home, he would take himself to ground still more neutral +than The Dials had proved to be. But Westboro' showed no intention of +coming immediately home. Instead, with a droll egoism, as if the fact +that he had made poor Bulstrode a party to his unhappiness gave him +thereafter a right to the other's time even in absence, he laid a firm +hold on Jimmy. Westboro' finally put pen to paper, and the scrappy +letter touched the deserted visitor; it proved to have been written at +a _bureau de poste_ in Paris: + +"Don't, for God's sake, go off, old man. Keep up your end." (His +end!) "Stop on at Westboro'--Use the place as if it were all put up +for your amusement. Just live there so I may feel it's alive. Let me +find a human being at home when I turn up. I'll wire in a day or so." + +"So he is in Paris, then." Bulstrode had supposed so, and did not +doubt that the Duke had gone there to find news of his wife, possibly +as well to see Madame de Bassevigne. + +Poor fellow, if he were searching for the Duchess! Well, Bulstrode +would keep up his end, he had nothing else for the time being to do but +to mind other people's business. He put it so to himself. Indeed he +could not but believe it was fortunate for more than one person that +something could keep him from minding his own. + +An undefined discretion kept him from going to the Moated Grange, as to +himself he styled the retreat the Duchess had made of The Dials. And, +in spite of the absolute freedom now given him to prowl about amongst +the books, in spite of his "evenings out" as he called them, Jimmy +found the time at Westboro' to drag lamentably. His own affairs, which +he so faithlessly denied, came to him in batches of letters whose +questions could not be solved by return mail. He became over his own +thoughts restless, and he sent a telegram to his host: "Better have a +look at things here yourself. Can't possibly stop on longer than...." +And he set a day. + +"If Westboro', poor devil, has to look forward to a life of this +unaccompanied grandeur," he pitied him. The lines and files of +soft-footed, impersonal servants, the perfect stilted attention, the +silence, and the inhumanness of a man's lonely life, became intolerable +to Jimmy Bulstrode. Even though Frances, Duchess of Westboro', had +truly said that the castle was a delightful home, Bulstrode began to +wonder what that word comprised or meant: certainly nothing like his +occupation of another man's house or like any life that is lived alone. + +At the end of the week that the American spent at Westboro' he had +condensed the castle, as he said to himself, as far as possible, to the +proportions of a Harlem flat, and he lived in it. In the almost small +breakfast room whose windows gave on the terrace, and where all the +December sun that was visible came to find him, he took his meals; each +of them but dinner, which was determinedly and imperially served by +five men in one of the dining-rooms, and at which function, as he +expressed it, he shut his eyes and just ate blindly through. He lived +out of doors all day, took his tea in his dressing-room, and read and +smoked until the august dinner hour called him down to dress and dine +alone. For a week he lived "without sight of a human being," so he +said, for the domestics were only machines. And, towards the end of +the week, he would have gone to see any one: an enemy would have been +too easy, and the only person within range was, of course, the Duchess +of Westboro'. + + +Westboro' had made a confidant of Bulstrode, and the woman had not. +Bulstrode liked it in her. To be sure, the cases were quite different: +there was no reason why the man deserted and bruised in his pride and +in his heart, should not have talked to his old friend. Westboro' +accused himself of weakness. + +"I've blabbed like a woman," he acknowledged ruefully. + +The Duchess had not spoken nor had she, on the other hand, with the +fine courage of the true woman, been in any eager haste to discover +what her husband had said of her, nor had she asked if he had spoken at +all. On the other hand, aided by an extreme patience and with still +greater delicacy, she had waited, understanding that her guest, whose +mettle and character she knew would not permit him to betray a trust, +might, however naïvely, disclose what he knew without being conscious +of it. + +But if Bulstrode gave himself or his host away, the Duchess made no +sign that she had profited by indiscretions. The impersonality of +their conversations was indeed a relief to Bulstrode, and it made it +possible for him to feel himself less a traitor at the Duke's hearth. +But she talked very sweetly, too, of her children. She had the second +picture to the Duke's of the little boys, a picture like the one +Bulstrode had seen at the castle, and showed it to him as the father +had done. + +"Westboro' has the companion to this," he had not minded telling her as +they sat together in the small room he had grown to know as well as the +larger rooms of the castle. And at the end of a few moments Bulstrode +quite blurted out: "Why, in Heaven's name do you women make men suffer +so?" + +The Duchess, who had been working, dropped her bit of muslin and +looked, with her cherry lips parted and her great serious eyes, for all +the world like a lady in a gift book. Her face was eighteenth century +and child-like. + +Bulstrode nodded. "Oh, yes, you've got so easily the upper hand, the +very least of you, you know, over the best of us. It's such an unfair +supremacy. You've got such a clever knowledge of little things, such a +sense of the scale of the feelings, and you certainly make the very +most of your power over us all. Can't you--" and his eyes, half +serious and half reproachful, seemed, as he looked at her, to question +all the womankind he knew--"Can't you ever love us well enough just +quite simply to make us happy?" + +The Duchess had taken up her sewing again, and her eyes were upon it. +Bulstrode waited for a little, following her stitches through the +muslin and the flash of her thimble in the light. + +"Can't you?" he softly repeated. "Isn't it, after all, a good sort of +way of spending one's life, this making another happy?" + +"American women aren't taught so, you know," she said. "It isn't +taught us that the end and aim of our existence is to make a man happy." + +Her companion didn't seem at all surprised. + +"And so you see," she went on, "those of us that do learn that after +all there may be something in what you say--those of us that learn, +only find it out after a lot of hard experiences, and it is sometimes +too late!" + +She seemed to think his direct question called for a distinct answer, +for she admitted: "Oh, yes, of course there are some of us who would +give a great deal to try. And you see, moreover," she went on with her +subject as she turned the corner of her square, "you put it well when +you said 'love enough.' You see that's the whole thing, Mr. Bulstrode, +to love enough. One can, of course, in that case, do nearly all there +is to do, can't one?" + +"Nearly all," he had smiled, and added: "_And a great deal more_." + + +The household gods, whose dignity and harmony had not been disturbed +during the absence of the master of Westboro', were unable, however, to +give him very much comfort on his return. The Duke's motor cut quickly +up the long drive and severed--clove, as it were--a way through the +frosty air and let him into the park. The poor man had only a sense of +wretchedness on coming home--"coming back," he now put it. Huddled +down deep in his fur coat, its collar hunched round his ears, his face +was as gloomy as that of a man dispossessed of all his goods; doors +thrown open into the fragrant and agreeably warmed halls fetched him +further home. But the knowledge that the house had been lived in +during his absence was not ungrateful. He sniffed the odor of a +familiar brand of cigar, and before he had quite plumbed the melancholy +of the place to its depths, Jimmy Bulstrode had sunned out of one of +the inner rooms, and the grasp of the friendly hand and the sound of +the cheerful voice struck a chord in Westboro' that shook him. + +"I've been like a fiend possessed," he said to Jimmy, in the evening +when they found themselves once more before the fire. "I've scarcely +known what I've been doing, or why; but I know one thing, and that is +that I'm the most wretched man alive." + +Bulstrode nodded. "You _did_ go to Paris, then!" + +"Yes," said the Duke, "and what I've found out there has driven me +insane." + +Although ignorant of the variations of his friend's discovery, +Bulstrode was pretty certain of one that had not been made. + +"You may, old chap," he said smoothly, "not have found out all the +truth, you know." + +Westboro' raised his hand. "Come," he said, "no palliations; you can't +smooth over the facts. Frances is not in Paris. She has not been in +Paris for several months." He paused. + +"In itself not a tragedy," murmured his friend. "Paris is considered +at times a place as well _not_ to be in." + +But Bulstrode's remark did not distract his friend from his narrative. + +"She has not been in Paris since I saw her twelve months ago, and she +has left no sign or trace of where she has gone. There is no address, +no way that I can find her. Not that a discovery is not of course +ultimately possible, but what, in the interval, if I should wish to +write to her? What if I should need to see her? What if I should die?" + +"Would you, in any of those cases, send for her?" + +"I don't know," the Duke admitted. + +"But," Jimmy asked him, "did you go to Paris this time to see the +Duchess?" + +"Since you ask me frankly," the Duke admitted, "I don't think that I +did." + +"At all events," the other said, "you surely did not go to spy on her, +Westboro'?" + +The Duke was silent, then answered quietly: + +"I should never ask a question--not if it meant a certain discovery of +something that I feared or suspected. I don't think I should ever seek +to find out something she didn't want me to know." + +Bulstrode, at the blindness of a man regarding his own intentions, +smiled behind his cigar. "Well?" he helped. + +"I went over to France," said the Duke--"and I suppose you'll scarcely +believe a man who you say is not a lover to be capable of such +sentimentality--simply, if possible, to have a sight of my wife, to see +her go out of the door, or to see her go in, to see her possibly get +into a carriage; and how did I know that it would not be with another +man?" + +"How did you find out that she had left?" + +"I asked for her at her hôtel." + +"The first question, then," Jimmy smiled. + +"A fair one?" + +"Oh, perfectly." + +"I was told that the Duchess had left Paris months before." + +"And then?" the other man's voice was placid as he spoke for the Duke. +"Then you went to her bankers, her bakers and candlestick makers; in +short, you asked all over the place, didn't you?" + +The Duke swore gently. "Well, what would you have a man do?" + +"Why I would have him do that," nodded Jimmy, "by all means. Any man +would have done so." + +In the half second of interval whilst the Duke was obliged to swallow +his friend's sarcasm, Bulstrode had time to think: "Here I am, once +more in the heart of an intrigue. Its fetters are all about me and I +am wretchedly bound by honor not to do the simple, natural thing." +Then he asked boldly: "Well, what do you think about it, Westboro'?" + +"Think?" Westboro' repeated, "why, that she has deliberately escaped +from me, put herself out of any possible reach; she doesn't want a +reconciliation and she has gone away. She may have gone away alone and +she may not, that I don't know, and I don't believe I want to know." + +"Oh, you'll find her." It was with the most delightful security and +contentment that his friend was able to tell the Duke this. But the +cheerful note struck the poor husband the disagreeablest of blows. + +"Gad!" he laughed, "what a cold brand of creature a bachelor is! 'Find +her!' as one might speak of finding an umbrella that you've left by +mistake at your club. Of course she can be found. There are not many +mysteries that search can't solve in these days. And Duchesses don't +drop off the face of the earth. I could no doubt have found her in +twenty-four hours, but I didn't try to. I don't know that I want to +find her. It isn't the fact of where she's gone that counts--that she +wanted to go--that she has voluntarily made the separation final and +complete." + +"Then," persisted the bachelor, "you don't really _want_ to find her?" + +"Jove!" the Duke turned on him. "You don't know what it is to love a +woman! You've got some imagination--try to use it, can't you? Can't +you?" + +He met the American's handsome eyes. A flush rose under Bulstrode's +cheek. Westboro' put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "I beg your +pardon, dear old chap." + +"Oh, that's all right, old chap," Bulstrode assured cheerfully. + + +"My dear Duchess, it seems an unconscionable waste of time and life for +any one to ignore the inevitable! It's such a prodigal throwing out of +the window of riches!" + +Bulstrode took her hands, both of them, in his as she stood in the +winter sunshine, the open house door behind her, the terrace and its +broken stairs of crumbling stone before her. + +"Why, my dear lady, if I kept a diary of daily events I couldn't write +down one page of good reasons why you should be living here and +Westboro' up there, and I a comic go-between, in the secret of both and +the confidence of one." + +"Oh," she interrupted, "then you're in the confidence...?" + +"Of your husband, yes," Bulstrode found himself startled into betrayal. + +She drew her hands from him and walked on a little in the sunshine, and +he followed by her side. + +"I don't mind," she permitted, "you're such a perfect dear. I +shouldn't mind at all if I thought that the confidence were a good one." + +Her tone was light and cool, but the gentleman never failed to notice +when the Duchess spoke of the Duke that there was a tremor under her +words, a warmth, an agitation, which she vainly tried to control. + +"Confidences," she said, "are very rarely just, you know, and _les +absents ont toujours tort_." + +"Oh, you don't mean...?" Jimmy emphasized. + +"It was a confidence, wasn't it?" + +"A real one," she was assured. + +"Well then, you'll keep it, of course." + +She drew the stole up round her long fair neck; her delicate head came +out of the soft fur like a flower. But before she could follow up her +words Bulstrode said: + +"You, of course, then know how he loves you." + +He felt more than knew that she trembled, and he saw an instinctive +gesture which he understood meant that he should be silent. + +"You and I put it quite clearly, Mr. Bulstrode, the other day." Her +voice was serene again. "If only one cares enough--that's the +necessary thing for every question." + +"Well?" + +She half shrugged, made a little motion with her white hands, and this +answer said for her: "That is indeed the question, and I haven't solved +it." + +They stopped at the terraced walk. The low stones, dark and black, +were filled in their interstices with fine lines of greenish moss. On +the sunny corner the dial's shadow fell across the noon. The Duchess +put her hand on the warmed stones. + +"It's a heavenly day," she said, "I don't believe that the Riviera is +warmer. I never have seen such an English December." + +Her eyes, which had been fixed on the woods below the garden, now +turned towards the house and rested on one of the upper windows where +the sun fell on the little panes. The Duchess remained looking up a +few seconds, then she came back to her guest. + +"I started, you know, to tell you something," Bulstrode smiled at her. +"I once served on a jury in the West, and although the case was a +miserably sad one in every way, I suppose, I couldn't take it as +seriously as I should have done, for from the first the whole thing +seemed so unnecessary, and the crisis could so easily have been +avoided." + +"I know," she interrupted him, "but you're rather wrong. Not from the +first." + +He capitulated. "Well, grant it so if you like, only agree with me +when I say from my own--" he put his hand down on the dial's edge. +"From this lovely noon-time on, every hour you waste is clear loss. +The Duke loves you as women are rarely loved, and after all," he said +with something like passion in his agreeable voice "what _do_ you all +expect? Love doesn't hang on every tree for a woman to pluck at will, +and you have the great luck, my dear Duchess, to be loved by your own +husband. Why don't you go to him?" + +"Go to him?" she echoed. + +He curtly replied: "Why not?" + +"My dear friend!" + +"Why, didn't you forbid him to go to you?" + +"Ah," she nodded, "the confidence, it was intimate indeed. But since +you have got it, won't you agree that any man, if he loved a woman, +would disobey her?" + +"Westboro' would not." + +The Duchess said coldly: "Pride is not love." + +"You didn't mean him, then, to keep his vow?" + +"Yes," she slowly thought out, "I did indeed, with all my heart." + +"And now?" + +She turned towards the house again, and as she walked back, said: "I +don't quite know." + +And Bulstrode asked her: "That is why you are here, to find out?" + +"Partly." + +Her companion's face grew stern. The Duchess did not see it for her +eyes had again swept the upper window. At her side Bulstrode went on: +"You have taken ten years to discover that you did not love your +husband. You have taken one year to begin to wonder, to doubt, to +suspect, to half think that you do; it's an unstable state of heart, +Duchess, terribly unstable." + +The woman stopped short at his side, and now as she lifted up her eyes +and saw him, was a little startled if not frightened at his expression. + +"Unstable," she repeated, with a world of scorn in her voice. "How can +you use that word to me, knowing the facts of the case?" + +"Oh, a man," said Bulstrode rather impatiently, "is a worthless, +wretched piece of mechanism altogether. I grant you that--utterly +unworthy the love and confidence of any good woman. He is capable of +all the vagaries and infidelities possible. We'll judge him so. But," +he continued, "these wandering, vagrant derelicts have been known to +tie fast, to find port, to drop anchor. They have even brought great +riches and important treasure into harbor, fetched a world of good luck +home. There's only one thing in the universe that can keep a man, +Duchess, only one." + +"Well?" she encouraged him. + +"A woman's heart," he said deeply, "a woman's true tenderness; and it +needs all that heart, all its love, all its patience and sacrifice to +keep that man--all and forever." + +He saw her bosom heave; she had thrown her fur off, as if its warmth +stifled her. Vivid color had come into her face. Her pallor for the +time was destroyed, and as she flashed a rebellious look at him, a look +of revolt and selfhood, he seemed to see again the American +girl--wilful, egotistical, spoiled--an imperious creature whose +caprices had been opposed to the Duke's Anglo-Saxon temperament and +national egoism. + +At this moment, the window the Duchess looked towards opened part way: +it was under the eaves and there must have been a dovecote near, for +there came the soft sound of cooing like the call of a young bird. +Possibly the gentle note reached the woman's hearing as well, for her +face transcendently softened. + +"I think," she said with evident effort to speak in a commonplace tone, +"it would be quite futile to urge Cecil to come." + +"Oh, I shan't advise him so." + +Bulstrode's quick answer made her look at him in so much surprise that +he went on to say: "I would not, in justice to him, in justice to the +great love I have been permitted to see, advise him to come." + +The Duchess, during the months of analysis, suffering and experience, +had not admitted to herself that should her husband return she would +receive him, nor had she decided as to quite how obdurate she would be, +and she was curious at the attitude of this gentle friend. She naïvely +asked: + +"Why would you not advise him so?" + +Bulstrode said, still continuing his pleasant sententiousness, "The +woman's heart must be as stable as the man's is uncertain, and the man +who comes back after such a separation must not find a woman who does +not know her own mind. He must, on the contrary, find one who has no +mind or will or life but his." + +As he looked at the person to whom he spoke he was somewhat struck by +the maternal look in her: he had never clearly discovered it before. +Her breast from which the fur had fallen, as it rose and fell under her +soft gown, was full, generous, and beautiful; even as he spoke in a +certain accusation against her, she seemed to have altered. + +"Westboro'," he said a little confused, "must come back to a woman, +Duchess, to a woman--to a consoler. I wish I could express +myself--almost to a mother--as well as to a wife." + +The ardent color dyed her face again; her lips moved. She put out her +hand towards him, and as he took it he understood that she wished him +to bid her good-by and to leave her alone. He heard what she struggled +to say: + +"He must not come, he must not come." + +"No," he accepted sadly for his friend, "No, he must not come." + + +Bulstrode had chosen those times for going to The Dials when his host +was least likely to take note of his absence; but it happened that more +than once the Duke missed him at just the wrong moment, and more than +once had been given the direction in which Bulstrode's footsteps had +turned. + +One morning, during a talk with his agent, Westboro'--the map of the +district before him--enquired what had ever been done with the property +known as The Dials, and into whose hands the old place had fallen. It +seemed that it had been let for some months to a foreigner, a widow, +who lived there, and alone. + +Westboro' considered the farms and forests, as they lay mapped out +before him, at the extreme foot of the castle's parks. It was a little +square of some fifty acres by itself; it had never interested him +before. + +How long did the lease run on? Did the agent know? He believed for +another year. + +The Duke gave instructions to have the property looked into, with a +view to purchase. And as the man put up his papers, he vouchsafed to +his employer: + +"The present tenant is very exclusive; she sees nobody, has never, I +believe, even been to the Abbey. An old gardener who has been kept on +says the servants are all foreign." + +The Duke gave only a tepid interest to the information which would have +passed entirely from his mind had it not been for his next meeting with +Jimmy Bulstrode. + +As much to shake off the impression his last talk with the Duchess had +left on his mind, as to prolong his exercise, Jimmy had gone down out +of the garden and across the place on foot over the rough winter fields +with their rimy furrows and their barren floors. As he made his way +towards the bottom hedge, looking for a stile he knew would be there a +little farther on, cutting an entrance out through the thorn to the +road, he met Westboro', like himself, on foot, and with his hand upon +the stile. The presence of the Duke where Bulstrode knew he was least +thought to be, and where he was now sadly sure he was not opportune, +made Jimmy stop short, troubled, and, not for a moment thinking that +the fact of his being there _himself_ was singular, he made his way +determinedly through the stile. As he greeted his friend, his own +demeanor was decidedly one which said: "Don't go on in that direction, +follow rather out of the turnstile with _me_." And he led his friend +rather brusquely down the bank, hitching his arm in Westboro's, forced +him along with him into the road. + +"I ran down here to look over these meadows," said Westboro.' "You +seem yourself, in a way, to be pacing the land off!" + +"Oh, I _love_ cross-country walking," said Bulstrode warmly. + +"You must," smiled the Duke, "to have cut off into those barren fields. +Were you lost?" Westboro' stopped and looked back. "You must have +come directly down through The Dials." + +"_The Dials_?" the American helplessly repeated. "Do you mean the old +house and garden?" + +Bulstrode's manner and speech were rarely curt and evasive, but he +seemed this time embarrassed and taken unawares. As the two men sat in +the motor which waited for the Duke down the road, Westboro' fixed his +glass in his eye and looked hard for a second at his friend. +Bulstrode's cheerful face was distinctly disturbed. + +"I'm thinking something of buying The Dials," Westboro', after a +moment, said against the wind. + +Poor Jimmy. If the house had not sufficiently up till now materialized +out of his fancy as a possession, it declared itself at once, without +doubt, as something he must look after. It was only a little bit of +England, luckily---- + +"Well," he exclaimed, "to be frank, old man, I've, too, been thinking I +should like to buy that property. You could surely spare me this +little corner of Glousceshire." + +"Spare it!" cried Westboro', "my dear chap, fancy how ripping to have +you a landlord here! To catch and hold you so! We'll go over the +whole place together. My agent shall put the matter through for you." + +"Good God, no!" said Bulstrode, "don't let your man have wind of any +such a deal. The place would go up like a rocket in price. If you +really yourself care to withdraw as much as possible, that's the most +you can do. But for God's sake keep off the place, like a good fellow." + +Behind his long moustaches the Duke covered a smile, but he conciliated +his agitated friend. + +"I'll keep off the grass until the turf is all your own, my dear +Bulstrode." + +"Thanks!" said the other cordially, and sat back with a sigh of relief. +"There," he reflected peacefully, "my presence is explained--it's quite +perfect. I shall be a landowner in England. At all events, it's lucky +the property is sympathetic. I'm glad I didn't get balled up in this +affair in, let us say, _New Jersey_, and find myself forced to purchase +the Hackensack Meadows. + +"Did the old house look deserted?" asked the Duke wickedly. + +"Oh, rather!" replied the other gentleman. + +"Really!" wondered Westboro'. "Why, they tell me that it is let to a +Donna Incognita--a foreign lady." + +Bulstrode, whether at his own lie or at the shock of his companion's +knowledge, blushed, and his friend saw him redden. And the Duke, in +whom candor was a charm, stared at his friend, half-opened his mouth, +and then sat speechless. The suggestiveness of the whole affair rushed +over him so rapidly that he had not time to ask himself whether he +credited his suspicions or not. + +"Good heavens! _Jimmy_ carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple +country village!" He looked at the face of the man by his side, but +Jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and +showed no intention of meeting the Duke's eyes. If it were not a +vulgar intrigue, what could it be? How difficult it grew to connect +such a _liason_ with his friend. But as he thought on, the Duke began +to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary! Why should he +suppose Jimmy so unlike the rest of his set? More scrupulous, more +sinless than other men--than himself? He couldn't answer his own +question, but he did so think of Bulstrode, and since his late house +party had believed that Jimmy cared for Mrs. Falconer. The lady at The +Dials was certainly not she. + +Bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in +the mind of the Duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human, +rather consolingly human. In their mutual intercourse the Duke had +felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed. +Along by Bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his +own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be. +And although Jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt +himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes. + +By the time he had reached this point in his reflections the motor had +stopped at one of the side doors of the castle. + +"There is, of course, some perfectly proper explanation--" the Duke +decided. It's a harmless flirtation, if any flirtation at all. +Perhaps it's a beneficent bit of benevolence; at any rate it's Jimmy's +own affair, and after all, he's going to _buy_ the property--perhaps +he's going to marry. Why not? + +Ashamed to have placed his friend, if only momentarily, in an equivocal +position, he turned about as they got out of the car and put an +affectionate hand on the American's shoulder. + +"Oh, I expect, old man, that you've got some wonderful scheme up your +sleeve! You're going to be married and fetch your bride to The Dials." + +Poor Bulstrode unfortunately echoed: "_Married_!" with a world of scorn +in his tone. "My poor Westboro,' after what I've lately seen and heard +here--forgive me if I say that for the time at least I'm not too +sharply tempted." + + +"Since," he said as he greeted her, "you appear to be intending to live +here forever, you'll welcome me when I come back from London. I'm +coming back for Christmas, but if I don't run in before you'll +understand, won't you, that it is because I simply haven't dared. +Westboro' has already seen me cut across to this place." + +The Duchess interrupted him. "Oh, in that case, I shall, of course, be +obliged to move away." And to her great surprise Bulstrode quickly +agreed with her. + +"I should think it wise--not of course in the least knowing why you +originally came." + +She looked at him rather quizzically. + +"You mean to say then that you don't really know?" + +"Oh,"--he was truthful--"I have rather an idea, and I hope a more or +less true one." + +But the lady did not confess or in anywise help him. He went on to say: + +"Your love for the castle couldn't, of course, long continue to keep +you mewed up here; and you'll be shortly discovered. As far as your +own interests are concerned it will be rather better to obtain the +divorce as soon as possible." + +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she interposed, "don't misread me." + +He nodded sagely. "On the contrary, I am translating you from sight, +my dear Duchess. And you are decidedly in your right regarding the +Duke." + +She was so at his mercy that she hardly moved her lips, watching his +face. And as Bulstrode lit the cigarette she permitted him, and took +his seat before the tea things which she had set at his elbow, he went +on to make out her case for her. + +"He has quite spoiled your life. He has been a brute, and not in the +least worth your----" + +But the Duchess had dropped her tongs; they fell ringing on the +hard-wood floor. She raised a scarlet face to him. + +"It's a _piége_," she murmured, "an _autodafé_." + +"No," he said quietly, "it's a plain truth. Westboro' has told me +everything. I must think that he has done so. The man of me naturally +condones him, and the friend in me is inclined to be lenient. But the +justice and right, my dear Duchess, are all on your side." + +"Oh, justice and right!" she dismissed, "only criminals need such +words." + +Bulstrode said cooly: "But Westboro' has been a criminal!" + +"If he were," emphasized the Duchess, "didn't I forgive him?" + +"Of course, you did, my dear," her friend agreed warmly, "how +wonderfully, how beautifully, everyone knows. And he is all the more, +therefore, dreadfully to be blamed." + +She said passionately: "What do you mean, Mr. Bulstrode? How--why do +you speak to me like this?" + +Her extraordinary guest drank his tea with singular peace of mind. + +"I think he is dreadfully to be blamed." + +"But why should you tell it to me?" + +"Why not?" he returned, his charming eyes on hers with the greatest +tribute of affection and sympathy--"I've known you for years, I'm fond +of you, you've been horribly wronged, and I'm going to see that things +are made right for you. I've been very blind. I have longed for a +reconciliation, I admit, with this husband who, poor stuff as he is, +loves you still. But I see what a sentimental ass I've been, and how +right you are." + +She put her hand to her throat as if the soft lace suffocated her; she +had grown very pale indeed. + +"What," she gasped, "do you know of my plans and my intentions, Mr. +Bulstrode? I have not told them to you." + +"But I've been able to guess them," he replied. + +"You've dared to, then?" she flashed. + +"Oh, don't blame me," he returned. "Seeing you as I have all the +while, I've been forced to make out something--to attach some reason to +your living in this isolation. You've wanted, not unnaturally and very +cleverly, I acknowledge, to see what's been going on at Westboro', what +the Duke's been up to." + +Her voice was suffocated as she said: + +"Oh, stop, please! Whatever has come to you, Mr. Bulstrode, I don't +know, or why you dare to speak to me as you do." + +Seeing her agitation he said smoothly: "My dear child, you're so right +in everything you've done, and of course I shall stand by you." + +She made a dismissing gesture. "Oh, I don't need you, I don't want +you." + +He smiled benignly on her. "But I'm here, and I'm going to see you +through." + +"See me through what?" + +"Through your divorce," he said practically. + +"But you're Westboro's friend," she stammered, and he repudiated with +just a little hesitation in his voice: + +"Oh, not so much as yours. But I'm the friend of both of you in this. +It's the best thing all round." + +The gentleman's attitude so baffled her, he was so serious, and yet he +took it so lightly, apparently, that she was obliged to believe he +meant what he said. + +"You talked to me very differently," she reminded him, and he shrugged. + +"Oh, I've been far too emotional and unpractical. I'm going henceforth +to look at things from the worldly and conventional stand-point." + +She put out her hand beseechingly. "Oh, leave that for the rest of us. +It quite spoils you." + +"I don't pretend to think--" He made his gaze small as he looked past +her in an attitude of reflection. "Oh, I don't claim that, it's an +ideal way of looking at things. But there is not much idealism in the +modern divorce, is there?" + +The Duchess took a turn across the floor, twisting her fair hands +together, then came round to his side and sat down on a low chair near +him. + +"Are you quite serious?" she asked. "But I know that you are not. Let +me at least think so. Your words shock me horribly"--and she looked +piteously at him. "I have felt you to be such a gentle person, and +yours is such an understanding atmosphere." + +Bulstrode had given himself methodically another cup of tea, and helped +himself now to sugar. + +"Oh, atmosphere!" he repeated scornfully. "One can't live on air, you +know. And I have been of the most colorless kind." + +"Well, you've changed terribly," she accused him. + +"I've only come down to solid earth," he explained. "And the earth's +after all where we belong, Duchess. Stand firm, keep to your own part +of it, and don't cloud-gaze, or somebody with a claim will knock you +off your little foothold." + +"Oh, _heavens_!" exclaimed his companion. + +The gentleman, who appeared at length quite to have finished his +material enjoyment of the tea, put his second empty cup down and looked +at the lady. + +"You should have married an American husband," he said to her, "a man +who would have idolized you, not cared whether you developed or not. A +duchess isn't far enough up. An American empress is higher." + +The lady listening to him, shuddered a little. + +"As it is," he went on regretfully, "you've been forced to develop, +whether or not you wanted to, to grow finer and freer, to go farther +on, to become more delightful. Here you are progressed and civilized, +after years of education, experience and suffering, and, my poor child, +here you are all alone." + +She cried out, "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," with a little gasp. + +"Oh, no, no," he softly ejaculated, "it is not fair! You're terribly +wasted, and you've been, as you too well know, terribly betrayed." + +But here he felt her hand on his arm with a strong grasp. She shook +the arm a little. + +"Don't go on," she said deeply. "I tell you not to go on." After a +few seconds, in which he heard the fire and the slow bubbling of the +gently boiling water and the cooing of the doves without, under the +eaves, the Duchess said: "Listen to me. I haven't talked at all to +you, let me say something now." + +Her companion reflected to himself: "Well, at all events, she's not +going to malign the Duke; that's a foregone conclusion." + +The Duchess clasped her hands round her knee and raised her face to him. + +"Do you think," she asked, "that there's any egoist as nasty as a +feminine one? Men are admitted to be generally selfish, but we +specialize, and each one of us has the faculty of getting up some new +and peculiar brand, I begin to believe. At any rate, when I married, I +was an egoist, and I've stayed on being one until a very little time +ago. I suppose I must in a way have more or less ornamented my +position, as the papers say. I did have two children as well, and in +that way fulfilled my duty as a Westboro'. But really and truly, I +have never in the least been a wife, and very little of a mother. I +was as silly and vain as could be, and I never for a moment valued my +husband. I wasn't indifferent to my children, but I was absorbed by my +worldly life, and when my little boys were taken ill and died, I was on +a dahabeah on the Nile, and I don't think that Cecil ever forgave us +for being so far away." + +She remained quiet for a long time, looking down at her hands, and when +she lifted her face Bulstrode saw that she had wept. + +"That," she went on, "broke the ice round my heart, when I came home to +those empty rooms." + +He said soothingly, "There, there, my child." + +"Oh, let me go on," she urged him, "let me speak. I shall probably +never feel like doing so again. But at that time when I turned to find +my husband, I discovered that I had no power over him, and I realized +that for years I had not possessed his love. I suppose you'll tell me +that it is unusual for a woman to see so clearly as this. Perhaps it +is. At any rate, just because I did so clearly, I forgave him when he +came to me last year, at Cannes." + +"You were wonderful!" he repeated again, "perfectly noble, and, as I +said before, Westboro' did not deserve you." + +She did not here, as she had done before, catch him up; on the +contrary, after a few moments, she asked him point-blank: + +"What then do you advise us, knowing us both, to do?" + +He was distinctly disappointed that she should have put the question to +him, and gave her time to withdraw it as he asked tentatively: "You +really feel that you must ask me, Duchess?" + +"Tell me, at all events." + +"You are quite sure that you could not go back to your husband?" + +After a little pause, she lingeringly said: + +"Yes, quite sure. You must know that he will not be the first to break +the ice now." Then she pushed: "You would advise my filing my papers +for divorce?" + +Held in this way pitilessly for a direct challenge, he met her eyes +with his own, asking her gently: + +"Is there nothing that speaks for Westboro' more distinctly than +anything I can say? And more appealingly than anything which you in +all your pride feel?" + +The Duchess assented that there was, with a movement of her lips; she +put her hands over her face and so sat quietly for a few moments, and +when she spoke again to her visitor, her words were irrelevant. When +some few moments after she bade him good-by, she regretted his absence +in London and begged him to come and see her as soon as he returned. + +"Come," she said, "at least to see whether I am here or whether I have +pitched my tent and gone away." + +As Bulstrode stood in the doorway she asked him: "I understand there +are a lot of people at the castle for Christmas, and among them will be +Mrs. Falconer? Isn't it so? Is she really so very lovely?" + +"It's a different type of loveliness from yours," Bulstrode returned. +And the Duchess supposed: "A happier type?" + +"Well, she's rather happy I think, take it all together," Jimmy said. + +"Has she children?" + +"None." + +"Is she in love with her husband?" + +And he was so long searching for a reply that the Duchess laughed +quietly. + +"Poor man," she said, "don't bother. But then since she's so happy, +she must be in love with somebody else's husband." + +But he put her right immediately. + +"I don't think she in the least is. And why," he went on, "since +happiness is so greatly the question of other people's state of mind, +might we not let it go at the fact that she is herself very much loved?" + +The Duchess looked at her guest rather absently. She was thinking of +the happy beauty, the woman of a different type from her own, whose +presence at Westboro' had been sought by her husband for the second +time. + +"Oh," she answered rather absently, giving Jimmy her hand, "she +wouldn't, you know, be happy if the feeling were all on the other side." + + +When the Duke had casually asked his guest's plans for Christmas week, +Bulstrode had come near to offending his host by declaring that he +could not possibly be one of a second house party. + +"Do you, then," Westboro' had asked, "_hate_ the holidays?" + +The genial Bulstrode had assured him to the contrary. + +"Nor do I," continued the Duke, "even though I'm a miserable man on the +verge of a divorce. I expect there's too long a line of jolly +Christmases back of the Westboro's for me to mope through the season. +But I don't want to have Christmas coming to an empty house, my dear +fellow"--He put it pathetically, "there's no one in this gloomy place +but yourself and myself. We must have a Christmas party. The tenants +will, of course, be noisy and cheerful, but I'm going to ask a lot of +people down and make the list out now." + +And Bulstrode had, however, firmly insisted that he could not really +stop on--that he must go away. "There are," he wound up his arguments, +"a thousand reasons why I should go." + +But Westboro' had comprehendingly suggested that they might together +bring "every reason" down to the country. "And," continued his Grace, +"we'll narrow things into the most intimate circle possible. For I +shall ask the Ravensworths of Surrey and their children, there are +eight of them, ripping little things; they used to play with my boys. +We'll turn them loose and have a tree, old man." + +Jimmy watched his face with a keen pity, for there had not been one ray +of light in it as he planned for his celebration. + +"But you arrange to come back for Christmas Eve. There _must_ be some +one in charge--I mean to say, some one so that if the whole thing is +too much for me, why I'll bolt and you'll have to stand by." + +He was, as he spoke, writing the names on a sheet of paper. Bulstrode +felt the plan to be rather _triste_ and lifeless, and he knew that he +could not and would not keep the Duchess' secret much longer, let its +revelation cost him what it would. + +"Westboro'," he said, "I shall have to be getting off to-morrow. You +know I would stand by you if I could possibly see my way clear." + +"I know perfectly well," the Duke acknowledged, "what a rotten bore +I've been, and how sick of me you must be." He wrote on: "I shall ask +Mrs. Falconer (her husband is in the States); she is quite alone in +town at Lady Sorgham's." As he quoted this last name the Duke folded +his list up. He nodded affectionately at Jimmy. "You'll arrange +perhaps to come down with Mrs. Falconer on the Friday train?" + +And Bulstrode capitulating weakly, murmured, "Oh, we'll fetch the toys +and things for the tree," he offered. + +"Ripping!" his Grace nodded. + + +Jimmy, on his way at last to London, stopped once more at The Dials, +and was hurrying across the forest when the Duchess herself appeared to +him at the big dial. She wore her furs, muff, and big enveloping +stole, her hat with fur on it, and a veil. She was not in house or +garden trim. The urban air of her toilet was a surprise to Bulstrode, +and he took in her readiness for something he had not expected, +something great, something decisive. + +"It's good of you to come when you must be full of delightful ways of +passing your time, Mr. Bulstrode," she said, "and I wanted so much to +see you again." + +"Again?" + +"Of course," she replied nodding, "again and many times. But I mean I +wanted to see you _here_." Bulstrode did not want her to tell him a +piece of final news. He did not care to learn of an arbitrary +departure, and he said, laughing: "Then you don't like my property? +Any repairs you...?" + +"Oh, I adore The Dials," she said gravely, "and I can't think why they +ever let you buy it, or what you'll do with it after I'm gone." She +smiled. ".... or with whom." Before he could speak she added: "Where +is my husband to-day?" + +"I left him wandering about the house like a lost spirit," Bulstrode +replied. "Looking," he went on, "all about for something or other. I +expect he himself didn't quite know what. For something to cheer up +the empty rooms." + +"Oh, don't," she murmured. + +But he seemed pleased with the picture he drew. "I doubt if Westboro' +stops in the house alone; he's probably gone out shooting." + +"But he has a house full of people....?" + +"No one has come, or is coming, after all." + +"You don't mean to say that they've all refused!" + +"Yes," Jimmy said, "every man of them, and all the women as well." + +The Duchess put out her hand quickly, and said touchingly: "Oh, but you +don't for a moment think----" + +"That it's because of the scandal, dear lady?" he smiled. "Well, that +would be a new phase. No, I think on the other hand they would revel, +and the only reason in the world that they have not come down is that +they were really asked too late. Christmas week, you know-- + +"And, of course, then, Mrs. Falconer," the Duchess's face brightened. +"She----" + +"Oh, _she_!" Bulstrode exclaimed, "she's as right as possible. She's +sure to be along in good season." + +"Oh!" accepted the Duchess, "and with whom does she come?" + +Bulstrode waited. "Well, of course, the poor thing expects to find +more or less some one to help her bear up her end. And I can't say how +she will take the fact of only us two." + +The Duchess interrupted cheerfully: + +"Why, she, of course, will go directly back! You don't think for a +second that she would stop on alone like that?" + +"Alone?" Bulstrode gave her with a little malice. "But she'll have +Westboro' and me so entirely to herself and one can always ask in the +rector or curate or corral a neighbor." + +But the Duchess shook her head as if she understood. "Oh, no, not at +this time." + +Bulstrode miscomprehended blithely: "Christmas time? You see, I know +the visiting lady pretty well, and I believe she'll feel me to be more +or less of a standby, and I know her spirit and her human kindness. I +am inclined to think that she will feel it's up to her not to run off +like a hare; to think that Westboro' may, in a way, need her; and that +when she finds everybody's gone back on the poor man, and there's to be +no tree after all, why, I'm tempted, by jove, to think----" + +The Duchess helped him: "That she'll make a charity of it." + +"Yes, if you like," he laughed. "Or be a sport," he preferred to put +it. "Stay on, stand by. It will be perfectly ripping of her, you +know." + +But the Duchess had no sympathy for the other woman. Her eyes fixed +themselves on the trees before her, and as a shot rang out in the +distance she said abruptly: "Why, that might be Cecil, mightn't it? +Does he shoot birds on your premises?" + +Bulstrode wondered very much for what reason she was habited in street +dress and furs, whether she had planned to leave The Dials or had +intended going up to see her husband. + +"Forgive me," he said, "if I seem to be shockingly in a hurry, but I +must have a look at the time, for as it happens, even in this far-off +place, I have an engagement." + +Impulsively putting out her hand the Duchess exclaimed: "I can't ever, +ever thank you." + +"Oh, after your divorce----" + +But she cried out so against his words that he hastened: "You want me +to think then that you do not believe...." + +"Believe!" she ardently repeated, "Oh, I don't know what I believe or +think," and he saw that the poor thing spoke the truth. "It's I who am +as unstable as the sea, I who am the derelict." + +He contradicted her gently: "My dear, you're only trying to solve alone +a problem which it takes two to answer. When you see Westboro' you +will know." + +She turned on him with the first sparkle of humor he had ever seen her +display. "Why don't you marry Mrs. Falconer?" + +He didn't start; indeed, the idea had such a familiar sound it would +have been hard to frighten him with it from any corner. + +"I thought you didn't believe in divorces?" + +"Oh, but you'd make a wonderful husband!" + +He laughed. "No one has ever thought so--_la preuve_....?" + +With great frankness in her gesture and a great--he was quick to see +it--a great affection--she put out her hand to him and said: "Oh, yes, +you'd make a wonderful companion, and you've been a wonderful friend. +If anything good comes to me now, I shall in great measure owe it to +you." + +He protested: "You owe me nothing, nothing." + +There were tears in her eyes as she said: "But I want to, I like to, +and I do. I don't know," she went on, "that I might not have been +reconciled ultimately to my husband, but I feel quite sure it would +only have been the basting up of the seam--it would have ripped away +again. Did you ever--" she challenged him with still a little sparkle +of humor, "hear of a thing called a change of heart?" + +"Yes, at Methodist meetings." + +She said gravely: "That's not what I mean. But whatever _has_ happened +it's only been since you told me things." + +Her face was so girlish, her eyes so sweet, her humility so sudden, +that her companion found himself embarrassed and could hardly find +words to say good-by to her. She went on to say, in a tone so low that +he bent a little over the dial to hear her. "You told me you could not +advise my husband to come to me." + +Ah, had he! It was hard to remember that. _Had_ he said so? + +"I think," she whispered, "you need not keep him away now, if he should +want to come." + +As her friend said nothing, she added in a voice more like a child than +a great Duchess, "You may trust me. I _want_ him to come-- There, +I've said it. I _hope_ he'll come. If he doesn't-- + +"Why, then, you'll go away," he finished. "You can't bear it." + +The Duchess shook her head. "I'll go to him, on the contrary." + +"You were going?" + +"Yes, when you came." + +He cried out: "Oh, I'm off then, I'm off for London, and I shan't be +back for the Christmas holidays. You may count on me." + +The Duchess smiled delightfully, and was in a second the elusive woman, +intangible, and impossible to seize. + +"No, no," she said, "please don't exile yourself either to-day or +to-morrow. It isn't after all the moment, and I want to prove to you +that I'm not jealous. I've decided to wait until that lovely woman has +gone away." + + +The waste of his territory, its largesse to no purpose, its vastness +through which only unbearable silences echoed; accumulated revenues and +hereditary title, only added to the Duke's melancholy. + +He had planned the Christmas house party too late as it proved, and +refusals, one after another, came in during the week. The poor +gentleman's mood led him to resent each fresh defection on the part of +his guests as personal wounds inflicted by old friends at a time when +charity would have been sweet. And it was with really tragic +melancholy that he threw the last letter down exclaiming: + +"And they all with one consent began to make excuse." + +He quite waited for a line from Mrs. Falconer, which would tell him +that she, too, had decided to abandon him: and the thought of what he +believed to be Jimmy's complications at The Dials caused him half to +regard the matter with a pity for her. + +"If Jimmy _isn't_ married, he's the most whited of sepulchres!" + +The satin shine of holly, the glimmer of pearly mistletoe, the odor of +spruce and pine, and heavier scent of hemlock bewitched the castle +throughout with their fragrance. Setting and decoration suggested a +feast, and the Duke as he passed through the upper halls, and by the +doors of his children's rooms, saw holly wreaths on the walls and that +the little gates were twisted with green. + +The day was dampish and the Duke, unable to bear the silence of the +house, with his gun and his dogs and with a lack of resource and +superfluity of ennui to urge him from the castle, started to tramp off +his unrest. The afternoon was young, and the bare, naked sunlight fell +over the bare nakedness of the land. The little low clumps of +neutral-colored underbrush, the reddish-brown thickets between wood and +field, would hide the birds well, and with his gun across his back, his +hands in his pockets, his Grace covered many miles before he at length +stopped to take in the length of the land or to listen for wings. + +Coveys had flown up and away unseen by him, and their whirring unheard. +His dogs had run off, and without being abruptly brought to heel, +skulked back by themselves shamefaced and bewildered by the hunter's +indifference. The holly reddened on the hedges, the scarlet berries +bright among the glowing leaves; high in the poplars the parasite +mistletoe with crystal balls, hung tiny white globules like fairy +grapes; holiday in the air, and over the grey winter landscape the +finest possible powder of snow lay pale under the furtive sun. As the +forest edges closed about him and the Duke with still no idea of where +he was going, continued to tramp, he unconsciously entered the property +Bulstrode had lately acquired, and which he had begged his friend to +avoid. + +There was something in the country air, in its pungent sweetness, and +in the season, that penetrated even Westboro's melancholy, and every +now and then he lifted his head to breathe in deeply the fragrance of +hemlock and the cold earthy aroma, the spice of bracken and the balm of +a fragrant thicket that smelled like a rose. It was winter, however, +and although a snow bird piped in it and the sun was out, there was a +December quality that, in the mood he was in, overcame all the +festivities of the time. He heard the bird who was persistent and +sharp-voiced, and, for the first time thinking of the other game he had +come out for, he paused. His dogs were gone, the beggars! He called +them to no purpose, whistled and waited. They were a new brace and +young. God knew where they had cut away to. + +Before him, as he stood, the brown vistas of the winter forest opened +out here and there into ochre circles and filled at this hour with +brilliant sunlight, their round openings overflowing; the light +filtered gently out and was swallowed up by the cold and closer wood. +Under his feet there was only the faint ghost of the late snowfall on +the turned-up, curled-up edges of the dry leaves. There beeches, red +as copper, and iron-strong oaks struck their roots deep down into the +mould. Westboro' did not know where he had wandered to, but here and +there through the bare trees gleamed the white of a statue on its mossy +base, and a little farther along, a broken pedestal held its slender +column up amongst the tree trunks as mossy and veined as they, and +right in the heart of the bowl, on a brick pedestal was a sundial, a +round brass disc, cut into with the tooth of time, and all black and +green. The sun at this moment shone full on it and its slight shadow +fell along the noon. The Duke stooped down and through the glass read +the inscription: + +_Utere dum licet_. + +"I'm a trespasser," he thought. "This is Bulstrode's property." + +Through an opening just to the right he could see a brown path, and at +the end of it a gate. + +"What the deuce could Jimmy have so wanted this old place for? What +was he hiding here?" + +He turned back with the intention of taking as sudden leave of the +place as he had made an entrance. He saw his dogs in front of him and +called them. Before him lay the clean low fall of the meadow with the +line of high hedge, and directly opposite him he could see the elms of +his own park. He had not gone more than a couple of hundred feet away +before he paused again and turned about to have one last look back at +the enchanting place. As he stood thus, in Jimmy's property, he at +first took it to be a trick of vision, for he stood perfectly rigid, +peering back at the opening he had left not five minutes before. He +leaned forwards, setting his eyeglass and staring at two figures who +had come into the bowl and stood close by the big dial. + +He set his gun on the ground and leaned upon it. There was a cordial +meeting; he could hear the voices but he could not distinguish their +words, and during all the interview, which must have consumed some +fifteen minutes, the Duke never stirred. Finally, and curiously enough +it seemed a short time to him, they took leave of each other, the man +going out of the forest by a different path, the woman slowly turning +down the neat walk that led to the brick arch, and to the old house. +Whether or not the Duke had at this moment the vaguest suspicion of +her, suspicion of his friend or of his wife that did them wrong, he +never had time or clearness to reflect or to ask himself. A dense +blindness took his senses away from him. He put his hands out to +steady himself in vain, and staggered. His dogs were at his feet, he +fell over them, struggled to get his balance back and like a stricken +tree went down. In his heavy fall on his gun it discharged, filling +his upper arm and shoulder with a quantity of bird shot. The +scattering pain, instead of finishing his faint, roused him with a +sharp, ugly sting, and the rush of the warm, wet blood. He half picked +himself up, and then, aware of the pain tearing his muscles and flesh, +he fell back like a dog on his haunches. Through his confusion he +still contrived to remember a little path, and inch by inch he dragged +himself towards it. He pulled along over the leaves and russet paths +of ground. His bare hand finally struck the bricks of the little walk +and he could still know that he was wonderfully in the road. There was +a cloud before his swimming eyes and his troubled mind; his face, pale +as death, was lifted towards the arch; leaving a bloody trail as he +crawled along the ground, he contrived to reach the gate and fell +across its threshold. His head lay on his arm, the string of his +broken eyeglass wound pathetically about his wrist. The Duke proved to +be a modern replica of the poor knight who fell, face downwards, on the +grass when Elizabeth's carriage passed him by, some four hundred years +before the present Duke. + + +After Bulstrode had left her, the Duchess of Westboro' hurried back to +the house that was not her home; to the little long drawing-room that +was not hers. For the first time since her voluntary exile, since her +occupation of this asylum, she found it bereft of charm and the cosey, +dear place as cold to her as if the snows had drifted in and filled a +deserted nest. It had nevertheless been a cloister, and she knew it, +where the best of her had prayed, where the true woman--and the true +woman is always something of a saint--had folded submissive hands, +where self had gone away and left nothing at all but love. + +On this Christmas Eve, The Dials was the loneliest corner of England. +The scarcely occupied house suggested to the Duchess the thought of a +stocking hung before a chimney when there were no children who cared +whether it was filled or not, when there was no reason why St. Nicholas +should pass. But it was only the very edge of her thoughts that +touched anything so fantastic as this picture. The Duchess was serious +and lonely. With a sigh, and winking back tears she threw off her +furs, laid off her hat, and, after poking up the fire into sparkling +brightness, she wandered up-stairs to the apartment that she had made +her bedroom. Under the low eaves the bed-chamber shone out gay with +chintz, fresh and sweet as a midwinter bouquet, the frostiness coming +in around it through the slightly opened window, and there was the +scent of the firs and the cedar wood that closely hemmed the old place +in. + +"Heavens!" thought the Duchess, half aloud. "How dreadfully in love +Jimmy Bulstrode is, how dreadfully, faithfully in love!" And then she +went on to say: "How dreadfully I am myself in love, and no one is +hurrying to _me_!" + +She walked aimlessly about the pretty room, irritated and annoyed at +the cloister effect. She found it too remote, too virgin, and no room +for a wife. "I promised," she mused, "to wait until Mrs. Falconer has +gone. I shall break my promise. Oh, I can't really wait at all! If +things are going to be as bad as this, I want to leave England, I want +at least to know. And Jimmy will forgive me, it's such a wonderfully +good cause ... a woman going to find her husband on Christmas Eve!" + +The Duchess threw open the window to its widest. Down in the garden on +the stone wall the big dial lay in the shadow of the afternoon. She +could not read its motto, but she knew perfectly what it said--_Utere +dum licet_. As she leaned out above her garden, under her window the +snowballs hung their waxen globes in a green tree. There were a few +winter roses blooming, and the English garden had the beauty of summer +in winter time. + +The Duchess heard a sharp sound close to the house. It was a rifle +shot, and died instantly on the still air. Shots were not uncommon in +this season, but here in The Dials woods they were entirely out of +character; in fact, they were quite inadmissible. There was no +shooting let, and a shot could only mean poaching, or something more +serious. The Duchess waited a few moments, but no other sound +followed. She nevertheless drew the casement in, and, going down +stairs threw her stole about her shoulders and opened the house door +into the garden. At the sight of her, down by the other end of the +wall, the gardener lifted up his bent form, and with a little pannier +of hot-house violets in his hands, hurried towards his lady. + +"Mellon," said she, "have you any violets?" + +The Duchess took the fragrant basket with its delicate burden. + +"A mort, my lady." + +"Pick them all, Mellon, and all the flowers from the green-house too, +every one of them, and fetch up whatever there is to the cottage." + +The old man was deaf, as well as discreet, and if this sudden command +to vandalism surprised him, he did not say so. Holding his hand behind +his ear, he nodded. + +"I shall send them," the Duchess thought, "up to Jimmy Bulstrode. I +think he will understand, and I will ask him at the same time to take +his friend off somewhere in a motor that I may go unobserved to the +castle." + +She said a few more words to the old man, asked him a few questions, +then with the basket on her arm she was about to turn away when she +remembered the shot. + +"Did you hear a shot, Mellon? They should not be shooting about here, +you know." But the old man had heard nothing, and, intending to find +the lodgekeeper who was clipping the trees on the lower terrace and ask +him to go through the woods for her, the Duchess walked toward the gate +and in the direction of the brick path. + +As she came up to it she gave a low cry, lifted her hands to her heart; +the basket of flowers fell to the earth and scattered their purple +blooms at her feet. Then the hands that had gone to her heart +extended, she held out her arms and went forwards, crying her husband's +name. + +The Duke of Westboro' had managed to pick himself up. He was a strong +man, in the fulness of health and vigor; there was nothing of the +mollycoddle about the last Duke of the line. The sound of voices had +reached his dull ear, his swoon was over, and he had manfully, with a +few sturdy curses, pulled himself up and now stood, albeit very pale, +clinging to the gatepost, leaning on it, finding his legs shaking and +his balance not all he could wish. Before him was a little brick +house, with bright curtains in the windows, and between it and himself, +lovely as a ghost, and no less white, was his wife, and her arms were +extended towards him. + +"Cecil!" she cried. "Oh, my God! Cecil, what has happened to you?" + +Before Westboro' knew it, the arms to which he had gone in visions were +about him and the soft shoulder gave him a prop more fragile perhaps +than the stone against which he leaned, but it was a living support, +and it felt warm and wonderful. + +"Don't," he said vaguely, "get near me. I'm nasty and bloody. It's +all right; I'm only a bit scratched, really. A lot of beastly shot has +gone off into my shoulder. Just call some one to help me, will you?" + +"Cecil," she said, "lean on me, put your arm around my shoulder; you +can perfectly well get along with only me. Come, come!" + +The Duke saw that he could perfectly get along with another faint--he +was near to it, but something besides his wound and his light head kept +him manfully to his feet. With his left hand he very firmly pushed the +Duchess a little away from him. + +"Come?" he repeated. "Come where?" + +"Home," said the Duchess with a catch in her voice--she was bearing up. +"Oh, lean on me! You'll fall, you'll fall! Mellon!" she cried. "O +Mellon!" + +But the Duke put up his hand. "I'm all right," he said. "Don't call. +What house is that? What home do you mean?" + +"Mine," said the Duchess, "my house--that is, I mean to say, Mr. +Bulstrode's." + +The Duchess saw a slight wave of red rush up her husband's pale cheek. + +"Damn Bulstrode!" he breathed. "What the devil does he do here? I saw +you together--I saw you not half an hour since--that is the whole +mischief of it--it was too much for me--it took away my senses and I +fell on my gun, and the beastly thing went off. If I ever get back to +where Bulstrode is----" + +"Cecil!" cried the Duchess. She again wound her arms around him, and +it was as well that she was a strong, fine creature and that the +columns of the gate were back of him, for Westboro' was swaying like a +child that has just learned to walk. + +"He is fainting!" she cried. "Mellon, Mellon!" + +The old man had not heard his mistress but he had seen her, and after +staring open-mouthed at the couple at the gate, he came scurrying like +a rabbit, dropping his shears on the wall. They hit the big dial with +a ring. + +The Duke heard the steps and tried to start forwards; also tried weakly +to extricate himself from his wife's embrace. "I beg your pardon," he +said, with a coolness that had something of the humorous in its +formality--"I beg your pardon, but I am _not_ going to Bulstrode's +house, you know." + +"_Cecil_," pleaded the woman tenderly, "how ridiculous you are! +Bulstrode's house! Why, it's mine! Oh, don't break my heart. He's +only bought it, you know, that's all." + +"Break her heart!" It was a new voice that spoke to the Duke of +Westboro'. He had never heard it in all his life. It was warm and +struggling for clearness, it was full of tears and quivering, it was +the voice of love, and unmistakable, certainly, to a lover. + +"What was Bulstrode doing here?" he persisted. + +"Going to Mrs. Falconer," breathed the Duchess. + +The Duke moved a step forwards: "What are you doing here?" + +"Going to you, Cecil--I have _been_ going to you all day. I think I +have been going to you ever since you left me that night on the +Riviera; at any rate, I was on my way to the castle as you came." + +The Duke halted again on his crawling way. Mellon, who had really +reached his side, was doing his best to be of some use and kept himself +well under the wounded arm, on which the blood had clotted and dried, +but ceased to flow. + +"Lean hard on me, your Grace," pleaded the gardener, and with his word, +he looked over at his mistress to see if she realized who their noble +visitor was. + +With fine disregard for his help or existence, the Duke said crossly: +"Send this damned gardener away." + +"Oh, Cecil, no, no; you can't stand without him." + +They had reached the garden wall, just at the place where the big dial, +round and shining, had come a little out of the shadow and the last of +the afternoon sun touched its edges. Westboro' lurched towards the +wall. "Send this man away," he commanded. + +"He is deaf, Cecil, as the stones." But at her husband's face she +motioned to Mellon: "Stand away a bit. His Grace wants to rest on the +wall. I'll call you." + +With his wife's arms about him, Westboro' leaned on the garden wall, +his ashen face lifted to her. + +"I've only one arm," he said. He put it around her and he drew her +down as close to him as he could. He felt her face warm against his, +wet against his with tears. As the Duke, who, Bulstrode said, was no +lover, kissed his wife, the dial seemed to sing its motto aloud. + +"You _were_ coming to me?" he breathed. "Do you forgive me? ... Then," +said Westboro', satisfied by what he heard, "I'm cured. I love you--I +love you." + +The woman could not find her voice, but as she held him she was the +warmest, sweetest prop that ever a wounded man leaned upon. After a +few seconds she helped him to rise, helped him on, and he found his +balance and his equilibrium to be very wonderful under the +circumstances, and managed to reach the door-sill. Mellon and the +maids were there, and as the Duchess passed in, leading her husband, +she bade them send for a doctor as fast as they could and to send at +once for Bulstrode at the castle. + +Westboro's wound had become a sort of intoxication to him, and he +assured her, "I'll be all right in an hour. I need no one but you; +send them all away, all away." + +He had never commanded her before, he had let her rule him, he had been +indifferent to her disobedience. But now she did what he bade her, and +led him to the drawing-room, suddenly repossessed of all its old charm; +led him to the lounge, where he sank down. Here, by his side, she gave +him stimulants and bathed his head and hands, waiting for the doctor to +come; and Westboro', like his ancestors who had fought in the King's +wars, bore up like a man with no resemblance whatsoever to the amorous +cavalier whose curls had met the dust of the road for love of Queen +Elizabeth. + +The Duchess found him that best of all things--very much of a man, and +knew that he was hers. And he, more wild with love for her than +suffering physical pain, found her a woman and knew that she loved him +and that she was his. + +The house, so deserted and desolate an hour ago, grew fresh, warm, and +rosy as over the west meadows the sunset, gilding the wall and The +Dials, flushed the windows red, and the deserted bird's-nest, lately +"filled with snow" appeared to have, as the light rained upon it, +filled itself with roses. So, an hour later, it seemed to Bulstrode, +when he came and found it housing the lovers. + + + + +THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE + + + +VIII + +IN WHICH HE COMES INTO HIS OWN + +England, the heart of the countryside, freshened by December and +drifted over by delicate breaths that are scarcely fog, and through +which like a chrysanthemum seen behind ground glass the sun contrives +to shine, the English country in December is one thing, London quite +another. + +Jimmy wandered across from Paddington to his destination, part of the +time on foot, part of the time peering from a crawling hansom in +immediate peril of collision with every other object that like himself +lost bearings in the nightmarish yellow fog. + +He fetched up before No. ----, Portman Square, at mid-day, and rang the +door bell of Lady Sorgham's town-house, and in his eagerness to find +his friend did not ask himself how the time accorded with calling hours. + +She was at home. + +An insignificant footman told him this, and the gentleman reflected +that it was astounding what the words, heard often in the course of ten +years, meant to him still. + +In the sitting-room, before a coal fire, a writing table at her side, a +pen in her hand, he found Mrs. Falconer. + +He sincerely struggled with an inability to speak at once, even the +consoling how-d'-dos that cover for us a multitude of feelings, were +not at his tongue's end. + +The fire had burned away a few feet of fog and lighted lamps and +candles shone pallidly through an obscurity about whose existence there +could be no doubt. + +The inmates of Lady Sorgham's thoroughly English and thoroughly +comfortable drawing-room were aliens, possessing neither of them a +hearthstone within range of several thousand miles. But no sooner had +they greeted--Bulstrode triumphantly peering at her through both real +and mental haze--shaken hands, and each found a seat before the grate, +than an enchanting homeliness overspread the place. Bulstrode felt it +and smiled with content to think she did as well, and remembered an +occasion in America when they had both of them missed a train for some +out-of-the-way place and found themselves side by side in a mid-country +station to pass there three hours of a broiling afternoon. The flies +and mosquitoes buzzed about them, the thermometer registered ninety +degrees, but happy, cool and unruffled Mary Falconer, smiling up at him +from her hard bench, had said: + +"Jimmy, let's _build_ here!" + + +"No one, Jimmy, is old"--Mrs. Falconer had once said to him on an +occasion when a word regarding gray hairs had drifted into their +conversation. Noticing the smooth reflection of the light along her +hair, Bulstrode had spoken of its golden quality, and the lady had +suddenly covered the strand with her hand; she knew that there ran a +line she did not want him to see. + +"No one is old, Jimmy, who has even the least little bit of future +towards which he looks! It's only those people whose doors are all +shut, whose window blinds are all drawn to, who, no matter which way +they look, see no opening into a distance towards which they will want +to go--only those people are old!" + +And as for Bulstrode, if Mrs. Falconer's idea were right, he was a very +young man still, for at the end of every path others opened and led +rapidly away. Scene gave on to scene, dissolved and grew new again. +Every door gave to rooms whose suites were delightful, indefinite, and +all followed towards a future whose existence Bulstrode never doubted. +But there were certainly times, as the days went methodically on, there +were decidedly many times when it took all his faith and his spirit to +endure the _étape_ that lay between self and life. Such a little +tranquil home as a certain property he had lately acquired was what he +dreamed of sharing with Mrs. Falconer. He did not, with any degree of +anxiety, ask himself whether or not it were dead men's shoes he was +waiting for, and no clear, formulated thought of tangible events took +existence in his mind. But he knew that he waited for his own. + +It was with some such personal feeling that in something that looked +like a future he might one day lead the woman he loved home, that he +had taken any pleasure whatsoever in his involuntary purchase of the +old property known as The Dials. The gray house down in Glousceshire +in its half-forsaken seclusion, the lie of the land round it, its +shut-offness from the world, its ancient beauty, had been a constant +suggestion to him of a future dwelling, and the doors, the windows, the +low-inviting rooms, the shadowy stairways, ingles, gables, terraces, +the dials and sunken gardens, had appeared to him conceived, planned +and waiting to be the settings for a life of his own. He wanted very +much to tell Mrs. Falconer all about the lovely English country-seat. + +In the room where they now talked, wreaths of fog filled the corners +like spiders' dusty webs that poised and swung. The odor that stamps +England hung in the mist, furthermore permeated with the scent of a +bouquet at Mrs. Falconer's elbow and which at one moment of his visit +Jimmy recognized for a lot of roses sent by parcel post from the +Westboro' greeneries. + +"Do you ever sew?" he asked her, and she admitted to a thimble which +persistently, with a suggestion of reproach, turned up every now and +then amongst her belongings; now falling out from a jewel box, then +stowed away in a handkerchief case, out of place and continually +reproachful: kept because it had been her mother's. + +If he did not speak other than in a general way of the rather long +visit he had been making to the Duke of Westboro' in Glousceshire, he +did tell his friend all about The Dials and dwelt on the fascination +that the old place possessed. The Dials was, in point of fact, very +agreeably described to Mrs. Falconer, who looked it out on the map of +Glousceshire, and Bulstrode's purchase (for he had legally gone in for +it, the whole thing), was made to seem a very jewel of a property. + +"It's as lovely as an old print," she said, "as good as a Turner. +You're a great artist along your lines, Jimmy. Don't have it rebuilt +by some more than designing architect in trouble, or landscape-gardened +by some inebriated Adam out of charity. Leave it beautifully alone." + +"Oh, I will," he assured her. "It shall tumble away and crush away in +peace. You shall see it all, however," he assured, "for you really +will come down for Christmas? You see, poor old fellow, Westboro's +house is rather empty." + +"Yes," nodded Mrs. Falconer. + +"You see, every one else has gone back on him." + +"Poor dear," sympathized the lady. "Of course we'll go down." + +No matter to what extent he had thought of her, and it was pretty sure +to be a wide one, her beauty struck him every time afresh. There was +the fine exquisiteness of _fin de race_ in Mary Falconer. Her father +had been an Irishman born, and the type of his island's lovely women +was repeated in his daughter's blue eyes, the set of her head and her +arms; her taper and small-boned little wrists, her cool hands with the +slender fingers told of muscle and moulding and completed the +well-finished, well turned-out creature whose race it had taken +generations to perfect. These distinctions her clever father +bequeathed her as well as her laugh and her wit, her blue eyes and her +curling hair. + +Bulstrode stayed on in the dingy delightful room, until at an order of +his hostess, luncheon was served them on a small table, and over the +good things of an amazingly well-understood buffet and a bottle of +wine, they were left alone. Bulstrode stayed on until the fog in the +corners darkened to the blackest of ugly webs and choked the fire and +clutched the candles' slender throats as if to suffocate the flame. +Tea was served and put away and the period known as _entre chien et +loup_ at length stole up Portman Square alongside the fog and found +Bulstrode still staying on.... + +Later, much later, when the lamps in the street and the square found +themselves, with no visible transition, lighting night-time as they had +lighted day--when the hansoms began to swing the early diners along to +their destinations, a hansom drew up before No. ----, Portman Square. + +It was at the hour soft-footed London had ceased to roll its rubber +tires down the little street, and only an occasional cab slipped by +unheard. But a small hand cart on which a piano organ was installed +wheeled by No. ----, Portman Square, and stopped directly under the +Sorghams' window and a man began to sing: + + "I'll sing thee songs of Araby + And tales of old Cashmere." + + +The creature was singing for his living, for his supper doubtless, +certainly for his breakfast, but he chanced to possess a remarkable +gift and he evidently loved his trade. The silence--wherein all London +appeared to listen, the quiet wherein the magically suspended room had +swung and swung until even Bulstrode's clear mind and good sense began +fatally to blur and swing with the pendulant room--was broken into by +the song. + +And as Bulstrode moved and turned away his eyes from the woman's lovely +face, she sighed and covered her own eyes with her hands. The small +coffee table had been taken away. Mrs. Falconer was in a low chair +leaning forwards, her hands lying loosely in her lap. The distance +between the two his hand could have bridged in one gesture. The voice +of the street singer was superb, liquid and sweet. He sang his ballad +well. + + "I'll sing thee songs of Araby + And tales of old Cashmere." + + +Mrs. Falconer's guest rose. + +"You'll come down for Christmas," he said, "and I'll meet you as we +have arranged, to-morrow." + +"Jimmy," she protested, "it's only ten o'clock." + +"I must, however, go." + +"Nonsense. Where will you pass the next hour and a half? There's not +a cat in town." + +"Nevertheless, I promised a man to meet him at the...." + +"_Jimmy_!" + +He had reached the door, making his way with a dogged determination +and, like a man who has touched terra firma after months on a dancing +brig, still not feeling quite sure of the land or its tricks. + +"How you hurry from me," she said softly. + +"Oh, I'm hurrying off," he explained brightly, "because I want to get +hold of that chap out there and take him to supper, and to find out why +he isn't on the operatic stage. He's got a jolly voice. Good night, +good night." + +He was gone from her with scant courtesy and a brusquerie she knew +well, adored and hated! During these last years she had done her cruel +best, her wicked best, to soften and change and break it down. + +The curtains, as she drew them back, showed that the fog had for the +most part lifted, and she was just in time to see the piano and the two +musicians disappear in the mist which still tenaciously held the end of +the street in shadow--a gentleman in long evening cloak and high hat +hurried after the street people. The woman's face was tender as she +watched the distinguished figure melt into the fog, and at her last +glimpse of her friend she blew a kiss against the pane. + + +Bulstrode did not go back that night to Westboro'. He wired out that +Mrs. Falconer and himself would be down for dinner the following day +and he also wired for a motor to meet him some few miles from Penhaven +Abbey, as the motor did the next day. + +As he speeded towards Penhaven Bulstrode leaned towards the man who +drove him. + +"Stop first at the inn, will you, Bowles? I'll order tea there, and +then drive on to the station at the Hants. It's the three o'clock from +London we're to meet, you know, and we've just the time." + +The Abbey and its clustering village hung on the hill side some fifteen +lovely miles away to the south of them. And Bulstrode, who was at +length obediently answering the call of it, and in response to the +fancied bell of the entire country side, religiously hastening to +whatever might reward him, settled himself back in his corner. + +He saw the mist fly by him as his carriage cut out its way rapidly +through Glousceshire. The air was not too cold in spite of the +dampness, for the vapor rose high, and above and below it the +atmosphere was clear. + +Mrs. Falconer herself had chosen Penhaven as a place possible to drive +over to as far as Bulstrode was concerned, and far enough away to stop +over in, for tea. Bulstrode carried in his pocket the note of it, she +had written out for him. It bore the arrivals of trains, the address +of the inn; she had herself written this, recurring to a pretty fallacy +she liked to indulge in that Jimmy forgot trains, missed them, and +forgot rendezvous, and that he never really knew. Well, at all events, +he was not likely to miss meeting this one. He had thought about +nothing else since he left her in London and prepared for her as he was +always preparing for her as one makes ready for the dearest guest at a +feast. + +The fact that not only had she divinely consented to the Penhaven +scheme, but that she had herself arranged the whole thing, made the +romance of the idea first appeal to herself and then readily to +Bulstrode; the fact that she had been the creator of the little +excursion that gave them to each other for several hours before what +the castle had to offer them of surprise or dulness--did not in any +measure rob the occasion of the charm of the _imprévue_ for the lady +herself. Nor did she in the least feel that it was any the less his +because it was so essentially her own plan. + +It proved either too cold or too late to see the cathedral, to see +anything more than the close which, side by side, they had wandered +through together a few moments before tea. Penhaven's distinguished +gloom was not disturbed, and in their subterranean vaults lying all +along their stones, the dukes and the abbés and the duchesses remained +unlit in their stern crypts by the verger's candle on this Christmas +Eve. + +At the little vulgar inn (in a stuffy sitting-room a fire had +spluttered for some quarter of an hour before the train arrived), Mrs. +Falconer had made Jimmy his tea in a vulgar little bowl-like teapot, +and as her hands touched the pottery's blue glaze served very well for +a halo. As she buttered him slices of toast herself, and spread them +with gooseberry jam and herself ate and drank and laughed and +chattered, she had been, with the tea things about her and her sleeves +turned back as she cut and buttered and spread, she had been with the +roundness of her wrists and the suave grace of her capable hands, most +adorably a woman, most adorably dear. + +Her furs and coat laid aside, the hat at his asking laid aside in +order, although he did not tell her so, that the air of home might be +more complete for them. _Vis-à-vis_ they had eaten together and +laughed together and talked together till it grew later and later, and +the motor waited without in the yard amongst the ravens and the ducks +who peered from the straw of their winter quarters at the big awkward +machine. + +"Jimmy" ... she had started when the crumbs and dishes had been cleared +away, and for some seconds did not follow up his name with any other +word. It was always Bulstrode who took wonderful care of the time. It +was he who gave her her hat, its pins, her coat, her furs, her gloves, +one by one, her muff last, his eyes on her, as each article slowly went +to place, until her big white veil wound and wound and pinned and +fastened and hid her. "Jimmy," she whispered, as he ruthlessly and +definitely opened the door and the cold rushed in, "let's build _here_." + +Still it was she who took all the blame of their tardy departure from +the homely hospitality of the inn; she assured him that she could make +a wonderful toilet and in an incredibly short time, and that for once +she wouldn't be late for dinner at the castle. + +"Not," Bulstrode assured her, "that it in the least matters, but the +Duke, as likely as not, would choose to dine alone; he was a man of +moods." + +"In which case," she had stopped with her foot on the auto step, +"Penhaven isn't a bad place for tea, and why wouldn't dinner at this +perfect inn...." + +But Bulstrode met her words with a shake of his head and a shrug of his +shoulders, and helped her firmly into the motor and sat again by her +side. + +"I can't tell you," he said, "what will be going on at the castle. I +haven't been back since I left it two days ago, and almost anything can +have happened in that time. The Duchess of Westboro' herself, in the +interval, may have gone back to her husband." + +"Heavens!" Mrs. Falconer exclaimed, "in which case how horribly _de +trop_ we shall be." + +But Bulstrode consoled her with the thought that if they were _de trop_ +they would at least be _de trop ensemble_. + + +Amongst the handful of letters waiting for her in her dressing-room at +the castle there had been a despatch from America. Even this, and a +hasty look at her mail had not succeeded in holding her attention or +even carrying it beyond the house. Her husband had expected to land in +Liverpool at the end of the coming week; he was to take her home with +him. And until he arrived she was breathing, as she always did in his +absence, deeply. + +There had been no one to greet them as Bulstrode and herself came into +the castle, and she had hurried to her rooms to begin without loss of +time her boasted rapid toilet. The dress, whose harmony had impressed +her host, the Duke, on a former visit at the castle, had been laid out +for her; its sumptuous color overspread the bed. But the lady chose +instead a white gown whose art of holding to her, and holding her, in +its simple lines and splendid sheen, made its beauty. + +There was much of the true woman in this entirely lovely creature, as +she stood before her glass and saw herself, the best example of the +really beautiful American. Her naturalness gave her a freedom, a +frankness, a grace, a certain imperial set of the head. + +Bulstrode had once said to the Duchess of Westboro' that a woman should +above all "console." Mary Falconer would have known what he meant. +That sex she gloriously represented! The sweetness and dearness of +her. Well, there were few women no doubt like her. Jimmy hoped so for +the sake of the race, for the sake of the hearts of other men. She was +the ideal fireside of home, and when, as she had twice done, she bade +him, as that time she had said, "Build here," he knew what she meant +and felt, and that she herself was exquisitely home. + +Leaning over her dressing-table she scrutinized not her face, whose +ardent beauty seemed to bloom upon the glass, but her hair as it fell +and rippled and flowed round her brows. Along the edge of one of the +lustrous waves was a touch as if her powder puff had brushed her hair. +Mrs. Falconer put up her hand, smoothed the line, then let it lie as it +grew. It so declared itself to be the first unmistakable white. A +gardener's basket full of roses and camelias, gardenias and carnations +had been sent up for her; but under the diamond at her breast she chose +rather to fasten in a spray of mistletoe with its pale, grape-like +berries. A long green scarf fell over her arm and against the +whiteness of her dress like a branch of spring verdure, and permitted +by the fashion of the day, there shook and trembled in her ears long, +pear-shaped pearls which, like her thimble, had been her mother's. + +As she left the security of her room and fire for the corridors and the +publicity of the lower rooms, for the first time in her life she had a +sudden feeling of _pruderie_ at the bare beauty of her neck and arms. +She felt as if she were coming unclad into the street, and drew her +scarf across her breast. But she found herself to be quite alone in +the drawing-room, and before she had time to be bewildered at her long +desertion, a letter was handed her with a few murmured words by a +footman. It perhaps served her right, she reflected, for so blandly +coming into a house during a state of domestic upheaval, that she +should turn out to be not alone the only guest, but without host or +friend! The letter told her, as gently as it could without the +satisfaction of any explanation, that both Bulstrode and the Duke of +Westboro' were unavoidably absent. She turned the letter over with +keen disappointment. Her dress, her beauty which the drive from +Penhaven and the afternoon's happiness had heightened to a point that +she might be pardoned for seeing, was then all for nothing! On what +extravagant bent could the two men have gone? + +"Both of them," she soliloquized with a shrug, "off on a hunt, I dare +say, after a fool of a woman who doesn't know enough to stop at home." + +Before she could further lash at her absent hostess, she found herself +a few seconds later taking the scarcely palpable arm of the rector, +whom the Duke, in a moment of abstraction, had asked to the +Christmas-tree and whom he had subsequently forgotten to put off. The +rector alone, of all the expected, turned up, his smile vacuous and his +appetite in order. At the table laid for four, and great enough for +forty, the clergyman and the lady faced each other. Mrs. Falconer +smiled kindly, for as her friend had told the Duchess on the same +afternoon, she was kind; and if she resented the apology for a man her +slender _vis-à-vis_ presented, she did not show her scorn; she smiled +kindly at him. His cloth and habit, and cut even, wore the air of +disapproval. Her jewels, the bare splendor of her neck and arms, +seemed out of place, and yet she could not but be perfectly sure that +even the dull eyes of her _vis-à-vis_ not alone reflected, but +confirmed, how lovely she was. + +The reverend gentleman was new to Glouceshire, but it turned out that +he already knew its hearsays and its _on dits_ and he knew when she +asked him, something of the country and The Dials. It may have been +that the bright aspect of the lady, her light mockery--for as she would +she could not help falling into them even with this half-human +creature--wickedly drew him on, gave the man license as he thought, to +descend to scandal; at all events, after dinner, over a cigar smoked in +her presence, the empty glass of Benedictine at his elbow, in his +cheeks a muddy red diffused from his wine, the gentleman leaned +forward, and tried to adapt his speech and topic to the worldly vein +which he imagined was the habitual tenor of a fashionable woman's life. + +"Even this lovely shire," he drawled its beauty--"cannot, so it would +seem, be free from scandal. And where a minister would naturally look +for help, wretchedly enough for the most part he only finds examples +and warnings." + +The rector lifted his eyes to the fine old ceiling as if in its shields +and blazons he was impressed by the blots of recent sins. + +His hand touched the little liqueur glass. He picked it up and in a +second of abstraction tried to drain its oily emptiness. + +"Let me ring," said Mrs. Falconer, "and send for some more Benedictine, +or better still, for some _fine_." + +"No," he refused, and sedately put her right. "No more of anything, I +think, unless it might be a bottle of soda. You spoke of lovely +Glousceshire and then spoke of The Dials. Do you know the place?" + +Only, she told him, by hearsay. + +He solemnly supposed so; so he himself chiefly knew it, as indeed all +the country side was growing to know it. + +The eyes of the lady to whom the rector was retailing his little gossip +were intently on him. But Mrs. Falconer in reality was not looking at +him, neither did she at once find ready words to refute, to cast down, +to blot out, his hideous suggestion that filled the room with it sooty +blot. + +Mrs. Falconer, who had good-humoredly been amused by his intense +Britishness thus far, his pale lack of individuality, his perfect type, +now looked sharply at her companion. + +The rector had been more than right, Mrs. Falconer was used to the +indifferent, rather brutal handling by society of human lives. +Possibly as she adored people, no one of her set was more interested in +the comedies and dramas of her _contemporains_. But there are ways and +channels: what runs clear in one runs muddy in another. + +The rector, in his own way, told her that for several weeks a very +beautiful lady had been living at The Dials. She had, it appeared, +never been out of the garden gate, and the servants were foreign, all +save a deaf old gardener. But the beautiful lady who sought such +peculiar seclusion, had a very constant visitor. Of course the rector +was not able or sufficiently daring to affirm; with a cleverness worthy +a better story he left his hearer to guess, imagine, who the visitor +might be. + +"Don't you think," Mrs. Falconer breathed, after a very short lapse +into silence, "that we might let such ghosts alone on Christmas Eve?" + +She rose and stood before him in her soft, luminous dress; her eyes +were intent on him, but in reality she was not looking at him. + +He had grown so detestable that she could bear his presence no longer; +she found herself, however, wanting to learn all his knowledge to its +finest detail. She found that she despised herself for any interest +she might take. She got rid of him at length, how, she never knew. +But she saw him leave her presence with relief. + + +When the miserable man, as she called him, had taken his leave, the +deserted guest looked about her rather defiantly, as if the objects +with which the room was filled were hostile. Then, with a half-audible +exclamation she sank down in a chair, her elbow on the left arm of it, +and her chin in her hand. + +Well, the imputation, the character of what she had just heard vulgarly +said and to which, for a bewildered second, she had perhaps vulgarly +listened--was highly dreadful, highly disordering to her fashion of +thinking and believing about Jimmy Bulstrode! Oh, for a moment she had +half believed what that creature said, and her eyes had winked fast at +the game before them! In the swiftness of the revolutions it had +seemed for a sole flash real; but now that the noise had stopped and +the carousel as well, she saw how _wooden_ the horses were and that +they were as dead as doornails! If she had been disturbed, she came +loyally back now, with a glow and a rush of tenderness as she instantly +re-instated what could never lose caste. + +Oh, The Dials! She couldn't conceive what Jimmy had in reality, +rashly, delightfully done there; what he had planted or installed, if +he had planted or installed anything. But whatever the truth was, it +was sure to be essentially right, as far as ethics went--she knew that +at least. But Jimmy's delicacy and his heart were all too fine for the +crude wisdom of the world or for her common-sense, which would have +told him no doubt, had he cared to ask, that he was rash and wild. + +She was prepared to hear that he had made some Magdalen a home in this +prudish country place. At this possibility Jimmy's kindness and +charity stood out graciously in strong contrast to the prudish judgment. + +There were several long mirrors set in the panels of the room like +lakes between green shores of old brocade, and they reflected her as +she leaned forwards in her chair and looked about her, taking in the +brightness of the perfect little room. It had been cut off from the +wider, grander spaces for more intimate passages in the social course +of events, but there was nothing newly planned in its colors and +tapestries, its hangings and furnishings; the effect was sombre rather, +the objects had the air of use, of having participated in past +existences, and like faithful servants, they seemed to wait to serve +perfectly new events. + +The especial brightness of the room came from the gay festooning that +had found its way throughout the castle. The mirrors were dark with +the velvet rounds of hemlock from which the miserable face of scandal, +the sardonic face of divorce, under the conditions of the present +domestic situation might well grin satyr-like from the Christmas +wreaths. No doubt there were lots of ghosts about, ready to stride, to +flutter, or to walk; the American woman put their histories and their +legends impatiently by. + +The facile way in which the Duchess of Westboro' had slipped out from +the chafing of domestic harness, the egotistical _geste_ with which she +had so widely thrown over her responsibilities, fetched Mrs. Falconer +up to her own life, from whose problems indeed her husband's absence +alone set her free. Her affairs had lately rapidly progressed, flying, +whirling. The circles the event of her marriage had originally +created, touched at last the farthest limit; there was nothing left for +them now but to scatter. The vortex had rapidly narrowed down, was +narrowing down, and nothing remained but a sole object in the bed of +the clear water; and as Mary Falconer looked at it she knew that the +thing was a stone. + +"We spend," she had once said to Bulstrode, "half our lives forging +chains, and the other half trying to make ourselves free." Hadn't she +wrenched with all her might to be rid of hers? materially she still +wore her bonds and moved with a ball. + +As she had driven away from Charing Cross Station, a month ago, after +seeing her husband aboard the Dover and Calais special, she had +breathed--breathed--breathed--stretched her arms and hands out to +London, felt on her eye and brow a dew that meant the very dawning of +liberty broke for her, and that she was for the time at least blessed +by it, and free. + +The Sorghams' London house had opened its refuge wide for her, and she +had gone into it like a child, to sleep and rest, and there she had +grown up again, to begin to think and to plan, project and puzzle as +those who grow up must do. She had never thought to such practical +purpose as she did in these days, and never come so nearly reaching an +end. + +Just before dressing for dinner on this night, at the sensation the +touch of her husband's telegram gave her, she realized how near to a +not unusual decision she was, and when she put the envelope by with the +rest of her mail, the part of her mind which she would not let herself +look into was in confusion and doubt. + +More effectively than Falconer's coming could have done, his few +telegraphed words brought him to his wife's consideration. And the +fantastic story of The Dials helped her, ridiculous as it was, +burlesque as it was, to think; in the very humor of it, a shock, and +helped her more reasonably to consider what otherwise her feelings +would have turned to tragedy. + +Jimmy's ecstasies about the place recurred to her with renewed +cordiality. He had spent an hour at least describing it, and when he +had finished with "A woman must be there, it is made for a woman," Mary +Falconer had only seen herself in the frame that the old place +presented. She exclaimed aloud: "Oh, no, no," and continued to affirm +to herself that it was too fantastically absurd--"Jimmy!" + +"It's only some delightful bit of charity, and he's too afraid of my +wretched conservatism and my ironies to have told me frankly about it." + +Having in a very unfeminine way opened a crack for reason, its honest +face peered through, and Mary Falconer glanced at it with a sigh and a +half-amused recognition, as if she had not been face to face with +anything so cool and eminent for a long time. + +Jimmy had hinted to her of a secret, in London; there was something he +said he wished to tell her about, would tell her in full later, +something that involved much happiness to others, and could it have +been this? Could it have been that he was really secretly married? +That at last the step of which he had constantly spoken, for which +indeed there had been times when together they had half-heartedly +planned for it, could it be that the one safeguard for them both had +actually been formed by him, and alone? But only a second would she +permit this conception of The Dials to obtain hold. "Ridiculous!" she +repeated, "ridiculous! Not that I believe a word or any innuendo of +the shocking old wizard, but it only shows, it only shows the +helplessness of a woman who is not bound to a man, and how entirely the +man is free!" + +Nothing a man does counts well for him with a woman but those things he +does in accordance with her estimate of what his attitude towards her +should be! And Bulstrode's high-minded control, the reserve--which +since her marriage had been maintained, only counted now against him. + +Wasn't she, in it all, rather counting without her host? Their bond +was so tacit, so silent, so unworded. Indeed, he had made no bond, had +asked her for no pledge. She was tied hand and foot, but he was free. +And over that freedom what vague right had she? What dominion could +she have? Isn't it, after all, in the life of a clever, delightful +man, something not strictly a burden, the soul-absorbing entire +devotion of a woman not too old and more or less not generally +disliked? What did it--heavens, but she was analyzing--what did it +cost him? Hadn't he always gone from her at a moment's warning, and +stopped away for months and months? Imperious as by nature she was, +she had always been wise enough to reserve a summons from her that, she +had every reason to believe, would fetch him from any distance to her +side. She never tested him, she scarcely ever wrote to him; she had +been at the Sorghams', and alone for a month, and save for one +perfectly delightful day he had not once turned up to keep her company. + +As the woman's thoughts encompassed the subject they brought it up to +this: that as far as things went, at all events, there was no blame: no +matter how society had coupled their names, she had at least the +conscience of her acts clear. Jimmy was to be thanked for it from +beginning to end; as far as the conscience of her thoughts went, well, +those were her own affair. Oh, she could recall skirmishes and narrow +impasses! Her tactics had more than once been those only permitted by +the codes of battle, and of another passion. + +Her chair, which she had left, she passed and repassed as she walked up +and down, trailing her soft dress across the floor. She stood before +the fire, her foot held out to the fervent flame. + +Her face softened as there came out clearly to her the real picture of +Jimmy that always kept itself somewhere between her eyes and her brain. +Ah, there were men of talent and fashion, who did not hesitate to make +merry, who were more or less good, more or less anti-pathetic, and for +whom society never had a word of reproach--but Jimmy! distinguished and +charming, with every taste and means to gratify them, with--so to put +it--the woman of his heart at his very doors--how did he live? Why, +for everybody in the world but for himself. And through it all, in +spite of the fact that he appeared blindly to shut his eyes against +their mutual love, he lived for her. Oh, he was the best, the best! + +She listened as she stood there for the hum of the motor which might +tell her he was coming back. She wanted to ask him to tell her the +truth about The Dials. She wanted, above all else, to see him again. + +She remembered them, one by one, the happy occasions they had caught +and made the most of, and each after the other they became lovely +harbors where like ships her thoughts lay at anchor. Penhaven was +certainly one of the best. She congratulated herself that she had +conceived that day, and without any blame she acknowledged it to +herself, that if Jimmy had only wished it they would have been there +together now. + +She had taken her chair again and sat back deeply in the great +fauteuil. The brocade made a dark-hued background against which her +head, frankly thrown back, defined its charming lines. Her bare arms +folded across her breast, her foot swinging gently to and fro, she +continued to muse and dream, and as she thought of Bulstrode, to love +him. + +Some one came in and piled up the fire and slipped out, but no message +was brought her to tell her what had become of her host and her friend. + +The long sympathetic silence beginning at the fireside flowed through +the vast rooms and corridors, and out into the night, down the lanes +and the road until its completeness and tonelessness were broken by the +memory of the bells of Penhaven, as she and Jimmy had heard them whilst +they rang the angelus in the close. And the discordant note of The +Dials was drowned, confused and lost in her intense listening to the +Penhaven bells. Some chord or other, or some fine spring touched as +she so thought on, brought back to her the fact of the despatch +upstairs, which if it had any, had an imperative importance. Falconer +had sent it from Palm Beach where he had gone to get rid of a +troublesome grippe. He did not, in the few lines which told he was +seedy and had put off his sailing, suggest that she should go back. +But he would not resent her return, she knew that, he would probably +treat her decently for at least a fortnight. + +"I don't know a creature," she praised herself, "who would have stayed +on with Jack, and nothing but Jimmy has helped me to stick it out. If +he really loved me would he have let me go on as I have gone on? I +don't know. Unless he loved me could he have helped me at all? I +think not." + +Round the figure of her friend there began to group, as if for some +special purpose, the kindnesses and charities she had seen him display. +One by one she added up his gifts and benefits until the poor and +outcast and forgotten and despised claimed all of them to be his +friends; they gathered round him and in place of the categoric +histories of self-love and indulgence, of passion that had in more or +less degree characterized the men of her set, these things came till +the dawn of them and the light of them made his figure shine. How, she +thought, could he ever have been what he so wonderfully is, if he had +lived for himself or been anything but the best? Upstairs, in her +room, a few hours before, the mark of silver on her hair had been a +whip to urge on her rebellion; to tell her to seize and make the most +of the fleeting time, to warn her of the age which when her beauty and +her youth were gone, was all that could remain for them both. But now +there began to blow across her soul a freshness. She had indeed been +drawing long breaths in her husband's absence, but free as they were +they left her stifled and panting, as if to get the oxygen she had been +obliged to climb too far. Now, on the contrary, she was lifted as by +wings, and whilst they fluttered about her she breathed evenly yet +fully, and the air on the heights was something better than wine. + +There is an unspoiled enjoyment in the thing which has never given us +pain. It may be a sensual and ecstatic prerogative of passion to make +the object suffer, but there is a different sense of happiness in that +which never does harm or hurt or wrong to the thing it loves. So she +could think of Bulstrode, without pain, without regret, without +reproach. And if the ardor and passion in her became suffused and +slowly paled, there was a starry brightness, a beauty in her face and +in her eyes such as Bulstrode, when he came in to find her waiting, had +never seen before. + + +With every mile of the short run from The Dials back to the castle, +Mrs. Falconer's friend had been preparing himself for his meeting with +the woman he had left some few hours before. All his emotions +culminated in a high, swinging excitement. The fact that he was going +back alone to find Mary Falconer there, was the big motif, and as he +thought of the dark, charming envelope the castle made, holding the +treasure she was, keeping her there for him, his heart beat so high +that he knew there was nothing more for him to feel. The ecstasy he +had witnessed in the little house his chivalry had purchased, the +meeting of the husband and wife, come together there after so much +unhappiness, put it poignantly to him that sterile love is a very +unsatisfactory thing indeed. And if the highest quality of gallantry +is to consider a woman's honor before her love, it at least makes real +happiness--so he felt then--impossible in the world. + +One false swerve of the motor at the pace they were going, and there +would not be any more problems to solve. If he died now he might +justly say that he had not lived, he had not lived! Who would give him +back what he had missed? The motto on the dials repeated itself to +him: _Utere dum licet_. + +He pushed into the castle on his arrival, hurried to dress, and went +downstairs. It seemed to him as he put aside the portières, that these +curtains were at last all there was between himself and her, that he +was going home, coming home at last; that ways he had for years seen +approaching, met at length to-night here. It was with the very clear +realization of the culmination of the time that Bulstrode went in to +find his friend. + +He had stopped to make himself irreproachable, and expected to find her +waiting and friendly and lovely. What, had he found her anything else? +But as rising from her chair, the scarf slipping back from her bare +shoulders, she put out her hand and greeted him, the dazzling sense +that breaks on a man's consciousness when he finds himself alone with +the woman he loves, proved for a second that he had need of all his +control. He could not speak. + +"Jimmy!" she exclaimed, "you're as white as a ghost! You look as +though you'd been to a wake; and I don't believe you've had a mouthful +of dinner." + +He remembered that it might be polite to apologize to her for the +entire desertion of the household. + +"My poor friend, what in Heaven's name must you think of us all!" + +"Of you all?" (True enough, there had been another!) She had thought +volumes, comedies, tragedies, melodramas, but what she thought didn't +so much matter as did the fact that he had not, whatever festivities he +had honored, dined. Shouldn't they have something here together before +the fire? + +"I seem," she said, "to have a blighting effect upon my host." + +"My friend Westboro' is the happiest man in Glousceshire." + +"Which means that he has found his Duchess?" + +"He has found his Duchess." + +When her friend entered the room, by the light on his face like the +brightness of the morning as he caught sight of her, Mary Falconer saw +that for Jimmy Bulstrode she was still the one woman in the world. In +the relief that this knowledge brought her she half attempted to play +with what had been her suspicions, and to tease him, but this mood +passed. + +"That's a horrid old parson they chose to have me dine with," she said. +"He told me dreadful scandals but I think now that I see through them +all. The Duchess of Westboro' has been living incognita at The Dials, +hasn't she, and her husband at last found her there?" + +Bulstrode acknowledged that she had read the drama correctly. And Mary +Falconer laughed. + +"Yes, evidently the Duchess has a strong dramatic sense; she's very +romantic, isn't she?" + +And the man absently exclaimed: "Oh, I dare say, I dare say." Then +turning to her with unusual vehemence: "Do, for Heaven's sake leave +them and everybody. I want to forget them all." + +He threw up his hand with a sort of supplication. He had seated +himself on a tapestried stool close beside the chair she had taken +again. Using her Christian name for one of the rare times in his life, +he pleaded: "Can't we leave all other people, Mary, can't we?" + +She looked at him startled and said that their host seemed pretty +effectually to have left _them_, rising from her chair with the words, +and crossing the room to one of the long windows, drew back the curtain. + +The cold glass against which she pressed her cheek sent a shock through +her, but she stayed for a second close to the pane as if she would +implore the newer transport, the stiller transport, of the icy cold to +transfuse her veins. + +The changed temperature had chased away the fog, and the night spread +its serene beauty over the park, where the moonlight lay along the +terrace like snow. Far down the slope rose the outlines of the bare +trees, and the wide landscape shone and shone until it finally was lost +in the mists. + +Bulstrode had followed over and stood by Mary Falconer's side, and the +scene before him seemed full of joy, full of gifts, full of largesse. +The ornament on the woman's bosom stirred with her breathing, shot a +million fine sparkles, and below it the spray of mistletoe rose and +fell, rose and fell. + +He put his hand out and took the spray and fastened it in his +buttonhole, saying that the mistletoe was above her head. + +His voice, one she had never heard, made her unwisely turn to meet his +eyes, to shake with the emotion of the adventurer trembling on the edge +of the precipice; just to hang over which, and to shudder, he has +climbed high. She put her hand out between them, holding him back. + +"I've had a telegram from my husband. He's very ill. He's in Palm +Beach and I'm going over to him next week." + +[Illustration: "I've had a telegram from my husband"] + +Falconer's name was sovereign for breaking spells as far as Jimmy was +concerned, but the wife's phrase this time gave him only a more violent +revelation of his cruel hope. She went on: + +"It's not alarming, but with a heart like Jack's, anything might +happen. It's only when I'm with him that he keeps up any sort of +shape." + +The fact of his holding in his the hand that she had put out to keep +him from her, did not serve to aid in a serene continuation of her +plans, and the silence became a burden which if she did not herself +lift would crush her. + +She said hurriedly: "And you will help me to go." + +And then Bulstrode spoke: "No," he said, "Oh, no." + +For the briefest space she yielded to what he meant and was at last +wicked enough and human enough to promise to do. But she had on this +solemn evening--for it had so been--come too far, gone up too high to +drag down all the way with him on a single word. In supremest +happiness, however, at what he said and how he said it, she gave a +little soft laugh, and although she was under the mistletoe, she felt +that she looked down on him, loving him so much more that in adorable +weakness he had suddenly grown small and dear. + +"Oh, Jimmy," she whispered, "how heavenly of you, but you can't go back +on ten years in one week. You can't, you know! You've thrown me like +a giant so _far_, I've gone right on up." + +Still looking at her he shook his head as she repeated: "You'll help +me, you'll help me! You can't go back!" + +"I _can_ go back," he said deeply, "_on everything and everybody in the +world_." + +At the frank simple words, and the sense of what they meant, at the +sound of his new voice, it was as if all the dykes at last were down; +and strong, bright, but most beautiful, the sea came rushing in. As +she saw him coming toward her and knew that in a moment more she would +be in his arms, and that at his first touch she would let everything +go, she found one word to say and it proved only to be his name: + +"Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy!" + +But there was in it an appeal. She could count the times she had wept +in her life, very nearly, she had often said that a woman weeps only +when she has nothing else to do, and there had always been so much, +every minute in her life; and as if in logical affirmation there seemed +now for her nothing to do but to cry. The tears which covered her face +and fell into her palms and against the chair on which she leaned, +comforted her in a measure and served to loosen the tension of her +mind. She had succeeded in miraculously keeping away from him, just +within touch of her, held back by a hand whose white gentleness was not +so exquisitely strong but that he loved her too well to break the +tender barrier. She never afterward knew what appeals she made or how +she besought, but it must have been of great force to keep him so +transfixed and pale. + +"Oh, you _have_ told me over and over again! Do you think I am deaf or +blind, or that I have found you dumb? Such love, Jimmy, such high, +sweet perfectness! Why, there isn't a woman in a million who has known +it or even dreamed what such love could mean. Why, there hasn't been a +day or an hour for ten years that you have not spoken it to me in the +most adorable way, in the most beautiful way; and in every kind thing +you have done, in every foolish, dear thing, I have been so vain as to +think that I counted for something in it, that you did it a little for +me. Other women have had their lovers, their scandals, their great +passions. But I have had you without flaw, without a change, without +regret. Hush!" she cried, wiping her tears away, "Hush. It's quite +safe to let me go on. The only fear is that _you_ may speak." + +The arm which she had held out to keep him from her had fallen upon his +shoulder, lay about his neck as he knelt by her chair. + +"It's been horrible!" she said, shaking her head, "Horrible--the days +and the nights, the days and the nights! There have been times when I +could have killed him and killed myself as well. But then you've come, +and your presence has helped me, and that's the way I've pulled along; +because by your silence you told me to pull along, because by the fact +that you didn't speak I understood that you thought I should be brave, +and I have been--thanks to you, and I shall be--thanks to you! Oh!" +she cried passionately, "if you think because I am saying it all out +that I want to go back, that I don't see what I am running away from, +and what you mean, you're cruel, you're cruel!" + +Her other hand had found its fellow and they both lay on his shoulders. + +"I only think of you," he breathed, "and of how..." + +She covered his lips. "Oh, hush, hush, you have told me, in the only +way there was to tell. I'm too stupid to be able to combine a lover +and a husband. The day and the hour you spoke I should never have seen +my husband again. And that's where it stands; that's how it is, and +you know it. You loved me because I was like that, and I love you +because you are the bravest of the brave. There you are!" she cried, +and drew away from him triumphantly, letting her arms fall. "There we +both are!" + +"Have you any vague conception of what this is for me?" Bulstrode asked. + +"Oh, I dare say," she exclaimed, with a kind of petulance, "that I am +only thinking of my own bewildering happiness. There," she exclaimed +at his face, "I see you have a new weapon: pity. Oh, don't use that +against me, and I warn you that everything in the world will crumble if +you speak." + +Her hands, which he was holding closely, she drew from him and laid +them both on his breast and met his eyes full with her own. Her lips +were slightly trembling, and she was as white as a winter day. In the +moment of silence they passed like this, she seemed to him like some +great precious pearl, some priceless rose fragrant, lustrous, made for +him, gathered for him, and yet beyond his right. She seemed, above +all, the woman, the mate; her glorious sex, her tenderness, her +humanness, drew him and dazzled him; and, nevertheless, through his +daze and over his desire, he heard with his finest her cry: + +"Jimmy, Jimmy, don't speak, don't speak. Ah, if you really love me..." + +He really loved her. Rising from where he knelt by her chair, +Bulstrode went over, stood a second by the chimneypiece, and then took +a few paces up and down the room, came back to her and said the thing +the real man says to the woman he really loves: + +"I want to make you happy, Mary. I will do whatever you wish me to do." + +"Ah, then, go!" + +Bulstrode looked wearily about as though of its own accord a door might +unclose or a portière lift. + +"Go where, pray, at this time of night, or morning?" + +"Oh, to The Dials. Ring for a motor; they will take you in again; or +go to the rector's." + +The last of the fire had flared up. The flame went out. + +Sinking back in her chair, she waited in a tranced stillness, her eyes +on the ashes of the fire. She had said her say out, perhaps the man +knew it, and as she leaned back in the cushions he saw how completely +it all lay with him at the end. She thought he came back and waited a +second at her side; she thought he bent a moment over her, but she did +not stir until the cold wind from an opening door, till the clicking of +a latch made her start, and then she turned to see that he had gone. + + +Bulstrode came back to the castle Christmas Day at nine o'clock. But +the hour had the effect of being much earlier. The winter morning +panoplied with festivity began its life slowly, and not all the day's +brightness through which he had speeded his motor had yet come into the +house. Bulstrode, drawn by it, went directly back to the room he had +left several hours before, as though he expected still to find the +woman he loved sitting before the extinguished fire. + +Two parlor maids were whisking their skirts and dusters out of the +opposite door, a footman at their heels. Touches of the inevitable +order which reduces an agreeable disarray to the impersonal had already +been put to the scene of Jimmy's tenderness, and the curtains drawn +well away from the long windows let in the morning that entered broadly +and fell across the hearth and the fresh-lit fire. + +Clean logs replaced the cold ashes: the match had just finished with +the kindlings, and Bulstrode went over to welcome the crackling of the +young blaze. The absence of his host, the castle once more handed over +to him for the time, gave him a feeling of proprietorship in the bright +cordial room, but looking up at the portraits of Westboro's in puffs +and velvets, Jimmy couldn't find an ancestor! Their amours and +indulgences had written brilliant and amusing history; the gentlemen +had gone mad at ladies' carriage wheels, they had carried off their +scandals with the highest of hands, and still held their heads well. +They had carved and raped and loved their way down to the present time, +and were none the less a proud line of pure British blood. The +American bachelor, about whose fine head nothing picturesque or worthy +of history circled, looked up at the Dukes of Westboro' musingly, and +there was not a peer or a noble better to look upon or who had been at +heart a truer lover, although he did not know it. + +During the lapse of time between leaving this same room and his present +return, Bulstrode had not tossed on a sleepless bed; he had slept +soundly, and during his rest the several dials had called out like +bells, their voice, _Utere dum licet_; and finally a real bell had +roused him to the fact that it was day, a new day, and that unless he +was killed en route to the castle, nothing could keep him from the +place and from her. + +He had no consolation in the fact that the honor and decency of society +were by him strengthened and retained, nor did he plan out the sane, +wise project of not seeing her again. Nor did he weigh or balance his +charge or responsibility. There had been a cessation of vibration of +any kind, and only one supreme, sovereign reality took possession of +the world and of himself, and the limitless beauty and the limitless +delight he had breathed in ever since he left her and knew how she +loved him. Nothing in life, he had so felt, could dull or tarnish the +glory of her face; nothing, no matter what life held for them both, +could efface the touch she had laid upon him, as her arms were about +him. Through the interval his past life appeared to have been, on +through the new and unlived interval to come, she would be as last +night she had been, she would look at him as last night she had looked. +"Heavens!" he meditated, in the faces of the self-indulgent, cynical +Westboro's, "I am not going to be blasé through six paradises just +because there happens to be a seventh!" + +A new fire spun its lilac flames behind his back. The spicy breath of +the wreaths of hemlock was deliciously sweet. Little by little the sun +had made its eastern way and sparkled at the pane outside, and in the +radiant clarity the terrace and its charming railing, the urns with the +little cedars, stood out clearly; and more than all else, the truth +cried itself to him, that whatever happened, she was still here, still +in the house with him. + +He had chosen a Christmas gift for her in London, and determined to +send it up to her now with some roses, and in this way to announce the +fact that he had come back from The Dials and was ready to use the day +as she liked. He felt only how beautiful it would be to see her, that +it did not for a second occur to him to wonder if she on her part would +feel a certain embarrassment. + +In answer to his ring, not a man servant, but the perfect housekeeper +rustled in, her crisp silks, her cameos, and her "Christmas face," as +one of the little Westboro' chaps had called her rosy countenance, on +one of his few Christmas days. + +"Where would Mr. Bulstrode please to have breakfast?" + +"Why, wherever it best suited, went with the house, with the day. +Where, indeed, and that was more to the point, would Mrs. Falconer have +it?" + +"Mrs. Falconer? Why, Mr. Bulstrode didn't know then that Mrs. Falconer +had gone?" + +She saw by his face that he knew nothing less in the world. + +Why, directly the despatch had been fetched over from the Abbey +station. There had been but twenty minutes between the getting of it +and her starting away. A motor had been sent with her and the maid, +and Mrs. Falconer had fortunately been able to make the train; the only +one, it so happened, being Christmas Day, that connected with the Dover +and Calais special. + +The matter-of-fact bit of news came to Bulstrode so coldly and so +ruthlessly that it took some seconds for the bitter thought that she +had gone because she couldn't trust him, to penetrate. Then this gave +place to an effulgent hope that it might be _herself_ she couldn't +trust! But the discovery that she had left him no message of any kind, +and that she was above all irrevocably gone, struck him more cruelly +than had any blow in his kindly life. He could not suffer in peace +before the bland creature in silks and cameos. Crises and departures, +battle, murder, and sudden death, he felt the housekeeper would accept +serenely should any of them chance to occur at Westboro', and above all +if they were part of the sacred family history. But Mrs. Falconer and +he were not Westboro's, and he wanted to be rid of his companion and to +find himself alone in order to consult time tables, to find out why it +had been imperative to go to Calais, with what boat for America a +Christmas-Day train could possibly connect, and to turn it all over in +his mind. He at first believed that there had never been any telegram +and that she had only employed a polite ruse in order to facilitate her +flight. + +Why, at all events, couldn't she have left him a line? She might, he +ruefully complained, have strained a point and wished him a Merry +Christmas! As he walked to and fro in the room now supremely deserted, +he began slowly to approach a certain hypothesis which as soon as he +granted, he as violently discarded. But the thought was imperious: +something of its kind always haunted him like a bad ghost. It could +usually be dismissed, but now it was persistent. A despatch from +Falconer had certainly come the night before. Another might have +followed on this morning, hard upon it? To have been sent over from +the Abbey on a holiday must have been a very grave message indeed; "a +matter," as the old term went, "of life and death." The phrase began +to repeat itself and the conviction to grow, and as he was obliged to +give it admittance and to face it, and to wonder what the shock would +be to her, and what the news would be to him, how it would change +things, and how they would both meet it--his promenade to and fro in +the room brought him up before the centre table and he looked down upon +it at length with a seeing eye. Why not? why not? he was wondering. +We are all essentially mortal, and lightning never had struck yet, _why +not in this place_? And since there had been neither shame nor blame, +why couldn't he face the possibility of a perfectly natural mortality? +Before him on the table lay Mrs. Falconer's green scarf, and as +Bulstrode lifted the soft thing he saw that underneath it lay a +despatch. + +Then he knew instantly that Mary Falconer had left both scarf and +telegram there, and that this was her message to him. He seemed, as +the word he had not yet read met him in this form, to have been waiting +all his life for just this news. The road, so long in winding home, +had wound home at length, and now that he believed the crisis was +really reached, there was something infinitely stilling in its +solemnity. + +Bulstrode could not at once draw the sheet from its envelope. He lit a +cigar and sat down before the fire. + +He knew, as though he saw it all before his eyes, how the despatch had +found her this early Christmas Day, in her room--he knew how she had +read it first and borne it well--for she was a brave, strong woman--he +knew that his absence had been a relief to her. He knew how she had +worn her long, dark cloak and thick veil, and had gone out to travel +home alone. Oh, he knew her, and as he thought of the picture she had +made, and how she would begin her sad and dreadful journey, he for the +first time thought of himself--of themselves. He was too human not to +know that there would be a future and that they would build anew. In +the new house there would be no driftwood now; nor would they ever be +haunted by the sound of a bell in the dark, for with the few brave +souls who sail across the seas of life they had both of them stood by +the sinking ship until it put into port. + +Mrs. Shawles came in again presently and told him that she had laid his +breakfast in the little room facing the gardens. Then she waited, and +as Bulstrode looked up at her he forced himself to smile faintly and +wished her a Merry Christmas. + +She thanked him, gave him many, and said it was a happy morning for all +of the Westboro's, and that the castle and the house would see new +times and better things, and when he had stirred himself to the point +of putting what he had for her into her hand, he was not sure whether +he wanted her to go, or not, this time and leave him alone. + +She still hesitated. It was a custom with them, she told him, with the +Westboro's, to have hall prayers on holidays. When the Duke himself +was there, he always read them; the servants and the children of the +place had already come in. In the absence of the family _would_ Mr. +Bulstrode...? + +"Oh, no, on no account, on no account," he hurried. "Wasn't there some +one else?" + +"Well, to be sure, there was Portman." + +The guest was sure that Portman would do it quite in the proper way, +and as for himself, he would have his breakfast in a few moments, he +thanked her. + +And Mrs. Shawles, who had expected a more favorable answer, left open +on the table the little Book which she had brought in with her. + +Bulstrode took it up after she was gone. + +In a few seconds he heard from the distance the sound of the children +singing. Their voices ceased, to be followed by the subdued murmur of +reading. As Bulstrode opened the Book he held, the leaves fell apart +at the marriage rite. He hurriedly passed this over, and his eyes were +arrested by the opening lines of a more solemn service. He paused to +read the beautiful, pitiful words, and then, still with the open Book +in his hands, he drew the telegram out of its cover.... + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy +Bulstrode, by Marie Van Vorst + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMY BULSTRODE *** + +***** This file should be named 34065-8.txt or 34065-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/0/6/34065/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode + +Author: Marie Van Vorst + +Illustrator: Alonzo Kimball + +Release Date: October 13, 2010 [EBook #34065] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMY BULSTRODE *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + +</pre> + + +<BR><BR> + +<A NAME="img-front"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame "<I>pour les enfants</I>"" BORDER="2" WIDTH="483" HEIGHT="762"> +<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 483px"> +The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame "<I>pour les enfants</I>" +</H4> +</CENTER> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H1 ALIGN="center"> +The Sentimental<BR> +Adventures of<BR> +Jimmy Bulstrode<BR> +</H1> + +<BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +BY +</H4> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +MARIE VAN VORST +</H3> + +<BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +With Illustrations by +<BR> +ALONZO KIMBALL +</H4> + +<BR><BR> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +NEW YORK +<BR> +HURST & COMPANY +<BR> +PUBLISHERS +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H5 ALIGN="center"> +COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY +<BR> +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS +<BR><BR> +Published March, 1908 +</H5> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +TO THE MEMORY +<BR> +OF +<BR> +H. E. TESCHEMACHER +</H3> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +CONTENTS +</H3> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +<A HREF="#chap01"> +<I>THE FIRST ADVENTURE</I> +</A> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +In which he buys a Christmas tree +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +<A HREF="#chap02"> +<I>THE SECOND ADVENTURE</I> +</A> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +In which he tries to buy a portrait +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +<A HREF="#chap03"> +<I>THE THIRD ADVENTURE</I> +</A> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +In which he finds there are some things which one cannot buy +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +<A HREF="#chap04"> +<I>THE FOURTH ADVENTURE</I> +</A> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +In which he makes three people happy +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +<A HREF="#chap05"> +<I>THE FIFTH ADVENTURE</I> +</A> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +In which he makes nobody happy at all +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +<A HREF="#chap06"> +<I>THE SIXTH ADVENTURE</I> +</A> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +In which he discards a knave and saves a queen +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +<A HREF="#chap07"> +<I>THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE</I> +</A> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +In which he becomes the possessor of a certain piece of property +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="noindent" STYLE="margin-left: 10%"> +<A HREF="#chap08"> +<I>THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE</I> +</A> +</P> + +<P CLASS="noindent"> +In which he comes into his own +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<H2 ALIGN="center"> +ILLUSTRATIONS +</H2> + +<H4 ALIGN="center"> +From drawings by ALONZO KIMBALL +</H4> + +<BR> + +<H4> +<A HREF="#img-front"> +<I>The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame <BR> +"pour les enfants"</I> . . . . . . Frontispiece +</A> +</H4> + +<H4> +<A HREF="#img-070"> +"<I>I only like him like a kind, kind friend</I>" +</A> +</H4> + +<H4> +<A HREF="#img-100"> +<I>In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing</I> +</A> +</H4> + +<H4> +<A HREF="#img-360"> +"<I>I've had a telegram from my husband</I>" +</A> +</H4> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap01"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE FIRST ADVENTURE +</H3> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +I +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN WHICH HE BUYS A CHRISTMAS TREE +</H3> + +<P> +There was never in the world a better fellow than Jimmy Bulstrode. If +he had been poorer his generosities would have ruined him over and over +again. He was always being taken in, was the recipient of hundreds of +begging letters, which he hired another soft-hearted person to read. +He offended charitable organizations by never passing a beggar's +outstretched hand without dropping a coin in it. He was altogether a +distressingly impracticable rich person, surrounded by people who +admired him for what he really was and by those who tried to squeeze +him for what he was worth! +</P> + +<P> +It was a general wonder to people who knew him slightly why Bulstrode +had never married. The gentleman himself knew the answer perfectly, +but it amused him to discuss the question in spite of the pain, as well +as for the pleasure that it caused him to consider—<I>the reason why</I>. +</P> + +<P> +Mary Falconer, the woman he loved, was the wife of a man of whom +Bulstrode could only think in pitiful contempt. But, thanks to an +element of chivalry in the character of the hero of this story the +years, as time went on, spread back of both the woman and the man in an +honorable series, of whose history neither one had any reason to be +ashamed. +</P> + +<P> +Nevertheless, it struck them both as rather humorous, after all, that +of the three concerned her husband should be the only renegade and, +notwithstanding, profit by the combined good faith of his wife and the +man who loved her. +</P> + +<P> +Oh, there was nothing easy in the task that Jimmy set for himself! And +it did not facilitate matters that Mary Falconer scarcely ever helped +him in the least! She was a beautiful woman, a tender woman, and there +were times when her friend felt that she cleverly and cruelly taunted +him with Puritanism and with his simple, old-fashioned ideas and +crystal clearness of vision, the <I>culte</I> he had regarding marriage and +the sacred way in which he held bonds and vows. It was no help at all +to think she rebelled and jested at his reserve; that she did her best +to break it—and there were times when it was a brilliant siege. But +down in her heart she respected him, and as she saw around her the +domestic wrecks with which the matrimonial seas are encumbered, and +knew that her own craft promised to go safely through the storm, Mary +Falconer more than once had been grateful to the man. +</P> + +<P> +As far as Bulstrode himself was concerned, each year—there had been +ten of them—he found the situation becoming more difficult and +dangerous. Not only did the future appear to him impossible as things +were, but he began to hate his arid past. He was sometimes led to ask, +what, after all, was he getting out of his colossal sacrifice? The +only reward he wanted was the woman herself, and, unless her husband +died, she would never be his. Bulstrode had not found that he could +solve the problem, and now and then he let it go from sheer weariness +of heart. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +In the face of the window of the drawing-room where Bulstrode sat on +this afternoon of an especial winter's day the storm cast wreaths of +snow that clung and froze, or dropped like feathers down against the +sill. The gentleman had his predilections even in New York, and in the +open fireplace the logs crumbled and disintegrated to ashen caves +wherein the palpitating jewels of the heat were held. Except for this +old-fashioned warmth, there was none other in the room, whose white +wainscoting and pillars, low ceilings and quaint chimney-piece, +characterized one of those agreeably proportioned houses still to be +found in lower New York around Washington Square. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode had received about half an hour ago a letter whose qualities +and suggestions were something disturbing to him: +</P> + +<BR> + +<P CLASS="letter"> +"There is such a thing, believe me" (Mary Falconer wrote in the pages +which Bulstrode opened to read for the twentieth time), "as the <I>gloom</I> +of Christmas, Jimmy. People won't frankly own to it. They're afraid +of seeming sour and crabbed. But don't you, who are so exquisitely apt +to feelings—to other people's feelings,—at once confess it? It +attacks the spinster in the bustling winter streets as she is elbowed +by some person, exuberantly a mother, and so arrogantly laden with +delicious-looking parcels that she is almost a personal Christmas tree +herself. I'm confident this 'gloom of Christmas' grips the wretched +little beings at toy-shop windows as they stand 'choosin'' their +never-to-be-realized toys. I'm sure it haunts the vagrant and the +homeless in a city fairly redolent of holly and dinners, and where the +array of other people's homes is terrifying. And, my dear friend, it +is so horribly subtle that no doubt it attacks others whose only grudge +is that their hearths are not built for Christmas trees or the hanging +of stockings. But these unfortunates are not saying anything aloud, +therefore we must not pry! +</P> + +<P CLASS="letter"> +"There's a jolly house-party on at the Van Schoolings'. We're to go +down to-morrow to Tuxedo and pass Christmas night, and you are, of +course, asked and wanted. Knowing your dread of these family +feasts—possibly from just such a ghost of the gloom—I was sure you +would refuse. But it's a wonderful place for a talk or two, and I +shall hope you will go—will come, not even follow, but go down with +me." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +There was more of the letter—there always is more of women's letters. +Their minds and pens are so charmingly facile; there is nothing a woman +can do better than talk, except to write. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode smoked slowly, the pages between his fingers, his thoughts +travelling like wanderers towards a home from which a ban had kept them +aliens. His eyes drifted to the beginning of the letter. He wasn't +familiar with the homeless vagrant class. His charities to that part +of the population consisted in donations to established societies, and +haphazard giving called forth by a beggar's extended hand. +</P> + +<P> +If anybody may be immune to the melancholy of which his friend Mrs. +Falconer spoke, it should surely be this gentleman, smoking his cigar +before the fire. The unopened letters—there was a pile of them—would +have offered ample reason why. No one of the lot but bore some +testimony to the generous heart which, beneath dinner-jacket and behind +the screw-faced watch with the picture in the back of it, beat so +healthy and so well. +</P> + +<P> +But the bestowal of benefits, whilst it may beautify the giver, does +not always transform itself into the one benefit desired and console +the bestower! Bulstrode had a charming home. He was alone in it. He +had his clubs where bachelors like himself, more or less infected with +Christmas gloom, would be glad to greet him. He had his friends, many +of them, and their home circles were complete. His, by force of +circumstances, began and ended with himself, and as if triumphant to +have found so tempting a victim, the gloom came and possessed Bulstrode +as he sat and mused. +</P> + +<P> +But the decided sadness that stole across his face bore no relation, to +the season, to whose white mystery and holy beauty there was something +in his boyish, kindly heart that always responded. +</P> + +<P> +The sadness Mrs. Falconer's letter awakened would not sleep. What his +Christmas <I>might</I> be...! He had only to order his motor, to call for +her and drive over the ferry; to sit beside her in the train, to drive +with her again across the wintry roads. He had but to see her, watch +her, talk with her, share with her the day and evening, to have his +Christmas as nearly what a feast should be as dreams could ask. The +whole festival was there: joy, good-will—peace? No. Not peace for +him or for her—not that; everything else, but not that. And he had +been travelling for five weary months in order to make himself keep for +her that peace a little longer. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode sighed here, lifted the letter where there was more of it to +his lips—held it out toward the fire as if the red jewels were to set +themselves around it, thought differently, and putting it back in its +envelope, thrust it in the pocket of his waistcoat. +</P> + +<P> +"Ruggles," he asked the servant who had come in, "you sent the despatch +to Tuxedo?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, sir." +</P> + +<P> +"There'll be later a note to send. I'll ring. Well, what is it?" +</P> + +<P> +"There's a person at the door, sir, who insists on seeing you." +</P> + +<P> +The servant's tone—one particularly jarring to the ears of a man who +had fellowship with more than one class of his kind—made the master +look sharply up. Ruggles was a new addition to the household, and +Bulstrode did not like him. +</P> + +<P> +"A person," Bulstrode repeated, quietly; "what sort of a person?" +</P> + +<P> +"A man, sir." +</P> + +<P> +"Not a gentleman? No," he nodded gently; "I see you do not think him +one. Yet that he is a man is in his favor. There are some gentlemen +who aren't men, you know. Let him in." +</P> + +<P> +In doing so Ruggles seemed to let in the night. Bulstrode had, in the +warmth of his fragrant room, forgotten that outside was the wintry +dark. Ruggles, in letting the man in, had the air of thrusting him in, +and shut the door behind the visitor with a click. +</P> + +<P> +The creature himself let in the cold; he seemed made of it. The snow +clung to his shoulders; his shoes, tied up with strings, were encrusted +with it. His coat, buttoned to his chin, frayed at the cuffs and +edges, was thin and weather-stained. He had a pale face, a royal +growth of beard—this was all Bulstrode had time to remark. He rose. +</P> + +<P> +"My servant says you want to see me. Come near the fire, won't you?" +</P> + +<P> +The visitor did not stir. Bewildered in the warmth of the room, he +stood far back on the edge of the thick rug. To all appearances he was +a bit of driftwood from the streets, one of the usual vagrant class who +haunt the saloons and park and steer from lockup to night-lodging, +until they finally steer themselves entirely off the face of history, +and the potter's field gathers them in. Nothing but his entrance into +this conventional room before this well-balanced member of decent +society was peculiar. +</P> + +<P> +As he still neither moved nor spoke, Bulstrode, approaching him, again +invited: "Come near the fire, won't you? and when you are warm tell me +what I can do for you." +</P> + +<P> +"It's the storm," murmured the man, and a half-human look came across +his face with his words. "I mean to say, it's this hellish storm +that's got in my throat and lungs. I can't speak—it's so warm here. +It will be better in a second. No, not near the fire; +thanks—chilblains." He looked down at his poor feet. +</P> + +<P> +The voice which the storm had beaten and thrashed to painful hoarseness +was entirely out of keeping with the man's appearance, and in +intonation, accent, and language was a shock to the hearer. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't stand back like that—come into the room." Bulstrode wheeled a +chair briskly about. "There; sit down and drink this; it's a mild +blend." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm very wet," said the man. "I'll drip on the rug." +</P> + +<P> +"Hang the rug!" +</P> + +<P> +The tramp drained the glass given him at one swallow merely; it +appeared to clear his throat and release his speech. He gathered his +rags together. +</P> + +<P> +"I beg pardon for forcing myself on you like this, but I fancy I +needn't tell you I'm desperate—desperate!" He held out his hand; it +shook like a pale ghost's. "I look it, I'm sure. I haven't eaten a +meal or slept in a bed for a fortnight. I've begged work and charity. +All day I've been shovelling snow, but I'm too weak to work now." +</P> + +<P> +He was being led to a chair. He sank in it. "Before they sent me to +the Island I decided to try a ruse. I went into a saloon and opened a +directory, and I said, 'The first name I put my finger upon I'll take +as good luck, and I'll go and see the person, man or woman. I opened +to James Thatcher Bulstrode, 9 Washington Square." He half smiled; the +pale, trembling hand was waving like a pitiful flag, a signal of +distress to catch the sight of some bark that might lend aid. "So I +came here. When there seemed actually to be some chance of my getting +in, why, my courage failed me. I don't expect you to believe my story +or to believe anything, except that I am desperate—desperate. It's +below zero to-night out there—infernally cold." He took the pin out +of the collar turned up around his neck and let his coat fall back. +Under it Bulstrode saw he wore a thin flannel shirt. The tramp +repeated to himself, as it were, "It's a bad storm." +</P> + +<P> +He looked up in a dazed fashion at his host as if for acceptance of his +remark. In the easy chair, half swathed in rags, pitiful in thinness, +dripping from shoes and clothes water that the storm had drenched into +him, he was a sorry object in the atmosphere of the well-ordered +conventional room. The heat and whiskey, the famine and exposure, cast +a film across his eyes and brain. He indistinctly saw his host pass +into the next room and shut the door behind him. +</P> + +<P> +"By Jove!" he murmured under his breath in wonder find dumb thanks for +the shelter. "By Jove!" The stimulant filtered agreeably through him; +more charitable than any element with which he had been lately +familiar, the fire's heat began to thaw the ice in his bones. He laid +his dripping hat on his knees, his thin hands folded themselves over +it, his eyes closed. For hours he had shuffled about the streets to +keep from freezing. At the charity organization they gave work he was +too weak to do; he had not eaten a substantial meal in so long that he +had forgotten the taste of food and had ceased to crave it. In the +soft light of lamp and fire he fell into a doze. Bulstrode, if he had +stolen softly in to look at his visitor, would have seen a man not over +thirty years of age, although want and dissipation added ten to his +appearance. He would have been quick to take note of the fine, +delicately cut face under the disfiguring beard, and of the slender, +emaciated body deformed by its rags. +</P> + +<P> +Possibly he did so noiselessly come in and stand by the unconscious +creature, but the sleeping vagabond, dreaming fitful, half-painful +things, was ignorant of the visitor. Finally across his mind's sharp +despair came a sense of warmth and comfort, and in its spell he awoke. +</P> + +<P> +A servant, not the one who had thrust him into the drawing-room, but +another with a friendly face, stood at his side, and in broken English +asked the guest of Bulstrode to follow him; and gathering his scattered +senses together and picking up his rags and what was left of himself, +the creature obeyed a summons which he supposed was to hale him again +into the winter streets. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +It was some three hours later that Bulstrode in his dining-room +entertained his singular guest. +</P> + +<P> +"I have asked you to dine with me," he explained, with a certain +graciousness, as if he claimed, not gave, a favor, "as I'm all alone +to-night. It's Christmas eve, you know—or perhaps you've been more or +less glad to forget it?" +</P> + +<P> +The young man who took the chair indicated him was unrecognizable as +the stranger who had staggered into 9 Washington Square three or four +hours before. Turned out in spotless linen and a good suit that fitted +him fairly well, shaven face save for a mustache above his lip, bathed, +brushed, refreshed by nourishment and sleep and repose, he looked like +one who has been in the waters, possibly a long, long time; like one +who has drifted, been bruised, shattered, and beaten, but who has +nevertheless drifted to shore; and in spite of his borrowed clothes, +his scarred, haggard face, he looked like a gentleman, and Bulstrode +from the moment he spoke had recognized him as one. +</P> + +<P> +The food was a feast to the stranger, in spite of nourishment already +given him by Prosper. He restrained the ferocious hunger that woke at +sight and smell of the good things, forced himself not to cry out with +eagerness, not to tear and grasp the eatables off the plate, not to +devour like a beast. Every time he raised his eyes he met those of the +butler Ruggles, and as quickly the stranger looked away. The face of +the servant standing by the sideboard, back of him the white and +gleaming array of the Bulstrode family silver like piles of snow, was +for some reason or other not a pleasant face; the stranger did not +think it so. +</P> + +<P> +Once again seated in the room he had entered in his outcast state, a +cup of coffee at his hand, a cigar between his lips, the agreeable +atmosphere of the old room and its charming objects, the kindly look on +the face of his host, all swam before him. Looking frankly at +Bulstrode, he said, not without grace of manner: +</P> + +<P> +"I give it up. I can't—it's not to be made out or understood..." +</P> + +<P> +"Do you," interrupted the other, "feel equal to talking a little: to +telling me how it happens that you are wandering, as you seem to be? +For from the moment you first spoke——" +</P> + +<P> +The young man nodded. "I'm a gentleman. It's worse somehow—I don't +know why, but it is." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode thought out for him: "It's like remembering agreeable places +to which you feel you will never return. Only," he quickly offered, +"in your case you must, you know, go back." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said the young man, quietly. +</P> + +<P> +There was so much entire renunciation in what he said that the other +could not press it. +</P> + +<P> +"Better still, you can then go on?" +</P> + +<P> +The vagrant looked at his companion as if to say: "Since I've known +you—seen you—I have thought that I might." But he said nothing more, +and Bulstrode, reading a diffidence which did not displease him, +finished: +</P> + +<P> +"You shall go on, and I'll help you." +</P> + +<P> +The stranger bowed his head, and the wine sent the color up until his +cheeks took the flush of health. Remaining a little bent over, his +eyes on his feet clad in Bulstrode's shoes, he said: +</P> + +<P> +"I'm an Englishman. My family is everything that's decent and all +<I>that</I>, you know, and proud. We've first-rate traditions. I'm a +younger son, and I've always been a thorn in the family's side. I've +been a sort of vagabond from the first, but never as bad as they +thought or believed." +</P> + +<P> +He paused. His recital was painful to him. Bulstrode waited, then +knocking off the ash from his cigar, urged: +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me about it, tell me frankly; it will, you see, be a relief. We +can do better that way—if I know." +</P> + +<P> +The stranger looked up at him quickly, then leaning forward in his +chair, talked as it were to the carpet, and rapidly: +</P> + +<P> +"It's just a year ago. I'd been going it rather hard and got into +trouble more or less—lost at cards and the races, and been running up +a lot of bills. My father was awfully down on me. I'd gone home for +the holidays and had a talk with my father and asked him to pay up for +me just this once more. He refused, and we got very angry, both of us, +and separated in a rage. The house was full of people—a Christmas +ball and a tree. My father had, so it happened, quite a lot of money +in the house. I knew where it was—I had seen him count it and put it +away. That night for some reason the whole thing sickened me, in the +mess I was in, and I left and went up to London without even saying +good-by. In the course of the week my brother came and found me drunk +in my rooms. It seems that the money had been taken from my father's +safe, and they accused me." +</P> + +<P> +"But," interrupted Bulstrode, eagerly, "it was a simple thing to +exculpate yourself." +</P> + +<P> +Ignoring his remark, the other continued: "I have never seen my father +since that night." +</P> + +<P> +No amount of former deception can persuade a man that he is a lame +judge of character. The young Englishman's emaciated face, where eyes +spoiled by dissipation looked out at his companion, was to this +impulsive reader of humanity a good face. Bulstrode, however, saw what +he wanted to see in most people. Given a chance to study them, or +rather further to know them intimately, he might indeed have ended by +finding in some cases a few of the imagined qualities. Here misery was +evident, degradation as well, timidity, and hesitation,—but honesty? +Bulstrode fancied that its characters were not effaced, and he helped +the recital: +</P> + +<P> +"Since you so left your people?" +</P> + +<P> +"The steady go down!" acknowledged the other. "I worked my passage to +the States on a liner—I stoked..." +</P> + +<P> +"Any chap," encouraged the gentleman, "who can do that can pull +himself, I should say, out of a worse hole." +</P> + +<P> +"There's scarcely a bad habit I haven't had down in the hole with me," +confessed the other, "and they've held me there." +</P> + +<P> +They both remained for a few seconds without speaking, and the host's +eyes wandered to where, over his mantel-shelf, in a great gold frame +was the portrait of a lady done by Baker. A quaint young lady in her +early teens, with bare arms and frilled frock. She had Bulstrode's +eyes. By her side was the black muzzle of a great hound, on whose head +the little hand rested. Under the picture, from a silver bowl of +roses, came a fragrance that filled the room, and, close by stood a +photograph of another lady, very modern, very mocking, and very lovely. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, delicately drawing inferences from the influences in his +life, and, if not consciously grateful, reflecting them charmingly, +broke the silence: +</P> + +<P> +"You must have formed some plan or other in your mind when you came to +my door? What, in the event of your being received, did you intend to +ask me to do?" +</P> + +<P> +The stranger lifted his head and his response was irrelevant: "It seems +a hundred years since I stood there in that storm and your man pulled +me in. I haven't seen a place like this for long, not the inside of +decent houses. When I left the ship I managed to get down with a chap +as far as Florida, where he had an orange-plantation, but the venture +fell through. I fancy the rest is as well forgotten. When I came in +here to-night I intended to ask you for a Christmas gift of money, and +I should have gone out and drunk myself to hell." +</P> + +<P> +"You spoke"—Bulstrode fetched him back—"of your father and your +brother; was there no one else?" +</P> + +<P> +The younger man looked up without reply. +</P> + +<P> +"There has been, then, no more kindly influence in your life—no +sister—no woman?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode brought out the words; in his judgment they meant so very +much. He saw a change cross the other's face. +</P> + +<P> +"I fancy there are not many men who haven't had a woman in their lives +for good or bad," he said, with a short laugh. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," urged the gentleman, gently, "and for what was this woman?" +</P> + +<P> +As if he repelled the insistence, the young fellow stammered: +</P> + +<P> +"I say, this putting a fellow on the rack——" +</P> + +<P> +But Bulstrode leaned forward in his chair and rested his hand on his +companion's knee and pleaded: +</P> + +<P> +"Speak out frankly—frankly—I believe I shall understand; it will free +your heart to speak. This influence which to a man should be the +best—the best—what was it to you?" Bulstrode sat back and waited, +and the other man seemed quite lost in melancholy meditations for some +few seconds. Then Bulstrode put it: "For a young man, no matter how +wild, to leave his home under the misapprehension you claim:—for him +to make no effort to reinstate himself: with no attempt at justice: for +him to become a wanderer—there must be an extraordinary reason, almost +an improbable one——" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't ask you to hear," said the vagrant, quickly. +</P> + +<P> +"I wish to do so. It would have been a simple matter to exculpate +yourself—you had not the funds in your possession, had never had them. +You took no means to clear yourself?" +</P> + +<P> +"None." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode looked hard at the face his care had revealed to him: the +deep eyes, the neck, chin, the sensitive mouth—there was a certain +distinction about him in his borrowed clothes. +</P> + +<P> +"Where is the woman now?" +</P> + +<P> +"She married my brother—she is Lady Waring—my name," tardily +introduced the stranger, "is Cecil Waring." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode bowed. "Tell me something of her, in a word—in a word." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, she is always clever," said the young man, slowly, "always very +beautiful, and then very poor." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," nodded Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +"She is like the rest of us—one of a fast wild set—a——" +</P> + +<P> +"A gambler?" Bulstrode helped the description. +</P> + +<P> +"She played," acknowledged the young man, "as the rest do—bridge." +</P> + +<P> +"Were you engaged to her, Waring?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he slowly acknowledged, as if each word hurt him. +</P> + +<P> +"And did she believe you guilty?" +</P> + +<P> +"I think," said the other, with an inscrutable expression, "she could +not have done so." +</P> + +<P> +"But she let you go under suspicion?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Without a word of good faith, of comfort?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +"Did she know of your embarrassments?" +</P> + +<P> +"Too well." +</P> + +<P> +"You tell me she was poor and—possibly she had embarrassments of her +own?" +</P> + +<P> +"Possibly." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode came over to him. +</P> + +<P> +"Was she at the Christmas ball that night?" +</P> + +<P> +The young man rose as well, his eyes on his questioner's; the color had +all left his face—he appeared fascinated—then he shook himself and +unexpectedly laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"No," he said; "oh no." +</P> + +<P> +The older man bowed his head and replied, quite inaptly: +</P> + +<P> +"I understand!" +</P> + +<P> +He took a turn across the room. +</P> + +<P> +The few steps brought him in front of the mantel and the photograph of +the modern lady in her furs and close hat. He stood and met the fire +of her mocking eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"And you <I>believe</I> him, Jimmy!" he could hear her say in her delicious +voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he mentally told her, "I believe him." +</P> + +<P> +"You think that to save a woman's name and honor he has become an +outcast on the face of the earth ... Jimmy!" +</P> + +<P> +He still gently replied to her: +</P> + +<P> +"Men who love, you know, have but one code—the woman and honor." +</P> + +<P> +Still mocking, but gentle as would have been the touch of the roses in +the bowl near the photograph, her voice told him, +</P> + +<P> +"Then he's worth saving, Jimmy." +</P> + +<P> +Worth saving ... he agreed, and turned to his guest. In doing so he +saw that Ruggles had come into the drawing-room to remove the +coffee-tray. +</P> + +<P> +"Beg pardon, sir, but you mentioned there would be a letter to send +shortly?" +</P> + +<P> +"By Jove! so I did!" exclaimed Bulstrode. "I beg your pardon; will you +excuse me while I write a line at the desk?" The line was an order to +the florist. +</P> + +<P> +For some reason the eyes of the Englishman had not quitted the butler's +face, and Ruggles, with cold insolence, had stared at him in turn. +Waring, albeit in another man's clothes, fed and seated before a +friendly hearth, and once again within the pale of his own class, had +regained something of his natural air and feeling of superiority. He +resented the servant's insolence, and his face was angrily flushed as +Bulstrode gave his orders, and the man left the room. +</P> + +<P> +"I must go away," he said, rather brusquely. "I can never thank you +for what you have done. I feel as if I had been in a dream." +</P> + +<P> +"Sit down." His companion ignored his words. "Sit down." +</P> + +<P> +"It's late." +</P> + +<P> +"For what, my friend?" +</P> + +<P> +"I must find some place to sleep." +</P> + +<P> +"You have found it," gently smiled Bulstrode. "Your room is prepared +for you here." Then he interrupted: "No thanks—no thanks. If what +you tell me is all I think it is, I'm proud to share my roof with you, +Waring." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't think well of me—don't!" blurted out the other. "You don't +know what a ruined vagabond I am. When you send me out to-morrow I +shall begin again; but let me tell you that although I've herded with +tramps and thieves, been in the hospital and lock-up, and worked in the +hell of a furnace in a ship's hold, nothing hurt me any more, not after +I left England—not after those days when I waited in Liverpool for a +word—for a sign—not after that, all you see the marks of now—nothing +hurts now but the memory. I'm immune." +</P> + +<P> +"You will feel differently—you will humanize." +</P> + +<P> +"Never!" exclaimed the tramp. +</P> + +<P> +"To-night," said Bulstrode, simply. +</P> + +<P> +Waring looked at him curiously. +</P> + +<P> +"What a wonderful man!" he half murmured. "I was led to you by fate: +you have forced me to lay my soul bare to you—and now..." +</P> + +<P> +"Let's look things in the face together," suggested the gentleman, +practically. "I have a ranch out West. A good piece of property. +It's in the hands of a clever Englishman and promises well. How would +you like to go out there and start anew? He'll give you a welcome, and +he's a first-rate business man. Will you go?" +</P> + +<P> +Waring had with his old habit thrust his hands in his pockets. He +stood well on his feet. Bulstrode remarked it. He looked meditatively +down between the soles of his shoes. +</P> + +<P> +"You mean to say you give me a chance—to—to——" +</P> + +<P> +"Begin anew, Waring." +</P> + +<P> +"I drink a great deal," said the young man. +</P> + +<P> +"You will swear off." +</P> + +<P> +"I've gambled away all the money I ever had." +</P> + +<P> +"You will be taking care of mine, and it will be a point of honor." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm under a cloud—— +</P> + +<P> +"Not in my eyes," said Bulstrode, stoutly. +</P> + +<P> +"—which I can never clear." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode made a dismissing gesture. +</P> + +<P> +"I should want the chap out there to know the truth." +</P> + +<P> +"The truth," caught his hearer, and the other as quickly interrupted: +</P> + +<P> +"To know under what circumstances I left my people." +</P> + +<P> +"No, that is unnecessary," said Bulstrode, firmly. "Nobody has any +right to your past. I don't know his. That's the beauty of the +plains—the freshness of them. It's a new start—a clean page." +</P> + +<P> +Still the guest hesitated. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe it's worth while. You see, I've batted about now so +much alone, with nobody near me but the lowest sort; I've given in so +long, with no care to do better, that I haven't any confidence in +myself. I don't want you to see me fail, sir,—I don't want to go back +on you." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode had heard very understandingly part of the man's word, part +of his excuse for his weakness. +</P> + +<P> +"That's it," he said, musingly. "Butting about alone. It's +that—loneliness—that's responsible for so many things." +</P> + +<P> +Looking up brightly as his friend whose derelict dangerous vessel, so +near to port and repair, was heading for the wide seas again, Bulstrode +wondered: "If such a thing could be that some friend, not too +uncongenial, could be found to go with you and stand as it were by +you—some friend who knew—who comprehended——" +</P> + +<P> +Waring laughed. "I haven't such a one." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said the older gentleman, "you have, and he will stand by you. +I'll go West with you myself to-morrow—on Christmas day. I need a +change. I want to get away for a little time." +</P> + +<P> +Waring drew back a step, for Bulstrode had risen. Cold Anglo-Saxon as +he was, the unprecedented miracle this gentleman presented made him +seem almost lunatic. He stared blankly. +</P> + +<P> +"It's simpler than it looks." Bulstrode attempted conventionally to +shear it of a little of its eccentricity. "There's every reason why I +should look after my property out there. I've never seen it at all." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not worth such a goodness," Waring faltered, earnestly,—"not +worth it." +</P> + +<P> +"You will be." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't hope it." +</P> + +<P> +"I believe it," smiled the gentleman; "and at all events I'll stand by +you till you are—if you'll say the word." +</P> + +<P> +Waring, whose lips were trembling, repeated vaguely, "The <I>word</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," replied Bulstrode, "you might say those—they're as good +any—will you stand by <I>me</I>——?" +</P> + +<P> +Making the first hearty spontaneous gesture he had shown, the young man +seized the other's outstretched hand. "Yes," he breathed; "by Heaven! +I will!" +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +It was past midnight when Bulstrode, pushing open the curtains of his +bedroom, looked out on the frozen world of Washington Square, where of +tree and arch not an outline was visible under the disguising snow; and +above, in the sky swept clear of clouds by the strongest of winds, rode +the round full disk of the Christmas moon. +</P> + +<P> +The adoption of a vagrant, the quixotic decision he had taken to leave +New York on Christmas day, the plain facts of the outrageous folly his +impulsiveness led him to contemplate, had relegated his more worldly +plans to the background. Laying aside his waistcoat, he took out the +letter in whose contents he had been absorbed when Cecil Waring crossed +the threshold of his drawing-room. +</P> + +<P> +Well ... as he re-read at leisure her delightful plan for Christmas +day, he sighed that he could not do for them both better than to go two +thousand miles away! "Waring thinks himself a vagrant—and so, poor +chap, he has been; but there are vagrants of another kind." Jimmy +reflected he felt himself to be one of these others, and was led to +speculate if there were many outcasts like himself, and what +ultimately, if their courage was sufficient to keep them banished to +the end, would be the reward? +</P> + +<P> +"Since," he reflected, "there's only one thing I desire—and it's the +one thing forbidden—I fail sometimes to quite puzzle it out!" +</P> + +<P> +He had finished his preparations for the night and was about to turn +out the light, when, with his hand on the electric button, he paused, +for he distinctly heard from downstairs what sounded like a call—a cry. +</P> + +<P> +Taking his revolver from the top drawer, he went into the hall, to feel +a draft of icy air blow up the staircase, to see over the balusters the +open door of the dining-room and light within it, and to hear more +clearly the sounds that had come to him through closed doors declare +themselves to be scuffling—struggling—the half-cry of a muffled +voice—a fall, then Bulstrode started. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm coming," he declared, and ran down the stairs like a boy. +</P> + +<P> +On the dining-room floor, close to the window wide open to the icy +night, lay a man's form, and over him bent another man cruelly, with +all the animus of a bird of prey. +</P> + +<P> +The under man was Ruggles, Bulstrode's butler, his eyes starting from +their sockets, his mouth open, his color livid; he couldn't have called +out, for the other man had seized his necktie, twisted it tight as a +tourniquet around the man's gullet, and so kneeling with one knee on +his chest, Waring held the big man under. +</P> + +<P> +"I say," panted the young man, "can you lend a hand, sir? I've got +him, but I'm not strong enough to keep him." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode thought his servant's eyes rolled appealingly at him. He +cocked his revolver, holding it quietly, and asked coolly: +</P> + +<P> +"What's the matter with him that he needs to be kept?" +</P> + +<P> +"Would you sit on his chest, Mr. Bulstrode?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," said that gentleman. "I'll cover him so. What's the truth?" +</P> + +<P> +"I heard a queer noise," panted the Englishman, "and came out to see +what it was, and this fellow was just getting through the window. +There was another chap outside, but he got away. I caught this one +from the back, otherwise I could never have thrown him." +</P> + +<P> +"You're throttling him." +</P> + +<P> +"He deserves it." +</P> + +<P> +"Let him up." +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Bulstrode...!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said that gentleman, decidedly, "let him up." +</P> + +<P> +But Ruggles, released from the hand whose knuckles had ground +themselves into his windpipe, could not at once rise. The breath was +out of him, for he had been heavily struck in the stomach by a blow +from the fist of a man whose training in sport had delightfully +returned at need. +</P> + +<P> +Ruggles began to breathe like a porpoise, to grunt and pant and roll +over. He staggered to his feet, and with a string of imprecations +raised his fist at Waring, but as Bulstrode's revolver was entirely +ready to answer at command, he did not venture to leave the spot where +he stood. +</P> + +<P> +"Now," said his master, "when you get your tongue your story will be +just the same as Mr. Waring's. You found him getting away with the +silver. The probabilities are all with you, Ruggles. The police will +be here in just about five minutes. Ten to one the guilty man is known +to the officers. Now there's an overcoat and hat on the hat-rack in +the hall. I give both of you time to get away. There's the front door +and the window—which, by the way, you would better shut, Waring, as +it's a cold morning." +</P> + +<P> +Neither man moved. Without removing his eyes from the butler or +uncovering him, Bulstrode, by means of the messenger-call to the right +of the window, summoned the police. The metallic click of the button +sounded loud in the room. +</P> + +<P> +Ruggles shook his great hand high in air. +</P> + +<P> +"I'd—I'd——" +</P> + +<P> +"Never mind <I>that</I>," interrupted the householder. "The man who's +<I>going</I> had better take his chance. There's one minute lost." +</P> + +<P> +During the next half-second the modern philanthropist breathed in +suspense. It was so on the cards that he might be obliged to apologize +to his antipathetic butler and find himself sentimentally sold by +Waring! +</P> + +<P> +But Ruggles it was who with a parting oath stepped to the +door—accelerating his pace as the daze began to pass a little from his +brain, and snatched the hat and coat, unlocked the front door, opened +it, looked quickly up and down the white streets, and then without a +word cut down the steps and across Washington Square, slowly at first, +and then on a run. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode turned to his visitor. +</P> + +<P> +"Come," he said, "let's go up to bed." +</P> + +<P> +"But," stammered the young man, "you're never going to let him go like +that?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I am," confessed the unpractical gentleman. "I couldn't send a +man to jail on Christmas day." +</P> + +<P> +"But the police——?" +</P> + +<P> +"I shall tell them out of my window that it was a false alarm." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode shut and locked his door, and turning to Waring, laughed +delightedly. +</P> + +<P> +"I must tell you that when he let you in last night Ruggles did not +think you were a gentleman. He must have found out this morning that +you were very much of a man. It's astonishing where you got your +strength, though. He'd make two of you, and you're not fit in any way." +</P> + +<P> +He looked ghastly enough as Bulstrode spoke, and the gentleman put his +arm under the Englishman's. "I'll ring for the servants and have some +coffee made and fetched to your room. Lean on me." He helped the +vagabond upstairs. +</P> + +<P> +The New Yorker, whose sentimental follies were certainly a menace to +public safety and a premium to begging and vagabondage and crime, slept +well and late, and was awakened finally by the keen, bright ringing of +the telephone at his side. As he took up the receiver his whole face +illumined. +</P> + +<P> +"Merry Christmas, Jimmy!" +</P> + +<P> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P> +"What <I>wonderful</I> roses! Thanks a thousand times!" +</P> + +<P> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P> +"But of course I knew! No other man in New York is sentimental enough +to have a woman awakened at eight o'clock by a bunch of flowers!" +</P> + +<P> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P> +"Forgive you!" (It was clear that she did.) +</P> + +<P> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy, what a day for Tuxedo, and what a shame I can't go!" +</P> + +<P> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P> +"You weren't going! You mean to say that you had refused?" +</P> + +<P> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P> +"I don't understand—it's the connection—West?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, ranches look after themselves. They always do. They go right +on. You don't <I>mean</I> it, on Christmas day!" +</P> + +<P> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P> +"I shouldn't care for your reasons. They're sure to be +ridiculous—unpractical—unnecessary—don't tell them to me." +</P> + +<P> +There was a pause, and then the voice, which had undergone a slight +change said: +</P> + +<P> +"Jack's ill again ... that's why I couldn't go to Tuxedo. I shall pass +the day here in town. I called up to tell you this—and to +suggest—but since you're going West..." +</P> + +<P> +Falconer's illnesses! How well Bulstrode knew them, and how well he +could see her alone in the familiar little drawing-room by a hearth not +built for a Christmas tree! He had promised Waring, "I'll stand by +you." It was a kind of vow—a real vow, and the poor tramp had lived +up to his. +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy." There was a note he had never heard before; if a tone can be +a tear, it was one. +</P> + +<P> +He interrupted her. +</P> + +<P> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P> +"How dear of you!" +</P> + +<P> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P> +"But I haven't any Christmas tree!" +</P> + +<P> +<SPAN STYLE="letter-spacing: 2em; font-weight: bold">.......</SPAN><BR> +</P> + +<P> +"You'll fetch one? How <I>dear</I> of you! We'll trim it—with your +roses—make it bloom. Come early and help me dress the tree." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Two hours later he opened the door into his breakfast-room with the +guiltiness of a truant boy. He wore culprit shame written all over his +face, and the young man who stood waiting for him in the window might +almost have read his friend's dejection in his embarrassed face. +</P> + +<P> +But Waring came eagerly forward, answered the season's greetings, and +said quickly: +</P> + +<P> +"Are you still in the same mind about the West, Mr. Bulstrode?" +</P> + +<P> +(Poor Bulstrode!) +</P> + +<P> +"I mean to say, sir, if you still feel like giving me this chance, I've +a favor to ask. Would you let me go <I>alone</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode gasped. +</P> + +<P> +"Since last night a lot has happened to me, not only since you've +befriended me, but since I tussled with that fellow here. I'd like a +chance to see what I can do alone. If you, as you so generously plan, +go with me, I shall feel watched—protected. It will weaken me more +than anything else. I suppose I shall go all to pieces, but I'd like +to try my strength. If I could suddenly master that chap with my fists +after months of dissipation——" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode finished for him: +</P> + +<P> +"You can master the rest." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't give me any extra money," pleaded the tramp, as if he foresaw +his friend's impulse. "Pay my ticket out West, if you will, and write +to the man who is there, and I'll start in." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode beamed on him. +</P> + +<P> +"You're a man," he assured him—"a man." +</P> + +<P> +"I may become one." +</P> + +<P> +"You're a fine fellow." +</P> + +<P> +"You'll trust me, then?" +</P> + +<P> +"Implicitly." +</P> + +<P> +"Then let me start to-day. I'm reckless—let me get away. I may get +off at the first station and pawn my clothes and drink and drink to a +lower hell than before—but let me try alone." +</P> + +<P> +"You shall go alone—and go to-day." +</P> + +<P> +Prosper came in with the coffee; he, too, was beaming, and the servants +below-stairs were all agog. Waring was a hero. +</P> + +<P> +"Prosper," said his master, in French, "will you, after you have served +breakfast, go out to the market quarters and see if you can discover +for me a medium-sized, very well-proportioned little Christmas tree? +Fetch it home with you." +</P> + +<P> +Waring smiled faintly. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode smiled too, and more comprehendingly, and Prosper smiled and +said: +</P> + +<P> +"Mais certainement, monsieur." +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap02"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE SECOND ADVENTURE +</H3> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +II +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN WHICH HE TRIES TO BUY A PORTRAIT +</H3> + +<P> +Bulstrode was extremely fond of travel, and every now and then treated +himself to a season in London or Paris, and in the May following his +adventure with Waring he saw, from his apartments in the Hôtel Ritz, +from Boulevard, Bois, and the Champs Elysées, as much of the +maddeningly delicious Parisian springtime "as was good for him at his +age," so he said! It gave the feeling that he was a mere boy, and with +buoyant sensations astir in him, life had begun over again. +</P> + +<P> +Any morning between eleven and twelve Bulstrode might have been seen in +the Bois de Boulogne briskly walking along the Avenue des Acacias, his +well-filled chest thrown out, his step light and assured; cane in hand, +a boutonnière tinging the lapel of his coat; immaculate and fresh as a +rose, he exhaled good-humor, kindliness, and well-being. +</P> + +<P> +From their traps and motors charming women bowed and smiled, the <I>fine +fleur</I> and the <I>beau monde</I> greeted him cordially. +</P> + +<P> +"Regardez moi ce bon Bulstrode qui se promene," if it were a Frenchman, +or, "There's dear old Jimmy Bulstrode!" if he were recognized by a +compatriot. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode was rather slight of build, yet with an evident strength of +body that indicated a familiarity with exercise, a healthful habit of +sport and activity. His eyes, clear-sighted and strong, looked through +the medium of no glass happily and naïvely on the world. Many years +before his hair had begun to turn gray, and had not nearly finished the +process; it grew thickly, and was quite dark about his ears and on his +brow. Having gained experience and kept his youth, he was as rare and +delightful as fine wine—as inspiring as spring. It was his heart +(Mrs. Falconer said) that made him so, his good, gentle, generous +heart!—and she should know. His fastidiousness in point of dress, and +his good taste kept him close to elegance of attire. +</P> + +<P> +"You turn yourself out, Jimmy, on every occasion," she had said, "as if +you were on the point of meeting the woman you loved." And Bulstrode +had replied that such consistent hopefulness should certainly be +ultimately rewarded. +</P> + +<P> +He gave the impression of a man who in his youth starts out to take a +long and pleasant journey and finds the route easy, the taverns +agreeable, and the scenes all the guide-book promised. Midway—(he had +turned the page of forty)—midway, pausing to look back, Bulstrode saw +the experiences of his travels in their sunny valleys, full of goodly +memories, and the future, to his sweet hopefulness, promised to be a +pleasant journey to the end. +</P> + +<P> +During the time that he spent in Paris every pet charity in the +American colony took advantage of the philanthropic Mr. Bulstrode's +passing through the city, and came to him to be set upon its feet, and +every pretty woman with an interest, hobby, or scheme came as well to +this generous millionaire, told him about her fad and went away with a +donation. +</P> + +<P> +One ravishing May morning Bulstrode, taking his usual constitutional in +the Bois, paused at the end of the Avenue des Acacias to find it +deserted and attractively quiet; he sat down on a little bench the more +reposefully to enjoy the day and time. +</P> + +<P> +There are, fortunately, certain things which, unlike money, can be +shared only with certain people; and Bulstrode felt that the pleasure +of this spring day, the charm of the opposite wood-glades into which he +meditatively looked, the tranquil as well as the buoyant joy of life, +were among those personal things so delightful when shared—and which, +if too long enjoyed alone, bring (let it be scarcely whispered on this +bewildering May morning) something like sadness! +</P> + +<P> +Before his happier mood changed his attention was attracted by a woman +who came rapidly toward the avenue from a little alley at the side. He +looked up quickly at the feminine creature who so aptly appeared upon +his musings. She was young; her form in its simple dress assured him +this. He could not see her face, for it was covered by her hands. +Abruptly taking the opposite direction, she went over to a farther +seat, where she sat down, and when the young girl put her arms on the +back of the seat, her head upon her arms, and in the remoteness this +part of the avenue offered, cried without restraint, the kind-hearted +Bulstrode felt that it was too cruel to be true. +</P> + +<P> +But soft-hearted though he was, the gentleman was a worldling as well, +and that the outburst was a ruse more than suggested itself to him as +he went over to the lovely Niobe whose abundant fair hair sunned from +under her simple straw hat and from beneath whose frayed skirt showed a +worn little shoe. +</P> + +<P> +He spoke in French. +</P> + +<P> +"Pardon, madame, but you seem in great distress." +</P> + +<P> +The poor thing started violently, and as soon as she displayed her +pretty tearful face the American recognized in her a compatriot. She +waved him emphatically away. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, please don't notice me—don't speak to me—I didn't see that +anybody was there." +</P> + +<P> +"I am an American, too: can't I do anything for you—won't you let me?" +</P> + +<P> +And he saw at once that she wanted to be left alone. She averted her +head determinedly. +</P> + +<P> +"No, no, please don't notice me. Please go away!" +</P> + +<P> +He had nothing to do but to obey her, and as he reluctantly did so a +smart pony-cart driven by a lady alone came briskly along and drew up, +for the occupant had recognized him. +</P> + +<P> +"Get in!" she rather commanded. "My dear Jimmy, how <I>nice</I> to find you +here, and how nice to drive you at least as far as the entrance!" +</P> + +<P> +As the rebuffed philanthropist accepted he cast a ruthful glance at the +solitary figure on the bench. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you see that poor girl over there? She's an American, and in real +trouble." +</P> + +<P> +"My <I>dear</I> Jimmy!" His companion's tone left him in no doubt as to her +scepticism. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I know, I know," he interrupted, "but she's not a fraud. She's +the real thing." +</P> + +<P> +They were already gayly whirling away from the sad little figure. +</P> + +<P> +"Did you make her cry?" +</P> + +<P> +"I? Certainly not." +</P> + +<P> +"Then let the man who did wipe her tears away!" +</P> + +<P> +But Bulstrode had seen the face of the girl, and he was haunted by it +all day until the Bois and its bright atmosphere became only the +setting for an unhappy woman, young and lovely, whom it had been +impossible for him to help. +</P> + +<P> +Somebody had said that Bulstrode should have his portrait done with his +hands in his pockets, and Mrs. Falconer had replied, "Or rather with +<I>other</I> people's hands in his pockets!" +</P> + +<P> +The next afternoon he found himself part of a group of people who, out +of charity and curiosity, patronized the Western Artists' Exhibition in +the Rue Monsieur. +</P> + +<P> +Having made a ridiculously generous donation to the support of this +league at the request of a certain lovely lady, Bulstrode followed his +generosity by a personal effort, and with not much opposition on his +part permitted himself to be taken to the exhibition. +</P> + +<P> +He was not, in the ultra sense of the word, a <I>connaisseur</I>, but he +thought he knew a horror when he saw it! So he said, and on this +afternoon his eyes ached and his offended taste cried out before he had +patiently travelled half-way down the line of canvases. +</P> + +<P> +"My dear lady," he confided <I>sotto voce</I> to his friend, "I feel more +inclined to establish a fund for sending all these young women back to +the <I>prairies</I>, if that's where they come from, than to aid in this +slaughter of public time and taste. <I>Why</I> don't they stay at home—and +marry?" +</P> + +<P> +"That's a vulgar and limited point of view to take," his friend +reproached him. "Don't you acknowledge that a woman has many careers +instead of one? <I>You</I> seem to be thoroughly enjoying your liberty! +What if I should ask you why <I>you</I> don't stay at home, and marry?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode looked at his guide comprehensively and smiled gently. His +response was irrelevant. "Look at this picture! It's too dreadful for +words." +</P> + +<P> +"Hush, you're not a judge. Here and there there is evidence of great +talent." +</P> + +<P> +They had drawn up before a portrait, and poor Bulstrode caught his +breath with a groan: +</P> + +<P> +"It's too awful! It's crime to encourage it." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer tried to lead him on. +</P> + +<P> +"Well, this <I>is</I> an unfortunate place to stop," she confessed. "That +portrait represents more tragedy than you can see." +</P> + +<P> +"It couldn't," murmured Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +"The poor girl who did it has struggled on here for two years, living +sometimes on a franc a day. Just fancy! She has been trying to get +orders so that she can stay on and study. Poor thing! The people who +are interested say that she's been near to desperation. She is awfully +proud, and won't take any assistance but orders. You can imagine +<I>they're</I> not besieging her! She has come to her last cent, I believe, +and has to go home to Idaho." +</P> + +<P> +"Let her go, my dear friend." Bulstrode was earnest. "It's the best +thing she could possibly do!" +</P> + +<P> +His companion put her hand on his arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Please be quiet," she implored. "There she is, standing over by the +door. That rather pretty girl with the disorderly blonde hair." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode looked up—saw her—looked again, and exclaimed: +</P> + +<P> +"Is <I>that</I> the girl? Do you know her? Present me, will you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nonsense." She detained him. "How you go from hot to cold! <I>Why</I> +should you want to meet her, pray?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," he evaded, "it's a curious study. I want to talk to her about +art, and if you don't present me I shall speak to her without an +introduction." +</P> + +<P> +Not many moments later Bulstrode was cornered in a dingy little room, +where tea that tasted like the infusion of a haystack was being served. +He had skilfully disassociated Miss Laura Desprey from her Bohemian +companions and placed her on a little divan, before which, with a +teacup in his hand, he stood. +</P> + +<P> +She wore the same dress, the same hat—and he did not doubt the same +shoes which characterized her miserable toilet when he had surprised +her childlike display of grief on a bench in the Bois. He had done +quite right in speaking to her, and he thanked his stars that she did +not in the least remember him. +</P> + +<P> +He thought with kind humor: "No wonder she cries if she paints like +that!" +</P> + +<P> +But it was not in a spirit of criticism that he bent his friendly eyes +on the Bohemian. He had the pleasure of seeing her plainly this time, +for the window back of her admitted a generous square of light against +which her blonde head framed itself, and her untidy hair was like a +dusty mesh of gold. She regarded the amiable gentleman out of eyes +child-like and purely blue. Under her round chin the edges of a black +bow tied loosely stood out like the wings of a butterfly. Her dress +was careless and poor, but she was grace in it and youth—"and what," +thought Bulstrode, "has one a right to expect more of any woman?" He +remembered her boots and shuddered. He remembered the one franc a day +and began his campaign. +</P> + +<P> +"I want so much to meet the painter of that portrait over there," he +began. +</P> + +<P> +Her face lightened. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, did you like it?" +</P> + +<P> +"I think it's wonderful, perfectly wonderful!" +</P> + +<P> +A slow red crept up the thin contour of her cheek. She leaned forward! +</P> + +<P> +"Do you really mean that?" +</P> + +<P> +He said most seriously: +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I can frankly say I haven't seen a portrait in a long time which +impressed me so much." +</P> + +<P> +His praise was not in Latin Quarter vernacular, and coming from a +Philistine, had only a certain value to the artist. But to a lonely +stranded girl the words were balm. Bulstrode, in his immaculate dress, +his conventional manner, was as foreign a person to the Bohemian +student as if he had been an inhabitant of another planet. Her speech +was brusque and quick, with a generous burr in her "rs" when she +replied. +</P> + +<P> +"I've studied at Julian's two years now. This was my Salon picture, +but it didn't get in." +</P> + +<P> +"If one can judge by those that <I>did</I>"—Bulstrode's tact was +delightful—"you should feel honorably refused. I suppose you are at +work on another portrait?" +</P> + +<P> +The face which his interest had brightened clouded. +</P> + +<P> +"No, I'm going home—to Idaho—I'm not painting any more." +</P> + +<P> +All the tragedy to a whole-souled Latin Quarter art student that this +implied was not revealed to Bulstrode, but, as it was, his sensitive +kindness felt so much already that it ached. He hastened toward his +goal with eagerness: +</P> + +<P> +"I'm so awfully sorry! Because, do you know, I was going to ask you if +you couldn't possibly paint my portrait?" It came from him on the spur +of the moment. His frank eyes met hers and might have quailed at his +hypocrisy, but the expression of joy on her face, eclipsing everything +else, dazzled him. +</P> + +<P> +She cried out impulsively: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh—goodness!" so loud that one or two tea-drinkers turned about. +After a second, having gained control and half as though she expected +some motive she did not understand: +</P> + +<P> +"But you never <I>heard</I> of me before to-day! I don't believe you +<I>really</I> liked that portrait over there so very much." +</P> + +<P> +With a candor that impressed her he assured her: "I give you my word of +honor I've never felt quite so about any portrait before." +</P> + +<P> +Here Miss Desprey had a cup of tea handed her by a vague-eyed girl who +stumbled over Bulstrode in her ministrations, much to her confusion. +</P> + +<P> +Laura Desprey drank her tea with avidity, put the cup down on the table +near, and leaning over to her patron, exclaimed: +</P> + +<P> +"I just <I>can't</I> believe I've got an order!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode affirmed smiling: "You have, and if you could arrange to stay +over for it—if it would," he delicately put, "be worth your while——" +</P> + +<P> +She said quietly: +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it would be worth my while." +</P> + +<P> +A <I>distrait</I> look passed over her face for a second, and Bulstrode saw +he was forgotten in, as he supposed, a painter's vision of an order and +its contingent technicalities. +</P> + +<P> +"I can begin at once." He lost no time. "I'm quite free." +</P> + +<P> +"But—I have no studio." +</P> + +<P> +"There must be studios to rent." +</P> + +<P> +Yes. She knew of one; she could secure it for a month. It would take +that time—she was a slow worker. +</P> + +<P> +"But we haven't discussed the price." Before so much poverty and +struggle—not that it was new to him, but clothed like this in beauty +it was rare and appealed to him—he was embarrassed by his riches. +"Now the price. I want," he meditated, "a full-length portrait, with a +great deal of background, just as handsome and expensive looking as you +can paint it." +</P> + +<P> +He exquisitely sacrificed himself and winced at his own words, and saw +her color with amusement and a little scorn, but he went on bravely: +</P> + +<P> +"Now for a man like me, Miss Desprey—I am sure you will know what I +mean—a man who has never been painted before—this picture will have +to cost me a lot of money. You see otherwise my friends would not +appreciate it." +</P> + +<P> +In the vulgarian he was making himself out to be his friends would not +have recognized the unpretentious Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +"Get the place, Miss Desprey, and let me come as soon as you can. All +this change of plans will give you extra expenses—I understand about +that! Every time I change my rooms it costs me a fortune. Now if you +will let me send you over a check for half payment on the picture, for, +let us say"—he made it as large as he dared and a quarter of what he +wanted. They were alone in the tea-room, the motley gathering had +weeded itself out. Miss Desprey turned pale. +</P> + +<P> +"No," she gasped; "I couldn't take anything like half so much for the +whole thing." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode said coldly: +</P> + +<P> +"I'm afraid I must insist, Miss Desprey; I couldn't order less than a +fifteen-hundred dollar portrait. It's the sum I have planned to pay +when I'm painted." +</P> + +<P> +"But a celebrated painter would paint it for that." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode smiled fatuously. +</P> + +<P> +"Can't a man pay for his fads? I want to be painted by the person who +did that portrait over there, Miss Desprey." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +In a tiny studio—the dingy chrysalis of a Bohemian art +student—Bulstrode posed for his portrait. +</P> + +<P> +Each morning saw him set forth from the Ritz alert and debonaire in his +fastidious toilet—-saw him cross the Place Vendôme, the bridge, and +lose his worldly figure in the lax nonchalant crowd of the Quarter +Latin. At the end of an alley as narrow and picturesque as a lane in a +colored print he knocked at a green door, and was admitted to the +studio by his protégée. In another second he had assumed his +prescribed position according to the pose, and Miss Desprey before her +easel began the <I>séance</I>. +</P> + +<P> +On these May days the glass roof admitted delightful gradations of +glory to the commonplace <I>atelier</I>. A few cheap casts, a few yards of +mustard-toned burlaps, some Botticelli and Manet photographs, a mangy +divan, and a couple of chairs were the furnishings. It had been +impossible for Bulstrode to pass indifferently the venders of flowers +in the festive, brilliant streets, and great bunches of <I>giroflé</I>, +hyacinths, and narcissi overflowed the earthenware pitchers and vases +with which the studio was plentifully supplied. The soft, sharp +fragrance rose above the shut-in odor of the <I>atelier</I>, and, while Miss +Desprey worked, her patron looked at her across waves of spring perfume. +</P> + +<P> +Her painting-dress, a garment of <I>beige</I> linen, half belted in at the +waist and entirely covering her, made her to Bulstrode, from the crown +of her fair hair to the tip of her old tan shoes, seem all of one +color. He had taken tremendous interest in his pose, in the progress +of the work. He would have looked at the portrait every few moments, +but Miss Desprey refused him even a glimpse. He was to wait until all +manner of strange things took place on the canvas, till "schemes and +composition" were determined, "proper values" arrived at, and he +listened to her glib school terms with respect and a sanguine hope that +with the aid of such potent technicalities and his interest she might +be able to achieve this time something short of atrocious. +</P> + +<P> +He posed faithfully for Miss Desprey, and smiled at her with friendly +eyes whenever he caught anything more personal than the squinting +glance with which she professionally regarded him, putting him far away +or fetching him near, according to her art's requirements. They talked +in his rest, and he took pleasure in telling her how he enjoyed his +morning walks from his hôtel, how the outdoor life delighted him, and +how all the suburban gardens seemed to have been brought to Paris to +glow and blossom in the venders' carts or in little baskets on the +backs of women and boys, and how thoroughly well worth living he +thought life in Paris was. +</P> + +<P> +"There is," he finished, "nothing in the world which compares to the +Paris spring-time, I believe, but I have never been West. What is +spring like in Idaho?" +</P> + +<P> +Miss Desprey laughed, touched her ruffled hair with painty fingers, +blushed, and mused. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, it's all right, I guess. There's a trolley-line in Centreville, +an electric plant and the oil works—no trees, no flowers, and the +people all look alike. So you see"—she had a dazzling way of shaking +her head, when her fine white teeth, her sunny dishevelled hair, her +bright cheeks and eyes seemed all to flash and chime together—"so you +see, spring in Centreville and <I>Paris</I> isn't the same thing at all! +Things are beautiful everywhere," she assured him slowly as she +painted, "if you're happy—and I was very unhappy in Centreville, so I +thought I'd come away and try to have a career." She poured out a long +stream of <I>garance</I> from the tube on to her palette. Bulstrode +watched, fascinated. +</P> + +<P> +"And here in Paris, are you—have you been happy here?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, dear no!" she laughed; "perfectly miserable. And it used to seem +as though it was cruel of the city to be so gay and happy when I +couldn't join in—" Bulstrode, remembering the one franc a day and the +very questionable inspiration her poor art could impart, understood; +his face was full of feeling—"until," she went slowly on, "lately." +She stepped behind the canvas and was lost to sight. "I've been +awfully happy in Paris for the first time. I do like beautiful +things—but I like beautiful people better—and you're +beautiful—beautiful." +</P> + +<P> +She finished with a blush and a smile. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode grew to think nothing at all about his portrait further than +fervently to hope it would not shock him beyond power to disguise. But +Miss Desprey was frightfully in earnest, and worked until her eyes +glowed with excitement and her cheeks burned. Strong and vigorous and +(Bulstrode over and over again said) "young, so young!" she never +evinced any signs of fatigue, but stood when his limbs trembled under +him and looked up radiant when he was ready to cry "<I>Grâce!</I>" In her +enthusiasm she would have given him two sittings a day, but this his +worldly relations would not permit. As she painted, painted, her head +on one side sometimes, sometimes thrown back, her eyes half closed, he +studied her with pleasure and delight. +</P> + +<P> +"What a pity she paints so dreadfully ill! What a pity she paints at +all! What difference, after all, does it make <I>what</I> she does? She's +so pretty and feminine!" She was a clinging, sweet creature, and the +walk and the flower debauch he permitted himself, the long quiet hours +of companionship with this lovely girl in the <I>atelier</I>, illumined, +accentuated, and intensified Bulstrode's already fatuous appreciation +of the spring in Paris. +</P> + +<P> +During Bulstrode's artistic mornings there distilled itself into the +studio a magic to which he was not insensitive. Whether or not it came +with the flowers or with the delicate filtering of the sun through the +studio light, who can say, but as he stood in his assumed position of +<I>nonchalance</I> he was more and more charmed by his painter. The spell +he naturally felt should, and for long indeed did, emanate from the +slender figure, lost at times behind her canvas, and at times +completely in his view. +</P> + +<P> +For years Bulstrode had been the victim of hope, or rather in this case +of intent, <I>to love again</I>—to love anew! Neither of these statements +is the correct way of putting it. He tried with good faith to prove +himself to be what was so generally claimed for him by his +friends—susceptible; alas, he knew better! +</P> + +<P> +As he meditatively studied the blonde young girl he spun for himself to +its end the idea of picking her up, carrying her off, marrying her, +shutting Idaho away definitely, and opening to her all that his wealth +and position could of life and the world. He grew tender at the +thought of her poor struggle, her insufficient art, her ambition. It +fascinated him to think of playing the good fairy, of touching her +gray, hard life to color and beauty, and as the beauty and the holy +intimacy of home occurred to him, and marriage, his thoughts wandered +as pilgrims whose feet stray back in the worn ways and find their own +old footprints there, ... and after a few moments Miss Desprey was like +to be farther away from his meditations than Centreville is from Paris, +and the personality of the dream-woman was another. Once Miss +Desprey's voice startled him out of such a reverie by bidding him, +"<I>Please</I> take the pose, Mr. Bulstrode!" As he laughed and apologized +he caught her eyes fixed on him with, as he thought, a curious +expression of affection and sympathy—indeed, tears sprang to them. +She reddened and went furiously back to work. She was more personal +that day than she had yet been. She seemed, after having surprised his +absent-mindedness, to feel that she had a right to him—quite ordered +him about, and was almost petulant in her exactions of his positions. +</P> + +<P> +Her work evidently advanced to her satisfaction. +</P> + +<P> +As she stood elated before her easel, her hair in sunny disorder, her +eyes like stars, Bulstrode was conscious there was a change in her—she +was excited and tremulous. In her frayed dress, sagging at the edges, +her paint-smeared apron, her slender thumb through the hole in the +palette, she came over to him at the close of the sitting, started to +speak, faltered, and said: +</P> + +<P> +"You don't know what it means to me—all you have done. And I can't +ever tell you." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't," he pleaded, "pray don't speak of it!" +</P> + +<P> +Miss Desprey, half radiant and half troubled, turned away as if she +were afraid of his eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"No, I won't try to tell you. I couldn't, I don't dare," she +whispered, and impulsively caught his hand and kissed it. +</P> + +<P> +When he had left the studio finally it was with a bewildering sense of +having kissed her hand—no, both of her hands! but one held her palette +and he <I>couldn't</I> have kissed that one without having got paint on his +nose—perhaps he had! He was not at peace. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +That same night a telegram brought him news to the effect that Miss +Desprey was ill and would not expect him to pose the following day; and +relieved that it was not required of him to resume immediately the +over-charged relations, he went back to his old habit, rudely broken +into by his artistic escapade, and walked far into the Bois. +</P> + +<P> +He thought with alarming persistency of Miss Desprey. He was +chivalrous with women, old-fashioned and clean-minded and +straight-lived. In the greatest, in the only passion of his life, he +had been a Chevalier Bayard, and he could look back upon no incidents +in which he had played the part which men of the world pride themselves +on playing well. Women were mysterious and wonderful to him. Because +of one he approached them all with a feeling not far from worship; and +he had no intention of doing a dishonorable thing. Puzzled, +self-accusing—although he did not quite know of what he was guilty—he +sat down as he had done several weeks before on the bench in the Avenue +des Acacias. With extraordinary promptness, as if arranged by a +scene-setter, a girl's figure came quickly out of a side alley. She +was young—her figure betrayed it. She went quickly over to a seat and +sat down. She was weeping and covered her face with her hands. +Bulstrode, this time without hesitation, went directly over to her: +</P> + +<P> +"My dear Miss Desprey——" +</P> + +<P> +She sprang up and displayed a face disfigured with weeping. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>You</I>!" she exclaimed with something like terror. "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" +</P> + +<P> +Her words shuddered in sobs. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't stay here! Why did you come? Please go—please." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode sat down beside her and took her hands. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not going away—not until I know what your trouble is. You were +in distress when I first saw you here and you wouldn't let me help you +then. Now you can't refuse me. What is it?" +</P> + +<P> +He found she was clinging to his hands as she found voice enough to say: +</P> + +<P> +"No, I can't tell you. I couldn't ever tell you. It's not the same +trouble, it's a new one and worse. I guess it's the worst thing in the +world." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode was pitiless: +</P> + +<P> +"One that has come lately to you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, yes!" +</P> + +<P> +She was weeping more quietly now. +</P> + +<P> +"Please leave me: please go, Mr. Bulstrode." +</P> + +<P> +"A trouble with which I have had anything to do?" +</P> + +<P> +She waited a long time, then faintly breathed: +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +The hand he firmly held was gloveless and cold—before he could say +anything further she drew it away from him and cried: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I ought never to have let you guess! You were so good and kind, +you meant to help me so, but it's been the worst help of all, only you +couldn't know that," she pleaded for him. "Please forgive me if I seem +ungrateful, but if I had known that I was going to suffer like this I +would have wished never to see you in the world." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode was trying to speak, but she wouldn't let him: +</P> + +<P> +"I never can see you again. Never! You mustn't come any more." +</P> + +<P> +But here she half caught her breath and sobbed with what seemed naïve +and adorable daring: +</P> + +<P> +"Unless you can help me through, Mr. Bulstrode—it is your fault, after +all." +</P> + +<P> +If this were a virtual throwing of herself into his arms, they were all +but open to her and the generous heart was all but ready "to see her +through." Bulstrode was about to do, and say, the one rash and +irrevocable perfect thing when at this minute fate again at the ring of +the curtain opportuned. The tap, tapping, of a pony's feet was heard +and a gay little cart came brightly along. Bulstrode saw it. He +sprang to his feet. It was close upon them. +</P> + +<P> +"You will let me come to-morrow?" he asked eagerly, +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, yes," she whispered; "yes, I shall count on you. I beg you will +come." +</P> + +<BR> +<P> +"Jimmy," said the lady severely as he accepted her invitation to get +into the cart, "this is the second wicked rendezvous I have +interrupted. I didn't know you were anything like this, and I've seen +that girl before, but I can't remember where." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't try," said Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +"And she was crying. Of course you made her cry." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Bulstrode desperately, "if I did, it's the first woman +that has ever cried for me." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +As the reason why Bulstrode had never married was again in Paris, he +went up in the late afternoon to see her. +</P> + +<P> +The train of visitors who showed their appreciation of her by thronging +her doors had been turned away, but Bulstrode was admitted. The man +told him, "Mrs. Falconer will see you, sir," by which he had the +agreeably flattered feeling that she would see nobody else. +</P> + +<P> +When he was opposite her the room at once dwindled, contracted, as +invariably did every place in which they found themselves together, +into one small circle containing himself and one woman. Mrs. Falconer +said at once to Bulstrode: +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy, you're in trouble—in one of your quandaries. What useless +good have you been doing, and who has been sharper than a serpent's +tooth to you?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode's late companionship with youth had imparted to him a boyish +look. His friend narrowly observed him, and her charming face clouded +with one of those almost imperceptible <I>nuances</I> that the faces of +those women wear who feel everything and by habit reveal nothing. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm not a victim." Bulstrode's tone was regretful. "One might say, +on the contrary, this time that I was possibly overpaid." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes?" +</P> + +<P> +"I haven't," he explained and regretted, "seen you for a long time." +</P> + +<P> +"I've been automobiling in Touraine." Mrs. Falconer gave him no +opportunity to be delinquent. +</P> + +<P> +"And I," he confessed, "have been posing for my portrait. Don't," he +pleaded, "laugh at me—it isn't for a miniature or a locket; it's +life-size, horribly life-size. I've had to stand, off and on with the +rests, three hours a day, and I've done so <I>every day for three weeks</I>." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer regarded him with indulgent amusement. +</P> + +<P> +"It's your fault—you took me to see those awful school-girl paintings +and pointed out that poor young creature to me." And he was +interrupted by her exclamation: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, how <I>dear</I> of you, Jimmy! how sweet and kind and ridiculous! It +won't be fit to be seen." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, never mind that," he waved; "no one need see it. I haven't—she +won't let me." +</P> + +<P> +He had accepted a cup of tea from the lady's hand; he drank it off and +sat down, holding the empty cup as if he held his fate. +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me," she urged, "all about it. It was just like you—any other +man would have found means to show charity, but you have shown +unselfish goodness, and that's the rarest thing in the world. Fancy +posing every day! How ghastly and how wonderful of you!" +</P> + +<P> +"No," he said slowly, "it wasn't any of these things. I wanted to do +it. It amused me at first, you see. But now I am a little +annoyed—rather bothered to tell the truth—He met her eyes with almost +an appeal in his. Mrs. Falconer was in kindness bound to help him. +</P> + +<P> +"Bothered? How, pray? With what part of it? You're not chivalrous +about it, are you? You're not by the way of feeling that you have +compromised her by posing?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, no, no," he hurried; "but I do feel, and I am frank to +acknowledge, that it was a mistake. Because—do you know—that for +some absurd reason I am afraid she has become fond of me." He blushed +like a boy. Mrs. Falconer said coldly: +</P> + +<P> +"Yes? Well, what of it?" +</P> + +<P> +"This—" Bulstrode's voice was quiet and determined—"if I am right I +shall marry her." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer had the advantage over most women of completely +understanding the man with whom she dealt. She knew that to attempt to +turn from its just and generous source any intent of Mr. Bulstrode +would have been as futile as to attempt to turn a river from its parent +fountain. +</P> + +<P> +"You're quixotic, I know, but you're not demented, and you won't +certainly marry this nobody—whose fancies or love-affairs have not the +least importance. You won't ever see her again unless you are in love +with her yourself." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode interrupted her hastily: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, yes, I shall." +</P> + +<P> +He got up and walked over to the window that looked down on Mrs. +Falconer's trim little garden. A couple of iron chairs and a table +stood under the trees. Early roses had begun to bloom in the beds +whose outlines were thick and dark with heart's-ease. Beyond the iron +rail of the high wall the distant rumble of Paris came to his ears. +Mrs. Falconer's voice behind him said: +</P> + +<P> +"She's a very pretty girl, and young enough to be your daughter." +</P> + +<P> +"No," he said quietly, "not by many years." +</P> + +<P> +As he turned about and came back to the lady the room seemed to have +grown darker and she to sit in the shadow. She leaned toward him, +laughing: +</P> + +<P> +"So you have come to announce at last the famous marriage of yours we +have so often planned together." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode stood looking down on her. +</P> + +<P> +"I feel myself responsible," he said gravely. "She was going home, and +by a mistaken impulse I came in and changed her plans. She is +perfectly alone and perfectly poor, and I am not going to add to her +perplexities. I have no one in the world to care what I do. I have no +ties and no duties." +</P> + +<P> +"No," said Mrs. Falconer; "you are wonderfully free." +</P> + +<P> +He said vehemently: +</P> + +<P> +"I am all of a sudden wonderfully miserable." +</P> + +<P> +He had been in the habit for years of suddenly leaving her without any +warning, and now he put out his hand and bade her good-by, and before +she could detain him had made one of many brusque exits from her +presence. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +On the following day—a Sunday, as from his delightful apartments in +the Ritz he set forth for the studio, Bulstrode bade good-by to his +bachelor existence. He knew when he should next see the Place Vendôme +it would be with the eyes of an engaged man. His life hereafter was to +be shared by a "total stranger." So he pathetically put it, and his +sentimental yearning to share everything with a lovely woman had died a +sudden death. +</P> + +<P> +"There's no one in the world to care a rap what I do—really," he +reflected, "and in this case I have run up against it—that's the long +and the short of the matter—and I shall see it through." +</P> + +<P> +As he set out for Miss Desprey's along his favorite track he remarked +that the gala, festive character of Paris had entirely disappeared. +The season had gone back on him by several months, and the melancholy +of autumn and dreary winter cast a gloom over his boyish spirits. A +very slight rain was falling. Bulstrode began to feel a twinge of +rheumatism in his arm and as he irritably opened his umbrella his +spirits dropped beneath it and his brisk, springy walk sagged to +something resembling the gait of a middle-aged gentleman. But he urged +himself into a better mood, however, at the sight of a flower-shop +whose delicate wares huddled appealingly close to the window. He went +in and purchased an enormous bunch of—he hesitated—there were certain +flowers he <I>could</I> not, would <I>not</I> send! The selection his +sentimental reserve imposed therefore consisted of sweet-peas, +<I>giroflés</I>, and a big cluster of white roses, all very girlish and +virginal. His bridal offering in his hand, he took a cab and drove to +the other side of the river with lead at his good heart and, he almost +fancied, a lump in his throat. He paid the coachman, whose careless +spirits he envied, and slowly walked down the picturesque alley of +Impasse du Maine. +</P> + +<P> +"There isn't a man I know—not a man in the Somerset Club—who would be +as big a fool as this!" +</P> + +<P> +He had more than a mind to leave the flowers on the doorstep and run. +Bulstrode would have done so now that he was face to face with his +quixotic folly, but his cab had been heard as well as his steps on the +walk, and the door was opened by Miss Desprey herself. The girl's +colorless face, her eyes spoiled with tears, and a pretty, sad dignity, +which became her well, struck her friend with the sincerity and depth +of her grief, and as the good gentleman shook hands with her he +realized that less than ever in the world could he add a featherweight +of grief to the burden of this helpless creature. +</P> + +<P> +"My dearest child!" He lifted her hand to his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode, I'm so glad you've come, I was so afraid you +wouldn't—after yesterday!" +</P> + +<P> +His arms were still full of white paper, roses, and sweet-peas. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't give them to me, Mr. Bulstrode! Oh, why, did you bring +them? Oh, dear, what will you think of me?" She had possessed herself +of the flowers and with agitation and distress hastily thrust them, as +if she wanted to hide them, behind the draperies of the couch. +Bulstrode murmured something of whose import he was scarcely conscious. +As she came tearfully back to him she let him take her hands. He felt +that she clung to him. "It would have spoiled my life if you hadn't +come. I would have just gone and jumped in the Seine. I may yet. Oh, +you don't understand! It's been hard to be poor—I've been often +hungry—but this last thing was too much. When you found me yesterday +I didn't want to live any more." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode's kind clasp warmed the cold little hands. As tenderly as he +could he looked at her agitated prettiness. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't talk like that"—he tried for her first name and found it. +"Laura, you will let me make it all right, my dear? You will let me, +won't you? You shall never know another care if I can prevent it." +</P> + +<P> +She interrupted with hasty gratitude: +</P> + +<P> +"Nobody else can make it all right but you." +</P> + +<P> +He tried softly: +</P> + +<P> +"Did I, then, make it so very wrong?" +</P> + +<P> +She murmured, too overcome to trust herself to say much: +</P> + +<P> +"Yes!" +</P> + +<P> +She was standing close to him, and lifted her appealing face to his. +Her excitement communicated itself to him; he bent toward her about to +kiss her, when the door of the studio sharply opened, and before +Bulstrode could do more than swiftly draw back and leave Miss Desprey +free an exceedingly tall and able-bodied man entered without ceremony. +</P> + +<P> +The girl gave a cry, ran from Bulstrode, and, so to speak, threw +herself against the arms of the stranger, for there were none open to +receive her. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, here's Mr. Bulstrode, Dan! I knew he'd come; and he'll tell +you—won't you, Mr. Bulstrode? Tell him, please, that I don't care +anything at all about you and you don't care anything about me.... +That you don't want to marry me or anything. Oh, please make him +believe it!" +</P> + +<P> +The poor gentleman's senses and brain whirling together made him giddy. +He felt as though he had just been whisked up from the edge of a +precipice over which he ridiculously dangled. Dan, who represented the +rescuer, was not prepossessing. He was the complete and unspoiled type +of Western youth; the girl herself was an imperfect and exquisite +hybrid. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know that this gentleman can explain to me"—the young fellow +threw his boyish head back—"or that I care to hear him." +</P> + +<P> +She gave a cry, sharp and wounded. The sound touched the now normal, +thoroughly grateful patron, who had come out of his ordeal with as much +kindly sensibility as he went in. +</P> + +<P> +"Of course, my dear young lady"—he perfectly understood the +situation—"I will tell your friend the facts of our acquaintance. +That's what you want me to do, isn't it?" +</P> + +<P> +She was weeping and hanging on to the unyielding arm of her cross +lover, who glared at the intruding Bulstrode with a youthful jealousy +at which the older man smiled while he envied it. He pursued +impressively: +</P> + +<P> +"Miss Desprey has been painting my portrait for the past few weeks. I +gave her the order at the Art League; other than painter and sitter we +have no possible interest in each other—Mr.——" +</P> + +<P> +"Gregs," snapped the stranger, "Daniel Gregs!" +</P> + +<P> +The slender creature, whose eyes never left the stolid, uncompromising +face, repeated eagerly: +</P> + +<P> +"<I>No possible interest</I>—Dan—none! He doesn't care anything about me +at all! You heard what he said, didn't you? I only like him like a +kind, kind friend." +</P> + +<A NAME="img-070"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-070.jpg" ALT=""I only like him like a kind, kind friend"" BORDER="2" WIDTH="482" HEIGHT="741"> +<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 482px"> +"I only like him like a kind, kind friend" +</H4> +</CENTER> + +<P> +Her voice, soft as a flower, caressed and pleaded with the passionate +tenderness of a woman who feels that an inadvertent word may keep for +her or lose for her the man she adores. +</P> + +<P> +"My dear man," exclaimed Bulstrode in great irritation, "you ought to +be ashamed to let her cry like that! Can't you <I>understand</I>—don't you +see?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," shortly caught up the other, "I don't! I've come here from South +Africa, where I'm prospecting some mines for a company at Centreville, +and I heard she was poor and unhappy, and I hurried up my things so I +could come to Paris and marry her and take her with me, and here I find +her painting every day alone with a rich man, her place all fixed up +with flowers, and a thousand dollars in the bank"—his cheek +reddened—"I don't like it! And that's all there is to it!" he +finished shortly. +</P> + +<P> +"No, my friend," said the other severely, "there's a great deal more. +If, from what you say, and the way you speak, you wish me to understand +you have a real interest in Miss Desprey, you can follow me when I say +that I came here and found her a lonely, forsaken girl, obliged to +return to Idaho when she didn't want to go, without any money or any +friends. May I ask you why, if there was any one in the world who +cared for her, she should be left so deserted?" +</P> + +<P> +The girl here turned her face from her lover to her champion. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't please blame Dan for that. He was so poor, too. He didn't have +anything when he went to South Africa; it was just a chance if he would +succeed. And he was working for me, so that he could get married." +</P> + +<P> +Gregs interrupted: +</P> + +<P> +"I don't owe this gentleman any explanation!" +</P> + +<P> +"No," accepted the other gently, "perhaps not, but you mustn't, on the +other hand, refuse to hear mine. Be reasonable. Why <I>shouldn't</I> Miss +Desprey have an order for a portrait?" +</P> + +<P> +Gregs, over the golden head against his arm, looked at Bulstrode: +</P> + +<P> +"<I>She</I> can't paint!" His tone was gentler. "Laura can't paint, and +you know it!" +</P> + +<P> +"Dan!" she whispered; "how cruel you are to me!" +</P> + +<P> +And here the desperate Bulstrode broke in: +</P> + +<P> +"He is, indeed, Miss Desprey, cruel and unjust, and I frankly ask leave +to tell him so. You don't deserve the girl, Mr. Gregs, if she's yours, +as she seems to be." +</P> + +<P> +But the girl clung closer, as if she still feared Bulstrode might try +to rescue her. +</P> + +<P> +"That's all right," frowned the miner. "I am no better and no worse +than any man about his girl, and I'm going to know <I>just where I +stand</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +The gentleman's reply was caustic. "I should be inclined to say you'd +find it hard to be in a better place." +</P> + +<P> +Laura Desprey had wound her arms around Mr. Gregs. Bulstrode held out +his hand. She couldn't take it, nor could her lover. With arrogant +obstinacy he had folded his arms across his chest. +</P> + +<P> +"Come, can't we be friends?" urged the amiable gentleman. "I seem to +have made trouble when I only wanted to be friendly. Let me set it +right before I go. I am lunching in Versailles, and I have to take the +noon train from the Gare Montparnasse." +</P> + +<P> +But Daniel Gregs did not unbend to the affable proposition. Miss +Desprey said: +</P> + +<P> +"When you saw me yesterday in the park, Mr. Bulstrode, Dan had just +come back the day before. I was putting the flowers you sent me in +fresh water when he came in on me all of a sudden. Oh, it was so +splendid at first! I was <I>so</I> happy—until he asked all about you, and +then he grew so angry and said unless you could explain to him a lot of +things he would go away and never see me again, and when you found me I +was crying because I thought he had left me forever. I hadn't seen him +for two years, and if you hadn't helped me to stay on here I should +have had to go to Idaho, and I wouldn't have seen him at all. You +ought to <I>thank</I> him, Dan." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode interrupted: +</P> + +<P> +"Indeed, Mr. Gregs, you should, you know!—you should thank me; come, +be generous." +</P> + +<P> +Dan relaxed his grim humor a little. +</P> + +<P> +"When I get through with this South African business I'm going back to +Centreville, and if I ever get her out of this Paris <I>she'll</I> never see +it again!" +</P> + +<P> +"Dan," she breathed, "I don't want to. Centreville is good enough for +me." +</P> + +<P> +(Centreville! The horrible environment he was to have snatched her +from. Bulstrode smiled softly.) +</P> + +<P> +"But this money," pursued the dogged lover, returning to his grudge. +"You've got to take it back, Mr. Bulstrode. No picture on earth is +worth a thousand dollars, and certainly not Laura's." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Dan!" she exclaimed. +</P> + +<P> +But her friend said firmly: "The portrait is mine. Come, don't be +foolish. If Miss Desprey is willing to marry you and go out to Idaho, +take the money and buy her some pretty clothes and things." +</P> + +<P> +Here the girl herself interrupted excitedly: +</P> + +<P> +"No, no! We couldn't take it. I don't want any new clothes. If Dan +doesn't care how shabby I am, I don't. I don't want anything in the +world but just to go with Dan." +</P> + +<P> +At this sweet tenderness Dan's face entirely changed, his arms +unfolded; he put them around her. +</P> + +<P> +"That's all right, little girl." His tone thrilled through Bulstrode +more than the woman's tears had done. He understood why she wanted to +go to him, and how she could be drawn. He had at times in his life +lost money, and sometimes heavily, and he had never felt poor before. +In the same words, but in a vastly different tone, Dan Gregs held out +his hand to Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +"That's all right, sir. When a fellow travels thousands and thousands +of miles to get his girl and hasn't much more than his car fare and he +runs up against another fellow who has got the rocks and all and who he +thinks is sweet on his girl, it makes him crazy—just crazy!" +</P> + +<P> +"I see"—Bulstrode sympathetically understood—"and I don't at all +wonder." +</P> + +<P> +They were all three shaking hands together and Bulstrode said: +</P> + +<P> +"Would you believe it, I haven't seen my portrait, Miss Desprey." +</P> + +<P> +Dan Gregs grinned. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't," he said, "don't look at it. It's what made all the trouble. +When I saw it yesterday and Laura told me it had drawn a thousand +dollars—why I said 'there isn't a man living who would give you fifty +cents for it.' That made her mad at first. Then she told me you +thought she was a great portrait-painter, and I knew you must be sweet +on her. I'm fond of her all right, but I decided that you were bound +to have her and didn't care how you dealt your cards, and I thought I'd +clear out." +</P> + +<P> +His face fell and threatened to cloud over, but it cleared again as +with the remembrance of his doubts came the actual sense of the woman +whose face was hidden on his breast, and he lightly touched the dusty +golden hair. +</P> + +<P> +When in a few seconds Bulstrode took leave of them, Miss Desprey, in +her dingy painting-dress, seemed completely swallowed up in the embrace +of the big Dan Gregs. From where he stood by the door Bulstrode could +see the white corner of his <I>fiançailles</I> bouquet sticking out from the +draperies of the couch. The paper was open and in the heat of the warm +little <I>atelier</I> the fresh odor of the pungent flowers came strongly on +the air. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode as he said good-by seemed to say it—and to look at the +lovers—through a haze of perfume—a perfume that, like the most +precious things in the world, pervades and affects, suggests and +impresses, while its existence is unseen, unknown to the world. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Once in his train, he had been able to catch it at the Invalides after +all, Jimmy drew a long breath and settled back into himself, for, he +had been, poor dear, during the past three weeks, in another man's +shoes and profiting by another man's identity. It was perfectly +heavenly to feel that he had been liberated by the merciful providence +which takes care to provide the right lover for the right place. He +couldn't be too grateful for the miracle which saved him from a +sacrifice alongside of which Abraham's would have been a jest indeed. +</P> + +<P> +The June morning was warm and through the open car window, as the train +went comfortably along, the perfume of the country came into him where +he sat. Opposite, a pair of lovers frankly and naturally showed their +annoyance at the third person's intrusion, and Bulstrode, +sympathetically turned himself about and became absorbed in Suburban +Paris. His heart beat high at the fact of his deliverance. His +gratitude was sincere—moreover, his thoughts were of an agreeable +trend, and he was able to forget everybody else within twelve miles. +Secure in his impersonality and in the indifference of his broad +unseeing back, the lovers kissed and held hands. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode wandered slowly up from the Versailles station to the Hôtel +des Reservoirs, crossed the broad square of the Palace Court, found the +pink and yellow façade more mellow and perfect than ever, and toward +twelve-thirty strolled into the yard of the old hostelry. Breakfast +had been set for twelve-thirty, but his host was not there. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah—mais, bon jour, Monsieur Bulstrode!" The proprietor knew and +appreciated this client greatly. +</P> + +<P> +Monsieur Falconer, it seemed, had been called suddenly to Paris.... +Yes—well—there were, now and then, in the course of life, bits of +news that could be borne with fortitude. "And Madame has also been +called to Paris?" +</P> + +<P> +"Mais non!" Madame had a few minutes since gone out in the Park, the +proprietor thought she would not be very far away. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode thanked him, and crossed over to the hedge and the gateway +and through it to the Palace Gardens. On all sides the paths stretched +broad and inviting toward the various alleys, and upon the terrace to +his left there shone a thousand flowers in June abundance. The +gentleman chose the first path that opened, and went carelessly down +it, and in a few moments the pretty ring of an embowered circle spread +before him, but, although there was an inviting marble bench under a +big tree at one side, and several eighteenth century marbles on their +pedestals, illuminated by the bland eighteenth century smile, there was +not a living woman in sight to make him, the visitor, welcome! He went +a little further along and found another felicitous, harmonious circle, +where a small fountain threw its jets on the June air. At the sound of +the water Bulstrode remembered that the Grands Eaux were to play on +this afternoon at Versailles. +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, <I>that</I> is why they especially wanted me to come out to-day," he +decided. +</P> + +<P> +On the other side of the fountain, the vivid white of her summer dress +making a flash like moonlight on the obscurity of the woods, a lady was +standing looking across at Mr. Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +"Hush!" she said; "come over softly, Jimmy; there is a timid third +party here." +</P> + +<P> +On a branch at her side, where an oriole sat, his head thrown back, his +throat swelling, there was a little stir and flutter of leaves, for +although the lady had put her finger to her lips, her voice broke the +spell, and a bit of yellow flashed through the trees. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't believe <I>he</I> will ever forgive you!" she cried; "you spoiled +his solo, but I'll forgive you. What brought you out to Versailles +to-day?" +</P> + +<P> +"The fountains," Bulstrode told her; "I have never seen them play. +Then, too—there are certain places to which, when I am asked to +luncheon, I always go." +</P> + +<P> +"That's quite true," she accepted; "you <I>were</I> invited!—but, to be +perfectly frank, I did not expect you, so your coming on this occasion +has only the pleasure of a surprise. As a rule, I hate them. My +husband informed me that he would telephone you to meet him in Paris, +but I think he must have forgotten you, Jimmy." +</P> + +<P> +She was taking him in from his fresh panama to his boots, and she +apparently found an air of festivity about him. +</P> + +<P> +"Was it," she asked, "in honor of the fountains' playing that you have +made yourself so beautiful?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode took the boutonnière out of his coat lapel and handed it to +her. "Can't you pin it in somewhere?" Mrs. Falconer laughed and +thrust the carnation into her bodice. +</P> + +<P> +"I dressed to-day, more or less," Mr. Bulstrode confessed, "in order to +attend—well, what shall I call it—a betrothal? That's a good +old-fashioned word." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh!" exclaimed the lady, "a <I>fiançailles</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes." +</P> + +<P> +The two had wandered slowly along, out of the Bosquet towards the +canals. +</P> + +<P> +"They make a great deal of these functions in France," Mrs. Falconer +said. +</P> + +<P> +Her companion agreed. "They made a great deal, rather more than usual, +out of this one." And his tone was so suggestive that his companion +looked up at him quickly. +</P> + +<P> +"Who <I>are</I> your mysterious lovers?" she asked, "are they French? Do I +know them?" +</P> + +<P> +"They are not in the least mysterious," Bulstrode assured her. "I +never saw anything less complex and more simple. They are Americans." +</P> + +<P> +She seemed now to understand that she was to hear of "one of Jimmy's +adventures," as she called his dashes in other people's affairs. +</P> + +<P> +"I hope, Jimmy, in this case, that you have pulled the affair off to +your credit, and that if you have made a match the creatures will be +grateful to you for once! And, by the way," she bethought; "whatever +has happened to the pretty girl whom you were quixotic enough to think +you had to marry?" +</P> + +<P> +"The last time I saw her she appeared to be in the best of +circumstances," Bulstrode answered cheerfully. "In point of fact—it +was, singularly enough, to <I>her</I> engagement party that I went to-day!" +</P> + +<P> +And Mrs. Falconer now showed real interest and feeling. "No! how +delightful. So she is really off your hands, Jimmy. Well, that is too +good to be true. There's one at least whom you don't have to marry, +Jimmy!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, they grow beautifully less," he agreed. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer smiled softly. +</P> + +<P> +"They are narrowing down every year," Jimmy went on; "when I am about +sixty the number will be reduced, I dare say, to the proper quantity." +</P> + +<P> +"What a goose you are," she said jestingly. "What a tease and a bother +you are, Jimmy Bulstrode; <I>I'll</I> find you a proper wife!" +</P> + +<P> +He accepted warmly. "Do, do! I leave myself quite in your hands." +</P> + +<P> +His companion extended him her hand as she spoke, and after lifting it +to his lips, Bulstrode drew it through his arm. It was clothed in a +glove of pale coffee-color suede. It was a soft, dear hand, and rested +as if it were at home on Bulstrode's gray sleeve. Side by side the two +friends walked slowly out toward the broader avenues leading to the +canals. The sky was faintly blue, touched with the edges of some +drifting cloud, like dashes of foam. The trees about them lifted dark +velvet masses and the air was sweet with the scent of the woods and +flowers. +</P> + +<P> +"Isn't this the most beautiful garden in the world?" murmured Mrs. +Falconer. "Isn't it <I>too</I> beautiful!" +</P> + +<P> +"Very," he incorrectly and vaguely answered. And the lady went on to +say how brilliant she found the place with the suggestions and memories +of the past royal times, whilst Bulstrode said nothing at all, because +he did not want to tell her that Versailles and the charming alleys, +and France, and the great big world, from limit to limit, was full of +no ghosts to him, but of just one woman. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap03"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE THIRD ADVENTURE +</H3> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +III +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN WHICH HE FINDS THERE ARE SOME THINGS WHICH ONE CANNOT BUY +</H3> + +<P> +After not a great deal of hesitation, toward the middle of a warm June, +Bulstrode permitted himself to become the proprietor of a palace: not +an inhabitant of the ordinary dwelling modelled after some old-world +wonder, wherein American millionaires choose to spend their leisure in +their own country—but of a real traditional palace, in whose charming +rooms no object was younger than Bulstrode's great-grandfather, and +where the enchanting women of the Fragonards and Nattiers almost made +him, as he mused upon them, lose sight for a moment of a living lady. +</P> + +<P> +On the very first day he went over the Hôtel Montensier from <I>grenier</I> +to <I>caves</I>, Jimmy Bulstrode gave in, and accepted the Duc de +Montensier's proposition to "fetch his traps for a few months to the +hôtel and turn Parisian." He was in the heart of Paris, yet all around +him, shut in by high walls, was a garden, to which the terraces of the +house gave in flights of marble steps. When his friend suggested that +Bulstrode turn Parisian, Jimmy laughed. "Do you think," he had asked, +"that a chap born in Providence, educated in Harvard, and, if +cosmopolitan, thoroughly American from start to finish, could, <I>mon +cher</I>, turn Parisian?" And the Duc had assured him that he did not +think Bulstrode had a "Latin eyelash," and that he needn't be at all +afraid to try his luck at what a French house would do for him! "Why, +your coat alone—the cut of it—" Montensier had laughed, "speaks of +Poole with a Boston compromise! +</P> + +<P> +The Duc had been in the United States—moreover, the Frenchman had +plans of his own and he wanted very much to go to Newport and leave his +house in the care of Jimmy Bulstrode. Whether the Puritan in him led +Bulstrode to excuse to himself his enjoyment of so much luxury, at any +rate he apologized, saying that nobody could expect a man with a love +of the beautiful, and who had more or less a desire to shut himself up +and to shut himself away for a time, to refuse. +</P> + +<P> +The Falconers were off somewhere <I>en auto</I>. He had thought they had +gone through Spain. It was pretty hot to do such a thing, however, and +he did not really know. He wanted very much to be able not to let +himself follow them, and he knew that there was little chance of his +reaching such stoicism unless he began by not finding out where they +were going! So he shut himself up with the books which the library +offered and gave many charming little dinners and parties on his +terraces in the bland summer nights, and tried with all his might and +main to forget the flight of a certain motor over the fair white roads +and, above all, to nerve himself up to refuse an invitation for the +middle of July. +</P> + +<P> +Directly opposite the white façade of the Montensiers' hôtel was a +hostelry for beggars, for domestics without places; for poor +professors; for actors with no stages but the last; for laborers with +no labor; in short, for the riff-raff of the population, for those who +no longer hold the dignity of profession or pay rent for a term. +Sometimes Bulstrode would look out at the tenement, whose windows in +this season were wide open; and the general aspect indicated that +dislocated fortunes flourished. In one window, pirouetting or dancing +in it, calling out of it, leaning perilously over the sill of it, was a +child—as far as Bulstrode could decide, a creature of about six years +of age. She was too small to see much of, but all he saw was activity, +gesticulation, and perpetual motion. When the day was hot she fanned +herself with a bit of paper. She called far out to the wine-merchant's +wife, who sat with her family before the shop while her pretty children +played in the gutter. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +In Paris, when the weather climbs to eighty, Parisians count themselves +in the tropics and the people, who lived apparently out of doors +altogether, wore a melted, disheartened air. But the De Montensier +garden, full of roses and heliotrope, watered and refreshed by the +fountains' delightful falling, was a retreat not to be surpassed by +many suburbs. Bulstrode gave little dinners on the terrace; little +suppers after the theatre, when rooms and garden were lighted with +fairy lanterns, and his chef outdid his traditions to please his +American master. +</P> + +<P> +One day as the American sat smoking on the terrace with nothing more +disturbing than the drip of the fountain and the remote murmur of Paris +to break his reverie, Prosper, his confidential man, made a tentative +appearance. +</P> + +<P> +"Would m'sieu, <I>who is so good</I>, see a young lady?" +</P> + +<P> +His master smiled as he rose, instinctively at the words "jeune +demoiselle," throwing away his cigar. +</P> + +<P> +"Pardon, m'sieu, I thought it might amuse m'sieu—" and Prosper stepped +back. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode had been intently thinking of the caravansary opposite him, +and he now saw that part of the <I>hôtel meublé</I> had come across the +street; he recognized it immediately for the smallest part. Before him +stood the ridiculous and pathetic figure of a dirty little girl in +rags, tatters, and furbelows, her legs clad in red silk stockings +evidently intended for fuller, shapelier limbs; her feet slipped about +in pattens. She had on a woman's bodice, a long flounced skirt pinned +up to keep her from tripping. Her head was adorned by a torn straw +hat, also contrived and created for the coquetry of maturity. +</P> + +<P> +"Monsieur is so good," she began in a flute-like voice. "I have come +to thank monsieur with all my heart." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode looked toward Prosper for enlightenment, but that individual +had cleverly disappeared. +</P> + +<P> +"To thank me, my child? But for what?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, for the eggs and butter and sugar that monsieur was so good as to +send me. I have made the cake. It is beautiful! Monsieur le +cuisinier of this house baked it for me. It is perhaps a little +flat—but that was because I got tired stirring. See—it says—" She +had, so he now saw, a book under her arm; letting fall a fold of her +cumbersome dress with both hands and opening a filthy cook-book, she +laid it on the table, bending over it. "It says stir briskly half an +hour." (Her "rs" rolled in her throat like tiny cannons in a rosy +hollow.) "Quelle idée! It was <I>too</I> stupid! Half an hour! I just +mixed it round once or twice and then—voila! it has white on the top +and shall have a candle." +</P> + +<P> +"So you've made a cake?" he said kindly. "I'm sure it's a good one." +</P> + +<P> +She nodded brightly. "It is for that I came to thank monsieur and to +ask if he would accept a piece of it." +</P> + +<P> +Poor Bulstrode, with dreadful suspicion, looked to see part of the +horror immediately offered for his degustation. "I don't, my dear, +understand. Why should you thank <I>me</I>—what had I to do with it?" +</P> + +<P> +Her gesture was delightful. "But for monsieur it would not exist; for +butter, eggs, and flour. Monsieur Prosper, when he gave them, said it +was of the kindness of '<I>Monsieur Balstro</I>.'" +</P> + +<P> +(Oh, Prosper! "I have corrupted <I>him</I>," his master thought. "He is as +bad as I am!") +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I'm very glad indeed," and he said it heartily. "But what did +you especially want to make it for—with the one candle? That means +one year old. Who's birthday may it then be?" +</P> + +<P> +"It is the birthday of maman." She shut the book, and as she did so +raised her great black eyes, which dirt and neglect could not spoil. +There was in her appearance so little suggestion of maternal care that +Bulstrode nearly incredulously asked, "Your mother? And what, then, +does your mother do?" +</P> + +<P> +"She's a fish," informed the child tranquilly. And Bulstrode, although +startled, could believe it. It too perfectly accounted for the +cold-blooded indifference to this offspring. Not even a mermaid could +have been guilty of so little care for her child. Still, he repeated: +</P> + +<P> +"A fish?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oui, a devil-fish in the aquarium at Bostock's. Oh, que c'est beau!" +she clasped her little hands. "Maman wears a costume of red—quite a +small, thin dress," she described eagerly. "And it is all spangles, +like fire when she dives into the water. I have been; the waiter at +the café downstairs took me. I screamed. I thought maman was drowned. +But no—she comes up always!" The child threw her head back and lifted +her eyes in ecstasy. "C'est magnifique!" +</P> + +<P> +"What is your mother's name?" +</P> + +<P> +"Mademoiselle Lascaze." +</P> + +<P> +"And yours?" +</P> + +<P> +"Simone." +</P> + +<P> +"What do you do all day, Simone?" +</P> + +<P> +"I wash and cook and sew and play—I have much to do—oh, much." She +assumed an important air. "The bad air of the room makes maman ill, so +she's out—'to breathe,' she says—and she locks me safely in. I play +Bostock and dive like maman. And sometimes"—she lowered her voice, +and looking back to see if they were alone—confided, "I cry." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah!" sympathized Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +"But, yes," she insisted, "when maman forgets to come home, and the +night is so black; then the seamstress next door knocks on the wall, +and I knock back for company." +</P> + +<P> +"I see," he understood gently, "for company." +</P> + +<P> +He rang for Prosper. "You will conduct mademoiselle home, Prosper, and +give her everything she needs for her kitchen always." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, monsieur; I knew that monsieur would——" +</P> + +<P> +At sight of Prosper the mite gathered up her voluminous skirts and bade +her new friend a cordial good-by. +</P> + +<P> +From the corrupted Prosper Bulstrode extracted what he wished to know +concerning the child. +</P> + +<P> +"It is of a scandalousness, monsieur! Four nights of the seven the +poor little object is alone. The mother appears to have money enough, +she pays her rent regularly, and there is therefore nothing to do. She +sometimes even fetches her companions home with her, and Simone, when +she is not making sport for them, is tied to a chair to keep her from +falling off in her sleep." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode expressed himself strongly, violently for him, went to see a +lawyer and a charitable French countess and found out that so long as +the mother did not actually ill-treat the child she could not be +replaced by any other guardian. +</P> + +<P> +"Mon cher ami," said the spirituelle lady, "leave the fish to her +deviltry, and her child in her care. We are <I>fin de race</I>, if you +like, and in direct opposition to your American progressive schemes, +but we have a tradition that the family is sacred, and that, however +bad it may be, a child is better off in its home than elsewhere. You +will find it difficult to replace a mother by a <I>machine</I> or an +<I>institution</I>, believe me." +</P> + +<P> +And Bulstrode at the words felt a new sense of failure in +philanthropies, and his benevolence seemed pure dilletantism. What was +he likely to accomplish in the case of this child? Nothing more than +the momentary pleasure a few toys and a few hours of play could secure. +"And yet," as he mused he philosophically put it to himself, "isn't it, +after all, about the sum total any of us get out of destiny?" +</P> + +<P> +In New York he would have quite known how to proceed in order to help +the child, but in the face of French law and strong family prejudice he +came up against a stone wall. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm no sort of a real benefactor," he remorsefully acceded, "and I +don't believe I'm fit to be trusted alone with the poor." +</P> + +<P> +Nevertheless he did not relinquish his idea entirely, and confided +Simone to Prosper's sympathetic care and that of an emotional +maid-servant, with the result that a cleaning woman penetrated by hook +or crook into the room of "the fish" and treated it to more <I>aqua pura</I> +than the piscatory individual had cognizance of outside of the aquarium. +</P> + +<P> +The gentleman in this particular charity was surprised to find how +simple it sometimes is to do good. In this case no one had come to him +with a petition or a demand; on the contrary, a note of undeserved +thanks had, with the strange little creature, been presented to him. +It was so pleasantly easy to help a child! There were no <I>arrières +pensées</I>—not that they would have troubled him, but there were none; +there were no wire-pullings, no time infringements, no suggestion or +criticism, no—he believed—expectations. Everything he could do was +so annoyingly little! The charwoman cleaned, Simone had a complete +wardrobe, the larder was full, and there remained nothing but toys to +buy. The little thing was so womanly and capable—he had seen it and +marvelled in their interviews at her age and accomplishments—her hands +were so apt and almost creative, that toys seemed inadequate. She took +her benefits charmingly; rushed over at the least provocation to pour +out her gratitude, and Bulstrode, who hated thanks, liked these. +Childhood, if it had been for sale on the Boulevard, even that he would +have bought Simone if he could! As it was, he found himself pausing +before a series of shops other than chemisièrs—florists, and +jewellers'—shops where diminutive objects were displayed—and one +afternoon had been standing ridiculously long in front of a certain +window on the Rue de Rivoli when he was accosted by an agreeable and +familiar voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy! It isn't possible! don't tell me it has come so cruelly +<I>soon</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +The gentleman gave a violent, but an entirely happy start. Well, there +were rewards then for people who didn't follow speeding motors through +France! She was back and in Paris. +</P> + +<P> +"What—has come so soon?" he asked. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer, on her way from a hat shop in her automobile, stopped by +his side. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, your second childhood, my dear man. Do you know what shop you +are standing before?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode seemed to be perfectly aware of his dotage and to delight in +it. Behind the big window pane there was a bright and very juvenile +display. +</P> + +<P> +Ships sailed there; dolls hung gaudily and smilingly aloft; giant +parti-colored balls rounded out their harlequin sides; tiny dishes for +pygmy festivals were piled with delicious carrots and artichokes on +little white, blue-rimmed platters. +</P> + +<P> +"Have you a moment to spare?" Bulstrode asked her. +</P> + +<P> +"I have bought all my hats," she replied; "after that a woman's time +hangs heavy on her hands." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah!" he was as radiant as she had the genius for making him. "Come, +then, in with me and help me choose a <I>doll</I>." +</P> + +<P> +It was not the first purchase during the course of a long friendship +which Bulstrode had made with this charming woman by his side, but for +some reason he enjoyed it more than former errands. The bachelor and +the childless woman were hard to please and their choice consumed an +unconscionable time. As they lingered, the amiable shopman pressed +various toys on monsieur and madame "<I>pour les enfants</I>," and the lady, +finally depositing her friend with his parcels at the door of his +hôtel, realized as she drove away that she knew nothing of the child +for whom the purchases had been made. On her way up the Champs Elysées +she smiled softly. "It's what you <I>share</I>," she mused, "what you give +of <I>yourself—with</I> yourself—<I>that's</I> charity! Jimmy gives himself. +I wonder who his new love is?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, in order to share what should be his "new love's" ecstasy at +first sight of the miraculous toy, sent for Simone. The Rue de Rivoli +doll, on a small chair designed for diminutive ladies of the eighteenth +century or for the king's dwarfs, held out stiff but cordial arms and +was naturally, to a child, the first and sole object of the +drawing-room. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Monsieur!</I>" +</P> + +<P> +"For you, Simone." +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Monsieur!</I>" +</P> + +<P> +She said nothing else as she clasped her hands, and the color rushed +into her face, but she felt the doll, touched reverently its feet, +hair, dress, incontinently forgot Bulstrode, and quite suddenly, +passionately, caught the image of life to her heart. Just over its +blonde head, for it was nearly as large as herself, she met the +gentleman's eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"It's my child! I've prayed for it always, always! I've never had a +doll, a <I>bébé</I>, m'sieu." +</P> + +<P> +The tea-table with cakes and chocolate called them all too soon and, as +Prosper served, the fountains sang, the heat stole through the garden +and called up agreeable odors of sod and roses, the late afternoon sky +spread its expanse over the terrace of the hôtel, where, perfectly +happy both of them, animated by as gentle and harmless pleasure as any +two in Paris that day, the child of the people and an American +gentleman chatted over their tea. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, being an original, erratic, and reckless giver of alms, +quite by this time knew that, more than often, for him to give was, if +not to regret, to have at least misgivings whether in the hands of some +colder, less poetic person his money would not have accomplished more +good. In the case of Simone he had, as usual, happily gone on with +abandon, relegating any remorse to a future which he hoped would never +arrive. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +But the middle of July did come and with it came poor Jimmy's exquisite +temptation. A telephone helped it dreadfully. There was something so +wonderful in the fact that in a couple of hours he could, if he would, +let himself reach the side of the lovely voice which called to him over +the wires. And being nothing but a human man, he threw all his good +resolves to the wind, and went down and stayed three days at +Fontainebleau. +</P> + +<P> +Out under the sky, where the elastic earth sprang softly beneath her +feet and the embowered forests were sifted through with gold, Mary +Falconer finally asked him, "And your doll, Jimmy? Have you broken her +yet?" Bulstrode felt a guilty twinge, for he had not once thought of +the little girl, nor did Mrs. Falconer's mention of her bring the +subject near enough for Bulstrode to tell her the pretty story. He had +other things to say, and many things not to say, and this, as it always +did when he was with his lady, kept him very absorbed and occupied. On +this occasion he forgot all about little Simone. +</P> + +<P> +The night of his return Paris was <I>en fête</I> and in no sense impatient +to reach his lonely house—for it seemed to him this night the +loneliest house in the world—he walked without haste up town along the +quays. +</P> + +<P> +It was hard to forget that not fifty miles away he had left the cool +forests, their tempting roads, their alluring alleys. He had forgotten +that it was the annual celebration and that at this late hour the +<I>fête</I> would be in full swing, and as he strolled meditating along the +Seine the spirit of the gay populace—good-humor, reckless pleasure, +and the <I>joie de vivre</I>—poured itself out around him like cordial, +like a generous gift from an over-charged horn of cheer. In his gray +clothes, modish panama, a little white rose plucked by a dear hand from +the trellis at Fontainebleau still in his buttonhole, Bulstrode +scarcely remarked the crowds or heard the music as he passed outdoor +dancing stands and was jostled by a dancing throng. +</P> + +<P> +His own street, as he approached it, welcomed him with a strong odor of +onions and fried potatoes; it had apparently turned itself out of doors +and all of the houses seemed to have emptied themselves into the narrow +alley. A hurdy-gurdy playing before the <I>hôtel meublê</I> tinkled and +jangled in the centre of a crowd of merry-makers, and the metallic +melody and wild ascending octaves were the first sounds Bulstrode +consciously heard since he left Fontainebleau. +</P> + +<P> +In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing like a mad child, +hair, arms, and feet flying; her voice, thin and piercing, every now +and then above the rattle of the hand-organ, cried out the lines of a +popular song whose meaning on her lips was particularly horrifying. +The wine-shop family encircled her, encoring her vociferously. As she +paused for breath the light from over the shop-door shone on her +excited little face. +</P> + +<A NAME="img-100"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-100.jpg" ALT="In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing" BORDER="2" WIDTH="482" HEIGHT="740"> +<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 482px"> +In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing +</H4> +</CENTER> + +<P> +"I tired! Mon Dieu, que non! I could dance till morning. Play again, +monsieur l'organiste. Play again." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, on the crowd's edge, watched her, and for once in his +philanthropic history made no attempt to rescue. As Prosper let his +master in he said: +</P> + +<P> +"It's a shame, isn't it, monsieur? The people over there have let her +run quite crazy. The poor little thing! Heaven knows where the mother +is!" +</P> + +<P> +Of which celestial knowledge Bulstrode had his doubts. It was close to +twelve, and dismissing Prosper for the night, he took his cigar out on +the terrace and to what solitude his garden might extend. Before long +the noise of the music subsided, the people, tired out with hours of +festivity, dispersed, and the alley settled into quiet. From the +distance now and then came the soft, dull explosion of fireworks, the +rumble and roar of Paris was a little accelerated; otherwise the +silence about Bulstrode's garden grew and deepened as the night +advanced. +</P> + +<P> +It was rare for him to allow himself to be the object of his own +personal consideration, or that indeed he at all thought of himself, +and when he did the man he had long ignored had his revenge and made +him pay up old scores. +</P> + +<P> +On the late afternoon of this very day he was to have walked for miles +through the Fontainebleau woods with Mrs. Falconer, and instead he had +fled. Pleading a sudden summons to Paris, he left Fontainebleau. +</P> + +<P> +It was well past four o'clock when he at last threw his cigar away and +rose. He had been musing all night in his chair. +</P> + +<P> +A sudden gust of noise blew down the quiet little street, the sound of +loud singing and the shrill staccato of a woman's laugh. By the time +the revellers had passed his house and the hubbub had died away, +Bulstrode, with an idea at length of going up to his room, walked +across the salon and prepared to extinguish the electricity, but the +sound of some one tapping without caught his ear, and going over to the +window that gave on the street, he looked out. From end to end the +alley was deserted except for the figure of a woman. As he saw in the +ruddy light of early morning she huddled against the threshold of the +<I>hôtel meublé</I>—knocking persistently at the door. The tattered gauze +of her dress, whose bold <I>decolletée</I> left her neck and shoulders bare, +a garland of roses on the bandeaux of her black hair, she epitomized +the carnival just come to its end—its exhaustion, its excess, spent at +length, surfeited, knocking for entrance at last to rest. Bulstrode, +as he remarked the sinuous figure that swayed as the woman stood, +exclaimed to himself with illumination: "Why, she's the <I>fish</I>, of +course! Simone's mother! And this is the state in which she goes to +the miserable child!" +</P> + +<P> +As, knocking at intervals, the object leaned there a few moments +longer, evidently scarcely able to stand, his pity wakened and he +slowly left the window, shut in its blinds, and crossed his +ante-chamber, where the artificial light of electricity was met by the +full sunshine of the breaking day streaming in through the open window +of his terrace. Not entirely sure of his motive or to what excess of +folly it might lead him, he nevertheless opened wide his front door, +only to see that the woman on the opposite street had gone. She had +been let in. With a glance of relief up and down the street where the +<I>confetti</I> in disks of lilac and yellow and red lay in dirty piles or +swam on the flushing gutters that sparkled in the light, Bulstrode shot +to his door on the Parisian world and after a <I>nuit blanche</I> went +upstairs to his rooms. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +And there had intensely come to him during the period of his dressing +the next morning after a tardy wakening the idea of taking the child, +of—he was certain it could be done—buying the mother off. He would, +in short, if he could, legally adopt the Parisian <I>gamine</I> for his own. +It would give him a distinct interest, and life was empty for want of +one; this, in a manner, however short of perfect, would supply the need +of a loving living creature in his environment and would—his thrill at +the idea proved to him how lonely he had been—give him companionship +and a responsibility of a tender, personal sort. He could make a home +at last for a child. Men are more paternal than they are credited with +being, and Bulstrode directly foresaw delightful <I>causeries</I> in the +future with—(he knew many women)—<I>with one woman</I> whose pretty taste, +whose wit and humor, should counsel him in his new rôle. Mrs. Falconer +would dress Simone—her hand should be wonderfully in it all. +Bulstrode had let his fancy linger over the scheme. Certainly, during +the hour in which he spun his fanciful plan, there was not one bar to +its execution. Nor did there come to him any hint of its intrinsic +sterility, or the idea that it was possibly an excuse for the +interweaving of another interest more closely with his life—no idea +that he was simply strengthening an old bond, or by means of this +little tug pushing a mighty vessel nearer port. +</P> + +<P> +He almost happily mused until a nursery grew out of thin air, a child's +little garments lay on a chair, and festivities, whose charm is of the +most mysterious, illuminated his reverie. Bulstrode, even without the +shudder of the climatician, contemplated the rigors of his own country, +for a rosy room grew out of his dream, fire-lit and fragrant with fir +and holly, and in the centre shone The Tree, whose shiny globes and +marvels were reflected till they danced in a child's eyes. +</P> + +<P> +There had been an hour earlier the quick, brusque dash of a French +thunder-storm, and the cooled air came refreshingly from the garden as +Bulstrode stood out on the terrace before going into the noonday +breakfast. Prosper, fetching his master's coffee at nine o'clock, had +been informed that they were leaving Paris that day and received +instructions as to the setting in order of the hôtel before returning +it to its proprietor. Where his wanderings were to take him Bulstrode +had not as yet made up his mind. It, after all, mattered so very +little what a bachelor did with his leisure! It was the height of the +season along the seacoast and a dozen places brilliantly beckoned; +there were tri-weekly boats to the country, where he should most +properly be. +</P> + +<P> +"There is," he with recurrent leeway to his inclinations reflected, +"always plenty of time to decide what one does not want to do!" +</P> + +<P> +As he glanced at the little breakfast spread temptingly there for him +on the terrace he was arrested by the sound of French voices in quick, +agitated discussion, and looked up to see the unceremonious entrance of +quite a little band of people who had in point of fact penetrated his +seclusion. In a second of time a group was before him and he +remembered afterward that certain figures in a twinkling assumed +familiar shapes: the wine-shop keeper, his wife, one or two other +patrons of the hôtel; but in the centre—he was sure of her!—pale and +staring, stood little Simone, her big doll clasped in her arms. +</P> + +<P> +Before the gentleman could ask their errand Madame Branchard, eager to +tell it, pushed forward. Bulstrode afterward, when he thought of the +scene, could always distinctly see her important red face, sleek, oily +hair, and in spite of summer heat the crocheted shawl over her cotton +gown. +</P> + +<P> +"We decided at once to address to monsieur, who is so good"—(he was +growing accustomed to the formula) "to monsieur who has been so like a +father to the poor little thing. Not but that we are ready ourselves +to do all we can for her—she is so sweet, so intelligent!" +</P> + +<P> +"The sweet, intelligent child" appeared, as Bulstrode's pitying gaze, +never leaving her, saw, to have shrunk overnight. In their midst she +stood of a ridiculous smallness, her big doll nearly hiding her and +over its blonde head Simone's eyes peered pathetically into, as it +were, a vague and terrifying world. Bulstrode asked shortly in the +face of the theatrical prelude: +</P> + +<P> +"What is this all about? What have you come to tell me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, monsieur!" Madame Branchard's voice, particularly suited to +retailing the tragedies of the streets, quavered. "There has been a +<I>malheur</I>—it is too horrible—the mother!" +</P> + +<P> +"Stop!" Bulstrode put out his hand. "Simone!" +</P> + +<P> +The little thing dragged herself to him with a new timidity, as though +she believed him in league with the world against her. +</P> + +<P> +"Come," he encouraged, "come out here on the terrace, where you have so +often played with your doll, and don't be frightened, <I>mon enfant</I>; +everything will be all right." +</P> + +<P> +When he had so settled her in the smallest of chairs he went back to +the other bit of Paris street-life which had seethed in to him. +</P> + +<P> +Madame Branchard, whom his manner had reduced to, for her, marvellous +quiet and ease, approached impressively and lowered her voice as deeply +as it would fall. +</P> + +<P> +"Mademoiselle Lascaze, whom monsieur knows has been my tenant for +months past, is dead—dead, monsieur!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode echoed, "Dead?" and his first thought was: "It was not she, +then, whom I saw striving for entrance this morning. Ah, poor +creature! Drowned?" +</P> + +<P> +"Monsieur then knows?" +</P> + +<P> +Knows—how should he know? He had thought of the aquarium and her +often repeated feat. +</P> + +<P> +"Monsieur is right, she is drowned; but it is not the aquarium—it is +the Seine. It appears," the wine-merchant's wife went on, "that last +night she made <I>la fête</I> in the streets. We over here lock up, well, +at a decent hour, as monsieur will understand. Those who are in stay, +those who are out—well, monsieur will understand——" +</P> + +<P> +Yes, he understood. Would she go on? +</P> + +<P> +"Mademoiselle Lascaze had evidently lost her key of entry—so it +appears. We have this story from her comrades, a bad lot, like +herself. She tried to get in about five o'clock—they left her +knocking at the door. She must then have wandered the streets for an +hour, for it was six when they met her again by chance quite by the +Pont des Arts. They all had something to drink and started across the +river, when the poor thing offered to give an exhibition of her circus +feat and, before anyone could stop her, had dived off the bridge into +the Seine." +</P> + +<P> +He had, then, seen her knocking there in the dawn, and if he had +hastened a little—not held conventionally back—— +</P> + +<P> +"It is all <I>en règle</I>," assured Madame Branchard. "As my husband will +tell monsieur, he has been to the morgue to identify her." +</P> + +<P> +The wine-merchant now at his cue, nodded impressively. "Mais oui, I +assure monsieur she was quite natural—and she was une belle femme tout +le même——" +</P> + +<P> +His wife glanced at him scornfully. "She was a bad mother, and all the +house will tell you so. Many times, monsieur, I have gone in with my +pass-key and taken the poor little thing downstairs in my arms to give +her all the supper she would have had, and many a time, on cold nights, +when there was not a stick of fire in their room, and the woman +abroad—many a time I have had her sleep in our bed with us—my husband +will tell monsieur." +</P> + +<P> +The wine-merchant nodded assent. "She speaks the truth, monsieur." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode found presence of mind to wonder. "I suppose Mademoiselle +Lascaze left debts?" +</P> + +<P> +The husband and wife exchanged glances. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>En vérité</I>, monsieur," confessed Madame Branchard, "she has left a +few, but they are small and not significant; a hundred francs will +cover them. It is not for our pockets we are come to monsieur." +</P> + +<P> +Here the sentimentality having been disposed of by the woman, the +husband broke in: +</P> + +<P> +"It is like this, Monsieur Balstro" (Bulstrode saw how intimately the +<I>hôtel meublé</I> knew him): "In a few moments even the authorities will +be here to take charge of the woman's effects and Simone will become +the property of the State. She has no relatives, as Monsieur will +understand. Thinking, therefore, that monsieur, <I>who is so good</I>, +might for some reason care to take an interest in the child's +future——" +</P> + +<P> +Branchard coughed and paused. Having given Mr. Bulstrode ample time to +speak, to show some signs of life and of his usual quick benevolence, +and being greeted with nothing other than quiet, meditative silence, +the merchant shrugged and comprehensively relinquished suppositions and +hopes in one large gesture. +</P> + +<P> +"In which case" (evidently that of taking for granted that Bulstrode +was less good than they had supposed), "in that case we shall put in a +plea ourselves for Simone and adopt her." +</P> + +<P> +Madame's voice, now in full and customary volume, expressed frankly +<I>her</I> goodness. "We have five children and our means are modest, +but"—and she put it sublimely—"<I>one is not a mother for nothing</I>." +</P> + +<P> +Her tirade, however, was quite lost on Bulstrode, who was occupied with +his own projects of benevolence. Turning to this contingent of the +<I>hôtel meublé</I> a back scarcely more imperturbable than his face had +been, he went out of the room to the terrace, where Simone sat just as +he had left her. She was, on her low chair, so tiny that in order more +nearly than ever before to approach her little point of view, to come +into her little sphere, Bulstrode knelt down on one knee. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't look so frightened, my child. Nothing will harm you—I assure +you of that; don't you"—he called her loyally to answer—"don't you +believe me, Simone?" +</P> + +<P> +The little thing drew in a struggling breath and whispered: "Oui, +m'sieu." +</P> + +<P> +"Good!" He was smiling at her and had taken her ice-cold, dirty, +little hands. "You are fond of me, Simone—you like a little M'sieu +Balstro'?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," she caught at her frightened voice and more clearly whispered, +"oh, oui, m'sieu!" +</P> + +<P> +"Bien encore!" +</P> + +<P> +He wanted tactfully to break the ice which shock and terror had formed +around the poor little heart, and yet not to prolong the moment. +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Voyons</I>," he said to her lightly, as if he were only to bid her come +and play in his garden, and not ask her to decide her destiny. +"<I>Voyons</I>, how would you like to come and live with me? to have toys +and pretty clothes and good things to eat—to be"—the bachelor put it +bravely—"to be <I>my</I> little girl. How, Simone, would you like it?" +</P> + +<P> +If further startled she was humanized by his warmth, which was melting +her; her breast heaved, her lips trembled, and she asked: "Et +puis—maman?" +</P> + +<P> +Here Madame Branchard, in whom all feelings were subordinate to +curiosity and motherhood, had approached until she stood directly +behind the two on the terrace. Tears had sprung to her eyes and she +sniffled and wiped them frankly away with her hand. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, singularly relieved by her appearance, turned and asked her, +"What does she then know?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing, m'sieur, nothing at all." +</P> + +<P> +Simone got up on her feet and her big doll fell with a crash on the +marble of the terrace and broke in a dozen pieces, but the catastrophe +did not touch her. +</P> + +<P> +"And maman?" she repeated. "Where is she? She did not come home last +night?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode had descended to one knee in order to approach her, but +Madame Branchard got down on both knees and tenderly put her arms +around the child. +</P> + +<P> +"Look, ma petite—your mother has gone away forever to a beautiful +country, and she has left you here to be a good girl and do whatever +this kind gentleman says. Will you go to be his little girl? He will +give you everything in the world." She closed with this magnificent +promise, whose breadth and wealth no child-mind could grasp. In order +to give her more complete liberty in which to make her decision the +wine-merchant's wife, after kissing her, set her free. +</P> + +<P> +Simone made no audible reflection of wonder at her seeming desertion, +no exhibition of distress, no melodramatic outburst of grief or +surprise. She stood silent, absorbed, desolate, and ashamed, twisting +in and out between her frail little fingers the fringe of Madame +Branchard's black shawl. +</P> + +<P> +"Or," brightly continued the good woman, "you can come home with me and +play with Marie and Jeannette and have what we have. You can be my +little girl, as you will—it is for you to decide—chez moi, or with +this bon monsieur." +</P> + +<P> +Was it fair of them—thus to lay on her six years the burden of her own +destiny? +</P> + +<P> +Simone raised her head; her cheeks had reddened a little at Madame +Branchard's last words. She was unable to grasp the benefits that +Bulstrode's magnificence offered, but she knew Marie and Jeannette—she +knew the hands of Madame Branchard could tuck one in at night, and how +warm and soft was the bosom on which she had already wept her little +griefs. There were many beautiful things in the world, but Simone just +then only wanted one. Madame Branchard was not <I>her</I> mother—but she +was still <I>a</I> mother! Simone whispered so low that only the woman +heard: +</P> + +<P> +"I will go with you." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Prosper having embarked on a sea of indiscretion, went through the day +consistently. With a love of the melodramatic in his Latin temperament +he had admitted the <I>hôtel meublé sans cérémonie</I>: and late that +afternoon he gave entrance to another group of quite a different order, +and without formality ushered the lady and her friends to the terrace, +where the solitary inhabitant of another man's house was taking a +farewell beverage before leaving Paris. +</P> + +<P> +"We have caught you in time, Jimmy!" Mrs. Falconer made a virtue of it. +"If you are absconding with the Montensier treasures, then let me show +Molly and the Marquis at least what has been left behind." +</P> + +<P> +His bags and boxes in the hall, his automobile at the door, and +Bulstrode himself in travelling trim, it looked very much like a +flight, indeed. Miss Molly and the Marquis, it transpired, were able +to explore for themselves and to find in the gallery and salons +pictures and objects of interest to excuse a prolonged absence. +</P> + +<P> +"They're engaged," Mrs. Falconer explained to her host. "Isn't it +ridiculous? As you know, she hasn't a cent in the world, and his +family are not in the secret, but Molly and De Presle-Vaulx <I>are</I>, and +<I>I</I> am, and I brought them off in pity for a spin to Paris." +</P> + +<P> +The apparition of the lady, whose mocking beauty had a fresh charm +every time he saw her—her worldly wisdom and her keen +reasonableness—made, as he stood talking with her, his past debauch in +philanthropies seem especially grotesque. With a long breath of joy at +the sight of her Bulstrode also realized how wonderfully separated from +her the introduction of another life into his environment would have +made him. +</P> + +<P> +"Your garden is a waste," the lady criticised, "dusty and dull. I +don't wonder you're getting away. Fontainebleau, too, was only a +<I>faute de mieux</I>, and I have left it. One should get really far away +at this season. It's the time when only the persons who are actually +bred in its stones can stay in Paris—certainly the birds of passage +may now, if ever, fly." +</P> + +<P> +"We are going to Trouville," she said; "we are all going to motor +through Normandy. Won't you come—won't you come?" He shook his head. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer looked across the terrace to where a little chair had +been overturned, and on the floor by its side lay a broken doll. +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy!" she laughed in triumph at the sight. "You <I>have</I> broken your +doll!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode said: "Yes, beyond repair, and I don't want another." Then +in a few words, briefly, a little impatient, and still smarting under +the child's defection, he gave her the story. +</P> + +<P> +Listening, absorbed, her charming eyes on him or at one moment turned +suspiciously away, the lady heard him to the end, and at the end said +softly: +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy, my poor Jimmy! What have you nearly done! What <I>would</I> people +have thought? Not that it matters in the least—it's what people <I>do</I> +that counts—but oh, I tremble for your next folly!" +</P> + +<P> +"It might"—he spoke with something like bitterness—"be less harmless +and leave me less alone." +</P> + +<P> +She had finished a glass of iced tea, put her goblet down on the tray +and rose, coming over to where Bulstrode stood; she lightly laid her +hand on his arm. +</P> + +<P> +"You are, then, so very lonely? So lonely that you would be capable of +doing this foolish thing? Oh, you would have found, as I have found, +that it is those things which come into our lives, not those which we +by force <I>take</I>, which mean all we want them to mean! This wasn't +<I>your child</I>!" Mrs. Falconer's face softened as he had never seen it. +"Nor yet is she the child of some woman you love. Believe me, it would +have made you far lonelier if it so happened—if you should ever come +to love—if you ever had loved——" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode interrupted her abruptly: +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, in that case I should no doubt be glad that Simone had gone back +on me." He waited silent for a second, and then continued gently, "I +<I>am</I> glad, very glad indeed!" +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap04"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE FOURTH ADVENTURE +</H3> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IV +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN WHICH HE MAKES THREE PEOPLE HAPPY +</H3> + +<P> +There were times when Bulstrode decided that he never could see the +woman he loved any more: there were times when he felt he must follow +her to the ends of the world, just in order to assure himself that she +was alive and serene. Such is the gentleman's character and point of +view, that she must always be serene, no matter what his own troubled +emotions might be. +</P> + +<P> +He had the extraordinary idea that he could not himself be happy or +make a woman happy over the dishonor of another man. It was +old-fashioned and unworldly of Bulstrode: still, that was the way he +was constituted. +</P> + +<P> +It was on one of the imperious occasions when he felt as if he must +follow her to the ends of the earth, that he steered his craft toward a +little town on the edge of the Norman coast, to a very fashionable bit +of France—Trouville. As soon as he understood that Mrs. Falconer was +to be in Normandy for the race week, he packed his things and ran down +and put up at the Hôtel de Paris. On this occasion the gentleman +followed so fast that he overleaped his goal, and arrived at the +watering-place before the others appeared. Bulstrode took his own +rooms, and in response to a telegram, engaged the Falconers' +apartments. He liked the way the little salon gave on the heavenly +blue sea, and with a nice fancy to make it something more home-like for +his friend to begin with, he filled it with flowers ... ran what +lengths he dared in putting a few rare vases and several pieces of old +Italian damask here and there. +</P> + +<P> +"Falconer," he consoled himself, "will be too taken up with his horses +to notice the <I>inside</I> of anything but a stable! And I shall tell the +others that the hôtel proprietor is a collector: most of these Norman +innkeepers are collectors." And, as his idea grew, he went to greater +lengths, with the curiosity shops on either side the Rue de Paris to +tempt him. The result was that when Mrs. Falconer came, she found the +hôtel room wonderfully mellow and harmonious, and as a woman who revels +in beauty she responded to its charm. She was delighted, her eyes +sparkled, her cheeks glowed. And Jimmy Bulstrode had a moment of high +happiness as she looked at him and touched with her pretty hands the +flowers he had himself arranged. It was a delightful moment, a moment +that was much to him. +</P> + +<P> +The Falconers arrived with the usual lot of servants and motors and, +moreover, with a racing outfit, for Falconer had decided to enter his +English filly, Bonjour, for the events of August. There was also with +them a Miss Molly Malines and a young sprig of nobility, the Marquis de +Presle-Vaulx, to whom Bulstrode was a trifle paternal. +</P> + +<P> +"He can't, at least, be after Molly's <I>millions</I>," he reflected; "he +can't, at any rate, be a <I>fortune</I> hunter, for the girl's face is the +only fortune she has!" +</P> + +<P> +On a bright and beautiful morning, the first of all the days for many +weeks—for Bulstrode reckoned his calendar in broken bits, beginning a +New Year each time he saw his lady again—a bright and beautiful +morning he walked out at the fashionable hour of noon and turned into +the Rue de Paris. +</P> + +<P> +The eyes of many women followed Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +Being an early riser, he had already taken a brisk walk over the +cliffs, had swum out beyond the buoys, and now in his flannels, his +panama, a gay rose in the lapel of his coat, amongst the many +debonnaire and pleasing people who filled the little fishing town, his +was a distinguished figure. He trusted very much to instinct to +discover his friend, and after a few moments found her at the extreme +end of the street which the papers of Paris tell you is "the most +worldly and fashionable in any part of the Continent, during race week +at Trouville." Mary Falconer was of course dressed in the very height +of the mode. She looked up and saw Bulstrode before he saw her, but +she could wait until he made his leisurely way down to her side. She +waited for him a great deal. He did not know how much, but then her +point of view and her feelings have never come into the history. It +amused her to make him her many clever little bits of speech, for he +was so appreciative of everything she said, and looking up at him now +as he approached she said: "These people never seem to have anything to +do, do they? Leisure is like money: to enjoy thoroughly either money +or leisure one should only have a little of each. Now for us +good-for-nothings who have no occupation it doesn't make much +difference what we do or where we do it!" +</P> + +<P> +The lady's camp-stool had been set down at the end of the street. +Those who are not promenading opened little <I>chaises pliantes</I> and +watched from their little seats. Mrs. Falconer sat facing the ocean, +or what was visible of it between the bathing tents. Pagodas gay with +children's shovels and bright pails, striped bonbons and the sea of +muslins, ribbons and feathers and sunshades of the midsummer crowd. +All the capitals of Europe had poured themselves into Trouville, and +the resort overflowed with beauty and fashion. +</P> + +<P> +'"It's perfectly bewitching," Bulstrode said to her, "perfectly +bewitching, and it makes one feel as though there were nothing but +pleasure in the world." +</P> + +<P> +She wore a white dress and her hat was bright with flowers. She opened +her rose-lined parasol over her head. +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy," she said abruptly, and brought his eyes to hers like a flash, +for he had been looking over the scene, "do you know I begin to see +where the innkeeper found his rare treasures; <I>there are a great many +other things</I> that suggest them in this little street!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode replied, "You don't want him to take them away, do you?" +</P> + +<P> +She shook her head. "No," she said slowly, "they have been a great +pleasure, but I don't want to <I>buy</I> them from him, either." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't <I>think</I> he'd sell them," Bulstrode was certain of it, "they're +extremely precious in his eyes." +</P> + +<P> +"I'm a good judge of works of art, however," she said after a moment, +"that is to say, I know a good thing when I see it. There was a little +picture in one of the shops back of me that I would have given a lot to +own." +</P> + +<P> +Her friend exclaimed: "Are you going to buy it! That is to say, will +Falconer buy it for you?" +</P> + +<P> +"My dear soul—with his horse running to-morrow! At any rate, the +bijou is already bought above my head. I went in yesterday to see what +was the least they would take for it, and found the Prince Pollona, the +Englishman who buys for the Wallace Collection, and somebody who, they +tell me, was the Rockefeller of St. Petersburg. Well, my little +picture was what they all wanted, and you can imagine that <I>I</I> retired +from the running...! But I tell you this," she said, "only to show you +how very good my taste is, and so that you may rely on my selections." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode smiled in a way that said he thought he might rely on her, +but still he asked rather quizzically, "Well, what are you going to +recommend to me <I>now</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +The lady at the moment, not having anything in mind, looked suddenly +up, gave him whimsically: +</P> + +<P> +"Molly and her Marquis." +</P> + +<P> +The two young people with Jack Falconer were coming slowly along the +Rue de Paris toward them. The grace of the girl, her freshness under +her wide hat where flowers and ribbons danced and blended; the radiant +pleasure she exhaled, the swing of her dress, her youth, expressed so +happily the joy of life, recommended themselves easily in a flash.... +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, <I>Molly</I>—she's perfect!" +</P> + +<P> +"And the Marquis?" +</P> + +<P> +"He is perfectly in <I>love</I>," ... Bulstrode allowed him so much. +</P> + +<P> +"My dear friend, remember I know my <I>objets d'art</I>." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, as an <I>objet d'art</I>...!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode took the young man in: his white immaculateness, his +boutonnière, his panama—(not less than forty dollars a straw, as Jimmy +knew) his monocle. +</P> + +<P> +"As an <I>objet d'art</I>," he further conceded to her, "he's perfect, too!" +</P> + +<P> +"As an <I>homme de race</I>," said the American lady eagerly, with the true +Republican appreciation of blood and title, "as an <I>homme du monde</I>, as +a..." +</P> + +<P> +"Title?" he finished for her. "Oh, the Presle-Vaulx are all right! +I'll grant him a perfect title, sound as a bell, first Crusade—<I>Léonce +de Presle-Vaulx main droite, or sur azur—Pour toi seule</I>. It's a good +old tradition—a good old name." +</P> + +<P> +She scented his lack of sympathy. "Oh, I'll stand for him, Jimmy. I +know the <I>pâte</I>, as they say. I know the ring and the tone; and you +must, at my valuation, take him." +</P> + +<P> +"Molly, dear lady, has done the taking." Bulstrode lifted his hat as +the trio came up. "And what, after all, can we—the rest of us do?" +</P> + +<P> +"The rest of them" watched the young couple with mingled emotions: Mary +Falconer with all the romance in her, and in spite of unusual cool +reasonableness she had a feminine share—Jimmy with the sympathy of a +kindly nature, a certain sting of jealousy at the decidedly perfect +completeness of young love, and with a singularly wide-awake practical +common sense for an impulsive gentleman whose pleasure in life is to +pour into people's hands the things they most long for and cannot +without him ever hope to enjoy! +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Bulstrode, although owning his share of horse-flesh and a proper number +of automobiles and keeping, for the best part of the time, a yacht out +of commission, was a sport only in a certain sense of the word. The +people who liked him best and who were themselves able to judge, said +he was a "dead game sport," but Jimmy smiled at this and knew that the +human element interested him in life above all, and that he only cared +for amusements as they helped others to enjoy. He was backing +Falconer's horse, although he felt certain the winnings would go to the +Rothschild's gelding. On the afternoon, however, when De Presle-Vaulx +came up to him in the Casino and said: "On what are you going to put +your money, Monsieur?" Bulstrode looked at him thoughtfully. He had +stood by the young man the night before at baccarat and seen him lose +enough to keep a little family of Trouville fisherfolk for a year. +</P> + +<P> +"Are you going to play the races, Marquis?" +</P> + +<P> +"But naturally!" ... +</P> + +<P> +De Presle-Vaulx had an attractive frankness, and his smile +was—Bulstrode understood what a girl would think about it! +</P> + +<P> +"... But of course! One doesn't come to Trouville in <I>la grande +semaine</I> not to play!" +</P> + +<P> +He put his hand cordially on Bulstrode's arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Entre nous," he said, "I don't believe Falconer's horse has a chance +against Rothschild's Grimace. And you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I shall back Jack Falconer's mare," the older man replied. +</P> + +<P> +The Marquis played with his moustache. "She doesn't stand a show." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode was walking slowly down the grand staircase by his +companion's side. "And you will back Grimace?" He ignored the young +man's prognostication. +</P> + +<P> +De Presle-Vaulx said ingenuously: "<I>I</I>? Oh, seriously, I'm not +betting. I lost at baccarat last night, and I haven't a sou for the +race." +</P> + +<P> +He looked boyish and regretful. The American put his hand in his +pocket and took out his portefeuille. +</P> + +<P> +"Let me," he suggested pleasantly, "be your banker." +</P> + +<P> +The light dry rustle of French bank-notes came agreeably from between +his fingers. +</P> + +<P> +The young man hesitated, then put out his hand. +</P> + +<P> +"A thousand thanks, Monsieur, you are too good—I <I>will</I> back Grimace, +and after the race——" +</P> + +<P> +Jimmy handed him the notes to choose from. +</P> + +<P> +At the stair foot stood Molly and Mrs. Falconer. +</P> + +<P> +"We went this afternoon to see Jack's horse," Miss Malines said to the +Marquis. Whatever she said, no matter how general, she said to +him—others might gather what they could. "Bon Jour's a beauty—a +dear, and as fit as possible. Oh, she's in great form! Jack's crazy +about her, and so is the jockey. I know Bon Jour will win! I'm going +to put twenty-five francs on her to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +Mary Falconer smiled radiantly. "And you, Jimmy," she took for +granted, "are of course betting on the favorite?" +</P> + +<P> +"If you mean Grimace—" his tone was indifferent—"no, I shall back +your husband's horse." +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Jimmy</I>!" Her tone changed, and her expression as well. +</P> + +<P> +De Presle-Vaulx saw it, and he knew what women's voices can mean. He +was a Frenchman, and he understood what a slow, delicious flush, a +darkening of the eyes, a sharp note in the voice can signify of +feeling—as well as of gratitude, surprise and a little scorn. There +was all this in Mary Falconer's exclamation and her face. +</P> + +<P> +"And Maurice!" Molly said, "of course, you're doing the same?" +</P> + +<P> +The Marquis met his fiancée's clear eyes, her girlish enthusiasm and +her confidence. He bit his lip, shrugged, hesitated, looked at +Bulstrode, at Molly, and laughed. The presence of the others and the +custom of his country made it only a pretty courtesy—he lifted Molly's +hand to his lips. +</P> + +<P> +"Of course—<I>chère Mademoiselle</I>, I am backing Bon Jour with all my +heart, <I>cela va sans dire</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +Miss Malines regarded her friend with a pretty grimace and a smile. +</P> + +<P> +As they walked along together all four, Bulstrode said to himself: +</P> + +<P> +"He's a sport, a true sport—that's five thousand francs to the bad. +He was game, however, he's a good sport and, better yet, he's a true +lover!" +</P> + +<P> +Whether or not Mary Falconer really had an exalted idea of the merits +of Bon Jour, or whether she thoroughly understood the situation, how +was her friend to know? +</P> + +<P> +Falconer adored the horse, and the lady showed in the matter, as in +everything else, a fine loyalty to her husband, which was undoubtedly +one of the reasons why—but this is going too deeply into the domain of +Bulstrode's feelings, which, since he keeps them honorably sealed, it +is unworthy to surprise even in the interest of psychology. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode saw that his friend was pleased: her color, her mounting +spirits at dinner, showed it. She spoke with interest of the races, +and with confidence greater than she had hitherto evinced in the +fortunes of her husband's racer—indeed she talked horse to Molly's +edification, her husband's delight, and Bulstrode's admiration. All +this—the sense that the party was, so to speak, with him—put Jack +Falconer in the best of spirits, and the unruffled course of the +dinner, and, above all, the humor of the elder of the two ladies, quite +repaid Jimmy Bulstrode for the sure loss of his stakes. +</P> + +<P> +"Does she really think that I have faith in the horse?" he +wondered—-meeting her charming eyes over the glass of champagne she +was drinking. They did not answer in text his question, but their glow +and the light of content in them answered for him other questions which +were perhaps of greater interest. +</P> + +<P> +She was not unhappy. All his life, since his acquaintance with her, it +had been his aim, in so far as he could aid it, that she should not be +unhappy. His idea of affection was that in all cases it should bring +to the object—joy. In his own life these things which brought him, no +matter how pleasant they might be, the after taste of regret and misery +he strove with all his manliness to tear out: "and surely," he so +argued, "if my presence in her life cause her for one moment anything +but peace, it would be better that we had never looked into each +other's eyes." +</P> + +<P> +There was nothing especially buoyant, in the attitude of the young +Marquis! His inclination to feminine will had cost him—he was so +familiar with the turf and the next day's programme to feel sure—five +thousand francs, which he had not the means to pay. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Later in the evening, very much later, indeed well on to one o'clock, +Bulstrode, wandering through the baccarat rooms—for no other purpose, +it would be said from his indifferent air, than to study types—saw +Maurice de Presle-Vaulx just leaving the Casino. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode's air was as friendly and as naïve as though he had not a +pretty clear idea of just how the tide of events was fluctuating toward +misfortune in the case of this young nobleman. +</P> + +<P> +"What do you say," he suggested, "to getting something to drink or eat? +What do you say to a piece of <I>perdreau</I> and some champagne?" +</P> + +<P> +The Frenchman followed the older man, who in contrast to his pallor +looked the picture of health and spirits. Bulstrode cheerily led him +to a small table in the corner of the restaurant, where they sat +opposite one another, and for a little time applied themselves in +silence to the light supper served them. +</P> + +<P> +The Marquis drank more than he ate, and Bulstrode dutifully finished +the game and toast, quite glad, in truth, to break the fast of a long +evening which he had spent in the close rooms: for no other reason than +unseen, to befriend—and unasked, to chaperone Molly's lover. Finally, +when he felt that the right moment to say something had come, he smiled +at the young man, and said frankly: +</P> + +<P> +"Voyons, mon ami, don't you feel that you can talk to me a little more +freely than you could possibly to even so kind and charming a friend as +Mrs. Falconer? We are not of the same race, perhaps, but then under +certain circumstances such distinctions are not important. How do +you"—he handled the words as though in presenting them to the young +man he was afraid they might prick him—"How do <I>you</I> now stand?—I +mean to say, the luck has been rather against you, I'm afraid." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode would never be so near forty again, and De Presle-Vaulx was a +spoiled child—at all events, all that could be spoiled in him had been +taken care of by his mother, and in his own way he had spoiled a large +part of what remained. He looked up smartly, for he had been following +the pattern of the table-cloth. If the frankness of the other +threatened to offend him, as he met the kind eyes of the American he +found nothing there that could do otherwise than please him. He +shrugged with his national habit, then threw out his hands without +making any verbal reply, but his smile and his gesture comprehended so +much that Bulstrode intelligently exclaimed: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, but you don't mean to <I>say</I>——?" +</P> + +<P> +"I have not, monsieur, much to lose," the scion of an old house replied +simply. "We have the reputation of being poor; but to-night and last +night have quite 'wiped me out,' as you say in America. Je suis ruiné." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode lit his cigar. De Presle-Vaulx took from his pocket one of +his own cigarettes and puffed at it gently. Bulstrode smoked silently, +and thought of the young man without looking at him. He liked him, and +did not understand him at all: not at all! He supposed, that with his +different traditions, his Puritanism, his New World point of view, he +could <I>never</I> understand him, but he would enjoy trying to do so, for +aside from the quality of spoiled boy, there was something of the man +in De Presle-Vaulx to which the New Englander extremely responded. +</P> + +<P> +His next remark was impersonal: +</P> + +<P> +"Bon Jour, then, you think is not likely——?" +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Mon cher Monsieur</I>! ... She is not even mentioned for place! Even in +the event of her winning," De Presle-Vaulx was gloomy, "I should be +able to discharge my debt to you and nothing more." Again he looked up +quickly. "I shall, of course, be quite able to discharge <I>that</I>; I +only mean to say that <I>en somme</I>, I am <I>roulé completément roulé</I>." +</P> + +<P> +"What, then, are you going to do?" +</P> + +<P> +De Presle-Vaulx looked at the end of his cigarette as though he took +counsel from it, and said measuredly: +</P> + +<P> +"There is, in my position, but one thing possible for a man to do." +</P> + +<P> +"You mean to say, marry, make a rich marriage?" +</P> + +<P> +The Marquis flashed at him: +</P> + +<P> +"A month ago, yes! that would have been the one way out of my +embarrassment: but I am no longer in the market. It is the other +alternative." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode in no case caring to hear put in words a tragically +disagreeable means of solving the problems of debt and love, and having +less faith in this extravagant, explosive alternative than in the +<I>marriage de convenance</I>, did not urge the Frenchman further. He +simply brought out—his quiet eyes fixed on the other: +</P> + +<P> +"And the little girl?—Molly—Miss Malines?——" +</P> + +<P> +He gave him three chances to think of the pretty child, and for the +first De Presle-Vaulx's expression changed. He had with a nonchalance +submitted to the discussion of his fortune and his fate, but now he +distinctly showed dignity. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't, I beg of you, <I>speak</I> of Mademoiselle Malines!" and then he +said more gently, "mille pardons, mon cher ami!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode smoked his Garcia meditatively. He had not attempted the +solving of other people's questions, had not played the good fairy for +a long time. He had the hazy feeling—such as he often experienced +just before stepping into the mysterious excitement of doing some good +deed, of undergoing the effects of a narcotic which put to sleep reason +and practical common-sense, and left alive only a desire to befriend. +In this case, determined not again to be the victim of sentimentality, +determined for once to unite common sense and common humanity, he +forcibly dissipated the haze and said: +</P> + +<P> +"Your family! I have, as you know, understood from Mrs. Falconer, the +facts of the case. You must not be formal with me." He smiled +delightfully. "I am an American; you know we have all sorts of +barbarous privileges. We rush in quite where the older races fear to +tread ... and Molly Malines' father is an old friend of mine." +</P> + +<P> +(Mr. Bulstrode did not say what kind of an old friend! or even allow +himself to remember the I.O.U.s and loans that his bankers had made to +the visionary, good-humored, sanguine, unfortunate stockbroker.) +</P> + +<P> +"Your family—how do they take the idea of your marriage to a poor +American?" +</P> + +<P> +De Presle-Vaulx pushed his coffee cup aside, leaned his arms on the +table, bent over, and said with more confidence: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, they are entirely opposed to it. That's one reason, to be quite +frank with you, why I have been so reckless." +</P> + +<P> +He added: "My mother has refused her consent, and I can never hope to +alter my father's attitude. I have their letters to-day as well as +telegrams from Presle-Vaulxoron—they bid me 'come home immediately,' +and so far as my people are concerned, their refusal puts an end to the +affair!" +</P> + +<P> +There was a mixture of amusement and reproach in Bulstrode's tone—"and +you have found nothing better to do than to throw away at baccarat what +money you had, and have found no other solution for the future than +to...?" he eyed the young man keenly, and a proper severity came into +his expression. "Nonsense," he said, and repeated the word with more +indulgence: "nonsense, <I>mon ami</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +His reproof was borne: +</P> + +<P> +"We are an old race, M. Bulstrode——" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode had heard this allocution before. It gave lee-way to so +much; permitted so much; excused so much! +</P> + +<P> +"... I don't need to tell you our traditions, or recall our customs. +You of course know them. If I marry without my parents' consent I +shall probably, during my mother's lifetime, never see her again, and I +am her only son. It means that I sever all relations with my people." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode knocked the ash off his cigar and said thoughtfully: +</P> + +<P> +"It's too bad! A choice, if there <I>is</I> one, is always too bad. There +should in real things <I>be</I> no choice. As soon as such a contingent +arises, it proves that neither thing is really worth while! When a man +loves a woman there can be no choice. My dear friend, when a +<I>man</I>"—he paused—"loves—there is nothing in the world <I>but the +woman</I>." +</P> + +<P> +The Marquis looked at the fine face of the elder man. Years had, with +their gentle history, and kindly records, touched Jimmy Bulstrode +lightly. Every experience made him better to look at; "like a good +picture," Mrs. Falconer had said, "painted by a master, and only +growing more splendid." Nothing of the worldliness of the roué marked +his expression. His memories were clear and honorable, and the +Frenchman experienced a sensation of surprise and also one of +enlightenment as he looked at him and responded to his expression. He +had never seen any one quite like this man of the world, could not +think of his prototype in France. +</P> + +<P> +He repeated: +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing but the woman in the world—? Honor—" Bulstrode quickly +added, "and the woman—they are synonymous." +</P> + +<P> +In watching his companion he wondered in how much of a tangle the +Frenchman's mind was, and just how deep his feet were sunk in the +meshes of conventionality and tradition, and decided: "Oh, is it too +much to believe that he could——!" +</P> + +<P> +As if in answer to his thoughts, De Presle-Vaulx spoke in the simplest +manner possible: +</P> + +<P> +"J'aime Molly." +</P> + +<P> +Quite surprised at the simplicity, Bulstrode beamed on him and waited. +</P> + +<P> +Then the other added: +</P> + +<P> +"But I can't ask any woman to share poverty and debts, and I have no +way of making a living; I'm not bred for it." +</P> + +<P> +"You are not an invalid?" +</P> + +<P> +"On the contrary." +</P> + +<P> +"You can work." +</P> + +<P> +De Presle-Vaulx smiled: "I am afraid not! No De Presle-Vaulx has done +a stroke of work in three hundred years." +</P> + +<P> +"It's time, then"—Bulstrode was tart—"that you broke the record. Why +don't you?" He said as though suddenly illumined—"make me your +banker, draw on me for whatever sum you will, and since you have faith +in her and are so well supported by the public opinion—bet on Grimace. +I believe, with you, that he is sure to win. You would recoup much of +your loss here." +</P> + +<P> +De Presle-Vaulx pushed back his chair and exclaimed: "Monsieur!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," shrugged Bulstrode, "a woman's caprice, my dear fellow! A +foolish little whim of a girl! You can't be expected to mix sport and +flirtation to the tune of two or three thousand dollars." +</P> + +<P> +He smiled deceptively. +</P> + +<P> +The young man laughed bitterly: +</P> + +<P> +"So that is something of what you think of me? for I see you are not +serious! It's a folly, of course, a sentimental folly," he met +Bulstrode's eyes that silently accused him of a like—"but only a man +in love knows what sentimental follies are worth! There is"—the young +man was suddenly serious, "a sort of prodigality in love only +understood by certain temperaments, certain races: it may be +degenerate: I suppose it is, and to push it quite to the last phase, +is, of course, cowardly, certainly very weak, and men like you, +Monsieur, will deem it so." +</P> + +<P> +"You mean—?" and now Bulstrode's tone urged him to make himself clear. +</P> + +<P> +"I mean," said De Presle-Vaulx firmly, "rather than renounce this woman +I adore I will without doubt—(given the tangle in which the whole +matter is!...") and he could not for the life of him put his intention +into words. He smiled nevertheless unmistakably. Bulstrode leaned +across the table and put his hand on the other's arm. +</P> + +<P> +"Then you don't love her well enough not to break her heart? Or well +enough to live a commonplace life for her?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know how to do it." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said Bulstrode, "I have run upon quite a good many hard +moments, perhaps some, in their way, as difficult as this, and I have +never thought of getting out of the muddle. Perhaps it <I>is</I> a +question, as you say, of temperament and race. I am inclined also to +think, stubbornly, that it is a question of the quality of the love +that one has for the woman. You won't think it impertinent of me, my +dear friend,"—and his tone was such that no one could have thought it +impertinent—"you won't, I am sure, take it amiss if we talk this over +to-morrow, and if I try to show you something that means <I>life</I>, +instead of what you plan." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"You know you as good as stood for De Presle-Vaulx." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode held Mrs. Falconer's parasol, her fan, as well as a gold bag +purse full of louis, a handkerchief and his own cane and field-glass. +For the lady, standing on a chair the better to see the race-track, was +applauding with enthusiasm the result of the first handicap. She had +placed a bet on a horse called Plum-Branch "from a feeling of +sentiment," as she said, because she had, that day, quite by chance, +selected a hat with a decorative plum-branch amongst other garnitures. +</P> + +<P> +"I am <I>standing</I>, certainly, Jimmy," she replied to his remark, "and to +the peril of my high heels!— <I>There</I>, I've won! and won't you, like an +angel, go and cash my bets?—give me the purse, you might have your +hand picked! You can put my winnings in your pocket; they're not so +enormous." +</P> + +<P> +During his absence she watched the scene around her with animation. +The spotless day, if one might so call it, when the sky and the turf +and the whole world looked as though washed clean, and nature, seen in +the warm sunlight, seemed to palpitate and flutter in the wind that +gently stirred ends of ribbon or tips of plumes, and set the fragrance +of the country air astir. Back of the lady the tribune was like a +floral display: here and there a corner red as roses, there a mass of +lily-white dresses enlivened by pink and blue parasols, and the green +<I>pesage</I> stretched between the spectators and the race-track in bands +of emerald, whilst across it promenaded or stood in groups those +interested in the races. Mrs. Falconer acknowledged a friend here and +there, glanced affectionately over to where Molly and the Marquis, +seated near, fixed their attention on the race-course, where the +winner, flying his blue ribbon, cantered triumphantly around the track. +</P> + +<P> +One of a little group Falconer, the worse for many cocktails, stood by +the railing, talking familiarly with his jockey, whilst Bon Jour, +blanketed to the eyes, was being led up and down the outside track +alongside of her rival, Rothschild's Grimace. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode returning, gave his friend a handful of gold, which she put +into her purse, and he repeated: "You remember that you stood, as it +were, for De Presle-Vaulx?" +</P> + +<P> +"I do," she said, "if you think the race-course is the place to take me +to account for anything so serious, I do remember, and I do stand. +What is the trouble that he needs me?" +</P> + +<P> +"He needs," Bulstrode was serious, "a good many things, it seems to me, +in order to get firmly on the plane where he should be!" +</P> + +<P> +"And that is——?" +</P> + +<P> +"On his feet, my dear friend." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, he is head over heels in love," she nodded, "but when he finally +lands I think you will find Maurice perfectly perpendicular." +</P> + +<P> +"He won't," returned the other, "at all events, land in the bosom of +his family." +</P> + +<P> +"No?"—she looked away from the race-course and laughed—"you mean to +say, Jimmy, has he heard, then?" +</P> + +<P> +"I mean to say that <I>they</I> are quite clear in their minds about his +marriage! They seem to have all the firmness that the young man lacks. +Tell me," he asked his friend, "just what do you know about the matter? +What happened that you so strongly took up his cause with Molly? You +have not told me yet." +</P> + +<P> +She relinquished the interests of the moment to those of the +sentimental question. +</P> + +<P> +"It seems," she said, lowering her tone, "that they have been secretly +engaged for a year. Nothing that an American girl can do would +surprise me, but you can imagine that I was overwhelmed at his part in +the matter. When Molly joined me in Fontainebleau, De Presle-Vaulx +promptly followed, and I naturally obliged her to tell me everything. +I was dismayed at the lack of <I>tenue</I> he had shown. I had a plain talk +with him. He said that he had first met Molly at some dance or other +in the American colony, I don't know where; that he understood that +American girls disposed of their own lives; that he loved her and +wanted to marry her, and that he was only waiting to gain the consent +of his family before writing to her father. He seemed delighted to +talk with me and perfectly conventional in his feelings. He further +told me that his parents until now knew nothing, that he had not been +able to tear himself away from Molly long enough to go down to the +country where they were and see them. I forced him to write at once; +exacted myself that until he received their answer there should be +nothing between Molly and him but the merest distant acquaintance. I +did not know that he had heard from the Marquise or his father. You +seemed to have suddenly entirely gained his confidence and taken my +place." She looked over at the young couple. "Poor Molly!" she +exclaimed. "He has not, I should say, told her: she looks so happy and +so serene! It's of course only a question of <I>dot</I>, otherwise there +could be no possible objection. She is perfectly beautiful, the +sweetest creature in the world; and she is a born Marquise!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode interrupted her impatiently: +</P> + +<P> +"It would be more to the purpose if he were a born bread-winner and she +were a dairy-maid!" +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy, how vulgar you are!" +</P> + +<P> +"Very—" he was wonderfully sarcastic for him—"money is a very vulgar +thing, my dear friend; it's as vulgar as air and bread and butter. It +is like all other clean, decent vulgarity, it can be abused, but it's +necessary to life." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer opened her eyes wide on this new Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, what has happened to you?" +</P> + +<P> +He made a comprehensive gesture: "Oh, I am always supporting a family!" +he said with an amusing attempt at irritability. "I am always +supporting a family that is not mine, that does not sit at my +hearthstone or at my table. I am always marrying other people to some +one else, and dressing other people's children!" +</P> + +<P> +He finished with a laugh: "There, No. 5 is up! Aren't you interested +in this race?" +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer and Bulstrode had walked a little from where the young +couple chattered indifferent to everything but each other. +</P> + +<P> +"No; I am only interested in what you are saying. What have you +planned to do or thought out for them, Jimmy? What do your rebellious +phrases imply? <I>Are</I> you really going to make a home for——?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode said stubbornly. "No! I am going to show him how to make +one for himself." +</P> + +<P> +He stopped short where he stood: he had resumed the care of her +parasol, her fan, and purse. +</P> + +<P> +Her face, as she took in his exposition of his plan for the +regeneration of a decayed nobility, was inscrutable. Instead of +exclaiming, she stopped to speak a moment to some people who passed, +shook hands with the owner of the favorite, and when they were once +again alone said to her friend: +</P> + +<P> +"Isn't it too delightful! the whole scene? I mean to say, how +perfectly they do it all. How thoroughly gay it is, how debonnair, +graceful, and <I>bien compris</I>. Look at the wonderful color of the +<I>pesage</I>, and the life of the whole thing! These Latin most thoroughly +understand the art of living. You scarcely ever see a care-worn face +in France. Look at Jack now! Did you ever see such anxiety as he +represents? If Bon Jour is beaten I don't know <I>what</I> will become of +him. What shall I do with him?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode's interest on this subject was tepid. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, he'll be all right!" he said indifferently. "Take him to the +Dublin Horse Fair." +</P> + +<P> +And then as though she had not capriciously left the other topic, Mrs. +Falconer asked: +</P> + +<P> +"Just what <I>is</I> your plan for Molly and her Marquis? May I not know?" +</P> + +<P> +And Bulstrode who had never in any way thought out a plan or scheduled +a scheme for the wise distribution of the good he intended to do, +educated now, so he fondly hoped, by his failures, wiser, he was proud +to believe, by several sharp lessons—with no little confidence and +something of pride, said to his companion: +</P> + +<P> +"I have a ranch out West, you know; a little property I took for a bad +debt once. It has turned out to be a great and good piece of luck. +That time I was fortunate—" (his tone, was congratulatory and Mrs. +Falconer smiled prettily). "I now need a second overseer again—a man +of brains, good temper, and physical endurance, who can keep accounts. +Experience isn't at all necessary. There's my Englishman there, my +Christmas tramp, you recall; he'll show De Presle-Vaulx his duties. +It's a good enough berth for any determined chap who has his way to +make and an ideal to work for. I purpose to send this Frenchman out on +a salary and to see what stuff he's made of. After a year or two, with +good sense and push, he will be in a position to ask any girl to be his +wife. I'll raise his salary, and if Molly is the girl I take her for, +she will help him there." +</P> + +<P> +"And his family, Jimmy?" +</P> + +<P> +"Damn his family!" risked the aroused Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"Really! It is casual of you! but you don't know them and can't! But +they can quite spoil the whole thing as far as Molly is concerned. His +tradition and race, his home and all it means to him—why you can't +roughly run against all the old conventions like that, my dear man!" +</P> + +<P> +"Well," said the ruthless gentleman, "then he can go and feed on their +charity, can take to his flesh-pots and give up the girl. She is far +too good for any foreign fortune-hunter anyway. You spoil a man, all +of you. You'd prefer a disreputable roué to a cowboy with money in his +pocket and a heart." +</P> + +<P> +"Would it then prove to you De Presle-Vaulx's heart if he threw over +his family and went West?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said the other quickly. "It would prove he loves the girl." +</P> + +<P> +"You forget his mother." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode fumed. +</P> + +<P> +"I have not the honor to forget her; I don't know the Marquise de +Presle-Vaulx." +</P> + +<P> +"I do," interrupted his friend. "She is a charming, gentle old dear; +narrow, if you call it so, clear-headed and delightful. She adores her +only son, and thinks quite properly that his name, his estates, +beautiful if mortgaged, are a fair exchange for an American <I>dot</I>. +Maurice de Presle-Vaulx, after all, does not go poverty-stricken to the +woman he marries. There are not so many ways to live after one is +twenty-five, and to uproot this scion of an old race, to exact such a +sacrifice——" +</P> + +<P> +"It would make a man of him." +</P> + +<P> +"He is one already. There are all kinds, I need not tell you so." +</P> + +<P> +"He is head over heels in debt." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer laughed again. +</P> + +<P> +"We make him out an acrobat between us." +</P> + +<P> +"He gambles on borrowed money." +</P> + +<P> +"You mean that you have forced him to borrow from you? He will pay +what he owes, I am sure of him." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode wheeled and scrutinized her, and said with the natural +asperity of a man who is bored by a woman's too generous championship +of another man: +</P> + +<P> +"You stand for him warmly." +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer, reading him, said quickly: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I know him thoroughly! He has the faults of his race, but as an +individual he is the right sort." +</P> + +<P> +With their pretty habit, her cheeks had grown red in the course of the +discussion. +</P> + +<P> +"Please give me my parasol; it's awfully hot here." +</P> + +<P> +He opened it for her and she held its rosy lining against the sun. +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Falconer, who from the rail had been observing, through the haze +formed by countless cocktails, the figure of his wife in her white +dress, as well as the figure of her faithful squire, here came +swaggering up to them both. He was never jealous, but Mr. Bulstrode's +uniform courtesy and attention to the woman neglected by her husband +often piqued him to attention. As he drew near, Mrs. Falconer asked +quickly: +</P> + +<P> +"And the Marquis, Jimmy? What do you suppose he will say to your Wild +West scheme?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you women understand us even when we are stupid mysteries to +ourselves! Tell me, how will he take this?" +</P> + +<P> +"He will refuse." The lady was quick in her decision. "He cannot in +consistence do otherwise. He will consider your plan provincial and +Yankee, and he will consider, what you ignore, that it will kill his +mother. If he cannot marry Molly with the family consent in proper +French fashion he will naturally give her up. But first of all, my +dear Jimmy, he will put <I>you</I> in your place!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode cast a fatherly glance to where the young people sat talking +together: the Marquis in gray clothes of the latest London make, a +white rose in his button-hole, and monocle in his eye, a figure more +unlike the traditional cowboy one could scarcely conceive. +</P> + +<P> +"Your taste is good, ma chere amie," his voice was delighted. "Your +instinct as a connoisseur is faultless; but you are not quite sure of +your <I>objet d'art</I> this time." He nodded kindly at the Parisian—"He's +all right! he's a true sport, a lover and a man. De Presle-Vaulx knows +my Wild West scheme and has accepted." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Molly had put twenty-five francs on Bon Jour and expected to win it. +The money Bulstrode played would have bought a very handsome present +for his lady, and he felt as if he were making an anonymous gift to the +woman he loved. +</P> + +<P> +At the ringing of the bell Falconer left his post by the railing and +came up and joined the little group of his friends just below the Grand +Stand. He lit a cigar, threw down the match furiously, smoked +furiously, and nerved himself for the strain. +</P> + +<P> +Nodding toward the betting contingent he muttered: "They're sheep. +They're all betting on the favorite naturally. Bon Jour wasn't +mentioned for place even, poor little girl!" +</P> + +<P> +The ignored little racer had ambled around the field, her jockey in +crimson and white, doubled up upon her back after the manner of his +profession. Bon Jour was as golden red as a young chestnut; she had +four white feet that twinkled on the fragrant turf whose odors of +crushed blades and green blades, of earth and the distant smell of the +sea went to her pretty head. She threw it up eagerly as her disputants +filled the field. There were nine horses scheduled, but only five +qualified. The Rothschild gelding, an English gray, and two others +named for probable places. +</P> + +<P> +"She's cool as a rose," murmured Bon Jour's owner, "and just look at +her form, will you!" +</P> + +<P> +It was charming, and already the American's horse was attracting +attention. +</P> + +<P> +Molly, with De Presle-Vaulx's aid, rose on her chair, from which her +excitement threatened at any moment to precipitate her. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Maurice—of course she'll win. Isn't she a <I>dear</I>? How much +shall I make on twenty-five francs?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"A frightful amount! There are twenty to one up on her, Molly." +</P> + +<P> +The girl mentally calculated, exclaimed with pleasure and, with +sparkling eyes, watched the lining-up of the racers. Neck to neck they +stood, a splendid showing of satin and shine from fetlock to forelock, +equine beauty enough to gladden a sporting man's heart, and all five +were away before Miss Malines was even sure which one was the great +Grimace. +</P> + +<P> +From the first the favorite's nose was to the good. His shapely body +followed, and when the horses came in sight again beyond the right-hand +hedge, he had put four lengths between himself and the others. The +winner of the Grand Prix had all the field with him. But the gray +gelding who strained at Grimace's flanks had no staying powers, +although he was backed as strongly for place as was Grimace to win; as +he fell back Bon Jour began to attract notice. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode and De Presle-Vaulx exchanged glances over the absorbed +figure of Jack Falconer. "She may yet win place," murmured the younger +man. +</P> + +<P> +As they came up the wide turf sweep that lay like an emerald sea +crested by the dark waves of the hedges, as the horses rocked like +ships over the obstacle—Bon Jour closely followed the favorite. +</P> + +<P> +At the moment Miss Malines cried: "Oh, a jockey's off! Oh, Jack, it's +Bon Jour! She's <I>thrown</I> her jockey! I see the red and white." +</P> + +<P> +But Falconer biting his cigar fiercely, laughed in scorn. "She's +thrown <I>them</I> all right. She's left them all <I>behind</I> her—see!" he +pointed, "there are only three running." And, indeed, as they came +again in sight, one of the horses was seen to be wandering loose about +the course, and another cantered nonchalantly some hundred yards behind. +</P> + +<P> +"She's not even trying," murmured her enchanted owner. "She's cool as +a rose." +</P> + +<P> +The cries which had named the Rothschild gelding from the start were +now mingled, and Bon Jour, flying around the emerald course, might have +heard her name for the first on the public lips. She was running +gracefully, her head even with the favorite's saddle and the English +gray was a far-off third. Bon Jour was pressing to fame. +</P> + +<P> +At the last hurdle as they appeared flying in full sight of the Grand +Stand it was evident the pretty creature had made her better good. The +horses leapt simultaneously and came down on all fours, with Grimace to +the rear, and amongst the frantic acclamation with which the public is +always ready to greet the surprise of unlooked-for merit, Bon Jour +passed Grimace by half a metre at the goal. Jack Falconer was an +interesting figure on the turf; his horse was worth twenty thousand +pounds. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Several hours later, Bulstrode, early in the salon, walked up and down +waiting the arrival of the ladies. He had paid downstairs a hundred +francs for the privilege of dining in the window of the restaurant, +because Mrs. Falconer chanced to remark that one saw the room better +from that point. And the head waiter even after this monstrous tip +said if "<I>ces dames</I>" were late there would be no possibility to keep +this gilt-edged table for them. It was the night of the year at +Trouville: Boldi and his Hungarians played to five hundred people in +the dining-room. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode looked at the clock; they had yet ten minutes' grace. +</P> + +<P> +Extremely satisfied with himself, with Bon Jour, above all with the +French Marquis—he felt a glow of affection for the whole French nation. +</P> + +<P> +"How we misjudge them!" he mused; "how we accuse them of clinging to +their families' apron strings, of being bad colonists; call them +hearthstone huggers, degenerates; and declare that they lack nerve and +force to rescue themselves from degeneration! And here without +hesitation this young man——" At this moment the salon door opened, +and one of the ladies he had been expecting came in, the youngest one, +Miss Molly Malines, in a tulle dress, an enormous white hat, a light +scarf over her shoulders, and the remains of recent tears on her face. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" she exclaimed, half putting out her hand and +drawing it back again, as she bit her lips: "I thought I should find +Mary here; I wanted to see her first to <I>cry</I> with! but of course it is +you I <I>should</I> see and not cry with!" +</P> + +<P> +She gave a little gasp and put her handkerchief to her eyes to his +consternation; then to his relief controlled herself. +</P> + +<P> +"Maurice has just told me <I>everything</I>," she repeated the word with +much the same desperation that De Presle-Vaulx had put into a gesture +which to Bulstrode had signified ruin. +</P> + +<P> +"He's too wonderful! too <I>glorious</I>, Mr. Bulstrode, isn't he? I loved +him before, but I <I>adore</I> him now! He's glorious. I never heard +anything so terrible and so silly!" +</P> + +<P> +Bright tears sprang to brighter eyes, and she dashed them away. +</P> + +<P> +("She's adorable") he was obliged to acknowledge it. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, how could you be so cruel; yes, I will say it, so cruel, so hard, +so brutal?" +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Brutal</I>?"—he fairly whispered the word in his surprise. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, fancy Maurice in the West, in the dreadful Western life, in that +climate——!" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, it is the Garden of Eden," murmured Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I mean to say with cattle and cowboys." +</P> + +<P> +"Come," interrupted her father's friend, practically, "you don't know +what you are talking about, Molly. You don't talk like an American +girl. They've spoiled De Presle-Vaulx, and this will make a man of +him!" +</P> + +<P> +Miss Malines called out in scorn: +</P> + +<P> +"<I>A man of him</I>! What do you think he is? He's the finest man I ever +saw. You don't know him. Just because he has a title and his mother +spoils him, and because he has been a little reckless in debts and +things, you throw him over as you do all the French race without +knowing them!" +</P> + +<P> +Her tears had dried and her cheeks flamed. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, Maurice has served three years as a common soldier in the +Madagascar Army; and <I>that's</I> no cinch! Cuba's a joke to it. He's had +the fever and marched with it. He's slept all night with no covering +but the clothes he had worn for weeks. He's eaten bread and drunk +dirty water. He's been a soldier three years. The way I came to know +him was at Dinard where he swam out into the sea to save a fisherman +who couldn't swim, and all the town was out in the storm to welcome +him! They carried him up the streets in their arms—" she waited a +minute to steady her voice—"He's been two years exploring in Abyssinia +with a native caravan—no white man near him, he's the youngest man +wearing the Legion d'Honneur in France. <I>And you want to send him out +to make a cowboy of him in the American West to turn him into a man</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Bulstrode had never heard such impressive youthful scorn. Molly +threw back her pretty head and laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you know many cowboys who have been three years a soldier; +travelled through unexplored countries; written a book that was crowned +by an academy? Well, I don't!" she said boldly. "Of course I like his +title, of course I am proud of his traditions. They're fine! And it +is no dishonor to love his château and his Paris hôtel, and I'd love +his mother, too—if she'd let me. But I adore Maurice <I>as he is</I>, and +he's man enough for me!" +</P> + +<P> +The floor seemed to quiver under poor Bulstrode, who could scarcely see +distinctly the lovely excited face as he ventured timidly: +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't know all these things, Molly." +</P> + +<P> +She was still unpitying. +</P> + +<P> +"Of course not! Americans never do know. They only <I>judge</I>. You +didn't think Maurice would tell you all his good points! He doesn't +think they are anything. He only sees the fact that he has debts and +that we are both poor and his family won't give their consent." +</P> + +<P> +Mr. Bulstrode smiled and said: +</P> + +<P> +"He is naturally forced to see these things, my dear child." +</P> + +<P> +The girl softened at his tone and said more gently: +</P> + +<P> +"Well, they are terrible facts, of course. It only means that my heart +is broken, but it doesn't mean that I will consent to your plan, or to +his plan, Mr. Bulstrode. I won't make him break his mother's heart and +ruin his career for me." +</P> + +<P> +The gentleman came up and took her hands: his voice was very gentle: +</P> + +<P> +"What, then, will you do?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, wait," she said with less spirit. "Wait until his mother +consents, or until she dies...." She began to hang her head. Her +eulogy of her lover over, only the dry facts of the present remained. +She had no more enthusiasm with which to animate her voice. +</P> + +<P> +Here Mrs. Falconer and the Marquis opened the door, and started back as +the animated picture of beauty being consoled by kindness met their +view. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, come along in!" cried the girl cheerily. "I have just been +ballyragging Mr. Bulstrode!" +</P> + +<P> +De Presle-Vaulx came eagerly forward: +</P> + +<P> +"Don't listen to her, Monsieur! Molly's tired out after so much +success." +</P> + +<P> +The startled benefactor looked doubtfully from her to the young man. +</P> + +<P> +"And you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I?" shrugged De Presle-Vaulx, "I'm already half cowboy!" +</P> + +<P> +Mary Falconer put her arm round Molly's waist, drew her to her, "and +Molly is more than half Marquise." +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Bulstrode," again cried the girl impetuously. "<I>Please</I> reason +with him! He's horribly obstinate. You have put this dreadful idea in +his head; now please tell him how <I>ridiculous</I> it is. If he goes West +and spoils his career and breaks with his family, I'll never marry him! +As it is, I will wait for ever!" +</P> + +<P> +"But my dear child!" Mary Falconer was determined to have the whole +thing out before them, "you don't seem to get it into your head that +you have neither of you a sou, and Maurice can never earn any money in +France." +</P> + +<P> +Miss Malines, to whom money meant that she drew on her father, the +extravagant stockbroker whose seat even in the Stock Exchange was +mortgaged, and who had not ten thousand dollars' capital in the +world—lost countenance here at the cruel and vulgar introduction of +the commodity on which life turns. She sighed, her lips trembled, and +she capitulated: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, if that's really true ... as I suppose it is——" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode watched her, she had grown pale—she drew a deep breath, and, +looking up, not at her lover, but at the elder man, said softly: +</P> + +<P> +"Why, I guess I'll have to give him quite up then." +</P> + +<P> +But here De Presle-Vaulx made an exclamation, and before them all took +Molly in his arms: +</P> + +<P> +"No," he said tenderly, "never, never! <I>That</I> the last of all! Mr. +Bulstrode is right. I must work for you, and I will. We'll both go +West together. Couldn't you? Wouldn't you come with me?" +</P> + +<P> +... "And your mother?" asked the girl. +</P> + +<P> +"Nothing—" De Presle-Vaulx whispered, "nothing, counts but <I>you</I>." +</P> + +<P> +Over their heads Bulstrode met his friend's eye, and in his were—he +could not help it—triumph, keen delight, and in hers there was anger +at him and tears. +</P> + +<P> +At this moment the waiter put his head in at the door and implored +Monsieur to come down if he wanted the seat in the window. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, we're coming!" Mrs. Falconer cried impatiently. "Molly, there's +some eau-de-cologne on the table. Put it on your eyes. Don't be long +or we'll lose our place. The West will keep!" +</P> + +<P> +She went out of the door and Bulstrode followed her. In the hall she +said tartly: +</P> + +<P> +"Well, I hope you're satisfied! I never saw a more perfect inquisitor. +Why didn't you live at the time of the Spanish persecution?" +</P> + +<P> +He ignored her scathing question: +</P> + +<P> +"I am satisfied," he said happily, "with both of them; they're bricks." +</P> + +<P> +The lady made no reply as she rustled along by his side to the elevator. +</P> + +<P> +From the floors below came the clear, bright sound of the Hungarian +music in an American cake-walk and the odor of cigars and wines and the +distinct suggestion of good things to eat came tempting their nostrils. +</P> + +<P> +As Bulstrode followed the brilliant woman, a sense of defeat came over +him and with less conviction he repeated: +</P> + +<P> +"I <I>am</I> satisfied, but you, my friend, are not." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," shrugged Mary Falconer desperately, "you know <I>I've</I> no right to +think, or feel, or criticise! I never pretend to run people's lives or +to act the benefactor or to take the place of Fate." +</P> + +<P> +The light danced and sparkled on the jet in her black dress, on the +jewels on her neck. Under her black feather-hat her face, brilliant +and glowing, seemed for once to be defiant to him, her handsome eyes +were dark with displeasure. +</P> + +<P> +The poor fellow could never recall having caused a cloud to ruffle her +face before in his life. It was not like her. Her tenderness for a +second had gone. He could not live without that, he knew it, what ever +else he must forego. +</P> + +<P> +He said, with some sadness, "I suppose you're right: if one can buy +even <I>a honeymoon</I> for another couple he shouldn't lose the +opportunity." +</P> + +<P> +She looked up at him quickly. They had reached the ground floor—they +had left the elevator and they stood side by side in the hall. The +lady had a very trifle softened, not very much, still he noticed the +change and was duly grateful. +</P> + +<P> +"We must wait here," she said, "for the others to come down. I can't +let Molly go in alone, and I don't know where my husband is; I haven't +seen him all day." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode continued spiritlessly: "Molly, if you remember, begged me to +tell De Presle-Vaulx how 'perfectly ridiculous' my scheme for the Wild +West is. I will tell him this—you will coach me,—there'll be some +pleasure in that, at least! and then I'll find out for what sum the +Marquise de Presle-Vaulx will sell her son. I'll buy him," he said, +"for Molly, and of course," he brought it out quite simply, "I shall +<I>dot</I> the girl." +</P> + +<P> +And then the lady stepped back and looked at him. He felt, before that +she had merely swept him with her eyes; now she looked at him. She +cried his name out—"Jimmy!"—that was all. +</P> + +<P> +But in the exclamation, in the change of her mobile face, in the lovely +gesture that her hand made, as if it would have gone to his, Bulstrode +was forced to feel himself eminently, gloriously repaid, and it is not +too much to say that he did. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap05"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE FIFTH ADVENTURE +</H3> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +V +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN WHICH HE MAKES NOBODY HAPPY AT ALL +</H3> + +<P> +Bulstrode stood before the entrance of the Hôtel de Paris bidding his +friends good-night. Watching them, at least one of them, enter in +under the shelter of the glass pavilion, he considered how much more +lonely he was at that special moment than he could remember having been +before. Of course he had bidden Mary Falconer good-night a hundred +dozen times in the course of his life, but it seemed to come with a +more sublime significance than ever how he gave her up every time he +said good-by and how he was himself left alone. And yet, had Mrs. +Falconer been asked, she would have said that she never found her +friend more cold and more constrained. In his correct evening dress +with the flower she herself had given him in his buttonhole, his panama +in his hand, he had been absorbed in her beauty, in the grace of her +dark dress, bright with scintillating ornaments—her big feathered hat +under which her face was more lovely, more alluring than ever; and +nothing in his eyes told the woman what he thought and felt. +</P> + +<P> +She touched his arm, saying: +</P> + +<P> +"Look, Jimmy." +</P> + +<P> +"Isn't that the lovely woman we've so often remarked? See, she's all +alone, how curious! She's going over to the Casino to play, I suppose. +<I>What</I> can have happened to the man who has been with her all this +time? Where is the Prince Pollona?" +</P> + +<P> +As Bulstrode turned his head in the direction indicated, through the +trees passed along the figure of a slender woman, trailing her thin +gown over the pebbles and the grass. She disappeared in the lighted +doorway of the Casino. +</P> + +<P> +"You're quite bearish to-night," Mrs. Falconer said reproachfully, +"quite a bear. I believe you're angry! Dear Jimmy, you may, I +promise, carry out all your philanthropies without my interference; I +won't even criticise or tease. I promise you next time you shall go +sweetly and serenely on your foolish way!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," he got out with effort, "I believe I've suddenly grown awfully +selfish, for I find I'm so ridiculous as only to want things for +myself——" +</P> + +<P> +(When he stopped she did not help him but, instead, persisted gently +with the wicked feminine way she had of urging him, tempting him on.) +</P> + +<P> +"What, then, what do you wish? Can't you tell me?" +</P> + +<P> +He laughed almost roughly and said, "No, it's a secret, and I'm one of +those unusual creatures who can keep a secret." +</P> + +<P> +The woman's face changed. He saw the shadow that crossed it. "Come," +she sighed, "you must bid me good-night..." +</P> + +<P> +And at this moment he had seen Jack Falconer emerge from a still more +shadowy corner, a cigar between his teeth. Drawing his wife's arm +through his, Falconer nodded to the other man and said they had all +better be going up. Bulstrode noted bitterly the satisfaction on +Falconer's bestial, indulgent face and the content that man felt with +himself this evening, his triumph at the race's termination. His horse +had won the stakes and was famous, his wife had been called to-day the +loveliest woman in Trouville, and not for the first time Bulstrode +suffered from it, the proprietorship with which Falconer considered his +wife. For the smallest part of a second he fancied that the woman drew +away, half turned away, looked toward him; and in dread that he might, +if he met her eyes, see some look like appeal, Bulstrode avoided +meeting her glance. He saw them pass under the glass roof of the hôtel +leaving him standing alone. +</P> + +<P> +The deserted lover waited until they had disappeared; then, turning +abruptly, vaguely in search of human beings with whom he might exchange +a word should he feel inclined to talk, dreading the deserted gardens +ami finding his own rooms the dreariest prospect of all, he went into +the Casino with the intention of waiting for the Frenchman who he +thought more than likely would come and join him there. The Marquis +failing him, Bulstrode chose a place not far from the table where the +lovely woman, that Mrs. Falconer and himself had remarked, seated +herself before the game. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode's sense of desolation and loneliness would not leave him. If +his luck had been bad, the excitement of the sport might have brought +him some sensation; but, on the contrary, he won. "Only," he said +humorously, as he gathered up his winnings, "only unlucky in love!" +</P> + +<P> +It was well on in the night when he thrust his last roll of bank notes +into his pocket. He had beaten the bank; he had raked up and stuffed +away a small fortune. As he wandered out through the deserted rooms, +he noted, bent over the table, her head in her hand, the woman who, in +spite of his sincere absorption in Mary Falconer, had, like a +temptation, crossed his mind when he first came into the Casino. No +one disturbed her, and she had remained in this dejected posture for +some time. This one amongst the many women in Trouville, Bulstrode and +his friends had remarked for several days. She had first appeared +alone; made a discreet <I>début</I> on the beach, passed through the Rue de +Paris and kept away from the more public parts of the town. Later she +had been joined by a man well known in the world, the Prince Pollona, +who was travelling incognito. The woman's beauty and manner were such +that her actual standing was a mooted question; it had even been +remarked that she was the princess herself incognita, but that they all +knew to be impossible. +</P> + +<P> +Before the official who waited to see the last players leave the +<I>salle</I> could speak to her, she rose of her own accord, gathering her +silken cloak about her, and went quickly from the gambling room. Once +on the stairway, however, her footsteps halted and she went slowly down +as if reluctant to leave the shelter of the brightly lighted +apartments. Bulstrode following her, observed her closely; tall, very +slender, with a fine carriage and a lovely blonde head set on the most +graceful of necks, older than Molly and younger than Mrs. Falconer, she +was quite as <I>comme il faut</I>. All along she had worn a collar and rope +of pearls which had excited Molly's enthusiasm. To-night she was +denuded of her jewels; her neck was bare. Bulstrode remarked this as +he walked behind in full view of the soft adorable <I>nuque</I> below the +curls of the girl's fair hair. She trailed her dress slowly through +the garden walks, her white figure in the darkness escaping from him a +little as the trees made an avenue for her. But Bulstrode distinctly +felt that he was expected to follow. Whether or not he might intrude +he did not ask, as he came along, surprised however to see her actually +stop short within a few feet of him. Under the full light of one of +the big lamps, she stood motionless, her arms by her side, her chin +raised. Now that he was quite near her he found her more lovely than +he had even imagined. +</P> + +<P> +He went up directly to her and, without asking how she might take his +interference, said: "You cannot remain here alone, Madame, the gardens +are deserted. What can I do for you?" +</P> + +<P> +As he so spoke in his kind voice the woman lifted her head and looked +full at him; Bulstrode was surprised at her words and more particularly +at her voice. +</P> + +<P> +"You—" she breathed, "you?" +</P> + +<P> +Taking it for granted that for some reason or other it might be him +more than any other man, Bulstrode went on. "You seem more or less to +be in trouble, if I may say so. Won't you please let me be of some +service to you—let me at least see you out of these gloomy gardens?" +</P> + +<P> +But the woman, whose face had flushed, exclaimed: "Oh, no, no! Please +don't bother; please leave me. I want to be alone." And, as she +spoke, she turned and went away from him some few steps. +</P> + +<P> +Jimmy Bulstrode never knew what impulse made him spring forward and +with one sudden gesture dash from her hand what it held. But the +little object fell some distance away, hard down in the grass, to be +found the next morning by the guardians of the place and considered as +a relic of the fortunes of Casino hazard. +</P> + +<P> +"Heavens!" exclaimed the gentleman, and he caught in his hand the +slender wrist from which he had just dashed the weapon. "My good God! +You poor child, why, why——" and he could go no further. The woman's +face, although moved, was singularly tranquil for the face of a woman +on the verge of self-destruction. +</P> + +<P> +"Won't you leave me," she whispered and Bulstrode, gathering himself +together, said firmly: +</P> + +<P> +"Leave you? Not now, certainly, not for anything in the world. And +you must let me take you home." +</P> + +<P> +After a few moments' silence in which she bit her lip and apparently +controlled a burst of hysterical weeping, the young woman accepted his +offer and very lightly put her hand on his arm. "You may, if you +like," she consented, "take me home, as you call it. I am staying at +the Hôtel des Roches Noires." +</P> + +<P> +From the Casino gardens through the silent town without exchanging one +word with her—for he saw she wished to be silent—Jimmy took the lady, +as he called it, home. Once in the big corridor of the vast hôtel, +into whose impersonal shelter they entered as the only late comers, he +stood for a second before bidding her good-night, whilst the porter +eyed them, scarcely with curiosity, so used was he to late entrances of +this kind which he imagined he fully understood. +</P> + +<P> +"Good-night—" Bulstrode started and at once cut himself short, for he +did not really intend to say it then—he had not spoken to her and he +knew he would never leave her until at least he was sure she would not +take her life before the next morning. +</P> + +<P> +The girl extended her hand, her beautiful face was gray. "Will you +not," she asked, "come up with me to my drawing-room? I am quite +alone." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode bowed and without hesitation followed her up the stairs to +the conventional suite of hôtel rooms, where, in the little salon, +trunks stood about in the evident indications of hasty packing. +</P> + +<P> +The girl threw her gloves, her handkerchief and her soft silken cloak +on the table. She then seated herself in a corner of the sofa by an +open dressing-bag and Bulstrode, at her invitation, took a chair +opposite. He scarcely knew how to begin his conversation with her, but +he determined at once to go toward what he believed to be the most +crying need. +</P> + +<P> +"You lost to-night," he said. "I saw it. As it happened, I was lucky. +I have no need of money, none." He had drawn from his pocket piles of +louis; he took out from his wallet a roll of notes. +</P> + +<P> +He saw, too, as well as the look of passion and admiration, that her +face was familiar, at least that there was about it something that +suggested remembrance. +</P> + +<P> +"This," she said, "is a fortune!" Her accent was British and her voice +very soft and sweet. "It is quite a large fortune, isn't it? My debts +here are small. I have not fifty pounds in the world," she said +smiling, "I work for my living, too. I have been extravagant, for I +had really made a lot of money, but lately I've thrown everything away. +Yesterday my pearls were sold, and my jewels went last week; the races +and the Casino did the rest! This would make me quite rich." +</P> + +<P> +"Work for her living!" Bulstrode thought, with a pang as he looked at +her. "Heavens, poor dear!" A thousand questions came to his lips, but +he asked her none. He was mastering the feelings her personality, her +trouble, and the night, aroused. He also decided to go at once, while +there was still time. +</P> + +<P> +"It is very droll that this money should have come from <I>you;</I>" she +repeated "from you," with the insistence on the pronoun that he had +before remarked as strange. "Even now you don't know me, do you? +Don't you know who I am?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," Bulstrode wondered, "and yet I have certainly seen you before, +but save as I have noticed and admired you here, I don't <I>think</I> I know +you. Should I?" +</P> + +<P> +"You <I>have</I> seen me then here?" she caught delighted, "you have +actually noticed me? You said 'admire'; did you perhaps find something +in me to like?" +</P> + +<P> +"Who," he said with sincerity, "could help himself! Of course I've +seen you and remarked you with your friend." +</P> + +<P> +Here she bit her lip and put up her hand. "Oh, please," she frowned, +"Oh, please!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, surprised at her accents of distress, murmured an excuse and +said he was much at fault, he should remember. But here the girl +smiled. "Well, it is not exactly a duty to know me; my name is not +quite unknown. I play in 'The Shining Lights Company,' 'The Warren +Company,' I am Felicia Warren—<I>now</I>, haven't you seen me play!" +</P> + +<P> +He was sorry, very, very sorry that he had not! Oh, but he knew her +name and her success; they were famous. He wished he could have +assured her that he had admired her before the footlights ...! +</P> + +<P> +Felicia Warren's eyes strayed down at the table on which the money was +so alluringly spread. +</P> + +<P> +"I've been touring in Australia and the Colonies, still I go now and +then to the Continent, though I am almost always in London." She +paused, then regarded him fully with her great blue eyes. "Don't you +remember, Mr. Bulstrode, a great many years ago when you took a +shooting-box in Glousceshire? Don't you remember...?" +</P> + +<P> +Staring at her, trying to place the image which was now taking form, he +did; he <I>did</I> remember it and she? +</P> + +<P> +"There was a mill there on the place. Rugby Doan was the miller, he is +the miller still." Didn't Mr. Bulstrode remember that Doan had a +daughter? She had been fifteen years old then, she had ambitions, she +was altogether a ridiculous and silly little thing; didn't he remember? +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode was silent. +</P> + +<P> +The gentleman, Mr. Bulstrode, took a strong liking to Doan; he gave him +the money to educate his daughter. Oh, dear me, such a generous lot of +money! Then, as the girl was extraordinarily silly (she had ambitions) +she went on the stage. Her father never forgave her; poor father! She +had never seen him since. "Mr. Bulstrode, don't you remember Felicia +Doan?—I am the miller's daughter." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode extended his hand. He wanted to say: "My poor child, my poor +little girl," but Miss Warren's dignity forbade it. "No wonder your +face was familiar," he said quietly; "no wonder! How I wish I might +have seen you play, but we must do something to make your father look +at things in a reasonable way. What can we do?" +</P> + +<P> +The girl shook her head. "Nothing" she said absently, "oh, nothing. +You know what an English yeoman is! or perhaps you don't! My greatest +kindness is to keep away from the Mill on the Rose" ... +</P> + +<P> +But Felicia Warren was not thinking of Glousceshire or of her father. +Still looking down at the money on the table, not even toward her +newly-found friend, she went on, "It is not half as curious, our +meeting here, as one might think. I knew you were here when I came and +I have watched you every day with—with your friend." A slight +expression of amusement crossed her face as, looking up, she caught his +puzzled expression. "Ah, you wonder about it!" she laughed gently. +Coming a little nearer to him, she went on: "You see, you have been my +benefactor, haven't you?" +</P> + +<P> +(Bulstrode wondered in just how far he <I>had</I> been beneficent!) "It's +natural I should remember you with gratitude, isn't it? Thanks to you +I have made my name." Her pride was touching. "You've made it +possible for me to know the world, to know life and to realize my +career. And now," she emphasized, "you've come to save my life and +afterward give me a little fortune." Here she again pointed to the +money. "My father took your money for years, Mr. Bulstrode, but <I>this, +this</I> must all go back. You must take it back soon—not that it could +really tempt me, but it hurts me to see it there." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, more wretched than he had yet been in his philanthropic +failures stared at her helplessly. This blind beneficence, this gift +made to the miller in a moment of enthusiasm had produced—how could he +otherwise believe—fatal results? Here was this delicate creature in +the fastest place in Europe, deserted by a man who had brought her +here—on the verge of suicide. +</P> + +<P> +Whilst speaking, Felicia Warren gathered up the gold and notes and she +was thrusting the money into his hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Please, please be reasonable," he pleaded. "You must let me help you. +There isn't any question of delicacy in the situation where you find +yourself to-night. If ever a man should be a woman's friend, I should +be that friend to you, and you must let me. Don't refuse. Money is +such a little thing, such a stupid little thing." +</P> + +<P> +Miss Warren shook her head obstinately. "Oh, that depends! I've +worked so hard that money often seems to me everything. Indeed, I +thought so to-night when I had not a sou! I shall think so to-morrow +when they seize my trunks for the hôtel bill." +</P> + +<P> +"Seize your trunks!" he exclaimed. "Why—you don't mean to say——?" +</P> + +<P> +The actress blushed crimson. "Oh, of course you thought otherwise," +she said, throwing up her pretty head. "I pay for my own livelihood, +Mr. Bulstrode," she told him proudly, "I pay for <I>everything</I> I have +and wear and eat and do. Don't feel badly at misunderstanding," she +comforted him sweetly—"You have nothing to apologize for. Why should +you or anyone think otherwise? But I don't care in the least what +people say or think; that is, <I>I only care what one person says</I>." +</P> + +<P> +With some of his gold in her palm and some of his bills in her hands, +Felicia Warren put both her hands on Bulstrode's arm. "No," she said +softly, "<I>I only care what one person thinks</I>. Can't you see that you +mustn't give me this?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," he persisted doggedly, charmed by her beyond his reason and angry +to find that she would not let him help her in the way he wished, "I do +<I>not</I> see! You must let me help you, you shall not be driven to +desperation." +</P> + +<P> +"Driven to desperation!" her expression seemed to say. Yes, so she had +been, but not through financial anxieties. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, I had rather starve than take your money. I could far sooner +have taken it from poor Pollona; and he left me so dreadfully angry +this morning." +</P> + +<P> +For a second neither spoke. He saw the soft mobile face touched to its +finest. Felicia's eyes were violet and large, and their expression at +the moment pierced him with its appeal. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you see?" she whispered. Her voice broke here. Her hands +trembled on his arm, some of the gold rattled on the floor and rolled +under the divan. She swayed and Bulstrode caught her. +</P> + +<P> +"... Ever since you came to the mill," she whispered, +"ever—since—you—came—to—the—mill." +</P> + +<P> +Before Bulstrode had time to realize what she said, or the fact that +his arm was about her, she had rushed across the room, thrown open the +window and gone out on the balcony. Left alone with what her words +implied, Bulstrode watched her go. +</P> + +<P> +The clock on the mantel pointed to three and through the open window +came the long, rushing sound of the sea on the beach. The day was +breaking and Bulstrode could see the white figure of Felicia Warren +between the lighted room and the dawn. +</P> + +<P> +He told himself that there was no reason why he should look upon her as +anything but an adventuress—and a very clever one—a very dangerous +one. But, at all events, there <I>was</I> no doubt that she was Felicia +Doan. She refused his money, and she told him that she loved him. But +Jimmy Bulstrode, man of the world as he was, did not reason at all +along those lines. Whether because he was vain, as most men are, or +because he was susceptible as he always told himself he was, he +believed what she said. More than once during the week at Trouville, +when she should have been absorbed in Polonna, Bulstrode had caught her +eyes fastened upon himself and as soon as she had met his own she had +turned hers away. He had no difficulty now in recalling the Mill on +the Rose, or the lovely bit of country where his shooting-box had held +him captive for nearly the whole hunting season. Nor had he any +difficulty in recalling the miller and his pretty daughter. Felicia +even then had been a wonder of good looks, and very intelligent and +mature. He could even see her as a child more plainly than he could +recall the woman who had just left him. She had been a pretty, +romantic girl and—she had deeply charmed him. He had walked with her +under the willows; he had told her many things; he had gone boating +with her on the Rose; he had tramped with her along the English lanes. +Of course he had been wrong. He had known it at the time—he had known +it. And perhaps one reason why he never reverted willingly to the days +spent with the girl was because his conscience had not left him free. +The money given to Doan, Bulstrode had always felt, was a sort of +recompense for hours of pleasure to which he had no right. Even at the +time he had feared that he had disturbed the girl's peace, and because +he had not wished to disturb his own, he had given up his lease and +left the place. Twelve years! Well, they had altered her enormously, +and her life had altered her and her experiences, and she was a very +charming creature. She was, in a measure, his very own work—almost +his creation. He had helped her to change her station, to alter her +life. What had she become? +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode's reflections consumed twenty minutes by the clock. He had +smoked a cigarette and walked up and down the deserted room, passing +many times the table where his gold lay scattered. +</P> + +<P> +Finally—he did not dare to trust himself to go out to her—he called +her name, Felicia Warren's name, gently, and she came directly in. +</P> + +<P> +Whilst alone on the balcony she had wept. Bulstrode could see the +trace on her cheeks and she was paler even than when he had struck the +pistol from her hand in the gardens of the Casino. She came over to +where he stood and said: +</P> + +<P> +"It's not a ruse, Mr. Bulstrode. Girls like me always have ideals. It +is fame with some, money with others, dress and a social craze for a +lot of them. But with me, ever since you came it has been +YOU—everything you said to me twelve years ago I have remembered. +Silly as it seems, I could almost tell the very words. I have seen a +lot of men since, too many," she said, "and known them too well. But I +have never seen anybody like you." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode tried to stop her. +</P> + +<P> +"But no," she pleaded, "let me go on. I've dreamed I might grow great, +and that some day you would see me play and that I should play so well +that you would go crazy about me! I have thought this really, and I +have lived for it, really—until—until——" +</P> + +<P> +As he did not question her or interrupt, she went on: +</P> + +<P> +"I said it was an ideal. Thinking of you and what I'd like to grow for +you kept me, in spite of everything—and I fancy you know in my +profession what that means—good." +</P> + +<P> +Here Felicia Warren met his eyes frankly with the same look of entire +innocence with which she might have met his eyes under the willows near +her father's mill. +</P> + +<P> +"I've been so horribly afraid that when you <I>did</I> come there might be +heaps of things you would not like that I have been awfully hard on +myself, awfully!" +</P> + +<P> +She was lacing and unlacing her slender fingers as she talked. +</P> + +<P> +"I went to Paris this spring because I saw that you were there, and +after passing you several times in the Bois and seeing that as far as I +could judge you were just the same as you had been, I took a new +courage hoping, waiting, for you, and being the best I knew. It seems +awfully queer to hear a woman talk like this to a man," she understood +it herself—"but you see I am used to speaking in public and I suppose +it is easier for me than for most women." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, more eager than anything else to know what her life had +really been, surprised and incredulous at everything she said, broke in +here: +</P> + +<P> +"But this—this man?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Pollona," she replied, "has been there for years, for years. He +has loved me ever since I first made my <I>début</I> and he follows me +everywhere like a dog. I have never looked at any of them, until this +week." +</P> + +<P> +With a sigh as if she renounced all her dreams, she said: "I grew tired +of my romantic folly. I was ill and nervous and could not play any +more, and that was dreadful. So, when Pollona came to me in Paris this +spring, I gave him a sort of promise. I told him that I was going to +Trouville for the Grande Semaine, that I would think things over and +that I would send him word." +</P> + +<P> +She picked up her handkerchief from the table where it lay beside her +gloves and her cloak and twisted the delicate object in her hands, +whose whiteness and transparency Bulstrode remarked. They were clever +hands, and showed her temperament and showed also singular breeding for +one born in the state of life from which she had come. +</P> + +<P> +"Well," she said shortly, "as you have seen, I gave in—I gave in at +last." +</P> + +<P> +"Why," Bulstrode asked abruptly, "did he leave you?" +</P> + +<P> +But instead of answering him, the girl said: "But you don't ask me why +I sent for him to come?" +</P> + +<P> +He was silent. +</P> + +<P> +Here she hid her face and through her fingers he could see the red rise +all along her cheek. Her attitude, and more what she implied than what +she said, and what he thought and feared, made the situation too much +for him. With a slight exclamation he put his arm about her and drew +her to him. As she rested against him he could feel her relax, hear +her sigh deeply. But, as he bent over her, she besought him to let her +go, to set her free, and he obeyed at once. +</P> + +<P> +"There," she said, "don't do that again—don't! Pollona left me +because he was jealous of you." +</P> + +<P> +But at this, in sheer unbelief, her hearer exclaimed: "Oh, my dear +girl!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, yes," she nodded, "when he found that I did not love him, that I +could never love him, he forced me to tell him the truth. Oh, don't be +afraid," she said, as though she anticipated his anger, "you are in no +wise connected with it. He thinks of me as a romantic, foolish girl. +He has laughed at me, tried to shake my faith, to destroy my ideal, but +at least he was honest enough to believe me; and that is all I asked of +him." +</P> + +<P> +Not for a moment did Bulstrode feel that she was weaving a web for him. +There was something about her so sincere and simple, she was so fragile +and fine and fair, there was so much of distinction in all she did and +said that it put her well nigh, one might say touchingly, apart from +the class to which she belonged. Her art and her knocking about, +instead of coarsening her, had refined her. She looked like a bit of +ivory, worn by experience, and struggle, to a fine polish; there was a +brilliance about her and he understood and felt, he instinctively saw +and knew, that she was unspoiled. +</P> + +<P> +It took him some half second to pull himself together. Then to turn +her thoughts from him, his from her, if he might, he questioned: +</P> + +<P> +"What sort of a man is Prince Pollona?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," she cried warmly, "the best! a kind, good, honorable friend. He +deserves something better than the horrors I have put him through, poor +dear!" +</P> + +<P> +"He seemed very devoted to you," Bulstrode said, "if one could judge." +</P> + +<P> +Not without pride she admitted that he was, and that the Prince had +always wanted to marry her. "I might have married him," she repeated, +"easily a score of times. But how it appears to interest you——" she +said jealously. +</P> + +<P> +"Only as he interests you," replied Bulstrode, "and what you tell me is +a great satisfaction. To be the Princess Pollona is an honor that many +women would be glad to have conferred upon them." Felicia Warren's +good looks were undeniable, her <I>genre</I> was exquisite, and Bulstrode, +again with no effort, believed all she said. Princes had married far +less royal-looking women, of far more humble antecedents than Felicia +Warren. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, his rank didn't dazzle me," she murmured absently, "they seem all +alike, and when they find out that I am not a certain kind they ask me +to marry them... But if I could only get back to the Mill on the Rose, +Mr. Bulstrode! If I might again see it as I used, if I could see you +there as I used to see you—walk by your side; row with you on the +river; if I could hear the wheel again as I used to hear it, then"—her +voice was delicious, a very note of the river of which she spoke. Oh, +she must act well, there was no doubt about that; no wonder she had +been a success: "If I might walk there with you—titles, even my art +and all the rest"—she did not apparently dare to look at him as she +spoke, but fixed her eyes across the room as if she saw back twelve +years into ——shire ... "if I could <I>only, only</I> go back again with +you!" +</P> + +<P> +In spite of himself, carried away by her voice, Bulstrode said: +</P> + +<P> +"You shall, you shall go back with me!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she gave a little cry and caught his hand, +steadying herself by the act. +</P> + +<P> +"Wait," he murmured, "wait, let me think it all out." And, as she had +done, Bulstrode walked over to the window, to the balcony where the +fresh air met his face, where the breath from the sea fanned him, +blended with the scent of the meadow. Before Bulstrode the first +reflection of the morning lay like silver on the sea. +</P> + +<P> +When he finally went back into the room, Felicia Warren had not moved. +Just as he left her, she sat, deep back into the divan, leaning on her +hand, with something like the glory of a dream on her face. Standing +in front of her, he said slowly: +</P> + +<P> +"I'm entirely free. No one in the world depends upon me. I have no +tie, or bond to my life. I have freedom and money. So far—if what +you say is all true, don't start so, for I believe it, every word—so +far, I have spoiled your life." +</P> + +<P> +But the girl shook her head. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, no, <I>you haven't</I>," she assured him. "We make our own lives, I +expect, and I told you that I could remember everything you ever said +to me in the past—you never lied to me, and you were never anything +but kind and dear. I've been a fool, a fool!" +</P> + +<P> +Sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they +had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room +around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like +a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had +at last drifted along the shore to his feet. Unhappy and deserted, she +reached the very tenderest part of Bulstrode's nature. Cost him what +it would, he must save her. +</P> + +<P> +But, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose +and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder: +</P> + +<P> +"You must go <I>now</I>: that is what I ask you to do. I have seemed, and +indeed I have thrown myself upon your mercy; but, in reality, I don't +do any such thing. You will soon forget me, as you have been able to +do all these years. The table is full of your money. I am poor, and +yet I don't take it. Doesn't <I>that</I> prove a little my good faith? +Doesn't it? Only think of me as the most romantic dreamer you ever +saw, and of nothing more. Oh, <I>no</I>," she breathed softly, "<I>no</I>, a +thousand times...! +</P> + +<P> +"I've answered your question before you've asked it! No, I couldn't; +no woman who wants love is content with pity. I would rather starve +than take money from you although I have lived on your money for years. +I would rather be unhappy than take what you could offer me for love. +You mustn't speak; you mustn't ask me. The temptation is very great, +you know, and it <I>might</I> wreck me. No, Mr. Bulstrode, and the reason +why I say it is because I've seen." +</P> + +<P> +"'I've seen?'" he repeated her words. "You've seen, but what do you +mean—what have you seen?" +</P> + +<P> +"I'm going to tell you why I sent for Prince Pollona, although you +don't ask me. I came to Trouville alone. I saw you; I've watched you +with your friends." Bulstrode accepted quietly. "The two young people +are engaged to be married and the other two are husband and +wife—well...?" +</P> + +<P> +A spasm of pain crossed Felicia Warren's face and she put what she had +to say with singular delicacy for an actress who had risen from the +people. +</P> + +<P> +"I know," she said, "I understand, but when I saw you, I knew that +there was no hope for any other woman who loved you—and I gave you up +then. I sent for Pollona." +</P> + +<P> +The introduction of even so little into the room as the suggestion of +the woman he loved, startled Bulstrode as nothing else under the +circumstances could have done. It struck him like a lash. He was +disenchanted, and he more quietly considered the girl whose confession +and whose beauty had made him nearly disloyal. +</P> + +<P> +Felicia Warren, as though she took it in her own hands and, mistress of +herself, knew how much she could take and what she could deny herself, +laid her hand on his arm. +</P> + +<P> +"You can do nothing at all, just as you have always done—and I—I can +learn to forget. But I have refused your money to-night," she said +piteously, "haven't I? and I am penniless; I have refused more too; +perhaps what no woman who loves could refuse as well. Don't you think +that there is something due me? Answer me this? Tell me. You <I>do</I> +love her, you <I>do</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +As she leaned against him, the years seemed to fall away and to leave +her a girl again, nothing more than a child he had known. He took her +face between his hands and looked into it as one might look into a +well. He saw nothing but his own reflection there. +</P> + +<P> +"God knows," he said deeply, "I could not willingly pain a living +creature, and to think that I should have made you suffer, have made a +woman suffer for years. Let me do all I can, my dear, let me—let me!" +</P> + +<P> +"You love her?" she persisted. +</P> + +<P> +His hands dropped to his side. "With all my soul," he said, "with all +my soul!" He thought she would sink to the floor, but instead she +caught fast hold of the table on which his money lay. She leaned on it +heavily, refusing his aid. He took one of the girl's cold hands in his. +</P> + +<P> +"Listen, listen! Let me say a word. How do you think it makes a man +feel to hear what you have told me to-night? to see you as you are, to +grow to know you in such a short—in such a terrible way, and in a few +hours to grow to know you so well, to find you dear, desirable, and +then to leave you, as you tell me I must leave you. I can't do it; I +have never been so miserable in my life, and if I find I am entirely +helpless to serve you I can never get over the regret." +</P> + +<P> +Felicia Warren turned a little. +</P> + +<P> +"I have found you near disaster," Bulstrode urged, "I must and will see +you to the shore. If you utterly refuse to let me take care of you as +I can and will, will you then," he hesitated, then brought it +out—"Will <I>you marry</I> Prince Pollona?" +</P> + +<P> +She drew from him with a cry, and by what he said she seemed to have +gained sudden strength. +</P> + +<P> +"My God!" she breathed, "You ask me <I>that</I>? Oh, it proves, it proves +how less than nothing I am..." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode saw he could not, must not undeceive her. +</P> + +<P> +"If you wish me to do <I>that</I>," she cried. "Oh, how dreadfully, how +cruelly, it breaks my dream!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode said authoritatively, "Listen! listen for one moment." +</P> + +<P> +The eyes of the girl were dark with defiance; she brushed her hair off +her brow with the back of her hand and stared straight before her. +</P> + +<P> +"—Otherwise," said Bulstrode, "I will remain here; I shall not leave +these rooms till morning and you will then be forced to marry me, and +since you think as you do, since I have told you my secret, ruin +perhaps three lives." +</P> + +<P> +He had her at bay, and for a brief second, he thought she would accept +his menace. But then in a sudden her anger vanished and her face +softened. +</P> + +<P> +"You know," she said, "that, loving you as I do, whatever you tell me +to do, I must. But let me go on with my career. Let me work, let me +work, and be free!" +</P> + +<P> +He said decidedly, "No! You must be protected from yourself; you must +have some one with you who will take care of you as I cannot do. You +must do this for me. Is Pollona distasteful to you?" he pursued, "do +you <I>hate</I> him?" +</P> + +<P> +She made an indifferent shrug of her shoulders. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode was watching her face keenly, and after a second said, "No, +you do not hate him. You sent for him to come to you here. He was the +one to whom you turned, Felicia; turn to him now." +</P> + +<P> +As she wavered and hesitated, he insisted, coming close to her: +</P> + +<P> +"You have an ideal, you told me—well we can't get on without them. +Your ideal has helped you, hasn't it? It seems pretty well to have +stood by you. I have one too, you must understand that, and I ask you +to help me to keep it secret now." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, what do you mean?" she questioned breathlessly. +</P> + +<P> +"I mean," he said gravely, "that I am a very lonely man. My days are +absolutely desolate excepting for those things that I can put into +them. I have nothing in my life and I am not meant for such a lot. I +am not meant for that! Such an existence has bitter temptations for +every man, and although I have never seen you before, possibly my fate +and Pollona's rest to-night with you." +</P> + +<P> +Felicia Warren turned her great eyes with a sort of wonder to him. +They rested on him with a tenderness that he could not long have borne. +</P> + +<P> +"You must not remain unmarried," he said, "you must not." +</P> + +<P> +Without answering him she went slowly over to her little desk. She +wrote a few seconds there and came back and handed to him a little slip +of paper. +</P> + +<P> +"When the telegraph office opens to-day, will you send this dispatch +for me? It will fetch Prince Pollona to me no matter where he may be. +I have asked him to meet me in Paris and I will take the morning train +from here myself." +</P> + +<P> +She turned to the table on which his money lay and taking a roll of +notes said, "I will pay up everything I owe here. I think I have given +you every proof, every proof." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode made no advance towards her. He saw how she struggled with +her emotion. He let her get herself in hand. Finally, with more +composure, she spoke again: +</P> + +<P> +"I play next month in London. Will you come to see me play?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, many times." +</P> + +<P> +"No," Felicia Warren murmured, "only once, and after that I shall never +see you again." +</P> + +<P> +He would have protested, but she repeated, "never again," with such +intensity that he bowed his head and he found that her decision brought +a pang whose sharpness he wondered would last how long. +</P> + +<P> +He had started, with her last words, toward the door and she followed +him over to it. There, detaining him by her hand, she asked softly: +"Does she, too, love you as much as this?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode hesitated; then said, "I do not know." +</P> + +<P> +"Not know?" cried the girl, "you don't know?" +</P> + +<P> +It was with the greatest difficulty that Bulstrode could at any time +bring to his lips even the name of the woman he loved. At this moment +the vision of her as he had seen her lately on her husband's arm going +in under the pavilion of the hôtel crossed his mind with a cruel +despair and cruel disgust. A sense of his solitude, of his defrauded +life, rushed over him as he looked into the eyes of this woman who +loved him. +</P> + +<P> +"No," he said intensely, "I do not know, I do not know. I have a code +of honor a million years old, but I live up to it. She is a wife, I +have never told her that I love her." +</P> + +<P> +The girl's incredulity and surprise were great. It showed in the smile +which, something like happiness, crossed her lips. She drew a long +breath; she held his eyes with hers, then she laid both her arms around +his neck and Bulstrode bent and kissed her. He held her for one moment +and his heart, if it beat for another woman, beat hard and fast and its +pulse ran through her own. Then Felicia heard the door close and the +footsteps of the man died away. +</P> + +<P> +It was seven o'clock when Bulstrode found himself out in the streets. +The fresh air in a keen, salt wind poured over him. Down on the beach, +for a couple of francs he bribed an attendant to open a bath-house for +him, and a few moments later, shivering a little in the keen air, he +could have been seen running down to the sea, and in a few moments more +his strong swift strokes had carried him far out into the waters which +the summer sun even at this early hour was fast turning into blue. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +When Jimmy came to himself, he found that without either seeing Mrs. +Falconer again or having even bidden a decent good-bye or godspeed to +his fiancée, he was back again in Paris. He had run away. Well, that +wasn't any new thing, he was always at it. Paris, in the month of +August, gave him a hot, desolate welcome, and it was with difficulty +that he could find a lawyer who would help him down to bedrock and put +in motion the business of winding up the affairs of Molly and her +Marquis. +</P> + +<P> +De Presle-Vaulx came to town and found his champion there and brought +him many messages from the ladies as well as a letter which Bulstrode +put in his pocket to read down in the country at the château of +Vaulxgoron in the seclusion of his own room. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode played the part of the "American Uncle" to perfection. He +let the old Marquis beat him at backgammon; he wandered all over the +property with the Marquise. He bought the young man for Molly Malines +and closed up his beneficent affairs in a very decent manner indeed, +but on the night when Mrs. Falconer and Miss Malines should have +arrived at the château, Bulstrode ran away again. From then on he +became a wandering Jew. He ran up to Norway, fished a little, then +took a motor and some people, who did not know any one whom he had ever +known, and drove them through Italy. He continued to travel a little +longer, working his way northward until finally—so he put it—dusty as +"Dusty Dog Dingo," tired as "Tired Dog Dingo," Bulstrode found himself +in London, drew a deep breath and capitulated. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap06"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE SIXTH ADVENTURE +</H3> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VI +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN WHICH HE DISCARDS A KNAVE AND SAVES A QUEEN +</H3> + +<P> +The morning he left for Westboro' Castle, Bulstrode remembers as being +the most beautiful of days; it came to him like a golden gift of +unrivalled loveliness as it broke and showered sunlight over England. +</P> + +<P> +"The very crannies of the island," he smiled at his own conceit, "must +filter out this gold to the sea." +</P> + +<P> +England lay like a viking's cup full to the brim of sunlight; +especially entrancing because unusual in the British calendar, and +enchanting to the American gentleman because it absolutely accorded +with his own mood. +</P> + +<P> +It was middle November, and yet there was not—so it seemed as one +looked at yellow and copper luxuriance—a leaf lost from the suave +harmony of the trees. Farms, tiled and thatched, basked in summery +warmth, forest, hedge and copse, full-foliaged and abundant, shone out +in copper and bronze, and the air's stillness, the patient +tranquillity, enfolding the land, made it seem expectantly to wait for +some sudden wind that should ultimately cast devastation through the +forests. +</P> + +<P> +On leaving his ship at Plymouth the day before, Bulstrode found amongst +other letters in his mail the Duke of Westboro's invitation for a +week's shooting in the west of England: "There were sure to be heaps of +people Jimmy would know"—and Bulstrode eagerly read the subjoined list +of names until he saw in a flash the name of the One Woman in the +World. He at once telegraphed his acceptance. +</P> + +<P> +The following afternoon he threw his evening papers and overcoat into a +first-class carriage whilst the guard placed his valise and +dressing-case in the rack. +</P> + +<P> +As there had been several minutes to starting time, he had not +immediately taken his seat, but had stood smoking by the side of his +carriage. He might, and did, doubtless, pass with others of the well +set-up, well-looking men travelling on that day, for an Englishman, but +closer observation showed his attire to be distinguished by that +personal note which marks the cosmopolitan whose taste has been more or +less tempted by certain fantasies of other countries. Bulstrode's +clothes were brown, his gloves, cravat, and boots all in the same color +scheme—one mentions a man's dress only on rare occasions, as on this +certain day one has been led to mention the weather. That a man is +perfectly turned out should, like the weather, be taken for granted. +Bulstrode on this day, travelling as he was towards a goal, towards the +one person he wanted above all to see, had spent some unusual thought +on his toilet. At all events, on passing a florist's in Piccadilly, +after giving his order for flowers to be boxed and expressed to +Westboro', he had selected a tiny reddish-brown chrysanthemum which now +covered the button-hole of his coat's lapel; it created a distinctive +scheme of color. In point of fact it caught the eye of the lady who, +hurrying from the waiting-room towards the Westboro' express, caught +sight of the American and started. It appeared as if she would speak +to him, half advanced, thought better of it, and said to the guard, who +was about to fasten a placard on the window of a carriage: +</P> + +<P> +"Please—-just a second—won't you, guard?" +</P> + +<P> +The bell rang, and Bulstrode found himself helping the lady into his +own compartment. The guard shut the door, which closed with the +customary soft thick sound of a lock setting, and pasted over the +window the exclusive and forbidding paper—RESERVED. +</P> + +<P> +Then it was in his corner by the window, once chimney pots and suburbs +left behind, that the traveller to Westboro' watched the landscape with +the pale, transparent smoke from the little farms floating like veils +across the golden atmosphere; the slow winding streams between +low-bushed, rosy shores, and red-tinged thickets; the flocks of rooks +across fields long harvested: the flocks of sheep on the gently +swelling downs. +</P> + +<P> +"England, England," he murmured, as if it were a refrain in whose +melody he found much charm, as if his traditions of insular forebears +might in some way be recalled in the word, as if it spoke more than a +chance traveller's appreciation for the melodious countryside. +</P> + +<P> +He had letters, read them, and put his correspondence aside, then +comfortably settling himself in his corner, began to construct for +himself a picture of Westboro', whose lines and architecture he knew +from photographs, although he had never been there. It was agreeable +to him as he mused to fancy himself for the first time with Mrs. +Falconer in England, in the country they preferred to all the others in +the Old World. They were in sympathy with English life and manners, +and here, if (oh, of course, a world of "ifs")—here no doubt they +would both choose to live when abroad, were there any choice for them +of mutual life. +</P> + +<P> +Westboro' is Elizabethan and of vast proportions. The house would +naturally be very full—how much of the time would they discover for +themselves? There would decidedly be occasions. Mary Falconer did not +hunt, and although Jimmy Bulstrode could recall having postulated that +"there are only two real occupations for a real man—to kill and to +love," he also knew what precedence he himself gave, and how little the +sportsmen of Westboro' would have cause to fear his concurrence if by +lucky chance in more or less of solitude he should find his lady there. +</P> + +<P> +It was months since he had seen Mrs. Falconer—months. It had been a +long exile. Each time that he started out to run away, it was just +that—running away—it was with a curious wonder whether or not on his +return he should not find a change. Time and absence—above all, time, +worked extraordinary infidelities in other people. Why should they two +believe themselves immune? The long months might have altered <I>her</I>. +The mischief was yet to be seen. But when in the list of noble names +he had in his hand, his eyes fell upon the single prefix—<I>Mrs.</I>—and +found it followed by <I>The Name</I>, if he had not sincerely known before, +his pulse at sight of the written words told Jimmy that he had not, at +all events, changed! +</P> + +<P> +Thinking at this point to light a cigarette, he became at the second +mindful of the other passenger in his carriage and that they were +alone. As he looked across towards the lady who had unwound her dark +veil, he observed that she was herself smoking, holding the cigarette +in her hand as with head turned from him she scanned the landscape +through the window of the compartment. +</P> + +<P> +He saw with a little start of pleasure what a delight she gave to the +eye, tastefully dressed as she too was, in leaf brown from head to +foot, with the slightest indication of forest green at buttons and hem +of her dress. Her hat, with its drooping feathers, fell rather low +over her wonderful hair, bronze in its reflections. Indeed, the lady +blended well with the November landscape, and as she apparently was not +conscious of her companion, he enjoyed the harmonious note she made to +the full. +</P> + +<P> +"What scope," he mused, "what scope they all have—and how prettily +they most of them know it! So just to sit and be a thing of beauty; +with head half-drooping, and eyelash meditative, one hand ungloved, and +such a perfectly lovely hand...! (It held the half-smoked cigarette, +but his taste was not offended.) He thought her a whim too debonnaire +for a Parisian of the best world, and of <I>that</I> she most distinctly +was—Austrian more than likely. Every woman has her history—only when +she is part of several has she a past. What had this woman so to +meditate upon? She turned and he met her eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"You have naturally waited for me to speak first," she said with a +gracious gesture of her bare hand. "And <I>I</I> was waiting till you +should have finished your letters! I, too, have wanted to think." +</P> + +<P> +Her familiar address, perfectly courteous and made in a pleasant voice, +with a very slight accent, was a surprise to her companion, who +mechanically lifted his hat as he bowed to her across the narrow +distance between their seats. +</P> + +<P> +"The guard," she smiled, "came very near putting the placard on the +other window! But I think we are now quite sure to be alone!" She +pointed to the seat opposite. "Sit there," she more commanded than +permitted, "we can talk better and I can watch your kind face, which +always looks as if you understood—and I shall be able to please you +better—perhaps to make you not unkind to me." +</P> + +<P> +He obeyed, taking the place indicated without hesitation, and as he sat +facing her, he saw her to be one of the most beautiful women he had +ever seen. There was at once something dazzling about her—and at the +same time familiar... He had surely met her, and not long ago. Where? +And how stupid of him to have forgotten! Or had he only seen her +photograph and remarked her as a celebrity whose type of looks had +pleased him? But no, she knew him: that was clear. He met her +friendly eyes, where liking was evident as well as the suggestion of +something akin to an appeal. Bulstrode was greatly intrigued. +</P> + +<P> +"Unkind?" he repeated vaguely. "But why should you think that? Please +me?"—and his graciousness did not fall short of her own—"But why +should you...?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, true," she interrupted him, "quite true. There is no reason +why—" and she made a rather petulant gesture—"yet every woman wants +to please, and none of us relishes being judged. Never mind, however, +don't think of me as a <I>person</I>—just let me talk to you frankly, be +myself for once with someone if I can." +</P> + +<P> +Jimmy Bulstrode gathered himself together and sat back in his corner. +She was very lovely at it, this being herself. Gallantry would not let +him bluntly tell her that she had made a mistake. A second more would +clear the matter and would be quite soon enough, for him at least, to +find that they were total strangers. Unless, indeed, he had met her +and forgotten it. They had possibly held some conversation together in +a London drawing-room. But how could he have been such a boor as to +forget her? She was neither a crook nor a mad woman—she might be an +adventuress; if so, she was an unusual one. He glanced at her luggage +as if it might help him—a dark-covered dressing-case, bundle of furs, +and rugs—new, everything new. Her left hand was bare of rings, she +clasped it with her gloved fellow and said warmly: +</P> + +<P> +"I can't believe it possible that you came, actually came, and that we +have so smoothly met! I can't believe nothing has hitched or missed, +or that everything is so cleverly planned and arranged for me, and +least of all I can believe that it should be <I>you</I> who are so sublimely +doing this." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah—" But here Bulstrode tardily started up. <I>He</I> doing it all? At +least if he was, then he must, if nothing else—know! He smiled at her +with a pleasant sense of being in the secret and with indulgent +amusement at her mistake. +</P> + +<P> +"I think—you made a mistake," he began it with commonplaceness, but +his gesture softened the words. +</P> + +<P> +But the lady made a little annoyed "tchk" with her tongue against her +teeth, and threw up her head with an impatient toss, an intensely +foreign way of dismissing his interpolation. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't, in pity's sake, talk like this," she exclaimed. "<I>Mistake</I>? +Who under the blue heavens <I>doesn't</I> make them—Certa! Haven't you, +yourself, in spite of your moral, spotless life, haven't even <I>you</I> +made them?" +</P> + +<P> +"How," flushed the naïve gentleman, on the sudden betrayed into a +mental frankness of self-approval near to conceit, "how does <I>she</I> know +me so well?" +</P> + +<P> +"Who is there," his companion gave him the question in a challenging +tone "to tell each other and every one of us what is or will be a +mistake in his life? Where were everyone's eyes when I married?—Why +didn't someone tell me then that my marriage was a hideous mistake? As +for the rest of it..." she turned away for a second towards the window, +and Bulstrode saw how the hot blood had mounted and her eyes had +changed when after a moment she came back to him again. She put out +towards him a beseeching hand: "<I>You</I> above all men, who are faithful +to an ideal, must not give me old platitudes!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode's head reeled. He felt like a man who after a narcotic finds +his brain suddenly alight and real things grow strange. He wanted to +rub his eyes. She appeared singularly to appreciate his daze. +</P> + +<P> +"It is as strange to me as it is to you, to find myself here with a man +to whom I have never spoken before—to be under his protection, and to +talk with him like this; and yet I have seen you so often, I have +watched you in the distance, and long since I singled you out as the +one man in whom I could fancy confiding—the one man to whom I could +give a sacred trust." +</P> + +<P> +With these words the incognita drew herself up, and her manner, with +amazing swiftness, changed from a childlike confidence to a dignity not +without a certain rigidness, and as Bulstrode remarked this, he also +noticed that she was very young, and he was conscious in her of a +something he had never quite met in a woman before—an extreme dignity, +an ultra poise, an assurance.—Who was she?—And whom did she take him +to be? With every turn of the fast wheels of the express it was +growing more difficult to explain. She would more keenly feel the fact +that he had not cut her frankness short—he had no right to her +confidences even though she took their mutual knowledge of each other +for granted. +</P> + +<P> +"When," he ventured it delicately—"did you last see me?" It was bold, +but it did perfectly. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, an age ago, isn't it? You were last on the Continent I think in +August at Trouville, during La Grande Semaine." +</P> + +<P> +Ah, he reflected, <I>of course</I>! <I>That</I> was where, amongst so many other +celebrities and beauties, she had attracted his attention. But his +rapid mental calculations of those seven days could reveal to him no +woman's face but one. He found himself even in this unique moment +recalling the time following hard on Molly's formal engagement to her +Marquis ... and those days were amongst the brightest in his life. No, +there had been no foreign element at Trouville for him in the dazzle +and freedom of that worldly fortnight—for Jimmy Bulstrode, in all the +scene she summoned up, there was but one woman. He came back with a +start to the other. +</P> + +<P> +"Then yesterday, as you passed our table at the Carlton, and it seemed +as if heaven had sent you to us to help us—at least so we both felt." +</P> + +<P> +And Bulstrode doubtfully smiled and, now determined, broke in, or would +have done so, but she waved him imperiously. +</P> + +<P> +"Your mind," she spoke indulgently, "is on the wrong side to-day. Try +to think only of the happiness towards which I am going so rapidly, so +rapidly." Then, as she with her word glanced out of the window, she +cried: "Oh, what if something should happen to the train—what if some +horrible delay——" +</P> + +<P> +And he shook himself to action. +</P> + +<P> +"My dear lady," he began gravely, "you must hear me. You have made and +are making a great mistake. I am certainly not the man..." +</P> + +<P> +"I <I>command</I> you, sir," she flashed out at him—"surely you will not +disobey me—you will not make me think as well that I am making a +mistake in you." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, but that," he gasped, and caught her words gratefully, "is just +the point." +</P> + +<P> +She smiled. "Please...! Let me judge! Only don't condemn me. Only +be glad you can so marvellously help a human soul to happiness—can so +generously lend yourself for these few hours to aid in my escape." +</P> + +<P> +She was escaping! Well, he had nearly guessed it! The new luggage +alone was an indication. Unless her mania was for taking strangers to +be intimate friends, she wasn't fleeing a madhouse! From what did she +so determinedly run?—and how in heaven's name was he helping her? Did +she think he was going to marry her? Into what tangle had the man he +was unwittingly impersonating got himself—and in default of his +appearing on the scene in what would his absence involve poor Bulstrode? +</P> + +<P> +He took off his hat and put it down on the seat—thus his fine head was +fully revealed to the lady's view. +</P> + +<P> +"I do not know you," he said determinedly. "You do not know me, but +you seem bent on not acknowledging this fact or permitting me to state +it." +</P> + +<P> +But even this plain statement did him no good, for she said, quite +agreeing with him: +</P> + +<P> +"If I had ever spoken with you—been near you before, I would not be +here now. You see it is just your <I>impersonality</I>—your <I>having</I> no +connection with anything in my life that makes it possible! But why," +she exclaimed impatiently, "do you spend these few hours with me in +this meaningless warfare? You should, it seems, take the honor more +graciously, and since you are here, have consented to be here, show me +a little kindness. Since, after all, willingly or not, you are in +effect nobly helping me to do what I am doing." +</P> + +<P> +And this brought him wonderfully up to the question of what was he +doing? What was he supposed to be furthering here? It was his +expression, no doubt, that made her ask with curious aptness: "Just how +much <I>do</I> you know?" +</P> + +<P> +The poor gentleman threw out his hands desperately. "You can't think +how in the dark I am! How beyond words mystified." +</P> + +<P> +"How droll!" she laughed sweetly, "and how amusing and all the more +beautiful and like you, to be, in spite of yourself, here. You see we +have switched off—just as you said we would do." +</P> + +<P> +So they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his +feet. He looked out: it was a fast express, a through train—the first +stop should have been Westboro' Abbey. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you +arranged so cleverly!—and the Westboro' people will go on without us." +</P> + +<P> +Would they indeed! Lucky people, but not if he could prevent it. But +his attention to the train's procedure had come too late. +</P> + +<P> +He opened the window and looked out. They stood at the side of a +switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the +far distance Bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train. He +drew in his head and quietly asked his companion: +</P> + +<P> +"What has happened to us, do you know?" +</P> + +<P> +She laughed deliciously. "Know? Why, of course, I do. You're +delightful! Of course I have followed every step of the plan—the +special for Dover picks us up here in three-quarters of an hour, +doesn't it? We make the boat for Calais, and there Gela meets me and +<I>your</I> mission is done!" +</P> + +<P> +The gentleman opposite her listened quietly, and before speaking waited +a second, staring down at her, his hands in his pockets: there they +touched a little coin which he always carried: a coin that opened at a +sacred point to discover to his eyes alone a picture of a woman as +lovely as this woman, as human, and one whom he had good cause to +suppose loved another man than her husband. The woman opposite him was +escaping from her husband. <I>That</I> was what she was doing! He who had +striven for fifteen years to prevent the like in the life of the one +woman of all, now appeared to be helping this poor thing to the same +thing. He did not believe he was to be waylaid and robbed, or that any +trick had been played upon him. The only thing he did <I>not</I> believe +was that the woman knew him! Before, however, brushing the delusion +aside, he asked, his candid eyes upon her: "And my mission being so +done, what then becomes of you?" +</P> + +<P> +The shrug of her shoulders was neither an indication of indifference +nor a pretty desperation! it rather was a relinquishing of herself +wholly to Fate—an abandon. +</P> + +<P> +"What becomes of a happy woman who goes with the man she loves?" +</P> + +<P> +"Her Fate," said her companion, "has no single history. She is most +often disillusioned, many times tragic, and always disgraceful." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, hush," she said angrily, "you presume too far. If you only +intended to lecture me—to condemn me—why did you come?" +</P> + +<P> +At this sincerely humorous challenge Bulstrode smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"I did not, to be quite accurate, come," he said, "and I assure you I +am here against my will. You refuse to listen to me; you turn my +efforts to put things straight against me—and now." +</P> + +<P> +The handsome creature gave him a flash from angry eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Your Excellency is scarcely polite. But I understand. Even my rank +doesn't protect me: and although your old friendship for Gela did +overcome your scruples, and our letters did touch you—still we should +have remembered that you are, above all else, the King's friend." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode fell a step back. Before he could take in the curious honors +that were being thrust upon him, the lady went hotly on: +</P> + +<P> +"You know how indulgent of me the King has been: how he adores me +still, how blind he is, and you pity him and have no mercy for me." +</P> + +<P> +Here, for she, too, had left her seat, she went over to the compartment +window and turning her back full on Bulstrode, stood looking out, and +she thus gave him time and he took it, not to consider his part of the +affair, but, as if it had been suddenly revealed to him by her words, +the woman's part in it. After all it was scarcely important whom, in +error, she believed him to be. In a strange fashion, through some +trick of resemblance, he was here and in her confidence in another's +stead—impersonating some man who, in spite of the reputation for +goodness and honor accredited him by this lady, would scarcely, +Bulstrode felt confident, be as scrupulous regarding the adventure as +he himself was fast becoming. The woman—the woman was all that +mattered. She was a Queen then? A Queen! And he had so naïvely +ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of +<I>lèse-majesté</I>—that she, poor thing, attributed his <I>sans gêne</I> to her +fallen state! +</P> + +<P> +Kings and Queens, poor dears, how human they are! What royalty could +she be? And what King's friend was he so closely supposed to be? The +King's friend—well, so he was—so he must be in spite of his quick +pity for the lovely creature—in spite of chivalry and the trust she +displayed. But to be practical: what in half an hour could he hope to +accomplish—how could he keep a determined woman from wrecking her life? +</P> + +<P> +His mind flew to Paddington, and his first sight of the lady on the +platform. There had been near the hour two trains for Westboro', one +of them a local which left London some few minutes later than the +Western express. <I>That</I> later train, no doubt of it, would fetch the +real accomplice to the eloping lady. Bulstrode argued that, should he +declare himself to the Queen at this point for a total stranger, the +revelation would plunge her in despair, anger and frighten her, and +lose him his cause—There was, in view of the cause, he now felt and +nerved himself to the deception, nothing to do but to assume his rôle +in earnest and play it as well as he might. He had never sat alone in +a travelling carriage and hobnobbed with a Queen, but he gracefully +made his try at the proper address: "Your Majesty," he began, and she +whirled quickly round, pleasure on her face. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Gresthaven!" she exclaimed with touching gratitude, extending her +hand. "Thanks, mon ami! I shall not have my title long, and I shall, +I suppose, miss it with other things." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, with her naming of him, knew at length who he was, and +recalled his supposed likeness to a certain Lord Almouth +Gresthaven—famous explorer, traveller and diplomat, cosmopolitan in +his tastes and a dabbler in the politics of other and less significant +countries than his own. In accepting his new personality, the American +winced a little as he bowed over the royal little hand and kissed it. +</P> + +<P> +"Your Majesty will miss many things indeed," he said gravely—"your +kingdom, your people, and the King—the King," he repeated, dwelling on +the word, "who, as you say, loves you." +</P> + +<P> +"My good friend," the lady made a little <I>moue</I>—"I know everything you +would say. You can't suppose I haven't thought of it all? To be so +far on my way must I not have carefully considered every step? One is, +after all, a woman—and I am a woman in love." +</P> + +<P> +"One word then," pleaded her unwilling imposter—"one word. Have you +also asked yourself: what chance for happiness a woman can possibly +hope for with a man who allows her to make the sacrifice you are about +to make?" +</P> + +<P> +If his words were straws before the wind to the woman, his simplicity +was impressive to her. "It has seemed to me," Jimmy Bulstrode said, +"that there is a great distinction between love and passion—and that +however great his passion for her, a man should supremely—<I>supremely +love</I> the woman he singles out of all the world." +</P> + +<P> +The Queen of Poltavia looked at the gentleman before her, who stood +very straight, his head alone bent, his clear fine eyes fixed upon her +own. +</P> + +<P> +"Love!" she repeated softly, "how well you say the word." +</P> + +<P> +A slight flush stole up the American's cheek. +</P> + +<P> +"Supreme love," he ventured to continue, "means protection to the +woman...." +</P> + +<P> +Here the Queen made an impatient gesture as though she shook away the +impression his tone made. +</P> + +<P> +"My dear Gresthaven," she exclaimed, "love means above all else +happiness! One is happy with one person and miserable with another. +It's all a lottery and unless our plans miscarry I am going towards the +greatest happiness in the world. But come"—She altered her tone to +one of practical command—"Let us address ourselves to our flight. You +have your train schedule of course? The Dover train is due here at +4:50 and it only waits for the taking on of our carriage." As she +looked up at him she saw the trouble in his face, and a solicitude for +her to which she was unaccustomed. +</P> + +<P> +"Mon cher ami," she said quizzically, "what, may I ask, since your +scruples are so great, ever led you to accept this mission....?" +</P> + +<P> +"Frankly," he eagerly answered, and was honest in it, "the hope, the +desire that I might...." +</P> + +<P> +"Persuade a woman in love against her heart?" she smiled, and so +sweetly, so convincingly, and so reasonably, he was for an instant all +on her side. +</P> + +<P> +"I see my folly, your Majesty." +</P> + +<P> +"There's nothing but <I>force majeure</I>, Gresthaven...." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes" ... he admitted reluctantly. "Let me go out now and see to our +manoeuvres here." He was able to open the door which a passing guard +had unlocked unobserved.... +</P> + +<P> +The innocent royalty let him pass, thanking him with a smile, and saw +him go down the track toward the little squat station, with the guards. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Bulstrode, whose mind as he walked along was busy with train schedules, +recalled, nevertheless, the Duke's letter, which he still had in his +letter case, and he took it from his pocket and re-read it. +</P> + +<P> +"... We are to have over the week-end a dash of royalty. Carmen-Magda, +the Queen of the petty kingdom of Poltavia." (This mention of the +Westboro' guests had quite escaped Bulstrode's mind in his +contemplation of the last page of the Duke's note.... "We are to have +a compatriot of your own, a Mrs. Jack Falconer.") And royalty being +very relative to the unsnobbish American, he had simply transferred the +title (with possibly a possessive pronoun before it) to the other lady! +He smiled as he reflected that the Westboro' express was destined to +arrive at the Abbey without either the royal guest or Mr. James +Thatcher Bulstrode. But more to the point, more instantly absorbing +was the fact, that within ten minutes the slow train from London to +Westboro' would arrive at Radleigh Bucks, the little station before +which he now stood, and from it, undoubtedly, would descend the real +Lord Gresthaven. If Jimmy needed encouragement in his self-imposed +rôle of Master of Fate, if he needed to forget the ardor and the +determination of the little Queen, if he needed to forget how, in +youth, he had cordially hated those interfering people who, on +horseback and in chaises, tore after flying lovers to waylay them at +Gretna Green—he found his stimulus in recalling that he was "the +King's friend." +</P> + +<P> +"It's after all something of a distinction," he mused, entertained by +the idea, "a sort of royal <I>noblesse oblige</I>—and since the poor dear +herself has so made me out to be, given King the precedence, how could +I, in the cause of gallantry, have proceeded otherwise! It's this +diabolical little brown chrysanthemum," he mentally laid the fault +there. "It is evidently a telling mark. People in books are always +meeting unknowns who are to wear a red flower in the right lapel of the +coat".... and he had unintentionally gone over into a romance—and his +<I>triste</I> part in it was that of an unsympathetic spoiler of a romance. +</P> + +<P> +As after a prolonged parley with the station officials he walked +leisurely back to his carriage, his wallet grown very thin indeed and +his honest heart suffering many sincere pangs at the contemplation of +his conduct altogether, he argued: "She is absurdly young—she will, +after a little, go back to her allegiance (he put it so), and I don't +take much stock in that barbaric Gela anyway, he probably is a +Hungarian band-master or a handsome ticket-agent, a plebian creature +whose very remoteness from her own life has fascinated her." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, not quite sure just whom he was supposed to be by the train +people, found himself bowed and escorted back to the carriage which had +been turned and manipulated and side-tracked—reswitched and displaced, +till even its own locomotive and train of cars would have been at a +loss to find it. He had the sense of being a traitor, brute, imposter, +and Providence all in one—which combination of qualities was +sufficient to explain his embarrassment and his nervous manner when he +at length rejoined the Queen. +</P> + +<P> +There was a slight transformation in the lady whose dressing bag had +aided, evidently, a brisk toilet. Under her chin flowered out a snowy +bow of tulle, and she had swathed herself in the thick veil she had +worn when first boarding the train. Indicating her disguise to +Bulstrode, she said with her pretty accent: "I think it well to be +thus." And he agreed that it was well. +</P> + +<P> +His own agitation as the other train rushed in, slowed and halted, was +scarcely less than hers, indeed perhaps greater, for Carmen-Magda, pale +and quiet, her handsome brown eyes fixed on the window-pane, gave no +sign of life, until after a series of jerks, jolts and bumps, they +slowly but certainly became part of a moving train, once more +undertaking its journey. Then Bulstrode, who stood determinedly in the +window, filled it up on the station side, giving her no chance to look +out had she wished to do so, nor did he think it needful to tell the +Queen what he saw: A distinguished-looking man in rough brown clothes, +and oh, the curious coincidence: a reddish-brown chrysanthemum in his +buttonhole. His Striking Resemblance was accompanied by another +gentleman—short and stout with military mustaches, and swarthy +complexion. The two men were gesticulating wildly together, and as the +train pulled away from them, Bulstrode turned about and faced the +little Queen. +</P> + +<P> +She had again lifted her veil, and he thought her pallor natural; in +the momentary excitement her large eyes were fastened upon him with a +touching confidence that nearly made the soft-hearted imposter regret +the boldest act of his history. +</P> + +<P> +"Are you sure," she asked him softly, "that this is the right train?" +</P> + +<P> +The coquetry of her bow of snowy tulle, the debonnaire costume of brown +and green, her gray hat with its feathers, were pathetic to him—her +attire contrasted sadly with her pale face. She was to him like a +wilful child. Not more, he decided for the sixth time, than twenty +years old. She was like a paper queen out of a child's fairy book, all +but her anxious face. "She regrets," he joyfully caught at the thought +to arm himself and give himself right. "Poor little thing, she already +regrets." +</P> + +<P> +Leaning forward, he suggested kindly: +</P> + +<P> +"Can't your Majesty rest a little?" +</P> + +<P> +As he spoke the hypocrite knew that in less time than it would take to +settle her they would bump into the station at Westboro' Abbey. +</P> + +<P> +But Carmen-Magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she was +<I>en route</I> for her plebian Gela. She leaned over and picked up one of +the illustrated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages, +reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph +displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a +military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin. She +held it out to Bulstrode and said: +</P> + +<P> +"It's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the +King?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on +his face. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, it is good of the King, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much +animation. It was strikingly so, he could with truth say it. +</P> + +<P> +Gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the King par +excellence—the King seemed to have many friends—-and the poor little +woman opposite—with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence +in a stranger—her madder confidence in Lord Almouth Gresthaven—where +were <I>her</I> friends? Jimmy leaned to her, and Mrs. Falconer could have +told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that +Jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of +his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined +to help in spite of themselves." +</P> + +<P> +"Your Majesty has done me great honor," Bulstrode said. "You have said +I was the King's friend, I should like instead to be <I>your</I> friend. +Women need friends ... even queens. Would it be too vast a presumption +if I should from henceforth feel myself to be...." He waited and +dared—"Carmen-Magda's friend?" +</P> + +<P> +His innocent lèse-majesté, coupled with the tone he used, reached the +woman in her—-not to speak of his personal charm. +</P> + +<P> +"Didn't I imply friendship when I chose you for this mission?" she said. +</P> + +<P> +He winced. "Of course—but I mean from now on——" +</P> + +<P> +She nodded sweetly. "<I>Cela va sans dire</I>, Gresthaven." +</P> + +<P> +"Don't call me so," he interrupted, "say <I>friend</I>, to please me." +</P> + +<P> +She laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"You are too amusing. I will say it for you then in Poltavian. It's a +sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with +the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she +knighted him. It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to +ask her: +</P> + +<P> +"What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you +had arranged he should do—he should betray you—should have warned +your husband and have gone so far <I>as to fetch the King to waylay you +and stop your flight</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition +with a word of disbelief. +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?" +</P> + +<P> +She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis +were real to her at last: +</P> + +<P> +"He would be the most despicable traitor in the world." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode pursued: "What—would you think of Gresthaven—if in order to +save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter +your decision—he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as +surely betraying your good faith?" +</P> + +<P> +Here she looked keenly through him—read him—then waited a second +before intensely exclaiming: +</P> + +<P> +"Gresthaven—<I>what have you done</I>?" +</P> + +<P> +His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him. He did +not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all +women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over +admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in +their own minds. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matter <I>what</I> reason, she had only +changed her <I>own</I> mind!" +</P> + +<P> +"In five minutes," he said bravely—"your Majesty will be at Westboro' +Abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which +followed us from London." +</P> + +<P> +With a smothered cry the Queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window +and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to +her in what part of England she was. Bulstrode had put his hand out +before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open +window. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," she cried furiously, shrinking back from him, "how have you dared +... dared?" +</P> + +<P> +... "To save your Majesty? Well, it <I>was</I> hard!" he acknowledged +practically. "Harder than you will ever believe. I may say that no +decision was ever more difficult to make. To be so trusted by you, and +to feel myself a double-dyed villain wasn't agreeable, but the issue +was a warrant for any treachery." +</P> + +<P> +"Great heavens!" she exclaimed. "Who made <I>you</I> judge of my actions, +who gave <I>you</I> leave to decide my fate, what a fool I was to trust +you—what a fool! You have spoiled my life!" she accused him—"You +have taken from me everything in the world." +</P> + +<P> +If she had been alone he knew she would have wept, and he kept his face +turned from her for some few seconds. "I have certainly established a +precedent for myself," he mused with humor. "<I>I</I> can never run away +with a woman now—never." +</P> + +<P> +Small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk +it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing. +She spoke, he supposed, in Poltavian, for he could not follow the +meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise +among the incoherences that she called him friend! +</P> + +<P> +As the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and +sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more +ventured to speak. +</P> + +<P> +"I am not the cold-blooded traitor I seem, believe me," he tried to +plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at Redleigh Bucks I +was miserable to think I had, as it seems, betrayed your Majesty. But +when as we came up to the station I saw the King on the platform——" +</P> + +<P> +She stopped short in front of him: "The King!" she exclaimed +incredulously. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode nodded in a matter-of-fact way as if stray kings on +mid-country platforms were the common occurrence of his travelling +experiences. +</P> + +<P> +"He had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to +attach your carriage to the Dover express had been attempted, you would +have been stopped by your husband himself. As it is you are simply +going where you are expected to go—to Westboro' Castle." +</P> + +<P> +This dénouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no +place for ecstatics. She sat down in front of Bulstrode and repeated, +dazed:— +</P> + +<P> +"The <I>King</I>! The King had followed me! He had been warned then, but +by whom? You above all did not....?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh no!" He was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this +disloyalty. "I had nothing to do with it. The King had come on with +the man who had played your Majesty false all along, the man who is +indeed more the King's friend than he is Carmen-Magda's." +</P> + +<P> +And sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him +say: "I mean Lord Almouth Gresthaven." +</P> + +<P> +She murmured some words in Poltavian, then besought: "Why, why do you +play with me?" The tears started to her eyes. +</P> + +<P> +"Lord Gresthaven," Bulstrode hurried now to his confession—"has +plainly betrayed you. Either he failed to meet you as planned, or else +he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your +husband—at all events, both he and the King took the slow train." +</P> + +<P> +"But <I>you</I>," she interrupted, staring at him—"You are not Lord +Gresthaven?" +</P> + +<P> +"No," he said quietly, "no, I am an American, nothing more than a +friend and guest of the Duke of Westboro'. I tried over and over again +to tell you this, but you would not hear me and I finally accepted the +rôle you gave me with the firm intention of taking you with me to +Westboro' Castle. My name is James Thatcher Bulstrode, I am from +Boston, in the United States." Bulstrode thus tardily introduced +himself. +</P> + +<P> +And Jimmy, not pretending ever to have counted greatly on the favor of +princes, was nevertheless taken aback. Not that he had any +preconceived notion of what Carmen-Magda would do—when she eventually +knew. He had been too absorbed in his mission, its entanglements, and +his climax. He may have been prepared for some exhibition of scorn, +but he more than likely looked for a social and commonplace ending to +their ride, but for what Carmen-Magda did he was entirely unprepared. +</P> + +<P> +As if in his declaration of himself and his identity he had taken a +sponge and quite wiped himself off the slate, the Queen, after +speechlessly staring at him for a few moments, quietly removed her +attention from him altogether. She took from a little bag at her wrist +a rouge stick with which she carefully touched her lips; from a tiny +gold box she lightly dusted her cheeks with powder; she adjusted her +tulle bow and her veil and then sat serenely back waiting until the +train should arrive at her forced destination. +</P> + +<P> +Although, one might say, unused to the manners of royalty, Jimmy was +dumbfounded; the beautiful woman in forest-brown clothes picked out +with hunting green had become as strange to him as in the first moment +when she attracted his attention some few miles beyond London. That +she should be angry at his interference he could admit, but that she +should not be grateful to be saved from her husband's wrath he did not +understand. Was he too plebeian for her to notice? He, of course, did +not speak to her again, nor did she break the singular silence, and for +some reason he did not even care to ask her forgiveness. Finally, he +decided that she was thinking solely of Gela, the man at the other end +of the route who would wait for her in vain, and when this sentimental +view of the case occurred to him, he would have felt <I>de trop</I> had he +not seen how completely he was ignored. +</P> + +<P> +They flashed past the last miles of wooded valley and hillside. +Westboro' was very soft in line and very mellow in the evening light. +The landscape, through a half-mist, was as brown and green as the dress +of the beautiful silent woman in the opposite corner of the travelling +carriage. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, looking at her rather timidly, felt as if he were in a dream. +</P> + +<P> +At Westboro' Abbey the guard unlocked the compartment door and +Bulstrode, who got out first, helped the Queen of Poltavia to descend. +As she put foot to the ground she said, half leaning on the arm he +gave: "I thank you—very much indeed." +</P> + +<P> +He caught the few words eagerly, and was fatuous enough to fancy that +she meant something more than the common courteous acknowledgment of a +man's help from a travelling carriage. +</P> + +<P> +The station was deserted. The express having arrived some half hour +before without them, there had evidently been no preparation made to +meet this train. +</P> + +<P> +Surrounded by her luggage, her brand new luggage, the Queen waited on +the side of the station that faced the open country, whilst Bulstrode +made inquiries about telephoning or getting word to the castle. +</P> + +<P> +At this juncture, down the lane, between red thickets and golden +hedges, a smart dog-cart tooled along driven by a lady. She waved a +welcoming hand. +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy," she said as she drove up and leaned out and nodded to him, "I +knew you'd miss the express, you're so absent-minded about trains; and +who could be expected to distinguish between a 3.50 and a 3.53? So, as +you see, I drove down on the chance." +</P> + +<P> +He had not greeted her in words. The long afternoon, the romantic +extravagant episode, of which he had been unwillingly a part, made this +woman seem so real. He felt as if from a burlesque extravaganza he had +come out into the fresh air; their eyes had met and Mrs. Falconer did +not miss any other greeting. +</P> + +<P> +"That lady," he then said, "whom you see standing on the edge of the +platform surrounded by her luggage, like a shipwrecked being on a +desert island, is the Queen of Poltavia." +</P> + +<P> +"Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Falconer. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he said indifferently, "we came down from London together." +</P> + +<P> +"Why, the whole castle is in a state about her. A coach and postillion +went to fetch her at the express. Telegrams are flying all over the +country. Why did she take a local—and with you—Jimmy?" +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps she is absent-minded about trains as well," he smiled, "at all +events here she certainly is and it will be charming of you to drive +her up." +</P> + +<P> +"But I don't know her!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," he shrugged, "one doesn't exactly <I>know</I> queens, I don't know her +either, but that wouldn't prevent my doing her a service. I am sure +she'd rather be driven up to a cup of tea and a fire by an American +than stand here waiting for a postilion and four. It will be nice of +you to speak to her," he suggested, and stepped back. +</P> + +<P> +Gathering up her reins, Mrs. Falconer whisked her horse about and drove +up to the lady's side. Bulstrode, from a little distance, watched her +graceful inclination and heard her lovely voice. He saw Carmen-Magda +lift her disguising veil, displaying her dark, foreign face. Slowly +going up to the dog-cart's side, together with the groom's help, he +bestowed the Queen's belongings in the trap. +</P> + +<P> +"I will walk on slowly up the road," he suggested, "and most possibly +you will send back for me." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I'll drive back myself." She was quite certain about it. As he +helped the Queen into the dog-cart, as she leaned on his supporting +hand, she said: +</P> + +<P> +"Thank you, thank you very much indeed." And he was so vain as to +fancy that into tone and words Carmen-Magda put more warmth, more of +meaning, than a woman usually puts into the phrase of recognition of a +man's helping hand. He could not, moreover, have sworn that at the end +of the sentence was not murmured a word in a foreign tongue which might +in Poltavian mean "friend," but as he did not understand the language +of the country he could not be sure. +</P> + +<P> +As he watched the trap up the hedged lanes out of sight, he rubbed his +eyes as if he were not certain whether or not he had not dozed and +dreamed in his compartment on the slow train from London.... But at +any rate he had the delightful heavenly certainty that this was +Westboro' of an Indian summer afternoon—and that of the two women who +had just driven up the lane out of sight, one at least was adorably +real. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap07"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE +</H3> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN WHICH HE BECOMES THE POSSESSOR OF A CERTAIN PIECE OF PROPERTY +</H3> + +<P> +As Bulstrode stood in the window of his room at Westboro' Castle, his +face turned toward the country, it seemed to beckon him. It called him +from the park's end where suave and smooth the curving downs met the +preciser contour of the eastern field; from hedges holding snugly in +the roadways, the roads themselves running off on pleasant excursions +to townships whose names are suggestive of romance, whose gentle +beauties have mellowed with the ages which give them value and leave +them perfect. +</P> + +<P> +With the sweetness of a bell, with the invitingness of a beckoning +hand, the English countryside summoned the gentleman to come out to it, +to explore and penetrate for himself. He gazed charmed and entranced +at the expanse of rippling meadow where, enclosed by the curtains of +soft old trees, the thatch of the eaves lifted their breast to the sun +and mist, and chimneys black with immemorial fires indicated the farms +of Westboro', rich, homely and respectable, as they left upon the +landscape harmonious color and history of thrift. To the east was the +dim suggestion of the little town, and some few miles in a hollow lay +the farmlands known as The Dials, and each second growing more +distinctly visible in the deepening light rose the towers of Penhaven +Abbey. +</P> + +<P> +At the Duke's urging, Bulstrode had been led to stop on at Westboro' +Castle after the house party had dissolved at the end of their week's +sojourn; and there had since been many long tramps across country, with +the dogs at his heels and by his side the Duke, for the time diverted +from his semi-melancholy, semi-egotistical cynicism, and transformed +into an enthusiastic sport. +</P> + +<P> +The Duke of Westboro' was a <I>désenchanté</I>, more truly speaking a victim +of other peoples' temperaments. There were, however, not a few little +scores in the character of moral delinquencies which at least, so he +felt, he had been called upon quite fully to discharge. +</P> + +<P> +The American man gave himself over to his host, and from the time +Westboro' put out a bait of "Oh, you're decidedly not turning in at +this hour, old man?" he flanked the Duke on the opposite side of the +fireplace in the East Library, there after coffee to wear away half the +night. During the following fortnight, Bulstrode found that he had +tallied up with his friend very closely the scores of the last few +miserable years. +</P> + +<P> +Westboro's friendship with him dated back some ten years. Bulstrode +had first known the Englishman at Newport where, then not a young man, +he had come obviously and frankly in search of an American wife. The +search was unusual in that it was not for money, but, as Westboro' put +it, for type and race. His mother had been an American. He had adored +her, and wanted an American mother for his children. The woman +herself—and how Bulstrode saw it as he followed the deserted husband's +narrative—the woman had been a secondary thing. He recalled easily +the summary and conventional courtship and the vulgar brilliance of the +wedding. He had been one of Westboro's ushers, and his smaller part of +the affair left him with the distressing idea that he had assisted at a +sacrifice. +</P> + +<P> +It would be euphemistic to say that Westboro' poured out his heart to +Bulstrode; Englishmen do not have such refreshments. Little by little, +rather in short curt phrases, a cynical word whose mocking fellow only +followed after some moments' silence—little by little, whilst the +smoky wreaths of the men's cigars veiled their confidences, the Duke +slowly told the story of ten years of married life. In this intimacy +he disclosed the history of the separation which formed at the moment +the subject of general public comment. Jimmy was relieved when the +moment came that the Duke thought opportune to say: +</P> + +<P> +"There, old chap, you have the whole story! It's this cursed tradition +of marriage, and you're a lucky fellow to be free. I have never spoken +to any one before—you know it. I don't need to tell you so, but you +were in, as it were, at the start, and what do you think of the finish?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode reserved his opinion. +</P> + +<P> +Westboro' Castle had been built in the sixteenth century by a lover of +the Virgin Queen. The stones were paved with memories. In the Picture +Hall the ardent gentleman three hundred years before had for one sole +hour entertained Elizabeth at a feast. She left him, obdurate and +unyielding, and he went crazy and followed the royal coach to the park +gate, weeping, his hands before his face; and there on the ground, his +fair curls torn, and the dust from the departing vehicles alone of the +glory that touched him, his people found him. +</P> + +<P> +"How they prate of inequality, and of the crime of grafting the +American rose on these old stalks," Bulstrode mused. The beauty of +Frances, Duchess of Westboro', he had himself been one of the first to +concede; a portrait of her by Lehnbach did not to his eyes do her +justice. The fresh purity of her type had not been seized by the +German. She would be an ideal Duchess, he had said of her when the +mission of Westboro' to America had been bruited, and Westboro' had +thought: "She's a strong, fine woman, and will bear me beautiful +children." +</P> + +<P> +She had borne him two. Bulstrode, in passing through the house, had +seen the low gates at the doors of two sunny rooms, the toys spread as +they had been lain. His own were the only apartments in that wing of +the castle, and the silence at the end of the hall was never broken. +When Westboro' had come to this part of his narrative, he had waited +quiet so long that his companion had naturally taken the evening to be +at its end. The Duke had thrown his cigar away, and lifting from the +table near him a leather case, opened it and handed over to Bulstrode +the photograph of two little bare-legged boys in sailor clothes. They +stood hand in hand, a pretty pair. Looking at it, and gently turning +it over on the other side, Bulstrode read: +</P> + +<P> +"Frederick Cecil John Edward, Marquis of Wotherington, three years old. +Guy Perceval, Lord Feversham, aged two years." +</P> + +<P> +Westboro's voice had a dull sound as he took the case from his friend's +hand. +</P> + +<P> +"They are Westboro's I think, neck and crop. Scarlet fever—in three +days, Bulstrode—both in three days." +</P> + +<P> +And that had been all. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode had left the Duke and gone up-stairs. On the other side of +his cheerful rooms the empty nurseries in the ghostly moonlight held +their doors wide open as if to welcome at the low gates those bright +heads if they should come. +</P> + +<P> +Jimmy, whose sentimentality consisted in his acting immediately when +anything was to be done, mixed a whiskey and soda from the array of +drinks that always exists at an Anglo-Saxon's elbow, and after a turn +or two in his dressing-room brought practically out: +</P> + +<P> +"It's ridiculous! Sheer nonsense. There should be children here. The +woman is selfish and puritanical, and the man is no lover—<I>that's</I> +what's the matter! But Westboro' certainly loves her in his big, cold, +affectionate way." Jimmy smiled at his own fashion of putting it. And +how any woman, with a mind and common-sense, could help loving +Westboro' Castle and countryside, as well as Cecil, tenth Duke of the +line, the American visitor failed to see. +</P> + +<P> +As the Duke of Westboro' thought of the members of his recent house +party—the women of it passed before his mental mirror. There were +several images of an American lady whose frocks and hats, whose wit and +grace, whose dark beauty had made her stay at Westboro' brilliant and +memorable. Possibly the remembrance of Mrs. Falconer, one night at +dinner, was what most persistently lingered in the Duke's mind. She +had sat on his left in a gown he remembered as becoming, and her jewels +had shone like fire on her bosom. He had particularly remarked them in +thinking of the idle jewels of his own house, left behind by the flight +of the Duchess. Mary Falconer had been more brilliant than her +ornaments, and Westboro' had thoroughly enjoyed his guest. He had +asked this woman especially because she charmed him; without forming +the reason he had a latent hope that she might do more than charm. He +wanted to forget and to be eased from the haunting memory that stung +and never soothed. From his first tête-a-tête with Mrs. Falconer he +had at once seen that there was nothing there for him. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode had said that Westboro' was not a lover. Reserved as far as +all feeling was concerned, he had made no advances to the beautiful +American, but contented himself with watching her. She could not be in +love with her brutish husband who, out of the week spent at Westboro' +was visible only two days. Then Bulstrode had come. Pictures of the +two talking in the long twilights, riding together, walking on the +terrace side by side, came vividly to Westboro's recollection. +</P> + +<P> +"That," he decided, "is a real flesh-and-blood woman, the kind of woman +I should have married. Bulstrode is a lucky devil." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"A chap," Westboro' said to Jimmy in a mild unpretentious mood of +philosophy, "is, of course, a husband; more naturally than people give +him credit for, a father; but first of all—and that's what so few +women take into consideration—<I>he is a man</I>." +</P> + +<P> +The Duke had fallen into the habit of breaking through the silences +when each man, following his own thoughts, would forget the other. And +remarks such as these his companion knew, referred in sense and detail +to the long talks whose intenser personalities had ceased. +</P> + +<P> +This day Westboro' brought out his little paragraph as, between the +hedges of a lowland lane, the two rode at a walk after a long hard +canter from Penhaven, some eight miles behind them on the hill. On +either side the top of the thorn was veiled with rime. Down the +hedge's thickness from his seat on his horse, Bulstrode could look into +the dark tangled interstices of the thicket and its delicious browns +and greens. Into the thorns here and there dried leaves had fallen, +and from the hedge as well as from the country, clouded and gray with +mist, came a sharpened sweetness; a blended smell of fields over which +early winter had passed; a smell of woods over which the fires cast +smoky veils. In the freshness and with the eager exercise, Bulstrode's +cheeks had reddened. He sat his horse well, and his enjoyment of life, +his ease with it, his charming spirit, shone in the face he turned to +the Duke. For some miles given over to the sympathetic task of +managing his horse, he had enjoyed like a boy, and during the ride had +thought of nothing but the physical delight of the open air and the +motion. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," he returned to his friend's remark, "as far as any point of +interest goes, we may grant you that we began as men. I mean to say +that monkeys aren't useful in one's deductions for emotional +hypotheses, at any rate. I'll grant you for our use that we were men +to begin with." +</P> + +<P> +"Damn it all," said his host, "aren't we just as much so to-day, for +all our civilization?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, we don't primarily knock on the head a woman whose physique has +pleased us, and carry her off while she's unconscious." +</P> + +<P> +"It might in some cases be a good thing if we did," Westboro' growled. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode ran his hand along the silky neck of his horse, from whose +nostrils smoke came in little puffs that met the moisture of the air. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, we're not, you know, so awfully far away from our instincts in +anything, old man! There isn't any cast-iron rule about feelings. +They depend on the individual." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you've never married," Westboro' tried frankly to irritate him, +"and you can't, you know——" +</P> + +<P> +The sweet temper of the other accepted the Duke's scorn. "I'm not +married, or very theoretical about it, either. One can only, after +all, have his own point of view." +</P> + +<P> +"We're not, I expect, fair to the women," the Duke generously +acknowledged. "We look for so much in them. We expect them to be so +much." +</P> + +<P> +"A wife," Bulstrode completed for him, "a mother, a friend." +</P> + +<P> +And Westboro' finished it. "For them and for other men. And a +mistress." +</P> + +<P> +And here Bulstrode took him up for the first time with a note of +challenge in his voice. +</P> + +<P> +"And what, my dear man, did you intend that the Duchess should take you +for? No, I mean to say, quite man to man, given that any woman could +or does contain all the qualities you so temperately ask?" +</P> + +<P> +Westboro' smiled at the first curtness he had ever heard in his +friend's voice. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you know, we men don't fuss about ourselves." +</P> + +<P> +"You married her at eighteen," Bulstrode said. "You made her a +Duchess. You had already lived a life and she was a child beside you +in experience. You required motherhood of her, and in return...." +</P> + +<P> +"Well," Westboro' turned about in his saddle and faced his earnest +friend. "What then, in your opinion, might I have been?" +</P> + +<P> +"You might have been from the start," Bulstrode said it shortly, "a +lover. It's not a bad rôle. We Anglo-Saxons have no sentimental +education. Our puritanism makes us half the time timid at courtship +and love." +</P> + +<P> +The gentlemen rode a little on with slackened rein. Westboro's +eyeglass cord was almost motionless as he stared out between his +horse's ears down the lane. +</P> + +<P> +"Perhaps, after all," he fetched it out slowly, "there's something in +what you say." +</P> + +<P> +Whether or not there was any truth in Bulstrode's commonplace remark, +it lingered in his host's mind all day. It gave him, for the first +time, a link to follow—an idea—and the Duke, entirely unused to +analysis, accustomed to act if not on impulse, certainly according to +his will and pleasure without concession, harked back in a groping, +touching fashion like an awkward boy looking for a lost treasure, +upsetting, as he went, old haunts, turning over things for years not +brought to the light of day. And it took him all the afternoon and a +good part of the evening to reach the place where he thought he had +lost originally his joy. Unlike the happier boy, he could not seize +his bliss once recovered, and stow it away; it was only remembrance +that brought him back, and with a tightening heart as he realized once +more the form and quality of his lost happiness—there he must leave it +and see it fade again into the past. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Jimmy gave his host a chance to follow his absorbed reflections. He +effaced himself, and behind a book whose lightness of touch made him +agreeably forget the heavier hand of current and daily events, he sat +in his dressing-room reading "The Vicar of Wakefield." +</P> + +<P> +When Westboro' came in to him Jimmy looked up and quoted aloud: "When +lovely woman stoops to folly and finds at length that men betray...." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, they console themselves quickly," Westboro' finished. "Don't +fancy anything else, my dear fellow, they console themselves." +</P> + +<P> +"They may pretend to do so." +</P> + +<P> +"They succeed." +</P> + +<P> +Westboro' took the little book from his friend's hand and shut it +firmly as if afraid that the rest of the verse might slip out and +refute him. +</P> + +<P> +"Bulstrode, she consoles herself, she is perfectly happy." +</P> + +<P> +"How are you then so sure?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I hear of her in Paris." The Duke's features contracted. "She's +contriving to pass her time—to pass her time." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode leaned over towards his friend and, for Westboro' sat +opposite him, he put his hand on the Duke's knee. +</P> + +<P> +"You must certainly go to her." +</P> + +<P> +Westboro' stroked his moustache before he answered: +</P> + +<P> +"Not if I never see her again." +</P> + +<P> +"You should decidedly go to her." +</P> + +<P> +The other shook his head. "Not if it meant twice the hell it is now." +</P> + +<P> +"Why not?" +</P> + +<P> +"I went to her once. I may say twice," he slowly said, "since we +separated." And as he stopped speaking Bulstrode could only imagine +what the result had been. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think I'm a Westboro' really, for I couldn't follow any +woman's carriage puling like a schoolboy as my ancestor did. There's a +great deal of my mother's blood in me, and it's a different blend." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode's eyes were on the little book between the Duke's +aristocratic hands. +</P> + +<P> +"She has, I grant you, a lot to forgive; but she quite well knows all +the blame I acknowledge, quite well. I don't believe I'm any worse +than the run of mankind, and whether I am or not, I've made all the +amends I can and I have nothing more to say." +</P> + +<P> +His eyeglass had dropped; his face looked worn; he showed his age more +than a happier man would have done at his years His mood of thinking it +out by himself continued for so long that Bulstrode finally asked: +</P> + +<P> +"What, if I may be so near you as to question, do you mean, old chap, +to do?" +</P> + +<P> +Westboro' had it all laid out for himself—his ready answer showed it. +</P> + +<P> +"You say I'm not a lover," he reminded his friend; "no doubt you're +right, but I'm an affectionate chap, at any rate, I can't bear this—" +He looked about hopelessly. The words were forced out by the high mark +of his unhappiness: "—this infernal solitude. Even when a good +comrade like yourself is in it, the house seems to speak to me from the +empty rooms in this wing." (Bulstrode knew he was thinking of the +nurseries with the low latches and little gates.) "I can't stand it. +When I get out of England and abroad the place fetches me back again +like a magnet. I'm a home-keeping sort of man, and I want my home." +</P> + +<P> +His friend gently urged in the silence: "Well?" +</P> + +<P> +"I shall wait," the Duke went on with the plan he had been forced to +make out for himself. "I shall hold on, keep along a bit, and then—<I>I +shall go to the other woman</I>." And the Duke, as he raised his eyes to +his companion, fixed his glass firmly and felt that he challenged in +every way Bulstrode's disapproval. "The Duchess will get her +divorce—it goes without saying—will get her divorce. Why she has not +already done so I can't imagine." +</P> + +<P> +As Westboro' appeared inclined to leave the subject there, Bulstrode +pressed him further: "And then?" +</P> + +<P> +"I fancy I shall marry the other woman." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode started. The complexion of the idea was so foreign to him +that he could not for a moment let himself think that he understood it. +</P> + +<P> +"You will," he said, "marry one woman whilst you distinctly love +another?" +</P> + +<P> +The Duke nodded. "Love," he reflected, "I begin to believe I don't +know anything about. It must, of course, suppose some sort of return. +If, as you say, I love another woman, I'm not made of the stuff that +can go along doing so without anything on her side." +</P> + +<P> +The dressing clock at the bedside on the little stand chimed the hour. +It was two o'clock. The Duke of Westboro' rose. +</P> + +<P> +"You must think me a colossal ass, my dear friend, but if it had not +been for your awfully good companionship and your kindness, I dare say +that by now I should have already made some sort of fatal blunder." +</P> + +<P> +At the door Bulstrode put his hand on his friend's arm, and, as though +nothing in the conversation apart from the Duchess had any real +significance, he said simply: +</P> + +<P> +"You are then, in sum, simply waiting...?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, yes," agreed the other rather blankly. And the other man knew +that he had been told only half the thought in his friend's mind. +</P> + +<P> +"She may get a divorce at any time, you know, quite easily, without my +taking any further steps." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I see perfectly," Jimmy accepted; and as the door closed after his +host, he said, almost aloud: "He thinks, then, there is half a chance +that the Duchess will return." And wondering very much how far a woman +is willing to sacrifice herself for a man, granted that she loves him, +he did not finish his phrase. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The next day Bulstrode, no longer able to resist the beckoning country, +went out, as it were, to it as if he said "Here I am—what will you do +with me?" +</P> + +<P> +If Glousceshire could, for a while, make him forget the problems he had +been housed with, brush him up a bit, he thought it would be a good +thing. Therefore, when his horse came up to the door he threw himself +on the animal in a nervous haste to be gone, and setting off in the +direction of Penhaven, obeyed its summons at last. +</P> + +<P> +Westboro' had run up to London for overnight, and Bulstrode, at the +Duke's something more than invitation, a sort of appeal, was to stay +indefinitely on. It must be confessed that he rather selfishly looked +forward to the course of an untroubled afternoon, to an evening amongst +the books whose files had tempted him for days. +</P> + +<P> +But the pity of all he had sympathetically been closeted with was great +in his mind. Whereas his native delicacy and slow judgment had led him +to keep silent until now towards his host, it was in no wise because +Jimmy had not quite made up his mind that he would not spare Westboro' +at all when the moment, if it ever came, should present itself for him +to speak. +</P> + +<P> +As he rode along he thought of the Duchess naturally in Paris, +surrounded by a train of ardent admirers; she had them always, +everywhere. She was disillusioned, of course, probably angry, piqued, +and unfortunately she had been betrayed; and he shrugged with a gentle +desperation as he made a mental picture of the last scene: the +inevitable divorce, the wrecking of another household, +unless—unless—one of them loved sufficiently to save the situation. +</P> + +<P> +His thoughts came to a standstill as his horse stopped short before a +gate: his riding had fetched him up before it. The mare stretched out +her long neck, set free by a relaxing rein; she sniffed the latch and +put her head over the wicket, and the rider saw that they had come +across fields, and were at the entrance of a deserted property. The +gate gave access to a forest road where the thick underbrush was +untidy, and on whose walk the piles of leaves lay as they had fallen. +He could see no farther in, and thinking to come at the end upon a +forsaken garden, the precincts of an untenanted country house, he +leaned down, tried the gate which fairly swung into his hand, and the +mare passed through. There was the delicious intimacy about the woods +which the sense of coming alone and unexpectedly upon the old and +forsaken gives the traveller. He is a discoverer of secrets, a +legitimate spy upon stories which he flatters himself he is the first +to read. He becomes intimate with another man's past, and as he must +necessarily, in all ignorance, tell himself his own tales, indiscretion +may be said to be a doubtful quantity. +</P> + +<P> +A bit back in the bare brown woods he saw the flash of a marble pillar; +it shone white and clear in the setting of russet and against the boles +of the trees. A little farther away gleamed another figure on its base +of fluted marble, and still farther along, leaf-overlaid and thus +effaced, he could discern the contour of a sunken garden. The place +grew more pretentious as he slowly picked his way, and he was +unprepared for coming suddenly onto a gravel path from which he thought +the leaves had been blown away. Here Bulstrode dismounted, and, with +the bridle over his arm, walked towards the path's end, pleasantly +interested, and now, as he thought it should by this do, the house +struck on him through an archway contrived by the training of old trees +over a circle of stone. The house broke on him in the shape of an +Elizabethan manse; long and old with soft rose-color of brick in +places, and the color of a faded leaf in others where the dampness had +soaked in and had, through countless mid-summer suns, been burned out +again. Before the windows flashed the red of bright curtains. The +house was distinctly, and he thought it seemed happily, occupied. He +stopped where he stood by the arch, a little confused and a little +balked in his romantic treat, and not the less feeling himself an +intruder. But before he could turn his horse and unobtrusively lead +her back the way they had come, the house's occupant, no doubt she who +gave it the air of being so happily tenanted, had come out with a +garden hat on her head, a pair of garden shears in her hands, and with +the precision of intention, turned sharply towards the arched forest +walk, and in this way squarely upon Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +The surprise to him was, without doubt, the greater, for she knew him +at once, and he for a second did not recognize her. Her extreme +English air—the straw hat tied under her chin and the face it framed, +so decidedly altered, bewildered him. His first greeting, mentally, +before he spoke aloud to her, was masculine. "Why, her beauty! What +in heaven's name had she done with it?" +</P> + +<P> +"<I>What</I> are you doing here?" +</P> + +<P> +They both asked it at once, and the lady having lived so long in an +insular country was adept in its possibilities of great hospitality as +well as of freezing out an unwelcome visitor. She froze the poor +gentleman and then, touched by his utter bewilderment and his innocence +of wilful intrusion, she smiled more humanly. +</P> + +<P> +"Won't you, since you <I>are</I> here, Mr. Bulstrode, come in and have a cup +of tea?" +</P> + +<P> +She at once followed their mutual question by saying: "As for being +here, you will admit that given the part of the country it is, no one +has a better right!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I'll admit anything you like," he laughed, "if you'll only admit +us. You see we are two." +</P> + +<P> +The lady came up to him in a more friendly manner; she gave him her +hand and she really smiled beautifully. Then she put her hand on the +nose of the horse, with the touch one has for familiar things. +</P> + +<P> +"She's a perfect dear, isn't she—a dear. So you are riding her then? +Well, you'll find her easy to tie, she stands well. There's nothing +she can spoil, that's the charm of such an old, tumble-down place." +</P> + +<P> +As Bulstrode followed after the trailing dress just touching the gravel +with a rustling sound, he had the feeling of being suddenly, +willy-nilly, taken and put into the heart of a story book. He smiled. +"Well, I've done the first chapter and now I've got to go on in the +book, I suppose, whether I want to be here or not, to the end." +</P> + +<P> +"I thought I was making a voyage of discovery," he told her as they sat +in the low room before a fire and before her table and tea cups. "I +fancied I was the only person within miles round. I expect no one has +a right to be so bold, but I really didn't dream the place was lived +in, as, of course, you know." +</P> + +<P> +"Drink your tea," she bade, "and eat your toast before I make you tell +me if you have come to see me as a messenger." +</P> + +<P> +"And if I have?" +</P> + +<P> +It was delicious tea, and the American of her had somehow found cream +for it, which, un-English luxury, the American in him fully +appreciated. The liquid in the blue-and-white cups was pale as saffron +and the toast was a feather. +</P> + +<P> +"At five o'clock there's nothing like it in the world," he breathed. +"I didn't hope for this to-day. I had recklessly thrown five o'clock +over, for I'm alone at the castle." He drank his tea, finished, and +with a sigh. Then he said: "I can actually venture to ask you for +another cup, for I am nobody's messenger or envoy, my dear, nobody's. +I'm just an indiscreet, humdrum individual who has been too charmingly +rewarded for an intrusion. You saw my surprise, didn't you? And I'm +not very clever at putting on things." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess tacitly accepted, it is to be supposed, for she made him a +second cup of tea, slowly. +</P> + +<P> +"You don't know that I've been thinking about you all day," he said, +"and I can frankly say that I've been making a very different picture +of you indeed." +</P> + +<P> +She took no notice whatsoever of his personality. +</P> + +<P> +"You are in England, then," she said rather formally. "I never think +of my own country people as being here. I always think of Americans as +being in the States, men above all, for they fit so badly in the +English atmosphere, don't they? It's always incongruous to me to hear +their "r's" and "a's" rattling about in this soft language. It's +horrid of me to speak so. You, of course, are out of the category. +But as you stood there, with Banshee's nose over your shoulder you +fitted quite beautifully in with everything. I don't believe I should +mind you, ever, anywhere, and yet I more naturally think of you at +Newport, don't you see?" +</P> + +<P> +Her companion cried: "Oh, no, I'm in England, and you can't alter the +fact, at least if you can, please don't; for Newport on the fifteenth +of December, and with no such tea or fire——" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," she permitted, "you may stay. I said you fitted—only——" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode interposed: "Don't at least for a few moments entertain any +'buts' and 'onlys'—they are nearly as bad as those magical travelling +trunks that would transport me to the United States. It is so—let me +say—neutral in this place, I should think I might remain. I don't +know why you are here or with whom, nor for how long, or for how deep, +but it is singularly perfect to have found you." +</P> + +<P> +His hostess had left her seat behind the table, and taking a chair by +the fireside where Bulstrode was sitting, undid the ribbons of her +garden hat and let the basket-like object fall on the floor. +</P> + +<P> +"You must promise me, first of all, that you will not say you have seen +me. Otherwise I shall leave here to-morrow and nobody shall ever again +know where I am." +</P> + +<P> +However her command might conflict with what was in his mind, he was +obliged to give her his word. He had no right not to do so. +</P> + +<P> +"And nothing," she said, "must make you break this promise, Mr. +Bulstrode. I know how good you are, and how you do all sorts of +Quixotic funny things, but in this case please—please——" +</P> + +<P> +"Mind my own business?" he nodded. "I will, Duchess, I will." +</P> + +<P> +She looked at him steadily a moment and seemed satisfied, for she +relaxed the tensity of her manner, which was the first Americanism she +had displayed, and in her pretty soft drawl asked him, with less +perfunctory interest than her words implied: "You are at Westboro'?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, since the twenty-fifth." +</P> + +<P> +"And you're staying on?" +</P> + +<P> +"I seem to be more or less of a fixture—until the holidays, I expect." +</P> + +<P> +"Lucky you," she breathed, and at his expression of candid surprise she +half laughed. "Oh, I mean as far as the castle goes—isn't it really +too delightful?" +</P> + +<P> +He was able to say honestly: "Quite the most beautiful house I have +ever seen." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, I think so too," she nodded. "It's not so important as many +others but it's more perfect, more like a home." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode sat back in his chair and tried to make her forget him. +Between the fire and the shadow he wanted to watch her face from which +he now saw that the beauty he remembered had not faded but had been +transformed. She was beautiful in another way: the brilliant, blooming +girl, fully blown at eighteen, with the dazzling charm of health, no +longer existed in the Duchess of Westboro'. She had refined very much +indeed. The aggressive bearing of the American princess had been +replaced by the colder, more serene hauteur of the English Duchess. +She was evidently a very proud woman, the arch of her brows said so, +and the line of her lips. All her lines were sharper and finer. Her +color, and he could not, as he studied her, quite regret it; her color +was quite gone. Her pallor made her more delicate, and her eyes—it +was in them that Bulstrode thought he saw the greatest change of all; +they were now fixed upon him, there was something melancholy in their +profound and deeply circled gray. +</P> + +<P> +"What rooms will they have given you?" she asked after a moment. +Then—"Wait," she commanded, "I know. The south wing, the Henry IV. +rooms that look into the gardens. I always gave those to the men. +There's something extremely homelike about them, don't you think so? +And have you ever seen anything like those winter roses in that court? +Did any bloom this year? The trellis runs up along the terrace +balustrade—or possibly you don't care for flowers? Of course you +wouldn't as a girl does." +</P> + +<P> +A <I>girl</I>—with that face and those eyes? Why, she must have been +talking back ten years. Bulstrode drew a breath. +</P> + +<P> +"I know the roses you mean. It would be difficult to forget them. +Your gardener takes such pride in them. For some reason they are never +gathered; they fall as they hang. The gardener, it so happened, told +me so." +</P> + +<P> +She was looking at him with an intensity almost painful, but she said +nothing further, and after a moment more Bulstrode replied to another +question. +</P> + +<P> +"As it happens I don't occupy the Henry IV. rooms. I have mine quite +on the other side of the castle. Don't they call them the 'West +Rooms'?" +</P> + +<P> +She caught her breath a little, but she was in splendid training with +all her years of English life behind her. Her face, nevertheless, +showed how well she knew those rooms, without the added note in her +voice as she said: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, those West Rooms—you have those." +</P> + +<P> +And in the quiet that fell as her eyes sought the fire, he quite knew +how her thoughts travelled down the hall to the open nursery doors with +their waiting gates. Whatever were her reasons for being here, +Bulstrode saw that he had surprised her in a moment of sadness, and +that his visit in spite of his indiscretion, was not wholly unwelcome. +But in the sudden way coming upon some one connected with her own life, +she had been completely taken unawares, and her lapse into something +like sentiment was short. Even as he looked at her she hardened. +</P> + +<P> +"You have naturally not asked me anything, Mr. Bulstrode," she said, +coldly enough now, "and more naturally still I have no explanations to +give. By to-morrow I may be gone. I may live here for the rest of my +life. I never leave my garden, I am quite unknown to the people about. +If any one in Westboro' learns that I am here I shall leave at once. +You will not come again. It is discourteous to say so—to ask it." +</P> + +<P> +He had risen from his chair. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, but it's quite, quite dark. However will you manage?" +</P> + +<P> +"We'll pick our way back well enough," he assured her. "The distance +to the road is nothing, and from here on it runs straight to the abbey." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess followed him slowly to the door, and there she asked +abruptly: "Is Westboro' to be down all winter? I didn't know it. I +thought he was out of England or I should not have come here at all." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," Bulstrode answered, "he's too restless to be long anywhere. I +expect he'll pack up and be off before we know it. He's away just now +at any rate, and I'm kicking my heels up there quite alone. I'm not to +return—ever?" he ventured. "You may so fully trust me that—" and he +saw that she hesitated and pursued, "I shall ride up to the little gate +again, and if it is unlatched...." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't count on it," she advised him, "don't—it's against all my +plans." +</P> + +<P> +Somebody in the shape of a lad had unfastened the mare, and preceded +Bulstrode on foot with a lantern, by whose flicker, with much delicate +caution and pretended shyness, Banshee picked her way to the road, +through the woods which Bulstrode an hour before had fancied led into a +deserted garden. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"You see," he put it to her delicacy to understand, "it's scarcely, in +a way, fair to him—I feel it so at least. It gives me the sensation +of knowing more than he does in his own house about that which +presumably should be Westboro's secret." +</P> + +<P> +"You mean to say,"—the Duchess pinned him down, "that you'll give me +away because of one of those peculiar crises of honor that makes a +person betray a trust in order to salve his conscience?" +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Bulstrode had come again faithfully, making the pilgrimage to the +forest road, and he was not surprised that it should have finally +turned out so that one day the gate yielded to his touch, and he found +the Duchess if not waiting for him, distinctly there. During their +delightful little talks—and they had been so—not once had the name of +Bulstrode's host been mentioned; and if the lady had a curiosity +concerning her lord and once master, she did not display it to the +visitor. +</P> + +<P> +"I mean to say," Bulstrode replied in answer to her challenge which was +fiery, "that I really don't want to play false to Westboro', more false +than I shall in the course of events be forced to be. Of course, your +secret—I need not say so—is entirely safe. But the Duke comes back +in a day or two, and rather than face him with this silence which you +have imposed upon me I am going back to London before he returns." +</P> + +<P> +The sewing she had chosen to finger—a Duchess, and an American one at +that, is not expected to do more—lay at her feet. By her side was a +basket of considerable proportions, and it was full to the brim with +linen: the very fine white stuff overflowed from the basket like snow. +The Duchess of Westboro's handiwork had already caught the eye of her +guest. And now, as her long hands and her long finger, tipped by its +golden thimble, handled her sewing, Bulstrode watched her interestedly +and found great loveliness in her bending face. +</P> + +<P> +"I didn't think any of you knew how to sew," he mused aloud. +</P> + +<P> +"Any of us!" she smiled. "Do you, by that, mean American Duchesses? +Or do you mean women who have left their husbands? Or in just what +class do you think of me, regarding your last remark?" +</P> + +<P> +She folded up her work and dropped her thimble in the nest of snow. +Bulstrode acknowledged that his conclusion, whatever it had been, was +wrong. +</P> + +<P> +"When I married," the Duchess said, "I was the best four-in-hand whip +for a woman in my set. I don't think I am a keen needlewoman, really, +and I know then I didn't recognize a needle by sight. When my little +boys were born I sent to Paris for everything they wore, and I can +remember that I didn't even know for what the little clothes were +intended, many of them, when they came home in my first son's layette. +I have learned to sew since I came here to The Dials. I've been three +months here, now, and I really must have proved a clever pupil, for I +assure you that they tell me I have made some pretty things." As she +spoke she held up the seam she ran, and Bulstrode, who himself +confessed to not knowing a needle by sight, was forced to peer over the +seam and endeavor to find her tiny stitches. He exclaimed: +</P> + +<P> +"Three months! You must have been terribly dull!" +</P> + +<P> +"No." +</P> + +<P> +"You are known," he said, "throughout the countryside—not that I've +been making inquiries, but in spite of myself I have heard—as a +stranger, presumably a Frenchwoman, a widow who will probably buy The +Dials." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I shall never buy the place," she assured him, and then abruptly: +"Had you been free to speak of me, what would you have told Westboro'?" +</P> + +<P> +He waited a second, then answered her lightly, but with a feeling which +she did not mistake: "I should have asked him to come and see you run +up that seam." +</P> + +<P> +"He would not have come." +</P> + +<P> +Remembering very clearly how determined Westboro's decision had been, +he did not affirm to the lady his belief that Westboro' would in +reality have flown to her. +</P> + +<P> +At the door, later, she bade him good-bye and appeared to gather her +courage together, and, with a lapse into a simplicity so entire that +she seemed only Frances Denby and to possess no more of title or +distinction than any lovely woman, she said to him: +</P> + +<P> +"Mr. Bulstrode, please don't leave the castle." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I couldn't sit opposite my friend at dinner, I couldn't meet his +eyes now, my dear child." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess touched his arm. "It's sweet of you to call me so. You +are really as young as I am, and certainly I feel an age beyond you. +Please stay." +</P> + +<P> +The pleasure which his visits had been to her had brought something of +an animation and interest to her cold face. Dressed in a dark and +simple gown, her fur stole about her neck, she had this afternoon +followed him out of the house into the garden and walked slowly along +by his side towards the gate. +</P> + +<P> +"Of all the people in the world one would choose you, I think, to be +the friend of..." She caught herself up. "I mean to say, can't you +forget those stupid little ideas of honor and friendship and all that?" +She put it beautifully. "I, of course, will give up seeing you," she +renounced, "but it will be a world of comfort just to feel that you are +there." +</P> + +<P> +As he did not at once succumb to her blandishments, she asked point +blank: +</P> + +<P> +"Promise me to stop on." +</P> + +<P> +"I at least won't go without letting you know of it." +</P> + +<P> +"Without my permission?" +</P> + +<P> +"I won't say that." +</P> + +<P> +"But I'm sure that you mean it," she nodded happily, "and you're <I>such</I> +a help." +</P> + +<P> +She was so affectionate as she bade him good-bye, that only at the +little road did he begin to wonder just what help he was. Was he +aiding her to detective poor Westboro'? Was he adding an air of +protection to some feminine treachery? +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, no," he decided; "she's incapable of any thing of the sort. But I +must clear out;" and he decided that at once, so soon as Westboro' +should be at home, he would take himself to ground still more neutral +than The Dials had proved to be. But Westboro' showed no intention of +coming immediately home. Instead, with a droll egoism, as if the fact +that he had made poor Bulstrode a party to his unhappiness gave him +thereafter a right to the other's time even in absence, he laid a firm +hold on Jimmy. Westboro' finally put pen to paper, and the scrappy +letter touched the deserted visitor; it proved to have been written at +a <I>bureau de poste</I> in Paris: +</P> + +<P> +"Don't, for God's sake, go off, old man. Keep up your end." (His +end!) "Stop on at Westboro'—Use the place as if it were all put up +for your amusement. Just live there so I may feel it's alive. Let me +find a human being at home when I turn up. I'll wire in a day or so." +</P> + +<P> +"So he is in Paris, then." Bulstrode had supposed so, and did not +doubt that the Duke had gone there to find news of his wife, possibly +as well to see Madame de Bassevigne. +</P> + +<P> +Poor fellow, if he were searching for the Duchess! Well, Bulstrode +would keep up his end, he had nothing else for the time being to do but +to mind other people's business. He put it so to himself. Indeed he +could not but believe it was fortunate for more than one person that +something could keep him from minding his own. +</P> + +<P> +An undefined discretion kept him from going to the Moated Grange, as to +himself he styled the retreat the Duchess had made of The Dials. And, +in spite of the absolute freedom now given him to prowl about amongst +the books, in spite of his "evenings out" as he called them, Jimmy +found the time at Westboro' to drag lamentably. His own affairs, which +he so faithlessly denied, came to him in batches of letters whose +questions could not be solved by return mail. He became over his own +thoughts restless, and he sent a telegram to his host: "Better have a +look at things here yourself. Can't possibly stop on longer than...." +And he set a day. +</P> + +<P> +"If Westboro', poor devil, has to look forward to a life of this +unaccompanied grandeur," he pitied him. The lines and files of +soft-footed, impersonal servants, the perfect stilted attention, the +silence, and the inhumanness of a man's lonely life, became intolerable +to Jimmy Bulstrode. Even though Frances, Duchess of Westboro', had +truly said that the castle was a delightful home, Bulstrode began to +wonder what that word comprised or meant: certainly nothing like his +occupation of another man's house or like any life that is lived alone. +</P> + +<P> +At the end of the week that the American spent at Westboro' he had +condensed the castle, as he said to himself, as far as possible, to the +proportions of a Harlem flat, and he lived in it. In the almost small +breakfast room whose windows gave on the terrace, and where all the +December sun that was visible came to find him, he took his meals; each +of them but dinner, which was determinedly and imperially served by +five men in one of the dining-rooms, and at which function, as he +expressed it, he shut his eyes and just ate blindly through. He lived +out of doors all day, took his tea in his dressing-room, and read and +smoked until the august dinner hour called him down to dress and dine +alone. For a week he lived "without sight of a human being," so he +said, for the domestics were only machines. And, towards the end of +the week, he would have gone to see any one: an enemy would have been +too easy, and the only person within range was, of course, the Duchess +of Westboro'. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Westboro' had made a confidant of Bulstrode, and the woman had not. +Bulstrode liked it in her. To be sure, the cases were quite different: +there was no reason why the man deserted and bruised in his pride and +in his heart, should not have talked to his old friend. Westboro' +accused himself of weakness. +</P> + +<P> +"I've blabbed like a woman," he acknowledged ruefully. +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess had not spoken nor had she, on the other hand, with the +fine courage of the true woman, been in any eager haste to discover +what her husband had said of her, nor had she asked if he had spoken at +all. On the other hand, aided by an extreme patience and with still +greater delicacy, she had waited, understanding that her guest, whose +mettle and character she knew would not permit him to betray a trust, +might, however naïvely, disclose what he knew without being conscious +of it. +</P> + +<P> +But if Bulstrode gave himself or his host away, the Duchess made no +sign that she had profited by indiscretions. The impersonality of +their conversations was indeed a relief to Bulstrode, and it made it +possible for him to feel himself less a traitor at the Duke's hearth. +But she talked very sweetly, too, of her children. She had the second +picture to the Duke's of the little boys, a picture like the one +Bulstrode had seen at the castle, and showed it to him as the father +had done. +</P> + +<P> +"Westboro' has the companion to this," he had not minded telling her as +they sat together in the small room he had grown to know as well as the +larger rooms of the castle. And at the end of a few moments Bulstrode +quite blurted out: "Why, in Heaven's name do you women make men suffer +so?" +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess, who had been working, dropped her bit of muslin and +looked, with her cherry lips parted and her great serious eyes, for all +the world like a lady in a gift book. Her face was eighteenth century +and child-like. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode nodded. "Oh, yes, you've got so easily the upper hand, the +very least of you, you know, over the best of us. It's such an unfair +supremacy. You've got such a clever knowledge of little things, such a +sense of the scale of the feelings, and you certainly make the very +most of your power over us all. Can't you—" and his eyes, half +serious and half reproachful, seemed, as he looked at her, to question +all the womankind he knew—"Can't you ever love us well enough just +quite simply to make us happy?" +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess had taken up her sewing again, and her eyes were upon it. +Bulstrode waited for a little, following her stitches through the +muslin and the flash of her thimble in the light. +</P> + +<P> +"Can't you?" he softly repeated. "Isn't it, after all, a good sort of +way of spending one's life, this making another happy?" +</P> + +<P> +"American women aren't taught so, you know," she said. "It isn't +taught us that the end and aim of our existence is to make a man happy." +</P> + +<P> +Her companion didn't seem at all surprised. +</P> + +<P> +"And so you see," she went on, "those of us that do learn that after +all there may be something in what you say—those of us that learn, +only find it out after a lot of hard experiences, and it is sometimes +too late!" +</P> + +<P> +She seemed to think his direct question called for a distinct answer, +for she admitted: "Oh, yes, of course there are some of us who would +give a great deal to try. And you see, moreover," she went on with her +subject as she turned the corner of her square, "you put it well when +you said 'love enough.' You see that's the whole thing, Mr. Bulstrode, +to love enough. One can, of course, in that case, do nearly all there +is to do, can't one?" +</P> + +<P> +"Nearly all," he had smiled, and added: "<I>And a great deal more</I>." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The household gods, whose dignity and harmony had not been disturbed +during the absence of the master of Westboro', were unable, however, to +give him very much comfort on his return. The Duke's motor cut quickly +up the long drive and severed—clove, as it were—a way through the +frosty air and let him into the park. The poor man had only a sense of +wretchedness on coming home—"coming back," he now put it. Huddled +down deep in his fur coat, its collar hunched round his ears, his face +was as gloomy as that of a man dispossessed of all his goods; doors +thrown open into the fragrant and agreeably warmed halls fetched him +further home. But the knowledge that the house had been lived in +during his absence was not ungrateful. He sniffed the odor of a +familiar brand of cigar, and before he had quite plumbed the melancholy +of the place to its depths, Jimmy Bulstrode had sunned out of one of +the inner rooms, and the grasp of the friendly hand and the sound of +the cheerful voice struck a chord in Westboro' that shook him. +</P> + +<P> +"I've been like a fiend possessed," he said to Jimmy, in the evening +when they found themselves once more before the fire. "I've scarcely +known what I've been doing, or why; but I know one thing, and that is +that I'm the most wretched man alive." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode nodded. "You <I>did</I> go to Paris, then!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," said the Duke, "and what I've found out there has driven me +insane." +</P> + +<P> +Although ignorant of the variations of his friend's discovery, +Bulstrode was pretty certain of one that had not been made. +</P> + +<P> +"You may, old chap," he said smoothly, "not have found out all the +truth, you know." +</P> + +<P> +Westboro' raised his hand. "Come," he said, "no palliations; you can't +smooth over the facts. Frances is not in Paris. She has not been in +Paris for several months." He paused. +</P> + +<P> +"In itself not a tragedy," murmured his friend. "Paris is considered +at times a place as well <I>not</I> to be in." +</P> + +<P> +But Bulstrode's remark did not distract his friend from his narrative. +</P> + +<P> +"She has not been in Paris since I saw her twelve months ago, and she +has left no sign or trace of where she has gone. There is no address, +no way that I can find her. Not that a discovery is not of course +ultimately possible, but what, in the interval, if I should wish to +write to her? What if I should need to see her? What if I should die?" +</P> + +<P> +"Would you, in any of those cases, send for her?" +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know," the Duke admitted. +</P> + +<P> +"But," Jimmy asked him, "did you go to Paris this time to see the +Duchess?" +</P> + +<P> +"Since you ask me frankly," the Duke admitted, "I don't think that I +did." +</P> + +<P> +"At all events," the other said, "you surely did not go to spy on her, +Westboro'?" +</P> + +<P> +The Duke was silent, then answered quietly: +</P> + +<P> +"I should never ask a question—not if it meant a certain discovery of +something that I feared or suspected. I don't think I should ever seek +to find out something she didn't want me to know." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, at the blindness of a man regarding his own intentions, +smiled behind his cigar. "Well?" he helped. +</P> + +<P> +"I went over to France," said the Duke—"and I suppose you'll scarcely +believe a man who you say is not a lover to be capable of such +sentimentality—simply, if possible, to have a sight of my wife, to see +her go out of the door, or to see her go in, to see her possibly get +into a carriage; and how did I know that it would not be with another +man?" +</P> + +<P> +"How did you find out that she had left?" +</P> + +<P> +"I asked for her at her hôtel." +</P> + +<P> +"The first question, then," Jimmy smiled. +</P> + +<P> +"A fair one?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, perfectly." +</P> + +<P> +"I was told that the Duchess had left Paris months before." +</P> + +<P> +"And then?" the other man's voice was placid as he spoke for the Duke. +"Then you went to her bankers, her bakers and candlestick makers; in +short, you asked all over the place, didn't you?" +</P> + +<P> +The Duke swore gently. "Well, what would you have a man do?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why I would have him do that," nodded Jimmy, "by all means. Any man +would have done so." +</P> + +<P> +In the half second of interval whilst the Duke was obliged to swallow +his friend's sarcasm, Bulstrode had time to think: "Here I am, once +more in the heart of an intrigue. Its fetters are all about me and I +am wretchedly bound by honor not to do the simple, natural thing." +Then he asked boldly: "Well, what do you think about it, Westboro'?" +</P> + +<P> +"Think?" Westboro' repeated, "why, that she has deliberately escaped +from me, put herself out of any possible reach; she doesn't want a +reconciliation and she has gone away. She may have gone away alone and +she may not, that I don't know, and I don't believe I want to know." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you'll find her." It was with the most delightful security and +contentment that his friend was able to tell the Duke this. But the +cheerful note struck the poor husband the disagreeablest of blows. +</P> + +<P> +"Gad!" he laughed, "what a cold brand of creature a bachelor is! 'Find +her!' as one might speak of finding an umbrella that you've left by +mistake at your club. Of course she can be found. There are not many +mysteries that search can't solve in these days. And Duchesses don't +drop off the face of the earth. I could no doubt have found her in +twenty-four hours, but I didn't try to. I don't know that I want to +find her. It isn't the fact of where she's gone that counts—that she +wanted to go—that she has voluntarily made the separation final and +complete." +</P> + +<P> +"Then," persisted the bachelor, "you don't really <I>want</I> to find her?" +</P> + +<P> +"Jove!" the Duke turned on him. "You don't know what it is to love a +woman! You've got some imagination—try to use it, can't you? Can't +you?" +</P> + +<P> +He met the American's handsome eyes. A flush rose under Bulstrode's +cheek. Westboro' put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "I beg your +pardon, dear old chap." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, that's all right, old chap," Bulstrode assured cheerfully. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"My dear Duchess, it seems an unconscionable waste of time and life for +any one to ignore the inevitable! It's such a prodigal throwing out of +the window of riches!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode took her hands, both of them, in his as she stood in the +winter sunshine, the open house door behind her, the terrace and its +broken stairs of crumbling stone before her. +</P> + +<P> +"Why, my dear lady, if I kept a diary of daily events I couldn't write +down one page of good reasons why you should be living here and +Westboro' up there, and I a comic go-between, in the secret of both and +the confidence of one." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," she interrupted, "then you're in the confidence...?" +</P> + +<P> +"Of your husband, yes," Bulstrode found himself startled into betrayal. +</P> + +<P> +She drew her hands from him and walked on a little in the sunshine, and +he followed by her side. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't mind," she permitted, "you're such a perfect dear. I +shouldn't mind at all if I thought that the confidence were a good one." +</P> + +<P> +Her tone was light and cool, but the gentleman never failed to notice +when the Duchess spoke of the Duke that there was a tremor under her +words, a warmth, an agitation, which she vainly tried to control. +</P> + +<P> +"Confidences," she said, "are very rarely just, you know, and <I>les +absents ont toujours tort</I>." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you don't mean...?" Jimmy emphasized. +</P> + +<P> +"It was a confidence, wasn't it?" +</P> + +<P> +"A real one," she was assured. +</P> + +<P> +"Well then, you'll keep it, of course." +</P> + +<P> +She drew the stole up round her long fair neck; her delicate head came +out of the soft fur like a flower. But before she could follow up her +words Bulstrode said: +</P> + +<P> +"You, of course, then know how he loves you." +</P> + +<P> +He felt more than knew that she trembled, and he saw an instinctive +gesture which he understood meant that he should be silent. +</P> + +<P> +"You and I put it quite clearly, Mr. Bulstrode, the other day." Her +voice was serene again. "If only one cares enough—that's the +necessary thing for every question." +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" +</P> + +<P> +She half shrugged, made a little motion with her white hands, and this +answer said for her: "That is indeed the question, and I haven't solved +it." +</P> + +<P> +They stopped at the terraced walk. The low stones, dark and black, +were filled in their interstices with fine lines of greenish moss. On +the sunny corner the dial's shadow fell across the noon. The Duchess +put her hand on the warmed stones. +</P> + +<P> +"It's a heavenly day," she said, "I don't believe that the Riviera is +warmer. I never have seen such an English December." +</P> + +<P> +Her eyes, which had been fixed on the woods below the garden, now +turned towards the house and rested on one of the upper windows where +the sun fell on the little panes. The Duchess remained looking up a +few seconds, then she came back to her guest. +</P> + +<P> +"I started, you know, to tell you something," Bulstrode smiled at her. +"I once served on a jury in the West, and although the case was a +miserably sad one in every way, I suppose, I couldn't take it as +seriously as I should have done, for from the first the whole thing +seemed so unnecessary, and the crisis could so easily have been +avoided." +</P> + +<P> +"I know," she interrupted him, "but you're rather wrong. Not from the +first." +</P> + +<P> +He capitulated. "Well, grant it so if you like, only agree with me +when I say from my own—" he put his hand down on the dial's edge. +"From this lovely noon-time on, every hour you waste is clear loss. +The Duke loves you as women are rarely loved, and after all," he said +with something like passion in his agreeable voice "what <I>do</I> you all +expect? Love doesn't hang on every tree for a woman to pluck at will, +and you have the great luck, my dear Duchess, to be loved by your own +husband. Why don't you go to him?" +</P> + +<P> +"Go to him?" she echoed. +</P> + +<P> +He curtly replied: "Why not?" +</P> + +<P> +"My dear friend!" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, didn't you forbid him to go to you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Ah," she nodded, "the confidence, it was intimate indeed. But since +you have got it, won't you agree that any man, if he loved a woman, +would disobey her?" +</P> + +<P> +"Westboro' would not." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess said coldly: "Pride is not love." +</P> + +<P> +"You didn't mean him, then, to keep his vow?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," she slowly thought out, "I did indeed, with all my heart." +</P> + +<P> +"And now?" +</P> + +<P> +She turned towards the house again, and as she walked back, said: "I +don't quite know." +</P> + +<P> +And Bulstrode asked her: "That is why you are here, to find out?" +</P> + +<P> +"Partly." +</P> + +<P> +Her companion's face grew stern. The Duchess did not see it for her +eyes had again swept the upper window. At her side Bulstrode went on: +"You have taken ten years to discover that you did not love your +husband. You have taken one year to begin to wonder, to doubt, to +suspect, to half think that you do; it's an unstable state of heart, +Duchess, terribly unstable." +</P> + +<P> +The woman stopped short at his side, and now as she lifted up her eyes +and saw him, was a little startled if not frightened at his expression. +</P> + +<P> +"Unstable," she repeated, with a world of scorn in her voice. "How can +you use that word to me, knowing the facts of the case?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, a man," said Bulstrode rather impatiently, "is a worthless, +wretched piece of mechanism altogether. I grant you that—utterly +unworthy the love and confidence of any good woman. He is capable of +all the vagaries and infidelities possible. We'll judge him so. But," +he continued, "these wandering, vagrant derelicts have been known to +tie fast, to find port, to drop anchor. They have even brought great +riches and important treasure into harbor, fetched a world of good luck +home. There's only one thing in the universe that can keep a man, +Duchess, only one." +</P> + +<P> +"Well?" she encouraged him. +</P> + +<P> +"A woman's heart," he said deeply, "a woman's true tenderness; and it +needs all that heart, all its love, all its patience and sacrifice to +keep that man—all and forever." +</P> + +<P> +He saw her bosom heave; she had thrown her fur off, as if its warmth +stifled her. Vivid color had come into her face. Her pallor for the +time was destroyed, and as she flashed a rebellious look at him, a look +of revolt and selfhood, he seemed to see again the American +girl—wilful, egotistical, spoiled—an imperious creature whose +caprices had been opposed to the Duke's Anglo-Saxon temperament and +national egoism. +</P> + +<P> +At this moment, the window the Duchess looked towards opened part way: +it was under the eaves and there must have been a dovecote near, for +there came the soft sound of cooing like the call of a young bird. +Possibly the gentle note reached the woman's hearing as well, for her +face transcendently softened. +</P> + +<P> +"I think," she said with evident effort to speak in a commonplace tone, +"it would be quite futile to urge Cecil to come." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I shan't advise him so." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode's quick answer made her look at him in so much surprise that +he went on to say: "I would not, in justice to him, in justice to the +great love I have been permitted to see, advise him to come." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess, during the months of analysis, suffering and experience, +had not admitted to herself that should her husband return she would +receive him, nor had she decided as to quite how obdurate she would be, +and she was curious at the attitude of this gentle friend. She naïvely +asked: +</P> + +<P> +"Why would you not advise him so?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode said, still continuing his pleasant sententiousness, "The +woman's heart must be as stable as the man's is uncertain, and the man +who comes back after such a separation must not find a woman who does +not know her own mind. He must, on the contrary, find one who has no +mind or will or life but his." +</P> + +<P> +As he looked at the person to whom he spoke he was somewhat struck by +the maternal look in her: he had never clearly discovered it before. +Her breast from which the fur had fallen, as it rose and fell under her +soft gown, was full, generous, and beautiful; even as he spoke in a +certain accusation against her, she seemed to have altered. +</P> + +<P> +"Westboro'," he said a little confused, "must come back to a woman, +Duchess, to a woman—to a consoler. I wish I could express +myself—almost to a mother—as well as to a wife." +</P> + +<P> +The ardent color dyed her face again; her lips moved. She put out her +hand towards him, and as he took it he understood that she wished him +to bid her good-by and to leave her alone. He heard what she struggled +to say: +</P> + +<P> +"He must not come, he must not come." +</P> + +<P> +"No," he accepted sadly for his friend, "No, he must not come." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Bulstrode had chosen those times for going to The Dials when his host +was least likely to take note of his absence; but it happened that more +than once the Duke missed him at just the wrong moment, and more than +once had been given the direction in which Bulstrode's footsteps had +turned. +</P> + +<P> +One morning, during a talk with his agent, Westboro'—the map of the +district before him—enquired what had ever been done with the property +known as The Dials, and into whose hands the old place had fallen. It +seemed that it had been let for some months to a foreigner, a widow, +who lived there, and alone. +</P> + +<P> +Westboro' considered the farms and forests, as they lay mapped out +before him, at the extreme foot of the castle's parks. It was a little +square of some fifty acres by itself; it had never interested him +before. +</P> + +<P> +How long did the lease run on? Did the agent know? He believed for +another year. +</P> + +<P> +The Duke gave instructions to have the property looked into, with a +view to purchase. And as the man put up his papers, he vouchsafed to +his employer: +</P> + +<P> +"The present tenant is very exclusive; she sees nobody, has never, I +believe, even been to the Abbey. An old gardener who has been kept on +says the servants are all foreign." +</P> + +<P> +The Duke gave only a tepid interest to the information which would have +passed entirely from his mind had it not been for his next meeting with +Jimmy Bulstrode. +</P> + +<P> +As much to shake off the impression his last talk with the Duchess had +left on his mind, as to prolong his exercise, Jimmy had gone down out +of the garden and across the place on foot over the rough winter fields +with their rimy furrows and their barren floors. As he made his way +towards the bottom hedge, looking for a stile he knew would be there a +little farther on, cutting an entrance out through the thorn to the +road, he met Westboro', like himself, on foot, and with his hand upon +the stile. The presence of the Duke where Bulstrode knew he was least +thought to be, and where he was now sadly sure he was not opportune, +made Jimmy stop short, troubled, and, not for a moment thinking that +the fact of his being there <I>himself</I> was singular, he made his way +determinedly through the stile. As he greeted his friend, his own +demeanor was decidedly one which said: "Don't go on in that direction, +follow rather out of the turnstile with <I>me</I>." And he led his friend +rather brusquely down the bank, hitching his arm in Westboro's, forced +him along with him into the road. +</P> + +<P> +"I ran down here to look over these meadows," said Westboro.' "You +seem yourself, in a way, to be pacing the land off!" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I <I>love</I> cross-country walking," said Bulstrode warmly. +</P> + +<P> +"You must," smiled the Duke, "to have cut off into those barren fields. +Were you lost?" Westboro' stopped and looked back. "You must have +come directly down through The Dials." +</P> + +<P> +"<I>The Dials</I>?" the American helplessly repeated. "Do you mean the old +house and garden?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode's manner and speech were rarely curt and evasive, but he +seemed this time embarrassed and taken unawares. As the two men sat in +the motor which waited for the Duke down the road, Westboro' fixed his +glass in his eye and looked hard for a second at his friend. +Bulstrode's cheerful face was distinctly disturbed. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm thinking something of buying The Dials," Westboro', after a +moment, said against the wind. +</P> + +<P> +Poor Jimmy. If the house had not sufficiently up till now materialized +out of his fancy as a possession, it declared itself at once, without +doubt, as something he must look after. It was only a little bit of +England, luckily—— +</P> + +<P> +"Well," he exclaimed, "to be frank, old man, I've, too, been thinking I +should like to buy that property. You could surely spare me this +little corner of Glousceshire." +</P> + +<P> +"Spare it!" cried Westboro', "my dear chap, fancy how ripping to have +you a landlord here! To catch and hold you so! We'll go over the +whole place together. My agent shall put the matter through for you." +</P> + +<P> +"Good God, no!" said Bulstrode, "don't let your man have wind of any +such a deal. The place would go up like a rocket in price. If you +really yourself care to withdraw as much as possible, that's the most +you can do. But for God's sake keep off the place, like a good fellow." +</P> + +<P> +Behind his long moustaches the Duke covered a smile, but he conciliated +his agitated friend. +</P> + +<P> +"I'll keep off the grass until the turf is all your own, my dear +Bulstrode." +</P> + +<P> +"Thanks!" said the other cordially, and sat back with a sigh of relief. +"There," he reflected peacefully, "my presence is explained—it's quite +perfect. I shall be a landowner in England. At all events, it's lucky +the property is sympathetic. I'm glad I didn't get balled up in this +affair in, let us say, <I>New Jersey</I>, and find myself forced to purchase +the Hackensack Meadows. +</P> + +<P> +"Did the old house look deserted?" asked the Duke wickedly. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, rather!" replied the other gentleman. +</P> + +<P> +"Really!" wondered Westboro'. "Why, they tell me that it is let to a +Donna Incognita—a foreign lady." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, whether at his own lie or at the shock of his companion's +knowledge, blushed, and his friend saw him redden. And the Duke, in +whom candor was a charm, stared at his friend, half-opened his mouth, +and then sat speechless. The suggestiveness of the whole affair rushed +over him so rapidly that he had not time to ask himself whether he +credited his suspicions or not. +</P> + +<P> +"Good heavens! <I>Jimmy</I> carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple +country village!" He looked at the face of the man by his side, but +Jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and +showed no intention of meeting the Duke's eyes. If it were not a +vulgar intrigue, what could it be? How difficult it grew to connect +such a <I>liason</I> with his friend. But as he thought on, the Duke began +to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary! Why should he +suppose Jimmy so unlike the rest of his set? More scrupulous, more +sinless than other men—than himself? He couldn't answer his own +question, but he did so think of Bulstrode, and since his late house +party had believed that Jimmy cared for Mrs. Falconer. The lady at The +Dials was certainly not she. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in +the mind of the Duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human, +rather consolingly human. In their mutual intercourse the Duke had +felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed. +Along by Bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his +own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be. +And although Jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt +himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes. +</P> + +<P> +By the time he had reached this point in his reflections the motor had +stopped at one of the side doors of the castle. +</P> + +<P> +"There is, of course, some perfectly proper explanation—" the Duke +decided. It's a harmless flirtation, if any flirtation at all. +Perhaps it's a beneficent bit of benevolence; at any rate it's Jimmy's +own affair, and after all, he's going to <I>buy</I> the property—perhaps +he's going to marry. Why not? +</P> + +<P> +Ashamed to have placed his friend, if only momentarily, in an equivocal +position, he turned about as they got out of the car and put an +affectionate hand on the American's shoulder. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I expect, old man, that you've got some wonderful scheme up your +sleeve! You're going to be married and fetch your bride to The Dials." +</P> + +<P> +Poor Bulstrode unfortunately echoed: "<I>Married</I>!" with a world of scorn +in his tone. "My poor Westboro,' after what I've lately seen and heard +here—forgive me if I say that for the time at least I'm not too +sharply tempted." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"Since," he said as he greeted her, "you appear to be intending to live +here forever, you'll welcome me when I come back from London. I'm +coming back for Christmas, but if I don't run in before you'll +understand, won't you, that it is because I simply haven't dared. +Westboro' has already seen me cut across to this place." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess interrupted him. "Oh, in that case, I shall, of course, be +obliged to move away." And to her great surprise Bulstrode quickly +agreed with her. +</P> + +<P> +"I should think it wise—not of course in the least knowing why you +originally came." +</P> + +<P> +She looked at him rather quizzically. +</P> + +<P> +"You mean to say then that you don't really know?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh,"—he was truthful—"I have rather an idea, and I hope a more or +less true one." +</P> + +<P> +But the lady did not confess or in anywise help him. He went on to say: +</P> + +<P> +"Your love for the castle couldn't, of course, long continue to keep +you mewed up here; and you'll be shortly discovered. As far as your +own interests are concerned it will be rather better to obtain the +divorce as soon as possible." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she interposed, "don't misread me." +</P> + +<P> +He nodded sagely. "On the contrary, I am translating you from sight, +my dear Duchess. And you are decidedly in your right regarding the +Duke." +</P> + +<P> +She was so at his mercy that she hardly moved her lips, watching his +face. And as Bulstrode lit the cigarette she permitted him, and took +his seat before the tea things which she had set at his elbow, he went +on to make out her case for her. +</P> + +<P> +"He has quite spoiled your life. He has been a brute, and not in the +least worth your——" +</P> + +<P> +But the Duchess had dropped her tongs; they fell ringing on the +hard-wood floor. She raised a scarlet face to him. +</P> + +<P> +"It's a <I>piége</I>," she murmured, "an <I>autodafé</I>." +</P> + +<P> +"No," he said quietly, "it's a plain truth. Westboro' has told me +everything. I must think that he has done so. The man of me naturally +condones him, and the friend in me is inclined to be lenient. But the +justice and right, my dear Duchess, are all on your side." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, justice and right!" she dismissed, "only criminals need such +words." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode said cooly: "But Westboro' has been a criminal!" +</P> + +<P> +"If he were," emphasized the Duchess, "didn't I forgive him?" +</P> + +<P> +"Of course, you did, my dear," her friend agreed warmly, "how +wonderfully, how beautifully, everyone knows. And he is all the more, +therefore, dreadfully to be blamed." +</P> + +<P> +She said passionately: "What do you mean, Mr. Bulstrode? How—why do +you speak to me like this?" +</P> + +<P> +Her extraordinary guest drank his tea with singular peace of mind. +</P> + +<P> +"I think he is dreadfully to be blamed." +</P> + +<P> +"But why should you tell it to me?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why not?" he returned, his charming eyes on hers with the greatest +tribute of affection and sympathy—"I've known you for years, I'm fond +of you, you've been horribly wronged, and I'm going to see that things +are made right for you. I've been very blind. I have longed for a +reconciliation, I admit, with this husband who, poor stuff as he is, +loves you still. But I see what a sentimental ass I've been, and how +right you are." +</P> + +<P> +She put her hand to her throat as if the soft lace suffocated her; she +had grown very pale indeed. +</P> + +<P> +"What," she gasped, "do you know of my plans and my intentions, Mr. +Bulstrode? I have not told them to you." +</P> + +<P> +"But I've been able to guess them," he replied. +</P> + +<P> +"You've dared to, then?" she flashed. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't blame me," he returned. "Seeing you as I have all the +while, I've been forced to make out something—to attach some reason to +your living in this isolation. You've wanted, not unnaturally and very +cleverly, I acknowledge, to see what's been going on at Westboro', what +the Duke's been up to." +</P> + +<P> +Her voice was suffocated as she said: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, stop, please! Whatever has come to you, Mr. Bulstrode, I don't +know, or why you dare to speak to me as you do." +</P> + +<P> +Seeing her agitation he said smoothly: "My dear child, you're so right +in everything you've done, and of course I shall stand by you." +</P> + +<P> +She made a dismissing gesture. "Oh, I don't need you, I don't want +you." +</P> + +<P> +He smiled benignly on her. "But I'm here, and I'm going to see you +through." +</P> + +<P> +"See me through what?" +</P> + +<P> +"Through your divorce," he said practically. +</P> + +<P> +"But you're Westboro's friend," she stammered, and he repudiated with +just a little hesitation in his voice: +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, not so much as yours. But I'm the friend of both of you in this. +It's the best thing all round." +</P> + +<P> +The gentleman's attitude so baffled her, he was so serious, and yet he +took it so lightly, apparently, that she was obliged to believe he +meant what he said. +</P> + +<P> +"You talked to me very differently," she reminded him, and he shrugged. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I've been far too emotional and unpractical. I'm going henceforth +to look at things from the worldly and conventional stand-point." +</P> + +<P> +She put out her hand beseechingly. "Oh, leave that for the rest of us. +It quite spoils you." +</P> + +<P> +"I don't pretend to think—" He made his gaze small as he looked past +her in an attitude of reflection. "Oh, I don't claim that, it's an +ideal way of looking at things. But there is not much idealism in the +modern divorce, is there?" +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess took a turn across the floor, twisting her fair hands +together, then came round to his side and sat down on a low chair near +him. +</P> + +<P> +"Are you quite serious?" she asked. "But I know that you are not. Let +me at least think so. Your words shock me horribly"—and she looked +piteously at him. "I have felt you to be such a gentle person, and +yours is such an understanding atmosphere." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode had given himself methodically another cup of tea, and helped +himself now to sugar. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, atmosphere!" he repeated scornfully. "One can't live on air, you +know. And I have been of the most colorless kind." +</P> + +<P> +"Well, you've changed terribly," she accused him. +</P> + +<P> +"I've only come down to solid earth," he explained. "And the earth's +after all where we belong, Duchess. Stand firm, keep to your own part +of it, and don't cloud-gaze, or somebody with a claim will knock you +off your little foothold." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, <I>heavens</I>!" exclaimed his companion. +</P> + +<P> +The gentleman, who appeared at length quite to have finished his +material enjoyment of the tea, put his second empty cup down and looked +at the lady. +</P> + +<P> +"You should have married an American husband," he said to her, "a man +who would have idolized you, not cared whether you developed or not. A +duchess isn't far enough up. An American empress is higher." +</P> + +<P> +The lady listening to him, shuddered a little. +</P> + +<P> +"As it is," he went on regretfully, "you've been forced to develop, +whether or not you wanted to, to grow finer and freer, to go farther +on, to become more delightful. Here you are progressed and civilized, +after years of education, experience and suffering, and, my poor child, +here you are all alone." +</P> + +<P> +She cried out, "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," with a little gasp. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, no, no," he softly ejaculated, "it is not fair! You're terribly +wasted, and you've been, as you too well know, terribly betrayed." +</P> + +<P> +But here he felt her hand on his arm with a strong grasp. She shook +the arm a little. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't go on," she said deeply. "I tell you not to go on." After a +few seconds, in which he heard the fire and the slow bubbling of the +gently boiling water and the cooing of the doves without, under the +eaves, the Duchess said: "Listen to me. I haven't talked at all to +you, let me say something now." +</P> + +<P> +Her companion reflected to himself: "Well, at all events, she's not +going to malign the Duke; that's a foregone conclusion." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess clasped her hands round her knee and raised her face to him. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you think," she asked, "that there's any egoist as nasty as a +feminine one? Men are admitted to be generally selfish, but we +specialize, and each one of us has the faculty of getting up some new +and peculiar brand, I begin to believe. At any rate, when I married, I +was an egoist, and I've stayed on being one until a very little time +ago. I suppose I must in a way have more or less ornamented my +position, as the papers say. I did have two children as well, and in +that way fulfilled my duty as a Westboro'. But really and truly, I +have never in the least been a wife, and very little of a mother. I +was as silly and vain as could be, and I never for a moment valued my +husband. I wasn't indifferent to my children, but I was absorbed by my +worldly life, and when my little boys were taken ill and died, I was on +a dahabeah on the Nile, and I don't think that Cecil ever forgave us +for being so far away." +</P> + +<P> +She remained quiet for a long time, looking down at her hands, and when +she lifted her face Bulstrode saw that she had wept. +</P> + +<P> +"That," she went on, "broke the ice round my heart, when I came home to +those empty rooms." +</P> + +<P> +He said soothingly, "There, there, my child." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, let me go on," she urged him, "let me speak. I shall probably +never feel like doing so again. But at that time when I turned to find +my husband, I discovered that I had no power over him, and I realized +that for years I had not possessed his love. I suppose you'll tell me +that it is unusual for a woman to see so clearly as this. Perhaps it +is. At any rate, just because I did so clearly, I forgave him when he +came to me last year, at Cannes." +</P> + +<P> +"You were wonderful!" he repeated again, "perfectly noble, and, as I +said before, Westboro' did not deserve you." +</P> + +<P> +She did not here, as she had done before, catch him up; on the +contrary, after a few moments, she asked him point-blank: +</P> + +<P> +"What then do you advise us, knowing us both, to do?" +</P> + +<P> +He was distinctly disappointed that she should have put the question to +him, and gave her time to withdraw it as he asked tentatively: "You +really feel that you must ask me, Duchess?" +</P> + +<P> +"Tell me, at all events." +</P> + +<P> +"You are quite sure that you could not go back to your husband?" +</P> + +<P> +After a little pause, she lingeringly said: +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, quite sure. You must know that he will not be the first to break +the ice now." Then she pushed: "You would advise my filing my papers +for divorce?" +</P> + +<P> +Held in this way pitilessly for a direct challenge, he met her eyes +with his own, asking her gently: +</P> + +<P> +"Is there nothing that speaks for Westboro' more distinctly than +anything I can say? And more appealingly than anything which you in +all your pride feel?" +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess assented that there was, with a movement of her lips; she +put her hands over her face and so sat quietly for a few moments, and +when she spoke again to her visitor, her words were irrelevant. When +some few moments after she bade him good-by, she regretted his absence +in London and begged him to come and see her as soon as he returned. +</P> + +<P> +"Come," she said, "at least to see whether I am here or whether I have +pitched my tent and gone away." +</P> + +<P> +As Bulstrode stood in the doorway she asked him: "I understand there +are a lot of people at the castle for Christmas, and among them will be +Mrs. Falconer? Isn't it so? Is she really so very lovely?" +</P> + +<P> +"It's a different type of loveliness from yours," Bulstrode returned. +And the Duchess supposed: "A happier type?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, she's rather happy I think, take it all together," Jimmy said. +</P> + +<P> +"Has she children?" +</P> + +<P> +"None." +</P> + +<P> +"Is she in love with her husband?" +</P> + +<P> +And he was so long searching for a reply that the Duchess laughed +quietly. +</P> + +<P> +"Poor man," she said, "don't bother. But then since she's so happy, +she must be in love with somebody else's husband." +</P> + +<P> +But he put her right immediately. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't think she in the least is. And why," he went on, "since +happiness is so greatly the question of other people's state of mind, +might we not let it go at the fact that she is herself very much loved?" +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess looked at her guest rather absently. She was thinking of +the happy beauty, the woman of a different type from her own, whose +presence at Westboro' had been sought by her husband for the second +time. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh," she answered rather absently, giving Jimmy her hand, "she +wouldn't, you know, be happy if the feeling were all on the other side." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +When the Duke had casually asked his guest's plans for Christmas week, +Bulstrode had come near to offending his host by declaring that he +could not possibly be one of a second house party. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you, then," Westboro' had asked, "<I>hate</I> the holidays?" +</P> + +<P> +The genial Bulstrode had assured him to the contrary. +</P> + +<P> +"Nor do I," continued the Duke, "even though I'm a miserable man on the +verge of a divorce. I expect there's too long a line of jolly +Christmases back of the Westboro's for me to mope through the season. +But I don't want to have Christmas coming to an empty house, my dear +fellow"—He put it pathetically, "there's no one in this gloomy place +but yourself and myself. We must have a Christmas party. The tenants +will, of course, be noisy and cheerful, but I'm going to ask a lot of +people down and make the list out now." +</P> + +<P> +And Bulstrode had, however, firmly insisted that he could not really +stop on—that he must go away. "There are," he wound up his arguments, +"a thousand reasons why I should go." +</P> + +<P> +But Westboro' had comprehendingly suggested that they might together +bring "every reason" down to the country. "And," continued his Grace, +"we'll narrow things into the most intimate circle possible. For I +shall ask the Ravensworths of Surrey and their children, there are +eight of them, ripping little things; they used to play with my boys. +We'll turn them loose and have a tree, old man." +</P> + +<P> +Jimmy watched his face with a keen pity, for there had not been one ray +of light in it as he planned for his celebration. +</P> + +<P> +"But you arrange to come back for Christmas Eve. There <I>must</I> be some +one in charge—I mean to say, some one so that if the whole thing is +too much for me, why I'll bolt and you'll have to stand by." +</P> + +<P> +He was, as he spoke, writing the names on a sheet of paper. Bulstrode +felt the plan to be rather <I>triste</I> and lifeless, and he knew that he +could not and would not keep the Duchess' secret much longer, let its +revelation cost him what it would. +</P> + +<P> +"Westboro'," he said, "I shall have to be getting off to-morrow. You +know I would stand by you if I could possibly see my way clear." +</P> + +<P> +"I know perfectly well," the Duke acknowledged, "what a rotten bore +I've been, and how sick of me you must be." He wrote on: "I shall ask +Mrs. Falconer (her husband is in the States); she is quite alone in +town at Lady Sorgham's." As he quoted this last name the Duke folded +his list up. He nodded affectionately at Jimmy. "You'll arrange +perhaps to come down with Mrs. Falconer on the Friday train?" +</P> + +<P> +And Bulstrode capitulating weakly, murmured, "Oh, we'll fetch the toys +and things for the tree," he offered. +</P> + +<P> +"Ripping!" his Grace nodded. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Jimmy, on his way at last to London, stopped once more at The Dials, +and was hurrying across the forest when the Duchess herself appeared to +him at the big dial. She wore her furs, muff, and big enveloping +stole, her hat with fur on it, and a veil. She was not in house or +garden trim. The urban air of her toilet was a surprise to Bulstrode, +and he took in her readiness for something he had not expected, +something great, something decisive. +</P> + +<P> +"It's good of you to come when you must be full of delightful ways of +passing your time, Mr. Bulstrode," she said, "and I wanted so much to +see you again." +</P> + +<P> +"Again?" +</P> + +<P> +"Of course," she replied nodding, "again and many times. But I mean I +wanted to see you <I>here</I>." Bulstrode did not want her to tell him a +piece of final news. He did not care to learn of an arbitrary +departure, and he said, laughing: "Then you don't like my property? +Any repairs you...?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I adore The Dials," she said gravely, "and I can't think why they +ever let you buy it, or what you'll do with it after I'm gone." She +smiled. ".... or with whom." Before he could speak she added: "Where +is my husband to-day?" +</P> + +<P> +"I left him wandering about the house like a lost spirit," Bulstrode +replied. "Looking," he went on, "all about for something or other. I +expect he himself didn't quite know what. For something to cheer up +the empty rooms." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, don't," she murmured. +</P> + +<P> +But he seemed pleased with the picture he drew. "I doubt if Westboro' +stops in the house alone; he's probably gone out shooting." +</P> + +<P> +"But he has a house full of people....?" +</P> + +<P> +"No one has come, or is coming, after all." +</P> + +<P> +"You don't mean to say that they've all refused!" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," Jimmy said, "every man of them, and all the women as well." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess put out her hand quickly, and said touchingly: "Oh, but you +don't for a moment think——" +</P> + +<P> +"That it's because of the scandal, dear lady?" he smiled. "Well, that +would be a new phase. No, I think on the other hand they would revel, +and the only reason in the world that they have not come down is that +they were really asked too late. Christmas week, you know— +</P> + +<P> +"And, of course, then, Mrs. Falconer," the Duchess's face brightened. +"She——" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, <I>she</I>!" Bulstrode exclaimed, "she's as right as possible. She's +sure to be along in good season." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh!" accepted the Duchess, "and with whom does she come?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode waited. "Well, of course, the poor thing expects to find +more or less some one to help her bear up her end. And I can't say how +she will take the fact of only us two." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess interrupted cheerfully: +</P> + +<P> +"Why, she, of course, will go directly back! You don't think for a +second that she would stop on alone like that?" +</P> + +<P> +"Alone?" Bulstrode gave her with a little malice. "But she'll have +Westboro' and me so entirely to herself and one can always ask in the +rector or curate or corral a neighbor." +</P> + +<P> +But the Duchess shook her head as if she understood. "Oh, no, not at +this time." +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode miscomprehended blithely: "Christmas time? You see, I know +the visiting lady pretty well, and I believe she'll feel me to be more +or less of a standby, and I know her spirit and her human kindness. I +am inclined to think that she will feel it's up to her not to run off +like a hare; to think that Westboro' may, in a way, need her; and that +when she finds everybody's gone back on the poor man, and there's to be +no tree after all, why, I'm tempted, by jove, to think——" +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess helped him: "That she'll make a charity of it." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, if you like," he laughed. "Or be a sport," he preferred to put +it. "Stay on, stand by. It will be perfectly ripping of her, you +know." +</P> + +<P> +But the Duchess had no sympathy for the other woman. Her eyes fixed +themselves on the trees before her, and as a shot rang out in the +distance she said abruptly: "Why, that might be Cecil, mightn't it? +Does he shoot birds on your premises?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode wondered very much for what reason she was habited in street +dress and furs, whether she had planned to leave The Dials or had +intended going up to see her husband. +</P> + +<P> +"Forgive me," he said, "if I seem to be shockingly in a hurry, but I +must have a look at the time, for as it happens, even in this far-off +place, I have an engagement." +</P> + +<P> +Impulsively putting out her hand the Duchess exclaimed: "I can't ever, +ever thank you." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, after your divorce——" +</P> + +<P> +But she cried out so against his words that he hastened: "You want me +to think then that you do not believe...." +</P> + +<P> +"Believe!" she ardently repeated, "Oh, I don't know what I believe or +think," and he saw that the poor thing spoke the truth. "It's I who am +as unstable as the sea, I who am the derelict." +</P> + +<P> +He contradicted her gently: "My dear, you're only trying to solve alone +a problem which it takes two to answer. When you see Westboro' you +will know." +</P> + +<P> +She turned on him with the first sparkle of humor he had ever seen her +display. "Why don't you marry Mrs. Falconer?" +</P> + +<P> +He didn't start; indeed, the idea had such a familiar sound it would +have been hard to frighten him with it from any corner. +</P> + +<P> +"I thought you didn't believe in divorces?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, but you'd make a wonderful husband!" +</P> + +<P> +He laughed. "No one has ever thought so—<I>la preuve</I>....?" +</P> + +<P> +With great frankness in her gesture and a great—he was quick to see +it—a great affection—she put out her hand to him and said: "Oh, yes, +you'd make a wonderful companion, and you've been a wonderful friend. +If anything good comes to me now, I shall in great measure owe it to +you." +</P> + +<P> +He protested: "You owe me nothing, nothing." +</P> + +<P> +There were tears in her eyes as she said: "But I want to, I like to, +and I do. I don't know," she went on, "that I might not have been +reconciled ultimately to my husband, but I feel quite sure it would +only have been the basting up of the seam—it would have ripped away +again. Did you ever—" she challenged him with still a little sparkle +of humor, "hear of a thing called a change of heart?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, at Methodist meetings." +</P> + +<P> +She said gravely: "That's not what I mean. But whatever <I>has</I> happened +it's only been since you told me things." +</P> + +<P> +Her face was so girlish, her eyes so sweet, her humility so sudden, +that her companion found himself embarrassed and could hardly find +words to say good-by to her. She went on to say, in a tone so low that +he bent a little over the dial to hear her. "You told me you could not +advise my husband to come to me." +</P> + +<P> +Ah, had he! It was hard to remember that. <I>Had</I> he said so? +</P> + +<P> +"I think," she whispered, "you need not keep him away now, if he should +want to come." +</P> + +<P> +As her friend said nothing, she added in a voice more like a child than +a great Duchess, "You may trust me. I <I>want</I> him to come— There, +I've said it. I <I>hope</I> he'll come. If he doesn't— +</P> + +<P> +"Why, then, you'll go away," he finished. "You can't bear it." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess shook her head. "I'll go to him, on the contrary." +</P> + +<P> +"You were going?" +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, when you came." +</P> + +<P> +He cried out: "Oh, I'm off then, I'm off for London, and I shan't be +back for the Christmas holidays. You may count on me." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess smiled delightfully, and was in a second the elusive woman, +intangible, and impossible to seize. +</P> + +<P> +"No, no," she said, "please don't exile yourself either to-day or +to-morrow. It isn't after all the moment, and I want to prove to you +that I'm not jealous. I've decided to wait until that lovely woman has +gone away." +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The waste of his territory, its largesse to no purpose, its vastness +through which only unbearable silences echoed; accumulated revenues and +hereditary title, only added to the Duke's melancholy. +</P> + +<P> +He had planned the Christmas house party too late as it proved, and +refusals, one after another, came in during the week. The poor +gentleman's mood led him to resent each fresh defection on the part of +his guests as personal wounds inflicted by old friends at a time when +charity would have been sweet. And it was with really tragic +melancholy that he threw the last letter down exclaiming: +</P> + +<P> +"And they all with one consent began to make excuse." +</P> + +<P> +He quite waited for a line from Mrs. Falconer, which would tell him +that she, too, had decided to abandon him: and the thought of what he +believed to be Jimmy's complications at The Dials caused him half to +regard the matter with a pity for her. +</P> + +<P> +"If Jimmy <I>isn't</I> married, he's the most whited of sepulchres!" +</P> + +<P> +The satin shine of holly, the glimmer of pearly mistletoe, the odor of +spruce and pine, and heavier scent of hemlock bewitched the castle +throughout with their fragrance. Setting and decoration suggested a +feast, and the Duke as he passed through the upper halls, and by the +doors of his children's rooms, saw holly wreaths on the walls and that +the little gates were twisted with green. +</P> + +<P> +The day was dampish and the Duke, unable to bear the silence of the +house, with his gun and his dogs and with a lack of resource and +superfluity of ennui to urge him from the castle, started to tramp off +his unrest. The afternoon was young, and the bare, naked sunlight fell +over the bare nakedness of the land. The little low clumps of +neutral-colored underbrush, the reddish-brown thickets between wood and +field, would hide the birds well, and with his gun across his back, his +hands in his pockets, his Grace covered many miles before he at length +stopped to take in the length of the land or to listen for wings. +</P> + +<P> +Coveys had flown up and away unseen by him, and their whirring unheard. +His dogs had run off, and without being abruptly brought to heel, +skulked back by themselves shamefaced and bewildered by the hunter's +indifference. The holly reddened on the hedges, the scarlet berries +bright among the glowing leaves; high in the poplars the parasite +mistletoe with crystal balls, hung tiny white globules like fairy +grapes; holiday in the air, and over the grey winter landscape the +finest possible powder of snow lay pale under the furtive sun. As the +forest edges closed about him and the Duke with still no idea of where +he was going, continued to tramp, he unconsciously entered the property +Bulstrode had lately acquired, and which he had begged his friend to +avoid. +</P> + +<P> +There was something in the country air, in its pungent sweetness, and +in the season, that penetrated even Westboro's melancholy, and every +now and then he lifted his head to breathe in deeply the fragrance of +hemlock and the cold earthy aroma, the spice of bracken and the balm of +a fragrant thicket that smelled like a rose. It was winter, however, +and although a snow bird piped in it and the sun was out, there was a +December quality that, in the mood he was in, overcame all the +festivities of the time. He heard the bird who was persistent and +sharp-voiced, and, for the first time thinking of the other game he had +come out for, he paused. His dogs were gone, the beggars! He called +them to no purpose, whistled and waited. They were a new brace and +young. God knew where they had cut away to. +</P> + +<P> +Before him, as he stood, the brown vistas of the winter forest opened +out here and there into ochre circles and filled at this hour with +brilliant sunlight, their round openings overflowing; the light +filtered gently out and was swallowed up by the cold and closer wood. +Under his feet there was only the faint ghost of the late snowfall on +the turned-up, curled-up edges of the dry leaves. There beeches, red +as copper, and iron-strong oaks struck their roots deep down into the +mould. Westboro' did not know where he had wandered to, but here and +there through the bare trees gleamed the white of a statue on its mossy +base, and a little farther along, a broken pedestal held its slender +column up amongst the tree trunks as mossy and veined as they, and +right in the heart of the bowl, on a brick pedestal was a sundial, a +round brass disc, cut into with the tooth of time, and all black and +green. The sun at this moment shone full on it and its slight shadow +fell along the noon. The Duke stooped down and through the glass read +the inscription: +</P> + +<P> +<I>Utere dum licet</I>. +</P> + +<P> +"I'm a trespasser," he thought. "This is Bulstrode's property." +</P> + +<P> +Through an opening just to the right he could see a brown path, and at +the end of it a gate. +</P> + +<P> +"What the deuce could Jimmy have so wanted this old place for? What +was he hiding here?" +</P> + +<P> +He turned back with the intention of taking as sudden leave of the +place as he had made an entrance. He saw his dogs in front of him and +called them. Before him lay the clean low fall of the meadow with the +line of high hedge, and directly opposite him he could see the elms of +his own park. He had not gone more than a couple of hundred feet away +before he paused again and turned about to have one last look back at +the enchanting place. As he stood thus, in Jimmy's property, he at +first took it to be a trick of vision, for he stood perfectly rigid, +peering back at the opening he had left not five minutes before. He +leaned forwards, setting his eyeglass and staring at two figures who +had come into the bowl and stood close by the big dial. +</P> + +<P> +He set his gun on the ground and leaned upon it. There was a cordial +meeting; he could hear the voices but he could not distinguish their +words, and during all the interview, which must have consumed some +fifteen minutes, the Duke never stirred. Finally, and curiously enough +it seemed a short time to him, they took leave of each other, the man +going out of the forest by a different path, the woman slowly turning +down the neat walk that led to the brick arch, and to the old house. +Whether or not the Duke had at this moment the vaguest suspicion of +her, suspicion of his friend or of his wife that did them wrong, he +never had time or clearness to reflect or to ask himself. A dense +blindness took his senses away from him. He put his hands out to +steady himself in vain, and staggered. His dogs were at his feet, he +fell over them, struggled to get his balance back and like a stricken +tree went down. In his heavy fall on his gun it discharged, filling +his upper arm and shoulder with a quantity of bird shot. The +scattering pain, instead of finishing his faint, roused him with a +sharp, ugly sting, and the rush of the warm, wet blood. He half picked +himself up, and then, aware of the pain tearing his muscles and flesh, +he fell back like a dog on his haunches. Through his confusion he +still contrived to remember a little path, and inch by inch he dragged +himself towards it. He pulled along over the leaves and russet paths +of ground. His bare hand finally struck the bricks of the little walk +and he could still know that he was wonderfully in the road. There was +a cloud before his swimming eyes and his troubled mind; his face, pale +as death, was lifted towards the arch; leaving a bloody trail as he +crawled along the ground, he contrived to reach the gate and fell +across its threshold. His head lay on his arm, the string of his +broken eyeglass wound pathetically about his wrist. The Duke proved to +be a modern replica of the poor knight who fell, face downwards, on the +grass when Elizabeth's carriage passed him by, some four hundred years +before the present Duke. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +After Bulstrode had left her, the Duchess of Westboro' hurried back to +the house that was not her home; to the little long drawing-room that +was not hers. For the first time since her voluntary exile, since her +occupation of this asylum, she found it bereft of charm and the cosey, +dear place as cold to her as if the snows had drifted in and filled a +deserted nest. It had nevertheless been a cloister, and she knew it, +where the best of her had prayed, where the true woman—and the true +woman is always something of a saint—had folded submissive hands, +where self had gone away and left nothing at all but love. +</P> + +<P> +On this Christmas Eve, The Dials was the loneliest corner of England. +The scarcely occupied house suggested to the Duchess the thought of a +stocking hung before a chimney when there were no children who cared +whether it was filled or not, when there was no reason why St. Nicholas +should pass. But it was only the very edge of her thoughts that +touched anything so fantastic as this picture. The Duchess was serious +and lonely. With a sigh, and winking back tears she threw off her +furs, laid off her hat, and, after poking up the fire into sparkling +brightness, she wandered up-stairs to the apartment that she had made +her bedroom. Under the low eaves the bed-chamber shone out gay with +chintz, fresh and sweet as a midwinter bouquet, the frostiness coming +in around it through the slightly opened window, and there was the +scent of the firs and the cedar wood that closely hemmed the old place +in. +</P> + +<P> +"Heavens!" thought the Duchess, half aloud. "How dreadfully in love +Jimmy Bulstrode is, how dreadfully, faithfully in love!" And then she +went on to say: "How dreadfully I am myself in love, and no one is +hurrying to <I>me</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +She walked aimlessly about the pretty room, irritated and annoyed at +the cloister effect. She found it too remote, too virgin, and no room +for a wife. "I promised," she mused, "to wait until Mrs. Falconer has +gone. I shall break my promise. Oh, I can't really wait at all! If +things are going to be as bad as this, I want to leave England, I want +at least to know. And Jimmy will forgive me, it's such a wonderfully +good cause ... a woman going to find her husband on Christmas Eve!" +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess threw open the window to its widest. Down in the garden on +the stone wall the big dial lay in the shadow of the afternoon. She +could not read its motto, but she knew perfectly what it said—<I>Utere +dum licet</I>. As she leaned out above her garden, under her window the +snowballs hung their waxen globes in a green tree. There were a few +winter roses blooming, and the English garden had the beauty of summer +in winter time. +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess heard a sharp sound close to the house. It was a rifle +shot, and died instantly on the still air. Shots were not uncommon in +this season, but here in The Dials woods they were entirely out of +character; in fact, they were quite inadmissible. There was no +shooting let, and a shot could only mean poaching, or something more +serious. The Duchess waited a few moments, but no other sound +followed. She nevertheless drew the casement in, and, going down +stairs threw her stole about her shoulders and opened the house door +into the garden. At the sight of her, down by the other end of the +wall, the gardener lifted up his bent form, and with a little pannier +of hot-house violets in his hands, hurried towards his lady. +</P> + +<P> +"Mellon," said she, "have you any violets?" +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess took the fragrant basket with its delicate burden. +</P> + +<P> +"A mort, my lady." +</P> + +<P> +"Pick them all, Mellon, and all the flowers from the green-house too, +every one of them, and fetch up whatever there is to the cottage." +</P> + +<P> +The old man was deaf, as well as discreet, and if this sudden command +to vandalism surprised him, he did not say so. Holding his hand behind +his ear, he nodded. +</P> + +<P> +"I shall send them," the Duchess thought, "up to Jimmy Bulstrode. I +think he will understand, and I will ask him at the same time to take +his friend off somewhere in a motor that I may go unobserved to the +castle." +</P> + +<P> +She said a few more words to the old man, asked him a few questions, +then with the basket on her arm she was about to turn away when she +remembered the shot. +</P> + +<P> +"Did you hear a shot, Mellon? They should not be shooting about here, +you know." But the old man had heard nothing, and, intending to find +the lodgekeeper who was clipping the trees on the lower terrace and ask +him to go through the woods for her, the Duchess walked toward the gate +and in the direction of the brick path. +</P> + +<P> +As she came up to it she gave a low cry, lifted her hands to her heart; +the basket of flowers fell to the earth and scattered their purple +blooms at her feet. Then the hands that had gone to her heart +extended, she held out her arms and went forwards, crying her husband's +name. +</P> + +<P> +The Duke of Westboro' had managed to pick himself up. He was a strong +man, in the fulness of health and vigor; there was nothing of the +mollycoddle about the last Duke of the line. The sound of voices had +reached his dull ear, his swoon was over, and he had manfully, with a +few sturdy curses, pulled himself up and now stood, albeit very pale, +clinging to the gatepost, leaning on it, finding his legs shaking and +his balance not all he could wish. Before him was a little brick +house, with bright curtains in the windows, and between it and himself, +lovely as a ghost, and no less white, was his wife, and her arms were +extended towards him. +</P> + +<P> +"Cecil!" she cried. "Oh, my God! Cecil, what has happened to you?" +</P> + +<P> +Before Westboro' knew it, the arms to which he had gone in visions were +about him and the soft shoulder gave him a prop more fragile perhaps +than the stone against which he leaned, but it was a living support, +and it felt warm and wonderful. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't," he said vaguely, "get near me. I'm nasty and bloody. It's +all right; I'm only a bit scratched, really. A lot of beastly shot has +gone off into my shoulder. Just call some one to help me, will you?" +</P> + +<P> +"Cecil," she said, "lean on me, put your arm around my shoulder; you +can perfectly well get along with only me. Come, come!" +</P> + +<P> +The Duke saw that he could perfectly get along with another faint—he +was near to it, but something besides his wound and his light head kept +him manfully to his feet. With his left hand he very firmly pushed the +Duchess a little away from him. +</P> + +<P> +"Come?" he repeated. "Come where?" +</P> + +<P> +"Home," said the Duchess with a catch in her voice—she was bearing up. +"Oh, lean on me! You'll fall, you'll fall! Mellon!" she cried. "O +Mellon!" +</P> + +<P> +But the Duke put up his hand. "I'm all right," he said. "Don't call. +What house is that? What home do you mean?" +</P> + +<P> +"Mine," said the Duchess, "my house—that is, I mean to say, Mr. +Bulstrode's." +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess saw a slight wave of red rush up her husband's pale cheek. +</P> + +<P> +"Damn Bulstrode!" he breathed. "What the devil does he do here? I saw +you together—I saw you not half an hour since—that is the whole +mischief of it—it was too much for me—it took away my senses and I +fell on my gun, and the beastly thing went off. If I ever get back to +where Bulstrode is——" +</P> + +<P> +"Cecil!" cried the Duchess. She again wound her arms around him, and +it was as well that she was a strong, fine creature and that the +columns of the gate were back of him, for Westboro' was swaying like a +child that has just learned to walk. +</P> + +<P> +"He is fainting!" she cried. "Mellon, Mellon!" +</P> + +<P> +The old man had not heard his mistress but he had seen her, and after +staring open-mouthed at the couple at the gate, he came scurrying like +a rabbit, dropping his shears on the wall. They hit the big dial with +a ring. +</P> + +<P> +The Duke heard the steps and tried to start forwards; also tried weakly +to extricate himself from his wife's embrace. "I beg your pardon," he +said, with a coolness that had something of the humorous in its +formality—"I beg your pardon, but I am <I>not</I> going to Bulstrode's +house, you know." +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Cecil</I>," pleaded the woman tenderly, "how ridiculous you are! +Bulstrode's house! Why, it's mine! Oh, don't break my heart. He's +only bought it, you know, that's all." +</P> + +<P> +"Break her heart!" It was a new voice that spoke to the Duke of +Westboro'. He had never heard it in all his life. It was warm and +struggling for clearness, it was full of tears and quivering, it was +the voice of love, and unmistakable, certainly, to a lover. +</P> + +<P> +"What was Bulstrode doing here?" he persisted. +</P> + +<P> +"Going to Mrs. Falconer," breathed the Duchess. +</P> + +<P> +The Duke moved a step forwards: "What are you doing here?" +</P> + +<P> +"Going to you, Cecil—I have <I>been</I> going to you all day. I think I +have been going to you ever since you left me that night on the +Riviera; at any rate, I was on my way to the castle as you came." +</P> + +<P> +The Duke halted again on his crawling way. Mellon, who had really +reached his side, was doing his best to be of some use and kept himself +well under the wounded arm, on which the blood had clotted and dried, +but ceased to flow. +</P> + +<P> +"Lean hard on me, your Grace," pleaded the gardener, and with his word, +he looked over at his mistress to see if she realized who their noble +visitor was. +</P> + +<P> +With fine disregard for his help or existence, the Duke said crossly: +"Send this damned gardener away." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Cecil, no, no; you can't stand without him." +</P> + +<P> +They had reached the garden wall, just at the place where the big dial, +round and shining, had come a little out of the shadow and the last of +the afternoon sun touched its edges. Westboro' lurched towards the +wall. "Send this man away," he commanded. +</P> + +<P> +"He is deaf, Cecil, as the stones." But at her husband's face she +motioned to Mellon: "Stand away a bit. His Grace wants to rest on the +wall. I'll call you." +</P> + +<P> +With his wife's arms about him, Westboro' leaned on the garden wall, +his ashen face lifted to her. +</P> + +<P> +"I've only one arm," he said. He put it around her and he drew her +down as close to him as he could. He felt her face warm against his, +wet against his with tears. As the Duke, who, Bulstrode said, was no +lover, kissed his wife, the dial seemed to sing its motto aloud. +</P> + +<P> +"You <I>were</I> coming to me?" he breathed. "Do you forgive me? ... Then," +said Westboro', satisfied by what he heard, "I'm cured. I love you—I +love you." +</P> + +<P> +The woman could not find her voice, but as she held him she was the +warmest, sweetest prop that ever a wounded man leaned upon. After a +few seconds she helped him to rise, helped him on, and he found his +balance and his equilibrium to be very wonderful under the +circumstances, and managed to reach the door-sill. Mellon and the +maids were there, and as the Duchess passed in, leading her husband, +she bade them send for a doctor as fast as they could and to send at +once for Bulstrode at the castle. +</P> + +<P> +Westboro's wound had become a sort of intoxication to him, and he +assured her, "I'll be all right in an hour. I need no one but you; +send them all away, all away." +</P> + +<P> +He had never commanded her before, he had let her rule him, he had been +indifferent to her disobedience. But now she did what he bade her, and +led him to the drawing-room, suddenly repossessed of all its old charm; +led him to the lounge, where he sank down. Here, by his side, she gave +him stimulants and bathed his head and hands, waiting for the doctor to +come; and Westboro', like his ancestors who had fought in the King's +wars, bore up like a man with no resemblance whatsoever to the amorous +cavalier whose curls had met the dust of the road for love of Queen +Elizabeth. +</P> + +<P> +The Duchess found him that best of all things—very much of a man, and +knew that he was hers. And he, more wild with love for her than +suffering physical pain, found her a woman and knew that she loved him +and that she was his. +</P> + +<P> +The house, so deserted and desolate an hour ago, grew fresh, warm, and +rosy as over the west meadows the sunset, gilding the wall and The +Dials, flushed the windows red, and the deserted bird's-nest, lately +"filled with snow" appeared to have, as the light rained upon it, +filled itself with roses. So, an hour later, it seemed to Bulstrode, +when he came and found it housing the lovers. +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR> + +<A NAME="chap08"></A> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE +</H3> + +<BR><BR> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +VIII +</H3> + +<H3 ALIGN="center"> +IN WHICH HE COMES INTO HIS OWN +</H3> + +<P> +England, the heart of the countryside, freshened by December and +drifted over by delicate breaths that are scarcely fog, and through +which like a chrysanthemum seen behind ground glass the sun contrives +to shine, the English country in December is one thing, London quite +another. +</P> + +<P> +Jimmy wandered across from Paddington to his destination, part of the +time on foot, part of the time peering from a crawling hansom in +immediate peril of collision with every other object that like himself +lost bearings in the nightmarish yellow fog. +</P> + +<P> +He fetched up before No. ——, Portman Square, at mid-day, and rang the +door bell of Lady Sorgham's town-house, and in his eagerness to find +his friend did not ask himself how the time accorded with calling hours. +</P> + +<P> +She was at home. +</P> + +<P> +An insignificant footman told him this, and the gentleman reflected +that it was astounding what the words, heard often in the course of ten +years, meant to him still. +</P> + +<P> +In the sitting-room, before a coal fire, a writing table at her side, a +pen in her hand, he found Mrs. Falconer. +</P> + +<P> +He sincerely struggled with an inability to speak at once, even the +consoling how-d'-dos that cover for us a multitude of feelings, were +not at his tongue's end. +</P> + +<P> +The fire had burned away a few feet of fog and lighted lamps and +candles shone pallidly through an obscurity about whose existence there +could be no doubt. +</P> + +<P> +The inmates of Lady Sorgham's thoroughly English and thoroughly +comfortable drawing-room were aliens, possessing neither of them a +hearthstone within range of several thousand miles. But no sooner had +they greeted—Bulstrode triumphantly peering at her through both real +and mental haze—shaken hands, and each found a seat before the grate, +than an enchanting homeliness overspread the place. Bulstrode felt it +and smiled with content to think she did as well, and remembered an +occasion in America when they had both of them missed a train for some +out-of-the-way place and found themselves side by side in a mid-country +station to pass there three hours of a broiling afternoon. The flies +and mosquitoes buzzed about them, the thermometer registered ninety +degrees, but happy, cool and unruffled Mary Falconer, smiling up at him +from her hard bench, had said: +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy, let's <I>build</I> here!" +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +"No one, Jimmy, is old"—Mrs. Falconer had once said to him on an +occasion when a word regarding gray hairs had drifted into their +conversation. Noticing the smooth reflection of the light along her +hair, Bulstrode had spoken of its golden quality, and the lady had +suddenly covered the strand with her hand; she knew that there ran a +line she did not want him to see. +</P> + +<P> +"No one is old, Jimmy, who has even the least little bit of future +towards which he looks! It's only those people whose doors are all +shut, whose window blinds are all drawn to, who, no matter which way +they look, see no opening into a distance towards which they will want +to go—only those people are old!" +</P> + +<P> +And as for Bulstrode, if Mrs. Falconer's idea were right, he was a very +young man still, for at the end of every path others opened and led +rapidly away. Scene gave on to scene, dissolved and grew new again. +Every door gave to rooms whose suites were delightful, indefinite, and +all followed towards a future whose existence Bulstrode never doubted. +But there were certainly times, as the days went methodically on, there +were decidedly many times when it took all his faith and his spirit to +endure the <I>étape</I> that lay between self and life. Such a little +tranquil home as a certain property he had lately acquired was what he +dreamed of sharing with Mrs. Falconer. He did not, with any degree of +anxiety, ask himself whether or not it were dead men's shoes he was +waiting for, and no clear, formulated thought of tangible events took +existence in his mind. But he knew that he waited for his own. +</P> + +<P> +It was with some such personal feeling that in something that looked +like a future he might one day lead the woman he loved home, that he +had taken any pleasure whatsoever in his involuntary purchase of the +old property known as The Dials. The gray house down in Glousceshire +in its half-forsaken seclusion, the lie of the land round it, its +shut-offness from the world, its ancient beauty, had been a constant +suggestion to him of a future dwelling, and the doors, the windows, the +low-inviting rooms, the shadowy stairways, ingles, gables, terraces, +the dials and sunken gardens, had appeared to him conceived, planned +and waiting to be the settings for a life of his own. He wanted very +much to tell Mrs. Falconer all about the lovely English country-seat. +</P> + +<P> +In the room where they now talked, wreaths of fog filled the corners +like spiders' dusty webs that poised and swung. The odor that stamps +England hung in the mist, furthermore permeated with the scent of a +bouquet at Mrs. Falconer's elbow and which at one moment of his visit +Jimmy recognized for a lot of roses sent by parcel post from the +Westboro' greeneries. +</P> + +<P> +"Do you ever sew?" he asked her, and she admitted to a thimble which +persistently, with a suggestion of reproach, turned up every now and +then amongst her belongings; now falling out from a jewel box, then +stowed away in a handkerchief case, out of place and continually +reproachful: kept because it had been her mother's. +</P> + +<P> +If he did not speak other than in a general way of the rather long +visit he had been making to the Duke of Westboro' in Glousceshire, he +did tell his friend all about The Dials and dwelt on the fascination +that the old place possessed. The Dials was, in point of fact, very +agreeably described to Mrs. Falconer, who looked it out on the map of +Glousceshire, and Bulstrode's purchase (for he had legally gone in for +it, the whole thing), was made to seem a very jewel of a property. +</P> + +<P> +"It's as lovely as an old print," she said, "as good as a Turner. +You're a great artist along your lines, Jimmy. Don't have it rebuilt +by some more than designing architect in trouble, or landscape-gardened +by some inebriated Adam out of charity. Leave it beautifully alone." +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I will," he assured her. "It shall tumble away and crush away in +peace. You shall see it all, however," he assured, "for you really +will come down for Christmas? You see, poor old fellow, Westboro's +house is rather empty." +</P> + +<P> +"Yes," nodded Mrs. Falconer. +</P> + +<P> +"You see, every one else has gone back on him." +</P> + +<P> +"Poor dear," sympathized the lady. "Of course we'll go down." +</P> + +<P> +No matter to what extent he had thought of her, and it was pretty sure +to be a wide one, her beauty struck him every time afresh. There was +the fine exquisiteness of <I>fin de race</I> in Mary Falconer. Her father +had been an Irishman born, and the type of his island's lovely women +was repeated in his daughter's blue eyes, the set of her head and her +arms; her taper and small-boned little wrists, her cool hands with the +slender fingers told of muscle and moulding and completed the +well-finished, well turned-out creature whose race it had taken +generations to perfect. These distinctions her clever father +bequeathed her as well as her laugh and her wit, her blue eyes and her +curling hair. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode stayed on in the dingy delightful room, until at an order of +his hostess, luncheon was served them on a small table, and over the +good things of an amazingly well-understood buffet and a bottle of +wine, they were left alone. Bulstrode stayed on until the fog in the +corners darkened to the blackest of ugly webs and choked the fire and +clutched the candles' slender throats as if to suffocate the flame. +Tea was served and put away and the period known as <I>entre chien et +loup</I> at length stole up Portman Square alongside the fog and found +Bulstrode still staying on.... +</P> + +<P> +Later, much later, when the lamps in the street and the square found +themselves, with no visible transition, lighting night-time as they had +lighted day—when the hansoms began to swing the early diners along to +their destinations, a hansom drew up before No. ——, Portman Square. +</P> + +<P> +It was at the hour soft-footed London had ceased to roll its rubber +tires down the little street, and only an occasional cab slipped by +unheard. But a small hand cart on which a piano organ was installed +wheeled by No. ——, Portman Square, and stopped directly under the +Sorghams' window and a man began to sing: +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"I'll sing thee songs of Araby<BR> +And tales of old Cashmere."<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +The creature was singing for his living, for his supper doubtless, +certainly for his breakfast, but he chanced to possess a remarkable +gift and he evidently loved his trade. The silence—wherein all London +appeared to listen, the quiet wherein the magically suspended room had +swung and swung until even Bulstrode's clear mind and good sense began +fatally to blur and swing with the pendulant room—was broken into by +the song. +</P> + +<P> +And as Bulstrode moved and turned away his eyes from the woman's lovely +face, she sighed and covered her own eyes with her hands. The small +coffee table had been taken away. Mrs. Falconer was in a low chair +leaning forwards, her hands lying loosely in her lap. The distance +between the two his hand could have bridged in one gesture. The voice +of the street singer was superb, liquid and sweet. He sang his ballad +well. +</P> + +<P CLASS="poem"> +"I'll sing thee songs of Araby<BR> +And tales of old Cashmere."<BR> +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer's guest rose. +</P> + +<P> +"You'll come down for Christmas," he said, "and I'll meet you as we +have arranged, to-morrow." +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy," she protested, "it's only ten o'clock." +</P> + +<P> +"I must, however, go." +</P> + +<P> +"Nonsense. Where will you pass the next hour and a half? There's not +a cat in town." +</P> + +<P> +"Nevertheless, I promised a man to meet him at the...." +</P> + +<P> +"<I>Jimmy</I>!" +</P> + +<P> +He had reached the door, making his way with a dogged determination +and, like a man who has touched terra firma after months on a dancing +brig, still not feeling quite sure of the land or its tricks. +</P> + +<P> +"How you hurry from me," she said softly. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I'm hurrying off," he explained brightly, "because I want to get +hold of that chap out there and take him to supper, and to find out why +he isn't on the operatic stage. He's got a jolly voice. Good night, +good night." +</P> + +<P> +He was gone from her with scant courtesy and a brusquerie she knew +well, adored and hated! During these last years she had done her cruel +best, her wicked best, to soften and change and break it down. +</P> + +<P> +The curtains, as she drew them back, showed that the fog had for the +most part lifted, and she was just in time to see the piano and the two +musicians disappear in the mist which still tenaciously held the end of +the street in shadow—a gentleman in long evening cloak and high hat +hurried after the street people. The woman's face was tender as she +watched the distinguished figure melt into the fog, and at her last +glimpse of her friend she blew a kiss against the pane. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Bulstrode did not go back that night to Westboro'. He wired out that +Mrs. Falconer and himself would be down for dinner the following day +and he also wired for a motor to meet him some few miles from Penhaven +Abbey, as the motor did the next day. +</P> + +<P> +As he speeded towards Penhaven Bulstrode leaned towards the man who +drove him. +</P> + +<P> +"Stop first at the inn, will you, Bowles? I'll order tea there, and +then drive on to the station at the Hants. It's the three o'clock from +London we're to meet, you know, and we've just the time." +</P> + +<P> +The Abbey and its clustering village hung on the hill side some fifteen +lovely miles away to the south of them. And Bulstrode, who was at +length obediently answering the call of it, and in response to the +fancied bell of the entire country side, religiously hastening to +whatever might reward him, settled himself back in his corner. +</P> + +<P> +He saw the mist fly by him as his carriage cut out its way rapidly +through Glousceshire. The air was not too cold in spite of the +dampness, for the vapor rose high, and above and below it the +atmosphere was clear. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer herself had chosen Penhaven as a place possible to drive +over to as far as Bulstrode was concerned, and far enough away to stop +over in, for tea. Bulstrode carried in his pocket the note of it, she +had written out for him. It bore the arrivals of trains, the address +of the inn; she had herself written this, recurring to a pretty fallacy +she liked to indulge in that Jimmy forgot trains, missed them, and +forgot rendezvous, and that he never really knew. Well, at all events, +he was not likely to miss meeting this one. He had thought about +nothing else since he left her in London and prepared for her as he was +always preparing for her as one makes ready for the dearest guest at a +feast. +</P> + +<P> +The fact that not only had she divinely consented to the Penhaven +scheme, but that she had herself arranged the whole thing, made the +romance of the idea first appeal to herself and then readily to +Bulstrode; the fact that she had been the creator of the little +excursion that gave them to each other for several hours before what +the castle had to offer them of surprise or dulness—did not in any +measure rob the occasion of the charm of the <I>imprévue</I> for the lady +herself. Nor did she in the least feel that it was any the less his +because it was so essentially her own plan. +</P> + +<P> +It proved either too cold or too late to see the cathedral, to see +anything more than the close which, side by side, they had wandered +through together a few moments before tea. Penhaven's distinguished +gloom was not disturbed, and in their subterranean vaults lying all +along their stones, the dukes and the abbés and the duchesses remained +unlit in their stern crypts by the verger's candle on this Christmas +Eve. +</P> + +<P> +At the little vulgar inn (in a stuffy sitting-room a fire had +spluttered for some quarter of an hour before the train arrived), Mrs. +Falconer had made Jimmy his tea in a vulgar little bowl-like teapot, +and as her hands touched the pottery's blue glaze served very well for +a halo. As she buttered him slices of toast herself, and spread them +with gooseberry jam and herself ate and drank and laughed and +chattered, she had been, with the tea things about her and her sleeves +turned back as she cut and buttered and spread, she had been with the +roundness of her wrists and the suave grace of her capable hands, most +adorably a woman, most adorably dear. +</P> + +<P> +Her furs and coat laid aside, the hat at his asking laid aside in +order, although he did not tell her so, that the air of home might be +more complete for them. <I>Vis-à-vis</I> they had eaten together and +laughed together and talked together till it grew later and later, and +the motor waited without in the yard amongst the ravens and the ducks +who peered from the straw of their winter quarters at the big awkward +machine. +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy" ... she had started when the crumbs and dishes had been cleared +away, and for some seconds did not follow up his name with any other +word. It was always Bulstrode who took wonderful care of the time. It +was he who gave her her hat, its pins, her coat, her furs, her gloves, +one by one, her muff last, his eyes on her, as each article slowly went +to place, until her big white veil wound and wound and pinned and +fastened and hid her. "Jimmy," she whispered, as he ruthlessly and +definitely opened the door and the cold rushed in, "let's build <I>here</I>." +</P> + +<P> +Still it was she who took all the blame of their tardy departure from +the homely hospitality of the inn; she assured him that she could make +a wonderful toilet and in an incredibly short time, and that for once +she wouldn't be late for dinner at the castle. +</P> + +<P> +"Not," Bulstrode assured her, "that it in the least matters, but the +Duke, as likely as not, would choose to dine alone; he was a man of +moods." +</P> + +<P> +"In which case," she had stopped with her foot on the auto step, +"Penhaven isn't a bad place for tea, and why wouldn't dinner at this +perfect inn...." +</P> + +<P> +But Bulstrode met her words with a shake of his head and a shrug of his +shoulders, and helped her firmly into the motor and sat again by her +side. +</P> + +<P> +"I can't tell you," he said, "what will be going on at the castle. I +haven't been back since I left it two days ago, and almost anything can +have happened in that time. The Duchess of Westboro' herself, in the +interval, may have gone back to her husband." +</P> + +<P> +"Heavens!" Mrs. Falconer exclaimed, "in which case how horribly <I>de +trop</I> we shall be." +</P> + +<P> +But Bulstrode consoled her with the thought that if they were <I>de trop</I> +they would at least be <I>de trop ensemble</I>. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Amongst the handful of letters waiting for her in her dressing-room at +the castle there had been a despatch from America. Even this, and a +hasty look at her mail had not succeeded in holding her attention or +even carrying it beyond the house. Her husband had expected to land in +Liverpool at the end of the coming week; he was to take her home with +him. And until he arrived she was breathing, as she always did in his +absence, deeply. +</P> + +<P> +There had been no one to greet them as Bulstrode and herself came into +the castle, and she had hurried to her rooms to begin without loss of +time her boasted rapid toilet. The dress, whose harmony had impressed +her host, the Duke, on a former visit at the castle, had been laid out +for her; its sumptuous color overspread the bed. But the lady chose +instead a white gown whose art of holding to her, and holding her, in +its simple lines and splendid sheen, made its beauty. +</P> + +<P> +There was much of the true woman in this entirely lovely creature, as +she stood before her glass and saw herself, the best example of the +really beautiful American. Her naturalness gave her a freedom, a +frankness, a grace, a certain imperial set of the head. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode had once said to the Duchess of Westboro' that a woman should +above all "console." Mary Falconer would have known what he meant. +That sex she gloriously represented! The sweetness and dearness of +her. Well, there were few women no doubt like her. Jimmy hoped so for +the sake of the race, for the sake of the hearts of other men. She was +the ideal fireside of home, and when, as she had twice done, she bade +him, as that time she had said, "Build here," he knew what she meant +and felt, and that she herself was exquisitely home. +</P> + +<P> +Leaning over her dressing-table she scrutinized not her face, whose +ardent beauty seemed to bloom upon the glass, but her hair as it fell +and rippled and flowed round her brows. Along the edge of one of the +lustrous waves was a touch as if her powder puff had brushed her hair. +Mrs. Falconer put up her hand, smoothed the line, then let it lie as it +grew. It so declared itself to be the first unmistakable white. A +gardener's basket full of roses and camelias, gardenias and carnations +had been sent up for her; but under the diamond at her breast she chose +rather to fasten in a spray of mistletoe with its pale, grape-like +berries. A long green scarf fell over her arm and against the +whiteness of her dress like a branch of spring verdure, and permitted +by the fashion of the day, there shook and trembled in her ears long, +pear-shaped pearls which, like her thimble, had been her mother's. +</P> + +<P> +As she left the security of her room and fire for the corridors and the +publicity of the lower rooms, for the first time in her life she had a +sudden feeling of <I>pruderie</I> at the bare beauty of her neck and arms. +She felt as if she were coming unclad into the street, and drew her +scarf across her breast. But she found herself to be quite alone in +the drawing-room, and before she had time to be bewildered at her long +desertion, a letter was handed her with a few murmured words by a +footman. It perhaps served her right, she reflected, for so blandly +coming into a house during a state of domestic upheaval, that she +should turn out to be not alone the only guest, but without host or +friend! The letter told her, as gently as it could without the +satisfaction of any explanation, that both Bulstrode and the Duke of +Westboro' were unavoidably absent. She turned the letter over with +keen disappointment. Her dress, her beauty which the drive from +Penhaven and the afternoon's happiness had heightened to a point that +she might be pardoned for seeing, was then all for nothing! On what +extravagant bent could the two men have gone? +</P> + +<P> +"Both of them," she soliloquized with a shrug, "off on a hunt, I dare +say, after a fool of a woman who doesn't know enough to stop at home." +</P> + +<P> +Before she could further lash at her absent hostess, she found herself +a few seconds later taking the scarcely palpable arm of the rector, +whom the Duke, in a moment of abstraction, had asked to the +Christmas-tree and whom he had subsequently forgotten to put off. The +rector alone, of all the expected, turned up, his smile vacuous and his +appetite in order. At the table laid for four, and great enough for +forty, the clergyman and the lady faced each other. Mrs. Falconer +smiled kindly, for as her friend had told the Duchess on the same +afternoon, she was kind; and if she resented the apology for a man her +slender <I>vis-à-vis</I> presented, she did not show her scorn; she smiled +kindly at him. His cloth and habit, and cut even, wore the air of +disapproval. Her jewels, the bare splendor of her neck and arms, +seemed out of place, and yet she could not but be perfectly sure that +even the dull eyes of her <I>vis-à-vis</I> not alone reflected, but +confirmed, how lovely she was. +</P> + +<P> +The reverend gentleman was new to Glouceshire, but it turned out that +he already knew its hearsays and its <I>on dits</I> and he knew when she +asked him, something of the country and The Dials. It may have been +that the bright aspect of the lady, her light mockery—for as she would +she could not help falling into them even with this half-human +creature—wickedly drew him on, gave the man license as he thought, to +descend to scandal; at all events, after dinner, over a cigar smoked in +her presence, the empty glass of Benedictine at his elbow, in his +cheeks a muddy red diffused from his wine, the gentleman leaned +forward, and tried to adapt his speech and topic to the worldly vein +which he imagined was the habitual tenor of a fashionable woman's life. +</P> + +<P> +"Even this lovely shire," he drawled its beauty—"cannot, so it would +seem, be free from scandal. And where a minister would naturally look +for help, wretchedly enough for the most part he only finds examples +and warnings." +</P> + +<P> +The rector lifted his eyes to the fine old ceiling as if in its shields +and blazons he was impressed by the blots of recent sins. +</P> + +<P> +His hand touched the little liqueur glass. He picked it up and in a +second of abstraction tried to drain its oily emptiness. +</P> + +<P> +"Let me ring," said Mrs. Falconer, "and send for some more Benedictine, +or better still, for some <I>fine</I>." +</P> + +<P> +"No," he refused, and sedately put her right. "No more of anything, I +think, unless it might be a bottle of soda. You spoke of lovely +Glousceshire and then spoke of The Dials. Do you know the place?" +</P> + +<P> +Only, she told him, by hearsay. +</P> + +<P> +He solemnly supposed so; so he himself chiefly knew it, as indeed all +the country side was growing to know it. +</P> + +<P> +The eyes of the lady to whom the rector was retailing his little gossip +were intently on him. But Mrs. Falconer in reality was not looking at +him, neither did she at once find ready words to refute, to cast down, +to blot out, his hideous suggestion that filled the room with it sooty +blot. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Falconer, who had good-humoredly been amused by his intense +Britishness thus far, his pale lack of individuality, his perfect type, +now looked sharply at her companion. +</P> + +<P> +The rector had been more than right, Mrs. Falconer was used to the +indifferent, rather brutal handling by society of human lives. +Possibly as she adored people, no one of her set was more interested in +the comedies and dramas of her <I>contemporains</I>. But there are ways and +channels: what runs clear in one runs muddy in another. +</P> + +<P> +The rector, in his own way, told her that for several weeks a very +beautiful lady had been living at The Dials. She had, it appeared, +never been out of the garden gate, and the servants were foreign, all +save a deaf old gardener. But the beautiful lady who sought such +peculiar seclusion, had a very constant visitor. Of course the rector +was not able or sufficiently daring to affirm; with a cleverness worthy +a better story he left his hearer to guess, imagine, who the visitor +might be. +</P> + +<P> +"Don't you think," Mrs. Falconer breathed, after a very short lapse +into silence, "that we might let such ghosts alone on Christmas Eve?" +</P> + +<P> +She rose and stood before him in her soft, luminous dress; her eyes +were intent on him, but in reality she was not looking at him. +</P> + +<P> +He had grown so detestable that she could bear his presence no longer; +she found herself, however, wanting to learn all his knowledge to its +finest detail. She found that she despised herself for any interest +she might take. She got rid of him at length, how, she never knew. +But she saw him leave her presence with relief. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +When the miserable man, as she called him, had taken his leave, the +deserted guest looked about her rather defiantly, as if the objects +with which the room was filled were hostile. Then, with a half-audible +exclamation she sank down in a chair, her elbow on the left arm of it, +and her chin in her hand. +</P> + +<P> +Well, the imputation, the character of what she had just heard vulgarly +said and to which, for a bewildered second, she had perhaps vulgarly +listened—was highly dreadful, highly disordering to her fashion of +thinking and believing about Jimmy Bulstrode! Oh, for a moment she had +half believed what that creature said, and her eyes had winked fast at +the game before them! In the swiftness of the revolutions it had +seemed for a sole flash real; but now that the noise had stopped and +the carousel as well, she saw how <I>wooden</I> the horses were and that +they were as dead as doornails! If she had been disturbed, she came +loyally back now, with a glow and a rush of tenderness as she instantly +re-instated what could never lose caste. +</P> + +<P> +Oh, The Dials! She couldn't conceive what Jimmy had in reality, +rashly, delightfully done there; what he had planted or installed, if +he had planted or installed anything. But whatever the truth was, it +was sure to be essentially right, as far as ethics went—she knew that +at least. But Jimmy's delicacy and his heart were all too fine for the +crude wisdom of the world or for her common-sense, which would have +told him no doubt, had he cared to ask, that he was rash and wild. +</P> + +<P> +She was prepared to hear that he had made some Magdalen a home in this +prudish country place. At this possibility Jimmy's kindness and +charity stood out graciously in strong contrast to the prudish judgment. +</P> + +<P> +There were several long mirrors set in the panels of the room like +lakes between green shores of old brocade, and they reflected her as +she leaned forwards in her chair and looked about her, taking in the +brightness of the perfect little room. It had been cut off from the +wider, grander spaces for more intimate passages in the social course +of events, but there was nothing newly planned in its colors and +tapestries, its hangings and furnishings; the effect was sombre rather, +the objects had the air of use, of having participated in past +existences, and like faithful servants, they seemed to wait to serve +perfectly new events. +</P> + +<P> +The especial brightness of the room came from the gay festooning that +had found its way throughout the castle. The mirrors were dark with +the velvet rounds of hemlock from which the miserable face of scandal, +the sardonic face of divorce, under the conditions of the present +domestic situation might well grin satyr-like from the Christmas +wreaths. No doubt there were lots of ghosts about, ready to stride, to +flutter, or to walk; the American woman put their histories and their +legends impatiently by. +</P> + +<P> +The facile way in which the Duchess of Westboro' had slipped out from +the chafing of domestic harness, the egotistical <I>geste</I> with which she +had so widely thrown over her responsibilities, fetched Mrs. Falconer +up to her own life, from whose problems indeed her husband's absence +alone set her free. Her affairs had lately rapidly progressed, flying, +whirling. The circles the event of her marriage had originally +created, touched at last the farthest limit; there was nothing left for +them now but to scatter. The vortex had rapidly narrowed down, was +narrowing down, and nothing remained but a sole object in the bed of +the clear water; and as Mary Falconer looked at it she knew that the +thing was a stone. +</P> + +<P> +"We spend," she had once said to Bulstrode, "half our lives forging +chains, and the other half trying to make ourselves free." Hadn't she +wrenched with all her might to be rid of hers? materially she still +wore her bonds and moved with a ball. +</P> + +<P> +As she had driven away from Charing Cross Station, a month ago, after +seeing her husband aboard the Dover and Calais special, she had +breathed—breathed—breathed—stretched her arms and hands out to +London, felt on her eye and brow a dew that meant the very dawning of +liberty broke for her, and that she was for the time at least blessed +by it, and free. +</P> + +<P> +The Sorghams' London house had opened its refuge wide for her, and she +had gone into it like a child, to sleep and rest, and there she had +grown up again, to begin to think and to plan, project and puzzle as +those who grow up must do. She had never thought to such practical +purpose as she did in these days, and never come so nearly reaching an +end. +</P> + +<P> +Just before dressing for dinner on this night, at the sensation the +touch of her husband's telegram gave her, she realized how near to a +not unusual decision she was, and when she put the envelope by with the +rest of her mail, the part of her mind which she would not let herself +look into was in confusion and doubt. +</P> + +<P> +More effectively than Falconer's coming could have done, his few +telegraphed words brought him to his wife's consideration. And the +fantastic story of The Dials helped her, ridiculous as it was, +burlesque as it was, to think; in the very humor of it, a shock, and +helped her more reasonably to consider what otherwise her feelings +would have turned to tragedy. +</P> + +<P> +Jimmy's ecstasies about the place recurred to her with renewed +cordiality. He had spent an hour at least describing it, and when he +had finished with "A woman must be there, it is made for a woman," Mary +Falconer had only seen herself in the frame that the old place +presented. She exclaimed aloud: "Oh, no, no," and continued to affirm +to herself that it was too fantastically absurd—"Jimmy!" +</P> + +<P> +"It's only some delightful bit of charity, and he's too afraid of my +wretched conservatism and my ironies to have told me frankly about it." +</P> + +<P> +Having in a very unfeminine way opened a crack for reason, its honest +face peered through, and Mary Falconer glanced at it with a sigh and a +half-amused recognition, as if she had not been face to face with +anything so cool and eminent for a long time. +</P> + +<P> +Jimmy had hinted to her of a secret, in London; there was something he +said he wished to tell her about, would tell her in full later, +something that involved much happiness to others, and could it have +been this? Could it have been that he was really secretly married? +That at last the step of which he had constantly spoken, for which +indeed there had been times when together they had half-heartedly +planned for it, could it be that the one safeguard for them both had +actually been formed by him, and alone? But only a second would she +permit this conception of The Dials to obtain hold. "Ridiculous!" she +repeated, "ridiculous! Not that I believe a word or any innuendo of +the shocking old wizard, but it only shows, it only shows the +helplessness of a woman who is not bound to a man, and how entirely the +man is free!" +</P> + +<P> +Nothing a man does counts well for him with a woman but those things he +does in accordance with her estimate of what his attitude towards her +should be! And Bulstrode's high-minded control, the reserve—which +since her marriage had been maintained, only counted now against him. +</P> + +<P> +Wasn't she, in it all, rather counting without her host? Their bond +was so tacit, so silent, so unworded. Indeed, he had made no bond, had +asked her for no pledge. She was tied hand and foot, but he was free. +And over that freedom what vague right had she? What dominion could +she have? Isn't it, after all, in the life of a clever, delightful +man, something not strictly a burden, the soul-absorbing entire +devotion of a woman not too old and more or less not generally +disliked? What did it—heavens, but she was analyzing—what did it +cost him? Hadn't he always gone from her at a moment's warning, and +stopped away for months and months? Imperious as by nature she was, +she had always been wise enough to reserve a summons from her that, she +had every reason to believe, would fetch him from any distance to her +side. She never tested him, she scarcely ever wrote to him; she had +been at the Sorghams', and alone for a month, and save for one +perfectly delightful day he had not once turned up to keep her company. +</P> + +<P> +As the woman's thoughts encompassed the subject they brought it up to +this: that as far as things went, at all events, there was no blame: no +matter how society had coupled their names, she had at least the +conscience of her acts clear. Jimmy was to be thanked for it from +beginning to end; as far as the conscience of her thoughts went, well, +those were her own affair. Oh, she could recall skirmishes and narrow +impasses! Her tactics had more than once been those only permitted by +the codes of battle, and of another passion. +</P> + +<P> +Her chair, which she had left, she passed and repassed as she walked up +and down, trailing her soft dress across the floor. She stood before +the fire, her foot held out to the fervent flame. +</P> + +<P> +Her face softened as there came out clearly to her the real picture of +Jimmy that always kept itself somewhere between her eyes and her brain. +Ah, there were men of talent and fashion, who did not hesitate to make +merry, who were more or less good, more or less anti-pathetic, and for +whom society never had a word of reproach—but Jimmy! distinguished and +charming, with every taste and means to gratify them, with—so to put +it—the woman of his heart at his very doors—how did he live? Why, +for everybody in the world but for himself. And through it all, in +spite of the fact that he appeared blindly to shut his eyes against +their mutual love, he lived for her. Oh, he was the best, the best! +</P> + +<P> +She listened as she stood there for the hum of the motor which might +tell her he was coming back. She wanted to ask him to tell her the +truth about The Dials. She wanted, above all else, to see him again. +</P> + +<P> +She remembered them, one by one, the happy occasions they had caught +and made the most of, and each after the other they became lovely +harbors where like ships her thoughts lay at anchor. Penhaven was +certainly one of the best. She congratulated herself that she had +conceived that day, and without any blame she acknowledged it to +herself, that if Jimmy had only wished it they would have been there +together now. +</P> + +<P> +She had taken her chair again and sat back deeply in the great +fauteuil. The brocade made a dark-hued background against which her +head, frankly thrown back, defined its charming lines. Her bare arms +folded across her breast, her foot swinging gently to and fro, she +continued to muse and dream, and as she thought of Bulstrode, to love +him. +</P> + +<P> +Some one came in and piled up the fire and slipped out, but no message +was brought her to tell her what had become of her host and her friend. +</P> + +<P> +The long sympathetic silence beginning at the fireside flowed through +the vast rooms and corridors, and out into the night, down the lanes +and the road until its completeness and tonelessness were broken by the +memory of the bells of Penhaven, as she and Jimmy had heard them whilst +they rang the angelus in the close. And the discordant note of The +Dials was drowned, confused and lost in her intense listening to the +Penhaven bells. Some chord or other, or some fine spring touched as +she so thought on, brought back to her the fact of the despatch +upstairs, which if it had any, had an imperative importance. Falconer +had sent it from Palm Beach where he had gone to get rid of a +troublesome grippe. He did not, in the few lines which told he was +seedy and had put off his sailing, suggest that she should go back. +But he would not resent her return, she knew that, he would probably +treat her decently for at least a fortnight. +</P> + +<P> +"I don't know a creature," she praised herself, "who would have stayed +on with Jack, and nothing but Jimmy has helped me to stick it out. If +he really loved me would he have let me go on as I have gone on? I +don't know. Unless he loved me could he have helped me at all? I +think not." +</P> + +<P> +Round the figure of her friend there began to group, as if for some +special purpose, the kindnesses and charities she had seen him display. +One by one she added up his gifts and benefits until the poor and +outcast and forgotten and despised claimed all of them to be his +friends; they gathered round him and in place of the categoric +histories of self-love and indulgence, of passion that had in more or +less degree characterized the men of her set, these things came till +the dawn of them and the light of them made his figure shine. How, she +thought, could he ever have been what he so wonderfully is, if he had +lived for himself or been anything but the best? Upstairs, in her +room, a few hours before, the mark of silver on her hair had been a +whip to urge on her rebellion; to tell her to seize and make the most +of the fleeting time, to warn her of the age which when her beauty and +her youth were gone, was all that could remain for them both. But now +there began to blow across her soul a freshness. She had indeed been +drawing long breaths in her husband's absence, but free as they were +they left her stifled and panting, as if to get the oxygen she had been +obliged to climb too far. Now, on the contrary, she was lifted as by +wings, and whilst they fluttered about her she breathed evenly yet +fully, and the air on the heights was something better than wine. +</P> + +<P> +There is an unspoiled enjoyment in the thing which has never given us +pain. It may be a sensual and ecstatic prerogative of passion to make +the object suffer, but there is a different sense of happiness in that +which never does harm or hurt or wrong to the thing it loves. So she +could think of Bulstrode, without pain, without regret, without +reproach. And if the ardor and passion in her became suffused and +slowly paled, there was a starry brightness, a beauty in her face and +in her eyes such as Bulstrode, when he came in to find her waiting, had +never seen before. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +With every mile of the short run from The Dials back to the castle, +Mrs. Falconer's friend had been preparing himself for his meeting with +the woman he had left some few hours before. All his emotions +culminated in a high, swinging excitement. The fact that he was going +back alone to find Mary Falconer there, was the big motif, and as he +thought of the dark, charming envelope the castle made, holding the +treasure she was, keeping her there for him, his heart beat so high +that he knew there was nothing more for him to feel. The ecstasy he +had witnessed in the little house his chivalry had purchased, the +meeting of the husband and wife, come together there after so much +unhappiness, put it poignantly to him that sterile love is a very +unsatisfactory thing indeed. And if the highest quality of gallantry +is to consider a woman's honor before her love, it at least makes real +happiness—so he felt then—impossible in the world. +</P> + +<P> +One false swerve of the motor at the pace they were going, and there +would not be any more problems to solve. If he died now he might +justly say that he had not lived, he had not lived! Who would give him +back what he had missed? The motto on the dials repeated itself to +him: <I>Utere dum licet</I>. +</P> + +<P> +He pushed into the castle on his arrival, hurried to dress, and went +downstairs. It seemed to him as he put aside the portières, that these +curtains were at last all there was between himself and her, that he +was going home, coming home at last; that ways he had for years seen +approaching, met at length to-night here. It was with the very clear +realization of the culmination of the time that Bulstrode went in to +find his friend. +</P> + +<P> +He had stopped to make himself irreproachable, and expected to find her +waiting and friendly and lovely. What, had he found her anything else? +But as rising from her chair, the scarf slipping back from her bare +shoulders, she put out her hand and greeted him, the dazzling sense +that breaks on a man's consciousness when he finds himself alone with +the woman he loves, proved for a second that he had need of all his +control. He could not speak. +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy!" she exclaimed, "you're as white as a ghost! You look as +though you'd been to a wake; and I don't believe you've had a mouthful +of dinner." +</P> + +<P> +He remembered that it might be polite to apologize to her for the +entire desertion of the household. +</P> + +<P> +"My poor friend, what in Heaven's name must you think of us all!" +</P> + +<P> +"Of you all?" (True enough, there had been another!) She had thought +volumes, comedies, tragedies, melodramas, but what she thought didn't +so much matter as did the fact that he had not, whatever festivities he +had honored, dined. Shouldn't they have something here together before +the fire? +</P> + +<P> +"I seem," she said, "to have a blighting effect upon my host." +</P> + +<P> +"My friend Westboro' is the happiest man in Glousceshire." +</P> + +<P> +"Which means that he has found his Duchess?" +</P> + +<P> +"He has found his Duchess." +</P> + +<P> +When her friend entered the room, by the light on his face like the +brightness of the morning as he caught sight of her, Mary Falconer saw +that for Jimmy Bulstrode she was still the one woman in the world. In +the relief that this knowledge brought her she half attempted to play +with what had been her suspicions, and to tease him, but this mood +passed. +</P> + +<P> +"That's a horrid old parson they chose to have me dine with," she said. +"He told me dreadful scandals but I think now that I see through them +all. The Duchess of Westboro' has been living incognita at The Dials, +hasn't she, and her husband at last found her there?" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode acknowledged that she had read the drama correctly. And Mary +Falconer laughed. +</P> + +<P> +"Yes, evidently the Duchess has a strong dramatic sense; she's very +romantic, isn't she?" +</P> + +<P> +And the man absently exclaimed: "Oh, I dare say, I dare say." Then +turning to her with unusual vehemence: "Do, for Heaven's sake leave +them and everybody. I want to forget them all." +</P> + +<P> +He threw up his hand with a sort of supplication. He had seated +himself on a tapestried stool close beside the chair she had taken +again. Using her Christian name for one of the rare times in his life, +he pleaded: "Can't we leave all other people, Mary, can't we?" +</P> + +<P> +She looked at him startled and said that their host seemed pretty +effectually to have left <I>them</I>, rising from her chair with the words, +and crossing the room to one of the long windows, drew back the curtain. +</P> + +<P> +The cold glass against which she pressed her cheek sent a shock through +her, but she stayed for a second close to the pane as if she would +implore the newer transport, the stiller transport, of the icy cold to +transfuse her veins. +</P> + +<P> +The changed temperature had chased away the fog, and the night spread +its serene beauty over the park, where the moonlight lay along the +terrace like snow. Far down the slope rose the outlines of the bare +trees, and the wide landscape shone and shone until it finally was lost +in the mists. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode had followed over and stood by Mary Falconer's side, and the +scene before him seemed full of joy, full of gifts, full of largesse. +The ornament on the woman's bosom stirred with her breathing, shot a +million fine sparkles, and below it the spray of mistletoe rose and +fell, rose and fell. +</P> + +<P> +He put his hand out and took the spray and fastened it in his +buttonhole, saying that the mistletoe was above her head. +</P> + +<P> +His voice, one she had never heard, made her unwisely turn to meet his +eyes, to shake with the emotion of the adventurer trembling on the edge +of the precipice; just to hang over which, and to shudder, he has +climbed high. She put her hand out between them, holding him back. +</P> + +<P> +"I've had a telegram from my husband. He's very ill. He's in Palm +Beach and I'm going over to him next week." +</P> + +<A NAME="img-360"></A> +<CENTER> +<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-360.jpg" ALT=""I've had a telegram from my husband"" BORDER="2" WIDTH="480" HEIGHT="714"> +<H4 CLASS="h4center" STYLE="width: 480px"> +"I've had a telegram from my husband" +</H4> +</CENTER> + +<P> +Falconer's name was sovereign for breaking spells as far as Jimmy was +concerned, but the wife's phrase this time gave him only a more violent +revelation of his cruel hope. She went on: +</P> + +<P> +"It's not alarming, but with a heart like Jack's, anything might +happen. It's only when I'm with him that he keeps up any sort of +shape." +</P> + +<P> +The fact of his holding in his the hand that she had put out to keep +him from her, did not serve to aid in a serene continuation of her +plans, and the silence became a burden which if she did not herself +lift would crush her. +</P> + +<P> +She said hurriedly: "And you will help me to go." +</P> + +<P> +And then Bulstrode spoke: "No," he said, "Oh, no." +</P> + +<P> +For the briefest space she yielded to what he meant and was at last +wicked enough and human enough to promise to do. But she had on this +solemn evening—for it had so been—come too far, gone up too high to +drag down all the way with him on a single word. In supremest +happiness, however, at what he said and how he said it, she gave a +little soft laugh, and although she was under the mistletoe, she felt +that she looked down on him, loving him so much more that in adorable +weakness he had suddenly grown small and dear. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, Jimmy," she whispered, "how heavenly of you, but you can't go back +on ten years in one week. You can't, you know! You've thrown me like +a giant so <I>far</I>, I've gone right on up." +</P> + +<P> +Still looking at her he shook his head as she repeated: "You'll help +me, you'll help me! You can't go back!" +</P> + +<P> +"I <I>can</I> go back," he said deeply, "<I>on everything and everybody in the +world</I>." +</P> + +<P> +At the frank simple words, and the sense of what they meant, at the +sound of his new voice, it was as if all the dykes at last were down; +and strong, bright, but most beautiful, the sea came rushing in. As +she saw him coming toward her and knew that in a moment more she would +be in his arms, and that at his first touch she would let everything +go, she found one word to say and it proved only to be his name: +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy!" +</P> + +<P> +But there was in it an appeal. She could count the times she had wept +in her life, very nearly, she had often said that a woman weeps only +when she has nothing else to do, and there had always been so much, +every minute in her life; and as if in logical affirmation there seemed +now for her nothing to do but to cry. The tears which covered her face +and fell into her palms and against the chair on which she leaned, +comforted her in a measure and served to loosen the tension of her +mind. She had succeeded in miraculously keeping away from him, just +within touch of her, held back by a hand whose white gentleness was not +so exquisitely strong but that he loved her too well to break the +tender barrier. She never afterward knew what appeals she made or how +she besought, but it must have been of great force to keep him so +transfixed and pale. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, you <I>have</I> told me over and over again! Do you think I am deaf or +blind, or that I have found you dumb? Such love, Jimmy, such high, +sweet perfectness! Why, there isn't a woman in a million who has known +it or even dreamed what such love could mean. Why, there hasn't been a +day or an hour for ten years that you have not spoken it to me in the +most adorable way, in the most beautiful way; and in every kind thing +you have done, in every foolish, dear thing, I have been so vain as to +think that I counted for something in it, that you did it a little for +me. Other women have had their lovers, their scandals, their great +passions. But I have had you without flaw, without a change, without +regret. Hush!" she cried, wiping her tears away, "Hush. It's quite +safe to let me go on. The only fear is that <I>you</I> may speak." +</P> + +<P> +The arm which she had held out to keep him from her had fallen upon his +shoulder, lay about his neck as he knelt by her chair. +</P> + +<P> +"It's been horrible!" she said, shaking her head, "Horrible—the days +and the nights, the days and the nights! There have been times when I +could have killed him and killed myself as well. But then you've come, +and your presence has helped me, and that's the way I've pulled along; +because by your silence you told me to pull along, because by the fact +that you didn't speak I understood that you thought I should be brave, +and I have been—thanks to you, and I shall be—thanks to you! Oh!" +she cried passionately, "if you think because I am saying it all out +that I want to go back, that I don't see what I am running away from, +and what you mean, you're cruel, you're cruel!" +</P> + +<P> +Her other hand had found its fellow and they both lay on his shoulders. +</P> + +<P> +"I only think of you," he breathed, "and of how..." +</P> + +<P> +She covered his lips. "Oh, hush, hush, you have told me, in the only +way there was to tell. I'm too stupid to be able to combine a lover +and a husband. The day and the hour you spoke I should never have seen +my husband again. And that's where it stands; that's how it is, and +you know it. You loved me because I was like that, and I love you +because you are the bravest of the brave. There you are!" she cried, +and drew away from him triumphantly, letting her arms fall. "There we +both are!" +</P> + +<P> +"Have you any vague conception of what this is for me?" Bulstrode asked. +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, I dare say," she exclaimed, with a kind of petulance, "that I am +only thinking of my own bewildering happiness. There," she exclaimed +at his face, "I see you have a new weapon: pity. Oh, don't use that +against me, and I warn you that everything in the world will crumble if +you speak." +</P> + +<P> +Her hands, which he was holding closely, she drew from him and laid +them both on his breast and met his eyes full with her own. Her lips +were slightly trembling, and she was as white as a winter day. In the +moment of silence they passed like this, she seemed to him like some +great precious pearl, some priceless rose fragrant, lustrous, made for +him, gathered for him, and yet beyond his right. She seemed, above +all, the woman, the mate; her glorious sex, her tenderness, her +humanness, drew him and dazzled him; and, nevertheless, through his +daze and over his desire, he heard with his finest her cry: +</P> + +<P> +"Jimmy, Jimmy, don't speak, don't speak. Ah, if you really love me..." +</P> + +<P> +He really loved her. Rising from where he knelt by her chair, +Bulstrode went over, stood a second by the chimneypiece, and then took +a few paces up and down the room, came back to her and said the thing +the real man says to the woman he really loves: +</P> + +<P> +"I want to make you happy, Mary. I will do whatever you wish me to do." +</P> + +<P> +"Ah, then, go!" +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode looked wearily about as though of its own accord a door might +unclose or a portière lift. +</P> + +<P> +"Go where, pray, at this time of night, or morning?" +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, to The Dials. Ring for a motor; they will take you in again; or +go to the rector's." +</P> + +<P> +The last of the fire had flared up. The flame went out. +</P> + +<P> +Sinking back in her chair, she waited in a tranced stillness, her eyes +on the ashes of the fire. She had said her say out, perhaps the man +knew it, and as she leaned back in the cushions he saw how completely +it all lay with him at the end. She thought he came back and waited a +second at her side; she thought he bent a moment over her, but she did +not stir until the cold wind from an opening door, till the clicking of +a latch made her start, and then she turned to see that he had gone. +</P> + +<BR> + +<P> +Bulstrode came back to the castle Christmas Day at nine o'clock. But +the hour had the effect of being much earlier. The winter morning +panoplied with festivity began its life slowly, and not all the day's +brightness through which he had speeded his motor had yet come into the +house. Bulstrode, drawn by it, went directly back to the room he had +left several hours before, as though he expected still to find the +woman he loved sitting before the extinguished fire. +</P> + +<P> +Two parlor maids were whisking their skirts and dusters out of the +opposite door, a footman at their heels. Touches of the inevitable +order which reduces an agreeable disarray to the impersonal had already +been put to the scene of Jimmy's tenderness, and the curtains drawn +well away from the long windows let in the morning that entered broadly +and fell across the hearth and the fresh-lit fire. +</P> + +<P> +Clean logs replaced the cold ashes: the match had just finished with +the kindlings, and Bulstrode went over to welcome the crackling of the +young blaze. The absence of his host, the castle once more handed over +to him for the time, gave him a feeling of proprietorship in the bright +cordial room, but looking up at the portraits of Westboro's in puffs +and velvets, Jimmy couldn't find an ancestor! Their amours and +indulgences had written brilliant and amusing history; the gentlemen +had gone mad at ladies' carriage wheels, they had carried off their +scandals with the highest of hands, and still held their heads well. +They had carved and raped and loved their way down to the present time, +and were none the less a proud line of pure British blood. The +American bachelor, about whose fine head nothing picturesque or worthy +of history circled, looked up at the Dukes of Westboro' musingly, and +there was not a peer or a noble better to look upon or who had been at +heart a truer lover, although he did not know it. +</P> + +<P> +During the lapse of time between leaving this same room and his present +return, Bulstrode had not tossed on a sleepless bed; he had slept +soundly, and during his rest the several dials had called out like +bells, their voice, <I>Utere dum licet</I>; and finally a real bell had +roused him to the fact that it was day, a new day, and that unless he +was killed en route to the castle, nothing could keep him from the +place and from her. +</P> + +<P> +He had no consolation in the fact that the honor and decency of society +were by him strengthened and retained, nor did he plan out the sane, +wise project of not seeing her again. Nor did he weigh or balance his +charge or responsibility. There had been a cessation of vibration of +any kind, and only one supreme, sovereign reality took possession of +the world and of himself, and the limitless beauty and the limitless +delight he had breathed in ever since he left her and knew how she +loved him. Nothing in life, he had so felt, could dull or tarnish the +glory of her face; nothing, no matter what life held for them both, +could efface the touch she had laid upon him, as her arms were about +him. Through the interval his past life appeared to have been, on +through the new and unlived interval to come, she would be as last +night she had been, she would look at him as last night she had looked. +"Heavens!" he meditated, in the faces of the self-indulgent, cynical +Westboro's, "I am not going to be blasé through six paradises just +because there happens to be a seventh!" +</P> + +<P> +A new fire spun its lilac flames behind his back. The spicy breath of +the wreaths of hemlock was deliciously sweet. Little by little the sun +had made its eastern way and sparkled at the pane outside, and in the +radiant clarity the terrace and its charming railing, the urns with the +little cedars, stood out clearly; and more than all else, the truth +cried itself to him, that whatever happened, she was still here, still +in the house with him. +</P> + +<P> +He had chosen a Christmas gift for her in London, and determined to +send it up to her now with some roses, and in this way to announce the +fact that he had come back from The Dials and was ready to use the day +as she liked. He felt only how beautiful it would be to see her, that +it did not for a second occur to him to wonder if she on her part would +feel a certain embarrassment. +</P> + +<P> +In answer to his ring, not a man servant, but the perfect housekeeper +rustled in, her crisp silks, her cameos, and her "Christmas face," as +one of the little Westboro' chaps had called her rosy countenance, on +one of his few Christmas days. +</P> + +<P> +"Where would Mr. Bulstrode please to have breakfast?" +</P> + +<P> +"Why, wherever it best suited, went with the house, with the day. +Where, indeed, and that was more to the point, would Mrs. Falconer have +it?" +</P> + +<P> +"Mrs. Falconer? Why, Mr. Bulstrode didn't know then that Mrs. Falconer +had gone?" +</P> + +<P> +She saw by his face that he knew nothing less in the world. +</P> + +<P> +Why, directly the despatch had been fetched over from the Abbey +station. There had been but twenty minutes between the getting of it +and her starting away. A motor had been sent with her and the maid, +and Mrs. Falconer had fortunately been able to make the train; the only +one, it so happened, being Christmas Day, that connected with the Dover +and Calais special. +</P> + +<P> +The matter-of-fact bit of news came to Bulstrode so coldly and so +ruthlessly that it took some seconds for the bitter thought that she +had gone because she couldn't trust him, to penetrate. Then this gave +place to an effulgent hope that it might be <I>herself</I> she couldn't +trust! But the discovery that she had left him no message of any kind, +and that she was above all irrevocably gone, struck him more cruelly +than had any blow in his kindly life. He could not suffer in peace +before the bland creature in silks and cameos. Crises and departures, +battle, murder, and sudden death, he felt the housekeeper would accept +serenely should any of them chance to occur at Westboro', and above all +if they were part of the sacred family history. But Mrs. Falconer and +he were not Westboro's, and he wanted to be rid of his companion and to +find himself alone in order to consult time tables, to find out why it +had been imperative to go to Calais, with what boat for America a +Christmas-Day train could possibly connect, and to turn it all over in +his mind. He at first believed that there had never been any telegram +and that she had only employed a polite ruse in order to facilitate her +flight. +</P> + +<P> +Why, at all events, couldn't she have left him a line? She might, he +ruefully complained, have strained a point and wished him a Merry +Christmas! As he walked to and fro in the room now supremely deserted, +he began slowly to approach a certain hypothesis which as soon as he +granted, he as violently discarded. But the thought was imperious: +something of its kind always haunted him like a bad ghost. It could +usually be dismissed, but now it was persistent. A despatch from +Falconer had certainly come the night before. Another might have +followed on this morning, hard upon it? To have been sent over from +the Abbey on a holiday must have been a very grave message indeed; "a +matter," as the old term went, "of life and death." The phrase began +to repeat itself and the conviction to grow, and as he was obliged to +give it admittance and to face it, and to wonder what the shock would +be to her, and what the news would be to him, how it would change +things, and how they would both meet it—his promenade to and fro in +the room brought him up before the centre table and he looked down upon +it at length with a seeing eye. Why not? why not? he was wondering. +We are all essentially mortal, and lightning never had struck yet, <I>why +not in this place</I>? And since there had been neither shame nor blame, +why couldn't he face the possibility of a perfectly natural mortality? +Before him on the table lay Mrs. Falconer's green scarf, and as +Bulstrode lifted the soft thing he saw that underneath it lay a +despatch. +</P> + +<P> +Then he knew instantly that Mary Falconer had left both scarf and +telegram there, and that this was her message to him. He seemed, as +the word he had not yet read met him in this form, to have been waiting +all his life for just this news. The road, so long in winding home, +had wound home at length, and now that he believed the crisis was +really reached, there was something infinitely stilling in its +solemnity. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode could not at once draw the sheet from its envelope. He lit a +cigar and sat down before the fire. +</P> + +<P> +He knew, as though he saw it all before his eyes, how the despatch had +found her this early Christmas Day, in her room—he knew how she had +read it first and borne it well—for she was a brave, strong woman—he +knew that his absence had been a relief to her. He knew how she had +worn her long, dark cloak and thick veil, and had gone out to travel +home alone. Oh, he knew her, and as he thought of the picture she had +made, and how she would begin her sad and dreadful journey, he for the +first time thought of himself—of themselves. He was too human not to +know that there would be a future and that they would build anew. In +the new house there would be no driftwood now; nor would they ever be +haunted by the sound of a bell in the dark, for with the few brave +souls who sail across the seas of life they had both of them stood by +the sinking ship until it put into port. +</P> + +<P> +Mrs. Shawles came in again presently and told him that she had laid his +breakfast in the little room facing the gardens. Then she waited, and +as Bulstrode looked up at her he forced himself to smile faintly and +wished her a Merry Christmas. +</P> + +<P> +She thanked him, gave him many, and said it was a happy morning for all +of the Westboro's, and that the castle and the house would see new +times and better things, and when he had stirred himself to the point +of putting what he had for her into her hand, he was not sure whether +he wanted her to go, or not, this time and leave him alone. +</P> + +<P> +She still hesitated. It was a custom with them, she told him, with the +Westboro's, to have hall prayers on holidays. When the Duke himself +was there, he always read them; the servants and the children of the +place had already come in. In the absence of the family <I>would</I> Mr. +Bulstrode...? +</P> + +<P> +"Oh, no, on no account, on no account," he hurried. "Wasn't there some +one else?" +</P> + +<P> +"Well, to be sure, there was Portman." +</P> + +<P> +The guest was sure that Portman would do it quite in the proper way, +and as for himself, he would have his breakfast in a few moments, he +thanked her. +</P> + +<P> +And Mrs. Shawles, who had expected a more favorable answer, left open +on the table the little Book which she had brought in with her. +</P> + +<P> +Bulstrode took it up after she was gone. +</P> + +<P> +In a few seconds he heard from the distance the sound of the children +singing. Their voices ceased, to be followed by the subdued murmur of +reading. As Bulstrode opened the Book he held, the leaves fell apart +at the marriage rite. He hurriedly passed this over, and his eyes were +arrested by the opening lines of a more solemn service. He paused to +read the beautiful, pitiful words, and then, still with the open Book +in his hands, he drew the telegram out of its cover.... +</P> + +<BR><BR><BR><BR> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy +Bulstrode, by Marie Van Vorst + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMY BULSTRODE *** + +***** This file should be named 34065-h.htm or 34065-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/0/6/34065/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode + +Author: Marie Van Vorst + +Illustrator: Alonzo Kimball + +Release Date: October 13, 2010 [EBook #34065] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMY BULSTRODE *** + + + + +Produced by Al Haines + + + + + + + + + +[Frontispiece: The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and +madame "_pour les enfants_"] + + + + + +The Sentimental + Adventures of + Jimmy Bulstrode + + + +BY + +MARIE VAN VORST + + + +With Illustrations by + +ALONZO KIMBALL + + + + +NEW YORK + +HURST & COMPANY + +PUBLISHERS + + + + +COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY + +CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS + + +Published March, 1908 + + + + +TO THE MEMORY + +OF + +H. E. TESCHEMACHER + + + + +CONTENTS + + +_THE FIRST ADVENTURE_ + +In which he buys a Christmas tree + + +_THE SECOND ADVENTURE_ + +In which he tries to buy a portrait + + +_THE THIRD ADVENTURE_ + +In which he finds there are some things which one cannot buy + + +_THE FOURTH ADVENTURE_ + +In which he makes three people happy + + +_THE FIFTH ADVENTURE_ + +In which he makes nobody happy at all + + +_THE SIXTH ADVENTURE_ + +In which he discards a knave and saves a queen + + +_THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE_ + +In which he becomes the possessor of a certain piece of property + + +_THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE_ + +In which he comes into his own + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +From drawings by ALONZO KIMBALL + + +_The amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame "pour +les enfants"_ . . . . . . Frontispiece + +"_I only like him like a kind, kind friend_" + +_In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing_ + +"_I've had a telegram from my husband_" + + + + +THE FIRST ADVENTURE + + + +I + +IN WHICH HE BUYS A CHRISTMAS TREE + +There was never in the world a better fellow than Jimmy Bulstrode. If +he had been poorer his generosities would have ruined him over and over +again. He was always being taken in, was the recipient of hundreds of +begging letters, which he hired another soft-hearted person to read. +He offended charitable organizations by never passing a beggar's +outstretched hand without dropping a coin in it. He was altogether a +distressingly impracticable rich person, surrounded by people who +admired him for what he really was and by those who tried to squeeze +him for what he was worth! + +It was a general wonder to people who knew him slightly why Bulstrode +had never married. The gentleman himself knew the answer perfectly, +but it amused him to discuss the question in spite of the pain, as well +as for the pleasure that it caused him to consider--_the reason why_. + +Mary Falconer, the woman he loved, was the wife of a man of whom +Bulstrode could only think in pitiful contempt. But, thanks to an +element of chivalry in the character of the hero of this story the +years, as time went on, spread back of both the woman and the man in an +honorable series, of whose history neither one had any reason to be +ashamed. + +Nevertheless, it struck them both as rather humorous, after all, that +of the three concerned her husband should be the only renegade and, +notwithstanding, profit by the combined good faith of his wife and the +man who loved her. + +Oh, there was nothing easy in the task that Jimmy set for himself! And +it did not facilitate matters that Mary Falconer scarcely ever helped +him in the least! She was a beautiful woman, a tender woman, and there +were times when her friend felt that she cleverly and cruelly taunted +him with Puritanism and with his simple, old-fashioned ideas and +crystal clearness of vision, the _culte_ he had regarding marriage and +the sacred way in which he held bonds and vows. It was no help at all +to think she rebelled and jested at his reserve; that she did her best +to break it--and there were times when it was a brilliant siege. But +down in her heart she respected him, and as she saw around her the +domestic wrecks with which the matrimonial seas are encumbered, and +knew that her own craft promised to go safely through the storm, Mary +Falconer more than once had been grateful to the man. + +As far as Bulstrode himself was concerned, each year--there had been +ten of them--he found the situation becoming more difficult and +dangerous. Not only did the future appear to him impossible as things +were, but he began to hate his arid past. He was sometimes led to ask, +what, after all, was he getting out of his colossal sacrifice? The +only reward he wanted was the woman herself, and, unless her husband +died, she would never be his. Bulstrode had not found that he could +solve the problem, and now and then he let it go from sheer weariness +of heart. + + +In the face of the window of the drawing-room where Bulstrode sat on +this afternoon of an especial winter's day the storm cast wreaths of +snow that clung and froze, or dropped like feathers down against the +sill. The gentleman had his predilections even in New York, and in the +open fireplace the logs crumbled and disintegrated to ashen caves +wherein the palpitating jewels of the heat were held. Except for this +old-fashioned warmth, there was none other in the room, whose white +wainscoting and pillars, low ceilings and quaint chimney-piece, +characterized one of those agreeably proportioned houses still to be +found in lower New York around Washington Square. + +Bulstrode had received about half an hour ago a letter whose qualities +and suggestions were something disturbing to him: + + +"There is such a thing, believe me" (Mary Falconer wrote in the pages +which Bulstrode opened to read for the twentieth time), "as the _gloom_ +of Christmas, Jimmy. People won't frankly own to it. They're afraid +of seeming sour and crabbed. But don't you, who are so exquisitely apt +to feelings--to other people's feelings,--at once confess it? It +attacks the spinster in the bustling winter streets as she is elbowed +by some person, exuberantly a mother, and so arrogantly laden with +delicious-looking parcels that she is almost a personal Christmas tree +herself. I'm confident this 'gloom of Christmas' grips the wretched +little beings at toy-shop windows as they stand 'choosin'' their +never-to-be-realized toys. I'm sure it haunts the vagrant and the +homeless in a city fairly redolent of holly and dinners, and where the +array of other people's homes is terrifying. And, my dear friend, it +is so horribly subtle that no doubt it attacks others whose only grudge +is that their hearths are not built for Christmas trees or the hanging +of stockings. But these unfortunates are not saying anything aloud, +therefore we must not pry! + +"There's a jolly house-party on at the Van Schoolings'. We're to go +down to-morrow to Tuxedo and pass Christmas night, and you are, of +course, asked and wanted. Knowing your dread of these family +feasts--possibly from just such a ghost of the gloom--I was sure you +would refuse. But it's a wonderful place for a talk or two, and I +shall hope you will go--will come, not even follow, but go down with +me." + + +There was more of the letter--there always is more of women's letters. +Their minds and pens are so charmingly facile; there is nothing a woman +can do better than talk, except to write. + +Bulstrode smoked slowly, the pages between his fingers, his thoughts +travelling like wanderers towards a home from which a ban had kept them +aliens. His eyes drifted to the beginning of the letter. He wasn't +familiar with the homeless vagrant class. His charities to that part +of the population consisted in donations to established societies, and +haphazard giving called forth by a beggar's extended hand. + +If anybody may be immune to the melancholy of which his friend Mrs. +Falconer spoke, it should surely be this gentleman, smoking his cigar +before the fire. The unopened letters--there was a pile of them--would +have offered ample reason why. No one of the lot but bore some +testimony to the generous heart which, beneath dinner-jacket and behind +the screw-faced watch with the picture in the back of it, beat so +healthy and so well. + +But the bestowal of benefits, whilst it may beautify the giver, does +not always transform itself into the one benefit desired and console +the bestower! Bulstrode had a charming home. He was alone in it. He +had his clubs where bachelors like himself, more or less infected with +Christmas gloom, would be glad to greet him. He had his friends, many +of them, and their home circles were complete. His, by force of +circumstances, began and ended with himself, and as if triumphant to +have found so tempting a victim, the gloom came and possessed Bulstrode +as he sat and mused. + +But the decided sadness that stole across his face bore no relation, to +the season, to whose white mystery and holy beauty there was something +in his boyish, kindly heart that always responded. + +The sadness Mrs. Falconer's letter awakened would not sleep. What his +Christmas _might_ be...! He had only to order his motor, to call for +her and drive over the ferry; to sit beside her in the train, to drive +with her again across the wintry roads. He had but to see her, watch +her, talk with her, share with her the day and evening, to have his +Christmas as nearly what a feast should be as dreams could ask. The +whole festival was there: joy, good-will--peace? No. Not peace for +him or for her--not that; everything else, but not that. And he had +been travelling for five weary months in order to make himself keep for +her that peace a little longer. + +Bulstrode sighed here, lifted the letter where there was more of it to +his lips--held it out toward the fire as if the red jewels were to set +themselves around it, thought differently, and putting it back in its +envelope, thrust it in the pocket of his waistcoat. + +"Ruggles," he asked the servant who had come in, "you sent the despatch +to Tuxedo?" + +"Yes, sir." + +"There'll be later a note to send. I'll ring. Well, what is it?" + +"There's a person at the door, sir, who insists on seeing you." + +The servant's tone--one particularly jarring to the ears of a man who +had fellowship with more than one class of his kind--made the master +look sharply up. Ruggles was a new addition to the household, and +Bulstrode did not like him. + +"A person," Bulstrode repeated, quietly; "what sort of a person?" + +"A man, sir." + +"Not a gentleman? No," he nodded gently; "I see you do not think him +one. Yet that he is a man is in his favor. There are some gentlemen +who aren't men, you know. Let him in." + +In doing so Ruggles seemed to let in the night. Bulstrode had, in the +warmth of his fragrant room, forgotten that outside was the wintry +dark. Ruggles, in letting the man in, had the air of thrusting him in, +and shut the door behind the visitor with a click. + +The creature himself let in the cold; he seemed made of it. The snow +clung to his shoulders; his shoes, tied up with strings, were encrusted +with it. His coat, buttoned to his chin, frayed at the cuffs and +edges, was thin and weather-stained. He had a pale face, a royal +growth of beard--this was all Bulstrode had time to remark. He rose. + +"My servant says you want to see me. Come near the fire, won't you?" + +The visitor did not stir. Bewildered in the warmth of the room, he +stood far back on the edge of the thick rug. To all appearances he was +a bit of driftwood from the streets, one of the usual vagrant class who +haunt the saloons and park and steer from lockup to night-lodging, +until they finally steer themselves entirely off the face of history, +and the potter's field gathers them in. Nothing but his entrance into +this conventional room before this well-balanced member of decent +society was peculiar. + +As he still neither moved nor spoke, Bulstrode, approaching him, again +invited: "Come near the fire, won't you? and when you are warm tell me +what I can do for you." + +"It's the storm," murmured the man, and a half-human look came across +his face with his words. "I mean to say, it's this hellish storm +that's got in my throat and lungs. I can't speak--it's so warm here. +It will be better in a second. No, not near the fire; +thanks--chilblains." He looked down at his poor feet. + +The voice which the storm had beaten and thrashed to painful hoarseness +was entirely out of keeping with the man's appearance, and in +intonation, accent, and language was a shock to the hearer. + +"Don't stand back like that--come into the room." Bulstrode wheeled a +chair briskly about. "There; sit down and drink this; it's a mild +blend." + +"I'm very wet," said the man. "I'll drip on the rug." + +"Hang the rug!" + +The tramp drained the glass given him at one swallow merely; it +appeared to clear his throat and release his speech. He gathered his +rags together. + +"I beg pardon for forcing myself on you like this, but I fancy I +needn't tell you I'm desperate--desperate!" He held out his hand; it +shook like a pale ghost's. "I look it, I'm sure. I haven't eaten a +meal or slept in a bed for a fortnight. I've begged work and charity. +All day I've been shovelling snow, but I'm too weak to work now." + +He was being led to a chair. He sank in it. "Before they sent me to +the Island I decided to try a ruse. I went into a saloon and opened a +directory, and I said, 'The first name I put my finger upon I'll take +as good luck, and I'll go and see the person, man or woman. I opened +to James Thatcher Bulstrode, 9 Washington Square." He half smiled; the +pale, trembling hand was waving like a pitiful flag, a signal of +distress to catch the sight of some bark that might lend aid. "So I +came here. When there seemed actually to be some chance of my getting +in, why, my courage failed me. I don't expect you to believe my story +or to believe anything, except that I am desperate--desperate. It's +below zero to-night out there--infernally cold." He took the pin out +of the collar turned up around his neck and let his coat fall back. +Under it Bulstrode saw he wore a thin flannel shirt. The tramp +repeated to himself, as it were, "It's a bad storm." + +He looked up in a dazed fashion at his host as if for acceptance of his +remark. In the easy chair, half swathed in rags, pitiful in thinness, +dripping from shoes and clothes water that the storm had drenched into +him, he was a sorry object in the atmosphere of the well-ordered +conventional room. The heat and whiskey, the famine and exposure, cast +a film across his eyes and brain. He indistinctly saw his host pass +into the next room and shut the door behind him. + +"By Jove!" he murmured under his breath in wonder find dumb thanks for +the shelter. "By Jove!" The stimulant filtered agreeably through him; +more charitable than any element with which he had been lately +familiar, the fire's heat began to thaw the ice in his bones. He laid +his dripping hat on his knees, his thin hands folded themselves over +it, his eyes closed. For hours he had shuffled about the streets to +keep from freezing. At the charity organization they gave work he was +too weak to do; he had not eaten a substantial meal in so long that he +had forgotten the taste of food and had ceased to crave it. In the +soft light of lamp and fire he fell into a doze. Bulstrode, if he had +stolen softly in to look at his visitor, would have seen a man not over +thirty years of age, although want and dissipation added ten to his +appearance. He would have been quick to take note of the fine, +delicately cut face under the disfiguring beard, and of the slender, +emaciated body deformed by its rags. + +Possibly he did so noiselessly come in and stand by the unconscious +creature, but the sleeping vagabond, dreaming fitful, half-painful +things, was ignorant of the visitor. Finally across his mind's sharp +despair came a sense of warmth and comfort, and in its spell he awoke. + +A servant, not the one who had thrust him into the drawing-room, but +another with a friendly face, stood at his side, and in broken English +asked the guest of Bulstrode to follow him; and gathering his scattered +senses together and picking up his rags and what was left of himself, +the creature obeyed a summons which he supposed was to hale him again +into the winter streets. + + +It was some three hours later that Bulstrode in his dining-room +entertained his singular guest. + +"I have asked you to dine with me," he explained, with a certain +graciousness, as if he claimed, not gave, a favor, "as I'm all alone +to-night. It's Christmas eve, you know--or perhaps you've been more or +less glad to forget it?" + +The young man who took the chair indicated him was unrecognizable as +the stranger who had staggered into 9 Washington Square three or four +hours before. Turned out in spotless linen and a good suit that fitted +him fairly well, shaven face save for a mustache above his lip, bathed, +brushed, refreshed by nourishment and sleep and repose, he looked like +one who has been in the waters, possibly a long, long time; like one +who has drifted, been bruised, shattered, and beaten, but who has +nevertheless drifted to shore; and in spite of his borrowed clothes, +his scarred, haggard face, he looked like a gentleman, and Bulstrode +from the moment he spoke had recognized him as one. + +The food was a feast to the stranger, in spite of nourishment already +given him by Prosper. He restrained the ferocious hunger that woke at +sight and smell of the good things, forced himself not to cry out with +eagerness, not to tear and grasp the eatables off the plate, not to +devour like a beast. Every time he raised his eyes he met those of the +butler Ruggles, and as quickly the stranger looked away. The face of +the servant standing by the sideboard, back of him the white and +gleaming array of the Bulstrode family silver like piles of snow, was +for some reason or other not a pleasant face; the stranger did not +think it so. + +Once again seated in the room he had entered in his outcast state, a +cup of coffee at his hand, a cigar between his lips, the agreeable +atmosphere of the old room and its charming objects, the kindly look on +the face of his host, all swam before him. Looking frankly at +Bulstrode, he said, not without grace of manner: + +"I give it up. I can't--it's not to be made out or understood..." + +"Do you," interrupted the other, "feel equal to talking a little: to +telling me how it happens that you are wandering, as you seem to be? +For from the moment you first spoke----" + +The young man nodded. "I'm a gentleman. It's worse somehow--I don't +know why, but it is." + +Bulstrode thought out for him: "It's like remembering agreeable places +to which you feel you will never return. Only," he quickly offered, +"in your case you must, you know, go back." + +"No," said the young man, quietly. + +There was so much entire renunciation in what he said that the other +could not press it. + +"Better still, you can then go on?" + +The vagrant looked at his companion as if to say: "Since I've known +you--seen you--I have thought that I might." But he said nothing more, +and Bulstrode, reading a diffidence which did not displease him, +finished: + +"You shall go on, and I'll help you." + +The stranger bowed his head, and the wine sent the color up until his +cheeks took the flush of health. Remaining a little bent over, his +eyes on his feet clad in Bulstrode's shoes, he said: + +"I'm an Englishman. My family is everything that's decent and all +_that_, you know, and proud. We've first-rate traditions. I'm a +younger son, and I've always been a thorn in the family's side. I've +been a sort of vagabond from the first, but never as bad as they +thought or believed." + +He paused. His recital was painful to him. Bulstrode waited, then +knocking off the ash from his cigar, urged: + +"Tell me about it, tell me frankly; it will, you see, be a relief. We +can do better that way--if I know." + +The stranger looked up at him quickly, then leaning forward in his +chair, talked as it were to the carpet, and rapidly: + +"It's just a year ago. I'd been going it rather hard and got into +trouble more or less--lost at cards and the races, and been running up +a lot of bills. My father was awfully down on me. I'd gone home for +the holidays and had a talk with my father and asked him to pay up for +me just this once more. He refused, and we got very angry, both of us, +and separated in a rage. The house was full of people--a Christmas +ball and a tree. My father had, so it happened, quite a lot of money +in the house. I knew where it was--I had seen him count it and put it +away. That night for some reason the whole thing sickened me, in the +mess I was in, and I left and went up to London without even saying +good-by. In the course of the week my brother came and found me drunk +in my rooms. It seems that the money had been taken from my father's +safe, and they accused me." + +"But," interrupted Bulstrode, eagerly, "it was a simple thing to +exculpate yourself." + +Ignoring his remark, the other continued: "I have never seen my father +since that night." + +No amount of former deception can persuade a man that he is a lame +judge of character. The young Englishman's emaciated face, where eyes +spoiled by dissipation looked out at his companion, was to this +impulsive reader of humanity a good face. Bulstrode, however, saw what +he wanted to see in most people. Given a chance to study them, or +rather further to know them intimately, he might indeed have ended by +finding in some cases a few of the imagined qualities. Here misery was +evident, degradation as well, timidity, and hesitation,--but honesty? +Bulstrode fancied that its characters were not effaced, and he helped +the recital: + +"Since you so left your people?" + +"The steady go down!" acknowledged the other. "I worked my passage to +the States on a liner--I stoked..." + +"Any chap," encouraged the gentleman, "who can do that can pull +himself, I should say, out of a worse hole." + +"There's scarcely a bad habit I haven't had down in the hole with me," +confessed the other, "and they've held me there." + +They both remained for a few seconds without speaking, and the host's +eyes wandered to where, over his mantel-shelf, in a great gold frame +was the portrait of a lady done by Baker. A quaint young lady in her +early teens, with bare arms and frilled frock. She had Bulstrode's +eyes. By her side was the black muzzle of a great hound, on whose head +the little hand rested. Under the picture, from a silver bowl of +roses, came a fragrance that filled the room, and, close by stood a +photograph of another lady, very modern, very mocking, and very lovely. + +Bulstrode, delicately drawing inferences from the influences in his +life, and, if not consciously grateful, reflecting them charmingly, +broke the silence: + +"You must have formed some plan or other in your mind when you came to +my door? What, in the event of your being received, did you intend to +ask me to do?" + +The stranger lifted his head and his response was irrelevant: "It seems +a hundred years since I stood there in that storm and your man pulled +me in. I haven't seen a place like this for long, not the inside of +decent houses. When I left the ship I managed to get down with a chap +as far as Florida, where he had an orange-plantation, but the venture +fell through. I fancy the rest is as well forgotten. When I came in +here to-night I intended to ask you for a Christmas gift of money, and +I should have gone out and drunk myself to hell." + +"You spoke"--Bulstrode fetched him back--"of your father and your +brother; was there no one else?" + +The younger man looked up without reply. + +"There has been, then, no more kindly influence in your life--no +sister--no woman?" + +Bulstrode brought out the words; in his judgment they meant so very +much. He saw a change cross the other's face. + +"I fancy there are not many men who haven't had a woman in their lives +for good or bad," he said, with a short laugh. + +"Well," urged the gentleman, gently, "and for what was this woman?" + +As if he repelled the insistence, the young fellow stammered: + +"I say, this putting a fellow on the rack----" + +But Bulstrode leaned forward in his chair and rested his hand on his +companion's knee and pleaded: + +"Speak out frankly--frankly--I believe I shall understand; it will free +your heart to speak. This influence which to a man should be the +best--the best--what was it to you?" Bulstrode sat back and waited, +and the other man seemed quite lost in melancholy meditations for some +few seconds. Then Bulstrode put it: "For a young man, no matter how +wild, to leave his home under the misapprehension you claim:--for him +to make no effort to reinstate himself: with no attempt at justice: for +him to become a wanderer--there must be an extraordinary reason, almost +an improbable one----" + +"I don't ask you to hear," said the vagrant, quickly. + +"I wish to do so. It would have been a simple matter to exculpate +yourself--you had not the funds in your possession, had never had them. +You took no means to clear yourself?" + +"None." + +Bulstrode looked hard at the face his care had revealed to him: the +deep eyes, the neck, chin, the sensitive mouth--there was a certain +distinction about him in his borrowed clothes. + +"Where is the woman now?" + +"She married my brother--she is Lady Waring--my name," tardily +introduced the stranger, "is Cecil Waring." + +Bulstrode bowed. "Tell me something of her, in a word--in a word." + +"Well, she is always clever," said the young man, slowly, "always very +beautiful, and then very poor." + +"Yes," nodded Bulstrode. + +"She is like the rest of us--one of a fast wild set--a----" + +"A gambler?" Bulstrode helped the description. + +"She played," acknowledged the young man, "as the rest do--bridge." + +"Were you engaged to her, Waring?" + +"Yes," he slowly acknowledged, as if each word hurt him. + +"And did she believe you guilty?" + +"I think," said the other, with an inscrutable expression, "she could +not have done so." + +"But she let you go under suspicion?" + +"Yes." + +"Without a word of good faith, of comfort?" + +"Yes." + +"Did she know of your embarrassments?" + +"Too well." + +"You tell me she was poor and--possibly she had embarrassments of her +own?" + +"Possibly." + +Bulstrode came over to him. + +"Was she at the Christmas ball that night?" + +The young man rose as well, his eyes on his questioner's; the color had +all left his face--he appeared fascinated--then he shook himself and +unexpectedly laughed. + +"No," he said; "oh no." + +The older man bowed his head and replied, quite inaptly: + +"I understand!" + +He took a turn across the room. + +The few steps brought him in front of the mantel and the photograph of +the modern lady in her furs and close hat. He stood and met the fire +of her mocking eyes. + +"And you _believe_ him, Jimmy!" he could hear her say in her delicious +voice. + +"Yes," he mentally told her, "I believe him." + +"You think that to save a woman's name and honor he has become an +outcast on the face of the earth ... Jimmy!" + +He still gently replied to her: + +"Men who love, you know, have but one code--the woman and honor." + +Still mocking, but gentle as would have been the touch of the roses in +the bowl near the photograph, her voice told him, + +"Then he's worth saving, Jimmy." + +Worth saving ... he agreed, and turned to his guest. In doing so he +saw that Ruggles had come into the drawing-room to remove the +coffee-tray. + +"Beg pardon, sir, but you mentioned there would be a letter to send +shortly?" + +"By Jove! so I did!" exclaimed Bulstrode. "I beg your pardon; will you +excuse me while I write a line at the desk?" The line was an order to +the florist. + +For some reason the eyes of the Englishman had not quitted the butler's +face, and Ruggles, with cold insolence, had stared at him in turn. +Waring, albeit in another man's clothes, fed and seated before a +friendly hearth, and once again within the pale of his own class, had +regained something of his natural air and feeling of superiority. He +resented the servant's insolence, and his face was angrily flushed as +Bulstrode gave his orders, and the man left the room. + +"I must go away," he said, rather brusquely. "I can never thank you +for what you have done. I feel as if I had been in a dream." + +"Sit down." His companion ignored his words. "Sit down." + +"It's late." + +"For what, my friend?" + +"I must find some place to sleep." + +"You have found it," gently smiled Bulstrode. "Your room is prepared +for you here." Then he interrupted: "No thanks--no thanks. If what +you tell me is all I think it is, I'm proud to share my roof with you, +Waring." + +"Don't think well of me--don't!" blurted out the other. "You don't +know what a ruined vagabond I am. When you send me out to-morrow I +shall begin again; but let me tell you that although I've herded with +tramps and thieves, been in the hospital and lock-up, and worked in the +hell of a furnace in a ship's hold, nothing hurt me any more, not after +I left England--not after those days when I waited in Liverpool for a +word--for a sign--not after that, all you see the marks of now--nothing +hurts now but the memory. I'm immune." + +"You will feel differently--you will humanize." + +"Never!" exclaimed the tramp. + +"To-night," said Bulstrode, simply. + +Waring looked at him curiously. + +"What a wonderful man!" he half murmured. "I was led to you by fate: +you have forced me to lay my soul bare to you--and now..." + +"Let's look things in the face together," suggested the gentleman, +practically. "I have a ranch out West. A good piece of property. +It's in the hands of a clever Englishman and promises well. How would +you like to go out there and start anew? He'll give you a welcome, and +he's a first-rate business man. Will you go?" + +Waring had with his old habit thrust his hands in his pockets. He +stood well on his feet. Bulstrode remarked it. He looked meditatively +down between the soles of his shoes. + +"You mean to say you give me a chance--to--to----" + +"Begin anew, Waring." + +"I drink a great deal," said the young man. + +"You will swear off." + +"I've gambled away all the money I ever had." + +"You will be taking care of mine, and it will be a point of honor." + +"I'm under a cloud---- + +"Not in my eyes," said Bulstrode, stoutly. + +"--which I can never clear." + +Bulstrode made a dismissing gesture. + +"I should want the chap out there to know the truth." + +"The truth," caught his hearer, and the other as quickly interrupted: + +"To know under what circumstances I left my people." + +"No, that is unnecessary," said Bulstrode, firmly. "Nobody has any +right to your past. I don't know his. That's the beauty of the +plains--the freshness of them. It's a new start--a clean page." + +Still the guest hesitated. + +"I don't believe it's worth while. You see, I've batted about now so +much alone, with nobody near me but the lowest sort; I've given in so +long, with no care to do better, that I haven't any confidence in +myself. I don't want you to see me fail, sir,--I don't want to go back +on you." + +Bulstrode had heard very understandingly part of the man's word, part +of his excuse for his weakness. + +"That's it," he said, musingly. "Butting about alone. It's +that--loneliness--that's responsible for so many things." + +Looking up brightly as his friend whose derelict dangerous vessel, so +near to port and repair, was heading for the wide seas again, Bulstrode +wondered: "If such a thing could be that some friend, not too +uncongenial, could be found to go with you and stand as it were by +you--some friend who knew--who comprehended----" + +Waring laughed. "I haven't such a one." + +"Yes," said the older gentleman, "you have, and he will stand by you. +I'll go West with you myself to-morrow--on Christmas day. I need a +change. I want to get away for a little time." + +Waring drew back a step, for Bulstrode had risen. Cold Anglo-Saxon as +he was, the unprecedented miracle this gentleman presented made him +seem almost lunatic. He stared blankly. + +"It's simpler than it looks." Bulstrode attempted conventionally to +shear it of a little of its eccentricity. "There's every reason why I +should look after my property out there. I've never seen it at all." + +"I'm not worth such a goodness," Waring faltered, earnestly,--"not +worth it." + +"You will be." + +"Don't hope it." + +"I believe it," smiled the gentleman; "and at all events I'll stand by +you till you are--if you'll say the word." + +Waring, whose lips were trembling, repeated vaguely, "The _word_?" + +"Well," replied Bulstrode, "you might say those--they're as good +any--will you stand by _me_----?" + +Making the first hearty spontaneous gesture he had shown, the young man +seized the other's outstretched hand. "Yes," he breathed; "by Heaven! +I will!" + + +It was past midnight when Bulstrode, pushing open the curtains of his +bedroom, looked out on the frozen world of Washington Square, where of +tree and arch not an outline was visible under the disguising snow; and +above, in the sky swept clear of clouds by the strongest of winds, rode +the round full disk of the Christmas moon. + +The adoption of a vagrant, the quixotic decision he had taken to leave +New York on Christmas day, the plain facts of the outrageous folly his +impulsiveness led him to contemplate, had relegated his more worldly +plans to the background. Laying aside his waistcoat, he took out the +letter in whose contents he had been absorbed when Cecil Waring crossed +the threshold of his drawing-room. + +Well ... as he re-read at leisure her delightful plan for Christmas +day, he sighed that he could not do for them both better than to go two +thousand miles away! "Waring thinks himself a vagrant--and so, poor +chap, he has been; but there are vagrants of another kind." Jimmy +reflected he felt himself to be one of these others, and was led to +speculate if there were many outcasts like himself, and what +ultimately, if their courage was sufficient to keep them banished to +the end, would be the reward? + +"Since," he reflected, "there's only one thing I desire--and it's the +one thing forbidden--I fail sometimes to quite puzzle it out!" + +He had finished his preparations for the night and was about to turn +out the light, when, with his hand on the electric button, he paused, +for he distinctly heard from downstairs what sounded like a call--a cry. + +Taking his revolver from the top drawer, he went into the hall, to feel +a draft of icy air blow up the staircase, to see over the balusters the +open door of the dining-room and light within it, and to hear more +clearly the sounds that had come to him through closed doors declare +themselves to be scuffling--struggling--the half-cry of a muffled +voice--a fall, then Bulstrode started. + +"I'm coming," he declared, and ran down the stairs like a boy. + +On the dining-room floor, close to the window wide open to the icy +night, lay a man's form, and over him bent another man cruelly, with +all the animus of a bird of prey. + +The under man was Ruggles, Bulstrode's butler, his eyes starting from +their sockets, his mouth open, his color livid; he couldn't have called +out, for the other man had seized his necktie, twisted it tight as a +tourniquet around the man's gullet, and so kneeling with one knee on +his chest, Waring held the big man under. + +"I say," panted the young man, "can you lend a hand, sir? I've got +him, but I'm not strong enough to keep him." + +Bulstrode thought his servant's eyes rolled appealingly at him. He +cocked his revolver, holding it quietly, and asked coolly: + +"What's the matter with him that he needs to be kept?" + +"Would you sit on his chest, Mr. Bulstrode?" + +"No," said that gentleman. "I'll cover him so. What's the truth?" + +"I heard a queer noise," panted the Englishman, "and came out to see +what it was, and this fellow was just getting through the window. +There was another chap outside, but he got away. I caught this one +from the back, otherwise I could never have thrown him." + +"You're throttling him." + +"He deserves it." + +"Let him up." + +"Mr. Bulstrode...!" + +"Yes," said that gentleman, decidedly, "let him up." + +But Ruggles, released from the hand whose knuckles had ground +themselves into his windpipe, could not at once rise. The breath was +out of him, for he had been heavily struck in the stomach by a blow +from the fist of a man whose training in sport had delightfully +returned at need. + +Ruggles began to breathe like a porpoise, to grunt and pant and roll +over. He staggered to his feet, and with a string of imprecations +raised his fist at Waring, but as Bulstrode's revolver was entirely +ready to answer at command, he did not venture to leave the spot where +he stood. + +"Now," said his master, "when you get your tongue your story will be +just the same as Mr. Waring's. You found him getting away with the +silver. The probabilities are all with you, Ruggles. The police will +be here in just about five minutes. Ten to one the guilty man is known +to the officers. Now there's an overcoat and hat on the hat-rack in +the hall. I give both of you time to get away. There's the front door +and the window--which, by the way, you would better shut, Waring, as +it's a cold morning." + +Neither man moved. Without removing his eyes from the butler or +uncovering him, Bulstrode, by means of the messenger-call to the right +of the window, summoned the police. The metallic click of the button +sounded loud in the room. + +Ruggles shook his great hand high in air. + +"I'd--I'd----" + +"Never mind _that_," interrupted the householder. "The man who's +_going_ had better take his chance. There's one minute lost." + +During the next half-second the modern philanthropist breathed in +suspense. It was so on the cards that he might be obliged to apologize +to his antipathetic butler and find himself sentimentally sold by +Waring! + +But Ruggles it was who with a parting oath stepped to the +door--accelerating his pace as the daze began to pass a little from his +brain, and snatched the hat and coat, unlocked the front door, opened +it, looked quickly up and down the white streets, and then without a +word cut down the steps and across Washington Square, slowly at first, +and then on a run. + +Bulstrode turned to his visitor. + +"Come," he said, "let's go up to bed." + +"But," stammered the young man, "you're never going to let him go like +that?" + +"Yes, I am," confessed the unpractical gentleman. "I couldn't send a +man to jail on Christmas day." + +"But the police----?" + +"I shall tell them out of my window that it was a false alarm." + +Bulstrode shut and locked his door, and turning to Waring, laughed +delightedly. + +"I must tell you that when he let you in last night Ruggles did not +think you were a gentleman. He must have found out this morning that +you were very much of a man. It's astonishing where you got your +strength, though. He'd make two of you, and you're not fit in any way." + +He looked ghastly enough as Bulstrode spoke, and the gentleman put his +arm under the Englishman's. "I'll ring for the servants and have some +coffee made and fetched to your room. Lean on me." He helped the +vagabond upstairs. + +The New Yorker, whose sentimental follies were certainly a menace to +public safety and a premium to begging and vagabondage and crime, slept +well and late, and was awakened finally by the keen, bright ringing of +the telephone at his side. As he took up the receiver his whole face +illumined. + +"Merry Christmas, Jimmy!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"What _wonderful_ roses! Thanks a thousand times!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"But of course I knew! No other man in New York is sentimental enough +to have a woman awakened at eight o'clock by a bunch of flowers!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"Forgive you!" (It was clear that she did.) + + . . . . . . . . + +"Jimmy, what a day for Tuxedo, and what a shame I can't go!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"You weren't going! You mean to say that you had refused?" + + . . . . . . . . + +"I don't understand--it's the connection--West?" + +"Why, ranches look after themselves. They always do. They go right +on. You don't _mean_ it, on Christmas day!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"I shouldn't care for your reasons. They're sure to be +ridiculous--unpractical--unnecessary--don't tell them to me." + +There was a pause, and then the voice, which had undergone a slight +change said: + +"Jack's ill again ... that's why I couldn't go to Tuxedo. I shall pass +the day here in town. I called up to tell you this--and to +suggest--but since you're going West..." + +Falconer's illnesses! How well Bulstrode knew them, and how well he +could see her alone in the familiar little drawing-room by a hearth not +built for a Christmas tree! He had promised Waring, "I'll stand by +you." It was a kind of vow--a real vow, and the poor tramp had lived +up to his. + +"Jimmy." There was a note he had never heard before; if a tone can be +a tear, it was one. + +He interrupted her. + + . . . . . . . . + +"How dear of you!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"But I haven't any Christmas tree!" + + . . . . . . . . + +"You'll fetch one? How _dear_ of you! We'll trim it--with your +roses--make it bloom. Come early and help me dress the tree." + + +Two hours later he opened the door into his breakfast-room with the +guiltiness of a truant boy. He wore culprit shame written all over his +face, and the young man who stood waiting for him in the window might +almost have read his friend's dejection in his embarrassed face. + +But Waring came eagerly forward, answered the season's greetings, and +said quickly: + +"Are you still in the same mind about the West, Mr. Bulstrode?" + +(Poor Bulstrode!) + +"I mean to say, sir, if you still feel like giving me this chance, I've +a favor to ask. Would you let me go _alone_?" + +Bulstrode gasped. + +"Since last night a lot has happened to me, not only since you've +befriended me, but since I tussled with that fellow here. I'd like a +chance to see what I can do alone. If you, as you so generously plan, +go with me, I shall feel watched--protected. It will weaken me more +than anything else. I suppose I shall go all to pieces, but I'd like +to try my strength. If I could suddenly master that chap with my fists +after months of dissipation----" + +Bulstrode finished for him: + +"You can master the rest." + +"Don't give me any extra money," pleaded the tramp, as if he foresaw +his friend's impulse. "Pay my ticket out West, if you will, and write +to the man who is there, and I'll start in." + +Bulstrode beamed on him. + +"You're a man," he assured him--"a man." + +"I may become one." + +"You're a fine fellow." + +"You'll trust me, then?" + +"Implicitly." + +"Then let me start to-day. I'm reckless--let me get away. I may get +off at the first station and pawn my clothes and drink and drink to a +lower hell than before--but let me try alone." + +"You shall go alone--and go to-day." + +Prosper came in with the coffee; he, too, was beaming, and the servants +below-stairs were all agog. Waring was a hero. + +"Prosper," said his master, in French, "will you, after you have served +breakfast, go out to the market quarters and see if you can discover +for me a medium-sized, very well-proportioned little Christmas tree? +Fetch it home with you." + +Waring smiled faintly. + +Bulstrode smiled too, and more comprehendingly, and Prosper smiled and +said: + +"Mais certainement, monsieur." + + + + +THE SECOND ADVENTURE + + + +II + +IN WHICH HE TRIES TO BUY A PORTRAIT + +Bulstrode was extremely fond of travel, and every now and then treated +himself to a season in London or Paris, and in the May following his +adventure with Waring he saw, from his apartments in the Hotel Ritz, +from Boulevard, Bois, and the Champs Elysees, as much of the +maddeningly delicious Parisian springtime "as was good for him at his +age," so he said! It gave the feeling that he was a mere boy, and with +buoyant sensations astir in him, life had begun over again. + +Any morning between eleven and twelve Bulstrode might have been seen in +the Bois de Boulogne briskly walking along the Avenue des Acacias, his +well-filled chest thrown out, his step light and assured; cane in hand, +a boutonniere tinging the lapel of his coat; immaculate and fresh as a +rose, he exhaled good-humor, kindliness, and well-being. + +From their traps and motors charming women bowed and smiled, the _fine +fleur_ and the _beau monde_ greeted him cordially. + +"Regardez moi ce bon Bulstrode qui se promene," if it were a Frenchman, +or, "There's dear old Jimmy Bulstrode!" if he were recognized by a +compatriot. + +Bulstrode was rather slight of build, yet with an evident strength of +body that indicated a familiarity with exercise, a healthful habit of +sport and activity. His eyes, clear-sighted and strong, looked through +the medium of no glass happily and naively on the world. Many years +before his hair had begun to turn gray, and had not nearly finished the +process; it grew thickly, and was quite dark about his ears and on his +brow. Having gained experience and kept his youth, he was as rare and +delightful as fine wine--as inspiring as spring. It was his heart +(Mrs. Falconer said) that made him so, his good, gentle, generous +heart!--and she should know. His fastidiousness in point of dress, and +his good taste kept him close to elegance of attire. + +"You turn yourself out, Jimmy, on every occasion," she had said, "as if +you were on the point of meeting the woman you loved." And Bulstrode +had replied that such consistent hopefulness should certainly be +ultimately rewarded. + +He gave the impression of a man who in his youth starts out to take a +long and pleasant journey and finds the route easy, the taverns +agreeable, and the scenes all the guide-book promised. Midway--(he had +turned the page of forty)--midway, pausing to look back, Bulstrode saw +the experiences of his travels in their sunny valleys, full of goodly +memories, and the future, to his sweet hopefulness, promised to be a +pleasant journey to the end. + +During the time that he spent in Paris every pet charity in the +American colony took advantage of the philanthropic Mr. Bulstrode's +passing through the city, and came to him to be set upon its feet, and +every pretty woman with an interest, hobby, or scheme came as well to +this generous millionaire, told him about her fad and went away with a +donation. + +One ravishing May morning Bulstrode, taking his usual constitutional in +the Bois, paused at the end of the Avenue des Acacias to find it +deserted and attractively quiet; he sat down on a little bench the more +reposefully to enjoy the day and time. + +There are, fortunately, certain things which, unlike money, can be +shared only with certain people; and Bulstrode felt that the pleasure +of this spring day, the charm of the opposite wood-glades into which he +meditatively looked, the tranquil as well as the buoyant joy of life, +were among those personal things so delightful when shared--and which, +if too long enjoyed alone, bring (let it be scarcely whispered on this +bewildering May morning) something like sadness! + +Before his happier mood changed his attention was attracted by a woman +who came rapidly toward the avenue from a little alley at the side. He +looked up quickly at the feminine creature who so aptly appeared upon +his musings. She was young; her form in its simple dress assured him +this. He could not see her face, for it was covered by her hands. +Abruptly taking the opposite direction, she went over to a farther +seat, where she sat down, and when the young girl put her arms on the +back of the seat, her head upon her arms, and in the remoteness this +part of the avenue offered, cried without restraint, the kind-hearted +Bulstrode felt that it was too cruel to be true. + +But soft-hearted though he was, the gentleman was a worldling as well, +and that the outburst was a ruse more than suggested itself to him as +he went over to the lovely Niobe whose abundant fair hair sunned from +under her simple straw hat and from beneath whose frayed skirt showed a +worn little shoe. + +He spoke in French. + +"Pardon, madame, but you seem in great distress." + +The poor thing started violently, and as soon as she displayed her +pretty tearful face the American recognized in her a compatriot. She +waved him emphatically away. + +"Oh, please don't notice me--don't speak to me--I didn't see that +anybody was there." + +"I am an American, too: can't I do anything for you--won't you let me?" + +And he saw at once that she wanted to be left alone. She averted her +head determinedly. + +"No, no, please don't notice me. Please go away!" + +He had nothing to do but to obey her, and as he reluctantly did so a +smart pony-cart driven by a lady alone came briskly along and drew up, +for the occupant had recognized him. + +"Get in!" she rather commanded. "My dear Jimmy, how _nice_ to find you +here, and how nice to drive you at least as far as the entrance!" + +As the rebuffed philanthropist accepted he cast a ruthful glance at the +solitary figure on the bench. + +"Do you see that poor girl over there? She's an American, and in real +trouble." + +"My _dear_ Jimmy!" His companion's tone left him in no doubt as to her +scepticism. + +"Oh, I know, I know," he interrupted, "but she's not a fraud. She's +the real thing." + +They were already gayly whirling away from the sad little figure. + +"Did you make her cry?" + +"I? Certainly not." + +"Then let the man who did wipe her tears away!" + +But Bulstrode had seen the face of the girl, and he was haunted by it +all day until the Bois and its bright atmosphere became only the +setting for an unhappy woman, young and lovely, whom it had been +impossible for him to help. + +Somebody had said that Bulstrode should have his portrait done with his +hands in his pockets, and Mrs. Falconer had replied, "Or rather with +_other_ people's hands in his pockets!" + +The next afternoon he found himself part of a group of people who, out +of charity and curiosity, patronized the Western Artists' Exhibition in +the Rue Monsieur. + +Having made a ridiculously generous donation to the support of this +league at the request of a certain lovely lady, Bulstrode followed his +generosity by a personal effort, and with not much opposition on his +part permitted himself to be taken to the exhibition. + +He was not, in the ultra sense of the word, a _connaisseur_, but he +thought he knew a horror when he saw it! So he said, and on this +afternoon his eyes ached and his offended taste cried out before he had +patiently travelled half-way down the line of canvases. + +"My dear lady," he confided _sotto voce_ to his friend, "I feel more +inclined to establish a fund for sending all these young women back to +the _prairies_, if that's where they come from, than to aid in this +slaughter of public time and taste. _Why_ don't they stay at home--and +marry?" + +"That's a vulgar and limited point of view to take," his friend +reproached him. "Don't you acknowledge that a woman has many careers +instead of one? _You_ seem to be thoroughly enjoying your liberty! +What if I should ask you why _you_ don't stay at home, and marry?" + +Bulstrode looked at his guide comprehensively and smiled gently. His +response was irrelevant. "Look at this picture! It's too dreadful for +words." + +"Hush, you're not a judge. Here and there there is evidence of great +talent." + +They had drawn up before a portrait, and poor Bulstrode caught his +breath with a groan: + +"It's too awful! It's crime to encourage it." + +Mrs. Falconer tried to lead him on. + +"Well, this _is_ an unfortunate place to stop," she confessed. "That +portrait represents more tragedy than you can see." + +"It couldn't," murmured Bulstrode. + +"The poor girl who did it has struggled on here for two years, living +sometimes on a franc a day. Just fancy! She has been trying to get +orders so that she can stay on and study. Poor thing! The people who +are interested say that she's been near to desperation. She is awfully +proud, and won't take any assistance but orders. You can imagine +_they're_ not besieging her! She has come to her last cent, I believe, +and has to go home to Idaho." + +"Let her go, my dear friend." Bulstrode was earnest. "It's the best +thing she could possibly do!" + +His companion put her hand on his arm. + +"Please be quiet," she implored. "There she is, standing over by the +door. That rather pretty girl with the disorderly blonde hair." + +Bulstrode looked up--saw her--looked again, and exclaimed: + +"Is _that_ the girl? Do you know her? Present me, will you?" + +"Nonsense." She detained him. "How you go from hot to cold! _Why_ +should you want to meet her, pray?" + +"Oh," he evaded, "it's a curious study. I want to talk to her about +art, and if you don't present me I shall speak to her without an +introduction." + +Not many moments later Bulstrode was cornered in a dingy little room, +where tea that tasted like the infusion of a haystack was being served. +He had skilfully disassociated Miss Laura Desprey from her Bohemian +companions and placed her on a little divan, before which, with a +teacup in his hand, he stood. + +She wore the same dress, the same hat--and he did not doubt the same +shoes which characterized her miserable toilet when he had surprised +her childlike display of grief on a bench in the Bois. He had done +quite right in speaking to her, and he thanked his stars that she did +not in the least remember him. + +He thought with kind humor: "No wonder she cries if she paints like +that!" + +But it was not in a spirit of criticism that he bent his friendly eyes +on the Bohemian. He had the pleasure of seeing her plainly this time, +for the window back of her admitted a generous square of light against +which her blonde head framed itself, and her untidy hair was like a +dusty mesh of gold. She regarded the amiable gentleman out of eyes +child-like and purely blue. Under her round chin the edges of a black +bow tied loosely stood out like the wings of a butterfly. Her dress +was careless and poor, but she was grace in it and youth--"and what," +thought Bulstrode, "has one a right to expect more of any woman?" He +remembered her boots and shuddered. He remembered the one franc a day +and began his campaign. + +"I want so much to meet the painter of that portrait over there," he +began. + +Her face lightened. + +"Oh, did you like it?" + +"I think it's wonderful, perfectly wonderful!" + +A slow red crept up the thin contour of her cheek. She leaned forward! + +"Do you really mean that?" + +He said most seriously: + +"Yes, I can frankly say I haven't seen a portrait in a long time which +impressed me so much." + +His praise was not in Latin Quarter vernacular, and coming from a +Philistine, had only a certain value to the artist. But to a lonely +stranded girl the words were balm. Bulstrode, in his immaculate dress, +his conventional manner, was as foreign a person to the Bohemian +student as if he had been an inhabitant of another planet. Her speech +was brusque and quick, with a generous burr in her "rs" when she +replied. + +"I've studied at Julian's two years now. This was my Salon picture, +but it didn't get in." + +"If one can judge by those that _did_"--Bulstrode's tact was +delightful--"you should feel honorably refused. I suppose you are at +work on another portrait?" + +The face which his interest had brightened clouded. + +"No, I'm going home--to Idaho--I'm not painting any more." + +All the tragedy to a whole-souled Latin Quarter art student that this +implied was not revealed to Bulstrode, but, as it was, his sensitive +kindness felt so much already that it ached. He hastened toward his +goal with eagerness: + +"I'm so awfully sorry! Because, do you know, I was going to ask you if +you couldn't possibly paint my portrait?" It came from him on the spur +of the moment. His frank eyes met hers and might have quailed at his +hypocrisy, but the expression of joy on her face, eclipsing everything +else, dazzled him. + +She cried out impulsively: + +"Oh--goodness!" so loud that one or two tea-drinkers turned about. +After a second, having gained control and half as though she expected +some motive she did not understand: + +"But you never _heard_ of me before to-day! I don't believe you +_really_ liked that portrait over there so very much." + +With a candor that impressed her he assured her: "I give you my word of +honor I've never felt quite so about any portrait before." + +Here Miss Desprey had a cup of tea handed her by a vague-eyed girl who +stumbled over Bulstrode in her ministrations, much to her confusion. + +Laura Desprey drank her tea with avidity, put the cup down on the table +near, and leaning over to her patron, exclaimed: + +"I just _can't_ believe I've got an order!" + +Bulstrode affirmed smiling: "You have, and if you could arrange to stay +over for it--if it would," he delicately put, "be worth your while----" + +She said quietly: + +"Yes, it would be worth my while." + +A _distrait_ look passed over her face for a second, and Bulstrode saw +he was forgotten in, as he supposed, a painter's vision of an order and +its contingent technicalities. + +"I can begin at once." He lost no time. "I'm quite free." + +"But--I have no studio." + +"There must be studios to rent." + +Yes. She knew of one; she could secure it for a month. It would take +that time--she was a slow worker. + +"But we haven't discussed the price." Before so much poverty and +struggle--not that it was new to him, but clothed like this in beauty +it was rare and appealed to him--he was embarrassed by his riches. +"Now the price. I want," he meditated, "a full-length portrait, with a +great deal of background, just as handsome and expensive looking as you +can paint it." + +He exquisitely sacrificed himself and winced at his own words, and saw +her color with amusement and a little scorn, but he went on bravely: + +"Now for a man like me, Miss Desprey--I am sure you will know what I +mean--a man who has never been painted before--this picture will have +to cost me a lot of money. You see otherwise my friends would not +appreciate it." + +In the vulgarian he was making himself out to be his friends would not +have recognized the unpretentious Bulstrode. + +"Get the place, Miss Desprey, and let me come as soon as you can. All +this change of plans will give you extra expenses--I understand about +that! Every time I change my rooms it costs me a fortune. Now if you +will let me send you over a check for half payment on the picture, for, +let us say"--he made it as large as he dared and a quarter of what he +wanted. They were alone in the tea-room, the motley gathering had +weeded itself out. Miss Desprey turned pale. + +"No," she gasped; "I couldn't take anything like half so much for the +whole thing." + +Bulstrode said coldly: + +"I'm afraid I must insist, Miss Desprey; I couldn't order less than a +fifteen-hundred dollar portrait. It's the sum I have planned to pay +when I'm painted." + +"But a celebrated painter would paint it for that." + +Bulstrode smiled fatuously. + +"Can't a man pay for his fads? I want to be painted by the person who +did that portrait over there, Miss Desprey." + + +In a tiny studio--the dingy chrysalis of a Bohemian art +student--Bulstrode posed for his portrait. + +Each morning saw him set forth from the Ritz alert and debonaire in his +fastidious toilet---saw him cross the Place Vendome, the bridge, and +lose his worldly figure in the lax nonchalant crowd of the Quarter +Latin. At the end of an alley as narrow and picturesque as a lane in a +colored print he knocked at a green door, and was admitted to the +studio by his protegee. In another second he had assumed his +prescribed position according to the pose, and Miss Desprey before her +easel began the _seance_. + +On these May days the glass roof admitted delightful gradations of +glory to the commonplace _atelier_. A few cheap casts, a few yards of +mustard-toned burlaps, some Botticelli and Manet photographs, a mangy +divan, and a couple of chairs were the furnishings. It had been +impossible for Bulstrode to pass indifferently the venders of flowers +in the festive, brilliant streets, and great bunches of _girofle_, +hyacinths, and narcissi overflowed the earthenware pitchers and vases +with which the studio was plentifully supplied. The soft, sharp +fragrance rose above the shut-in odor of the _atelier_, and, while Miss +Desprey worked, her patron looked at her across waves of spring perfume. + +Her painting-dress, a garment of _beige_ linen, half belted in at the +waist and entirely covering her, made her to Bulstrode, from the crown +of her fair hair to the tip of her old tan shoes, seem all of one +color. He had taken tremendous interest in his pose, in the progress +of the work. He would have looked at the portrait every few moments, +but Miss Desprey refused him even a glimpse. He was to wait until all +manner of strange things took place on the canvas, till "schemes and +composition" were determined, "proper values" arrived at, and he +listened to her glib school terms with respect and a sanguine hope that +with the aid of such potent technicalities and his interest she might +be able to achieve this time something short of atrocious. + +He posed faithfully for Miss Desprey, and smiled at her with friendly +eyes whenever he caught anything more personal than the squinting +glance with which she professionally regarded him, putting him far away +or fetching him near, according to her art's requirements. They talked +in his rest, and he took pleasure in telling her how he enjoyed his +morning walks from his hotel, how the outdoor life delighted him, and +how all the suburban gardens seemed to have been brought to Paris to +glow and blossom in the venders' carts or in little baskets on the +backs of women and boys, and how thoroughly well worth living he +thought life in Paris was. + +"There is," he finished, "nothing in the world which compares to the +Paris spring-time, I believe, but I have never been West. What is +spring like in Idaho?" + +Miss Desprey laughed, touched her ruffled hair with painty fingers, +blushed, and mused. + +"Oh, it's all right, I guess. There's a trolley-line in Centreville, +an electric plant and the oil works--no trees, no flowers, and the +people all look alike. So you see"--she had a dazzling way of shaking +her head, when her fine white teeth, her sunny dishevelled hair, her +bright cheeks and eyes seemed all to flash and chime together--"so you +see, spring in Centreville and _Paris_ isn't the same thing at all! +Things are beautiful everywhere," she assured him slowly as she +painted, "if you're happy--and I was very unhappy in Centreville, so I +thought I'd come away and try to have a career." She poured out a long +stream of _garance_ from the tube on to her palette. Bulstrode +watched, fascinated. + +"And here in Paris, are you--have you been happy here?" + +"Oh, dear no!" she laughed; "perfectly miserable. And it used to seem +as though it was cruel of the city to be so gay and happy when I +couldn't join in--" Bulstrode, remembering the one franc a day and the +very questionable inspiration her poor art could impart, understood; +his face was full of feeling--"until," she went slowly on, "lately." +She stepped behind the canvas and was lost to sight. "I've been +awfully happy in Paris for the first time. I do like beautiful +things--but I like beautiful people better--and you're +beautiful--beautiful." + +She finished with a blush and a smile. + +Bulstrode grew to think nothing at all about his portrait further than +fervently to hope it would not shock him beyond power to disguise. But +Miss Desprey was frightfully in earnest, and worked until her eyes +glowed with excitement and her cheeks burned. Strong and vigorous and +(Bulstrode over and over again said) "young, so young!" she never +evinced any signs of fatigue, but stood when his limbs trembled under +him and looked up radiant when he was ready to cry "_Grace!_" In her +enthusiasm she would have given him two sittings a day, but this his +worldly relations would not permit. As she painted, painted, her head +on one side sometimes, sometimes thrown back, her eyes half closed, he +studied her with pleasure and delight. + +"What a pity she paints so dreadfully ill! What a pity she paints at +all! What difference, after all, does it make _what_ she does? She's +so pretty and feminine!" She was a clinging, sweet creature, and the +walk and the flower debauch he permitted himself, the long quiet hours +of companionship with this lovely girl in the _atelier_, illumined, +accentuated, and intensified Bulstrode's already fatuous appreciation +of the spring in Paris. + +During Bulstrode's artistic mornings there distilled itself into the +studio a magic to which he was not insensitive. Whether or not it came +with the flowers or with the delicate filtering of the sun through the +studio light, who can say, but as he stood in his assumed position of +_nonchalance_ he was more and more charmed by his painter. The spell +he naturally felt should, and for long indeed did, emanate from the +slender figure, lost at times behind her canvas, and at times +completely in his view. + +For years Bulstrode had been the victim of hope, or rather in this case +of intent, _to love again_--to love anew! Neither of these statements +is the correct way of putting it. He tried with good faith to prove +himself to be what was so generally claimed for him by his +friends--susceptible; alas, he knew better! + +As he meditatively studied the blonde young girl he spun for himself to +its end the idea of picking her up, carrying her off, marrying her, +shutting Idaho away definitely, and opening to her all that his wealth +and position could of life and the world. He grew tender at the +thought of her poor struggle, her insufficient art, her ambition. It +fascinated him to think of playing the good fairy, of touching her +gray, hard life to color and beauty, and as the beauty and the holy +intimacy of home occurred to him, and marriage, his thoughts wandered +as pilgrims whose feet stray back in the worn ways and find their own +old footprints there, ... and after a few moments Miss Desprey was like +to be farther away from his meditations than Centreville is from Paris, +and the personality of the dream-woman was another. Once Miss +Desprey's voice startled him out of such a reverie by bidding him, +"_Please_ take the pose, Mr. Bulstrode!" As he laughed and apologized +he caught her eyes fixed on him with, as he thought, a curious +expression of affection and sympathy--indeed, tears sprang to them. +She reddened and went furiously back to work. She was more personal +that day than she had yet been. She seemed, after having surprised his +absent-mindedness, to feel that she had a right to him--quite ordered +him about, and was almost petulant in her exactions of his positions. + +Her work evidently advanced to her satisfaction. + +As she stood elated before her easel, her hair in sunny disorder, her +eyes like stars, Bulstrode was conscious there was a change in her--she +was excited and tremulous. In her frayed dress, sagging at the edges, +her paint-smeared apron, her slender thumb through the hole in the +palette, she came over to him at the close of the sitting, started to +speak, faltered, and said: + +"You don't know what it means to me--all you have done. And I can't +ever tell you." + +"Oh, don't," he pleaded, "pray don't speak of it!" + +Miss Desprey, half radiant and half troubled, turned away as if she +were afraid of his eyes. + +"No, I won't try to tell you. I couldn't, I don't dare," she +whispered, and impulsively caught his hand and kissed it. + +When he had left the studio finally it was with a bewildering sense of +having kissed her hand--no, both of her hands! but one held her palette +and he _couldn't_ have kissed that one without having got paint on his +nose--perhaps he had! He was not at peace. + + +That same night a telegram brought him news to the effect that Miss +Desprey was ill and would not expect him to pose the following day; and +relieved that it was not required of him to resume immediately the +over-charged relations, he went back to his old habit, rudely broken +into by his artistic escapade, and walked far into the Bois. + +He thought with alarming persistency of Miss Desprey. He was +chivalrous with women, old-fashioned and clean-minded and +straight-lived. In the greatest, in the only passion of his life, he +had been a Chevalier Bayard, and he could look back upon no incidents +in which he had played the part which men of the world pride themselves +on playing well. Women were mysterious and wonderful to him. Because +of one he approached them all with a feeling not far from worship; and +he had no intention of doing a dishonorable thing. Puzzled, +self-accusing--although he did not quite know of what he was guilty--he +sat down as he had done several weeks before on the bench in the Avenue +des Acacias. With extraordinary promptness, as if arranged by a +scene-setter, a girl's figure came quickly out of a side alley. She +was young--her figure betrayed it. She went quickly over to a seat and +sat down. She was weeping and covered her face with her hands. +Bulstrode, this time without hesitation, went directly over to her: + +"My dear Miss Desprey----" + +She sprang up and displayed a face disfigured with weeping. + +"_You_!" she exclaimed with something like terror. "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" + +Her words shuddered in sobs. + +"Don't stay here! Why did you come? Please go--please." + +Bulstrode sat down beside her and took her hands. + +"I'm not going away--not until I know what your trouble is. You were +in distress when I first saw you here and you wouldn't let me help you +then. Now you can't refuse me. What is it?" + +He found she was clinging to his hands as she found voice enough to say: + +"No, I can't tell you. I couldn't ever tell you. It's not the same +trouble, it's a new one and worse. I guess it's the worst thing in the +world." + +Bulstrode was pitiless: + +"One that has come lately to you?" + +"Oh, yes!" + +She was weeping more quietly now. + +"Please leave me: please go, Mr. Bulstrode." + +"A trouble with which I have had anything to do?" + +She waited a long time, then faintly breathed: + +"Yes." + +The hand he firmly held was gloveless and cold--before he could say +anything further she drew it away from him and cried: + +"Oh, I ought never to have let you guess! You were so good and kind, +you meant to help me so, but it's been the worst help of all, only you +couldn't know that," she pleaded for him. "Please forgive me if I seem +ungrateful, but if I had known that I was going to suffer like this I +would have wished never to see you in the world." + +Bulstrode was trying to speak, but she wouldn't let him: + +"I never can see you again. Never! You mustn't come any more." + +But here she half caught her breath and sobbed with what seemed naive +and adorable daring: + +"Unless you can help me through, Mr. Bulstrode--it is your fault, after +all." + +If this were a virtual throwing of herself into his arms, they were all +but open to her and the generous heart was all but ready "to see her +through." Bulstrode was about to do, and say, the one rash and +irrevocable perfect thing when at this minute fate again at the ring of +the curtain opportuned. The tap, tapping, of a pony's feet was heard +and a gay little cart came brightly along. Bulstrode saw it. He +sprang to his feet. It was close upon them. + +"You will let me come to-morrow?" he asked eagerly, + +"Oh, yes," she whispered; "yes, I shall count on you. I beg you will +come." + + +"Jimmy," said the lady severely as he accepted her invitation to get +into the cart, "this is the second wicked rendezvous I have +interrupted. I didn't know you were anything like this, and I've seen +that girl before, but I can't remember where." + +"Don't try," said Bulstrode. + +"And she was crying. Of course you made her cry." + +"Well," said Bulstrode desperately, "if I did, it's the first woman +that has ever cried for me." + + +As the reason why Bulstrode had never married was again in Paris, he +went up in the late afternoon to see her. + +The train of visitors who showed their appreciation of her by thronging +her doors had been turned away, but Bulstrode was admitted. The man +told him, "Mrs. Falconer will see you, sir," by which he had the +agreeably flattered feeling that she would see nobody else. + +When he was opposite her the room at once dwindled, contracted, as +invariably did every place in which they found themselves together, +into one small circle containing himself and one woman. Mrs. Falconer +said at once to Bulstrode: + +"Jimmy, you're in trouble--in one of your quandaries. What useless +good have you been doing, and who has been sharper than a serpent's +tooth to you?" + +Bulstrode's late companionship with youth had imparted to him a boyish +look. His friend narrowly observed him, and her charming face clouded +with one of those almost imperceptible _nuances_ that the faces of +those women wear who feel everything and by habit reveal nothing. + +"I'm not a victim." Bulstrode's tone was regretful. "One might say, +on the contrary, this time that I was possibly overpaid." + +"Yes?" + +"I haven't," he explained and regretted, "seen you for a long time." + +"I've been automobiling in Touraine." Mrs. Falconer gave him no +opportunity to be delinquent. + +"And I," he confessed, "have been posing for my portrait. Don't," he +pleaded, "laugh at me--it isn't for a miniature or a locket; it's +life-size, horribly life-size. I've had to stand, off and on with the +rests, three hours a day, and I've done so _every day for three weeks_." + +Mrs. Falconer regarded him with indulgent amusement. + +"It's your fault--you took me to see those awful school-girl paintings +and pointed out that poor young creature to me." And he was +interrupted by her exclamation: + +"Oh, how _dear_ of you, Jimmy! how sweet and kind and ridiculous! It +won't be fit to be seen." + +"Oh, never mind that," he waved; "no one need see it. I haven't--she +won't let me." + +He had accepted a cup of tea from the lady's hand; he drank it off and +sat down, holding the empty cup as if he held his fate. + +"Tell me," she urged, "all about it. It was just like you--any other +man would have found means to show charity, but you have shown +unselfish goodness, and that's the rarest thing in the world. Fancy +posing every day! How ghastly and how wonderful of you!" + +"No," he said slowly, "it wasn't any of these things. I wanted to do +it. It amused me at first, you see. But now I am a little +annoyed--rather bothered to tell the truth--He met her eyes with almost +an appeal in his. Mrs. Falconer was in kindness bound to help him. + +"Bothered? How, pray? With what part of it? You're not chivalrous +about it, are you? You're not by the way of feeling that you have +compromised her by posing?" + +"Oh, no, no," he hurried; "but I do feel, and I am frank to +acknowledge, that it was a mistake. Because--do you know--that for +some absurd reason I am afraid she has become fond of me." He blushed +like a boy. Mrs. Falconer said coldly: + +"Yes? Well, what of it?" + +"This--" Bulstrode's voice was quiet and determined--"if I am right I +shall marry her." + +Mrs. Falconer had the advantage over most women of completely +understanding the man with whom she dealt. She knew that to attempt to +turn from its just and generous source any intent of Mr. Bulstrode +would have been as futile as to attempt to turn a river from its parent +fountain. + +"You're quixotic, I know, but you're not demented, and you won't +certainly marry this nobody--whose fancies or love-affairs have not the +least importance. You won't ever see her again unless you are in love +with her yourself." + +Bulstrode interrupted her hastily: + +"Oh, yes, I shall." + +He got up and walked over to the window that looked down on Mrs. +Falconer's trim little garden. A couple of iron chairs and a table +stood under the trees. Early roses had begun to bloom in the beds +whose outlines were thick and dark with heart's-ease. Beyond the iron +rail of the high wall the distant rumble of Paris came to his ears. +Mrs. Falconer's voice behind him said: + +"She's a very pretty girl, and young enough to be your daughter." + +"No," he said quietly, "not by many years." + +As he turned about and came back to the lady the room seemed to have +grown darker and she to sit in the shadow. She leaned toward him, +laughing: + +"So you have come to announce at last the famous marriage of yours we +have so often planned together." + +Bulstrode stood looking down on her. + +"I feel myself responsible," he said gravely. "She was going home, and +by a mistaken impulse I came in and changed her plans. She is +perfectly alone and perfectly poor, and I am not going to add to her +perplexities. I have no one in the world to care what I do. I have no +ties and no duties." + +"No," said Mrs. Falconer; "you are wonderfully free." + +He said vehemently: + +"I am all of a sudden wonderfully miserable." + +He had been in the habit for years of suddenly leaving her without any +warning, and now he put out his hand and bade her good-by, and before +she could detain him had made one of many brusque exits from her +presence. + + +On the following day--a Sunday, as from his delightful apartments in +the Ritz he set forth for the studio, Bulstrode bade good-by to his +bachelor existence. He knew when he should next see the Place Vendome +it would be with the eyes of an engaged man. His life hereafter was to +be shared by a "total stranger." So he pathetically put it, and his +sentimental yearning to share everything with a lovely woman had died a +sudden death. + +"There's no one in the world to care a rap what I do--really," he +reflected, "and in this case I have run up against it--that's the long +and the short of the matter--and I shall see it through." + +As he set out for Miss Desprey's along his favorite track he remarked +that the gala, festive character of Paris had entirely disappeared. +The season had gone back on him by several months, and the melancholy +of autumn and dreary winter cast a gloom over his boyish spirits. A +very slight rain was falling. Bulstrode began to feel a twinge of +rheumatism in his arm and as he irritably opened his umbrella his +spirits dropped beneath it and his brisk, springy walk sagged to +something resembling the gait of a middle-aged gentleman. But he urged +himself into a better mood, however, at the sight of a flower-shop +whose delicate wares huddled appealingly close to the window. He went +in and purchased an enormous bunch of--he hesitated--there were certain +flowers he _could_ not, would _not_ send! The selection his +sentimental reserve imposed therefore consisted of sweet-peas, +_girofles_, and a big cluster of white roses, all very girlish and +virginal. His bridal offering in his hand, he took a cab and drove to +the other side of the river with lead at his good heart and, he almost +fancied, a lump in his throat. He paid the coachman, whose careless +spirits he envied, and slowly walked down the picturesque alley of +Impasse du Maine. + +"There isn't a man I know--not a man in the Somerset Club--who would be +as big a fool as this!" + +He had more than a mind to leave the flowers on the doorstep and run. +Bulstrode would have done so now that he was face to face with his +quixotic folly, but his cab had been heard as well as his steps on the +walk, and the door was opened by Miss Desprey herself. The girl's +colorless face, her eyes spoiled with tears, and a pretty, sad dignity, +which became her well, struck her friend with the sincerity and depth +of her grief, and as the good gentleman shook hands with her he +realized that less than ever in the world could he add a featherweight +of grief to the burden of this helpless creature. + +"My dearest child!" He lifted her hand to his lips. + +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode, I'm so glad you've come, I was so afraid you +wouldn't--after yesterday!" + +His arms were still full of white paper, roses, and sweet-peas. + +"Oh, don't give them to me, Mr. Bulstrode! Oh, why, did you bring +them? Oh, dear, what will you think of me?" She had possessed herself +of the flowers and with agitation and distress hastily thrust them, as +if she wanted to hide them, behind the draperies of the couch. +Bulstrode murmured something of whose import he was scarcely conscious. +As she came tearfully back to him she let him take her hands. He felt +that she clung to him. "It would have spoiled my life if you hadn't +come. I would have just gone and jumped in the Seine. I may yet. Oh, +you don't understand! It's been hard to be poor--I've been often +hungry--but this last thing was too much. When you found me yesterday +I didn't want to live any more." + +Bulstrode's kind clasp warmed the cold little hands. As tenderly as he +could he looked at her agitated prettiness. + +"Don't talk like that"--he tried for her first name and found it. +"Laura, you will let me make it all right, my dear? You will let me, +won't you? You shall never know another care if I can prevent it." + +She interrupted with hasty gratitude: + +"Nobody else can make it all right but you." + +He tried softly: + +"Did I, then, make it so very wrong?" + +She murmured, too overcome to trust herself to say much: + +"Yes!" + +She was standing close to him, and lifted her appealing face to his. +Her excitement communicated itself to him; he bent toward her about to +kiss her, when the door of the studio sharply opened, and before +Bulstrode could do more than swiftly draw back and leave Miss Desprey +free an exceedingly tall and able-bodied man entered without ceremony. + +The girl gave a cry, ran from Bulstrode, and, so to speak, threw +herself against the arms of the stranger, for there were none open to +receive her. + +"Oh, here's Mr. Bulstrode, Dan! I knew he'd come; and he'll tell +you--won't you, Mr. Bulstrode? Tell him, please, that I don't care +anything at all about you and you don't care anything about me.... +That you don't want to marry me or anything. Oh, please make him +believe it!" + +The poor gentleman's senses and brain whirling together made him giddy. +He felt as though he had just been whisked up from the edge of a +precipice over which he ridiculously dangled. Dan, who represented the +rescuer, was not prepossessing. He was the complete and unspoiled type +of Western youth; the girl herself was an imperfect and exquisite +hybrid. + +"I don't know that this gentleman can explain to me"--the young fellow +threw his boyish head back--"or that I care to hear him." + +She gave a cry, sharp and wounded. The sound touched the now normal, +thoroughly grateful patron, who had come out of his ordeal with as much +kindly sensibility as he went in. + +"Of course, my dear young lady"--he perfectly understood the +situation--"I will tell your friend the facts of our acquaintance. +That's what you want me to do, isn't it?" + +She was weeping and hanging on to the unyielding arm of her cross +lover, who glared at the intruding Bulstrode with a youthful jealousy +at which the older man smiled while he envied it. He pursued +impressively: + +"Miss Desprey has been painting my portrait for the past few weeks. I +gave her the order at the Art League; other than painter and sitter we +have no possible interest in each other--Mr.----" + +"Gregs," snapped the stranger, "Daniel Gregs!" + +The slender creature, whose eyes never left the stolid, uncompromising +face, repeated eagerly: + +"_No possible interest_--Dan--none! He doesn't care anything about me +at all! You heard what he said, didn't you? I only like him like a +kind, kind friend." + +[Illustration: "I only like him like a kind, kind friend"] + +Her voice, soft as a flower, caressed and pleaded with the passionate +tenderness of a woman who feels that an inadvertent word may keep for +her or lose for her the man she adores. + +"My dear man," exclaimed Bulstrode in great irritation, "you ought to +be ashamed to let her cry like that! Can't you _understand_--don't you +see?" + +"No," shortly caught up the other, "I don't! I've come here from South +Africa, where I'm prospecting some mines for a company at Centreville, +and I heard she was poor and unhappy, and I hurried up my things so I +could come to Paris and marry her and take her with me, and here I find +her painting every day alone with a rich man, her place all fixed up +with flowers, and a thousand dollars in the bank"--his cheek +reddened--"I don't like it! And that's all there is to it!" he +finished shortly. + +"No, my friend," said the other severely, "there's a great deal more. +If, from what you say, and the way you speak, you wish me to understand +you have a real interest in Miss Desprey, you can follow me when I say +that I came here and found her a lonely, forsaken girl, obliged to +return to Idaho when she didn't want to go, without any money or any +friends. May I ask you why, if there was any one in the world who +cared for her, she should be left so deserted?" + +The girl here turned her face from her lover to her champion. + +"Don't please blame Dan for that. He was so poor, too. He didn't have +anything when he went to South Africa; it was just a chance if he would +succeed. And he was working for me, so that he could get married." + +Gregs interrupted: + +"I don't owe this gentleman any explanation!" + +"No," accepted the other gently, "perhaps not, but you mustn't, on the +other hand, refuse to hear mine. Be reasonable. Why _shouldn't_ Miss +Desprey have an order for a portrait?" + +Gregs, over the golden head against his arm, looked at Bulstrode: + +"_She_ can't paint!" His tone was gentler. "Laura can't paint, and +you know it!" + +"Dan!" she whispered; "how cruel you are to me!" + +And here the desperate Bulstrode broke in: + +"He is, indeed, Miss Desprey, cruel and unjust, and I frankly ask leave +to tell him so. You don't deserve the girl, Mr. Gregs, if she's yours, +as she seems to be." + +But the girl clung closer, as if she still feared Bulstrode might try +to rescue her. + +"That's all right," frowned the miner. "I am no better and no worse +than any man about his girl, and I'm going to know _just where I +stand_!" + +The gentleman's reply was caustic. "I should be inclined to say you'd +find it hard to be in a better place." + +Laura Desprey had wound her arms around Mr. Gregs. Bulstrode held out +his hand. She couldn't take it, nor could her lover. With arrogant +obstinacy he had folded his arms across his chest. + +"Come, can't we be friends?" urged the amiable gentleman. "I seem to +have made trouble when I only wanted to be friendly. Let me set it +right before I go. I am lunching in Versailles, and I have to take the +noon train from the Gare Montparnasse." + +But Daniel Gregs did not unbend to the affable proposition. Miss +Desprey said: + +"When you saw me yesterday in the park, Mr. Bulstrode, Dan had just +come back the day before. I was putting the flowers you sent me in +fresh water when he came in on me all of a sudden. Oh, it was so +splendid at first! I was _so_ happy--until he asked all about you, and +then he grew so angry and said unless you could explain to him a lot of +things he would go away and never see me again, and when you found me I +was crying because I thought he had left me forever. I hadn't seen him +for two years, and if you hadn't helped me to stay on here I should +have had to go to Idaho, and I wouldn't have seen him at all. You +ought to _thank_ him, Dan." + +Bulstrode interrupted: + +"Indeed, Mr. Gregs, you should, you know!--you should thank me; come, +be generous." + +Dan relaxed his grim humor a little. + +"When I get through with this South African business I'm going back to +Centreville, and if I ever get her out of this Paris _she'll_ never see +it again!" + +"Dan," she breathed, "I don't want to. Centreville is good enough for +me." + +(Centreville! The horrible environment he was to have snatched her +from. Bulstrode smiled softly.) + +"But this money," pursued the dogged lover, returning to his grudge. +"You've got to take it back, Mr. Bulstrode. No picture on earth is +worth a thousand dollars, and certainly not Laura's." + +"Oh, Dan!" she exclaimed. + +But her friend said firmly: "The portrait is mine. Come, don't be +foolish. If Miss Desprey is willing to marry you and go out to Idaho, +take the money and buy her some pretty clothes and things." + +Here the girl herself interrupted excitedly: + +"No, no! We couldn't take it. I don't want any new clothes. If Dan +doesn't care how shabby I am, I don't. I don't want anything in the +world but just to go with Dan." + +At this sweet tenderness Dan's face entirely changed, his arms +unfolded; he put them around her. + +"That's all right, little girl." His tone thrilled through Bulstrode +more than the woman's tears had done. He understood why she wanted to +go to him, and how she could be drawn. He had at times in his life +lost money, and sometimes heavily, and he had never felt poor before. +In the same words, but in a vastly different tone, Dan Gregs held out +his hand to Bulstrode. + +"That's all right, sir. When a fellow travels thousands and thousands +of miles to get his girl and hasn't much more than his car fare and he +runs up against another fellow who has got the rocks and all and who he +thinks is sweet on his girl, it makes him crazy--just crazy!" + +"I see"--Bulstrode sympathetically understood--"and I don't at all +wonder." + +They were all three shaking hands together and Bulstrode said: + +"Would you believe it, I haven't seen my portrait, Miss Desprey." + +Dan Gregs grinned. + +"Don't," he said, "don't look at it. It's what made all the trouble. +When I saw it yesterday and Laura told me it had drawn a thousand +dollars--why I said 'there isn't a man living who would give you fifty +cents for it.' That made her mad at first. Then she told me you +thought she was a great portrait-painter, and I knew you must be sweet +on her. I'm fond of her all right, but I decided that you were bound +to have her and didn't care how you dealt your cards, and I thought I'd +clear out." + +His face fell and threatened to cloud over, but it cleared again as +with the remembrance of his doubts came the actual sense of the woman +whose face was hidden on his breast, and he lightly touched the dusty +golden hair. + +When in a few seconds Bulstrode took leave of them, Miss Desprey, in +her dingy painting-dress, seemed completely swallowed up in the embrace +of the big Dan Gregs. From where he stood by the door Bulstrode could +see the white corner of his _fiancailles_ bouquet sticking out from the +draperies of the couch. The paper was open and in the heat of the warm +little _atelier_ the fresh odor of the pungent flowers came strongly on +the air. + +Bulstrode as he said good-by seemed to say it--and to look at the +lovers--through a haze of perfume--a perfume that, like the most +precious things in the world, pervades and affects, suggests and +impresses, while its existence is unseen, unknown to the world. + + +Once in his train, he had been able to catch it at the Invalides after +all, Jimmy drew a long breath and settled back into himself, for, he +had been, poor dear, during the past three weeks, in another man's +shoes and profiting by another man's identity. It was perfectly +heavenly to feel that he had been liberated by the merciful providence +which takes care to provide the right lover for the right place. He +couldn't be too grateful for the miracle which saved him from a +sacrifice alongside of which Abraham's would have been a jest indeed. + +The June morning was warm and through the open car window, as the train +went comfortably along, the perfume of the country came into him where +he sat. Opposite, a pair of lovers frankly and naturally showed their +annoyance at the third person's intrusion, and Bulstrode, +sympathetically turned himself about and became absorbed in Suburban +Paris. His heart beat high at the fact of his deliverance. His +gratitude was sincere--moreover, his thoughts were of an agreeable +trend, and he was able to forget everybody else within twelve miles. +Secure in his impersonality and in the indifference of his broad +unseeing back, the lovers kissed and held hands. + +Bulstrode wandered slowly up from the Versailles station to the Hotel +des Reservoirs, crossed the broad square of the Palace Court, found the +pink and yellow facade more mellow and perfect than ever, and toward +twelve-thirty strolled into the yard of the old hostelry. Breakfast +had been set for twelve-thirty, but his host was not there. + +"Ah--mais, bon jour, Monsieur Bulstrode!" The proprietor knew and +appreciated this client greatly. + +Monsieur Falconer, it seemed, had been called suddenly to Paris.... +Yes--well--there were, now and then, in the course of life, bits of +news that could be borne with fortitude. "And Madame has also been +called to Paris?" + +"Mais non!" Madame had a few minutes since gone out in the Park, the +proprietor thought she would not be very far away. + +Bulstrode thanked him, and crossed over to the hedge and the gateway +and through it to the Palace Gardens. On all sides the paths stretched +broad and inviting toward the various alleys, and upon the terrace to +his left there shone a thousand flowers in June abundance. The +gentleman chose the first path that opened, and went carelessly down +it, and in a few moments the pretty ring of an embowered circle spread +before him, but, although there was an inviting marble bench under a +big tree at one side, and several eighteenth century marbles on their +pedestals, illuminated by the bland eighteenth century smile, there was +not a living woman in sight to make him, the visitor, welcome! He went +a little further along and found another felicitous, harmonious circle, +where a small fountain threw its jets on the June air. At the sound of +the water Bulstrode remembered that the Grands Eaux were to play on +this afternoon at Versailles. + +"Ah, _that_ is why they especially wanted me to come out to-day," he +decided. + +On the other side of the fountain, the vivid white of her summer dress +making a flash like moonlight on the obscurity of the woods, a lady was +standing looking across at Mr. Bulstrode. + +"Hush!" she said; "come over softly, Jimmy; there is a timid third +party here." + +On a branch at her side, where an oriole sat, his head thrown back, his +throat swelling, there was a little stir and flutter of leaves, for +although the lady had put her finger to her lips, her voice broke the +spell, and a bit of yellow flashed through the trees. + +"I don't believe _he_ will ever forgive you!" she cried; "you spoiled +his solo, but I'll forgive you. What brought you out to Versailles +to-day?" + +"The fountains," Bulstrode told her; "I have never seen them play. +Then, too--there are certain places to which, when I am asked to +luncheon, I always go." + +"That's quite true," she accepted; "you _were_ invited!--but, to be +perfectly frank, I did not expect you, so your coming on this occasion +has only the pleasure of a surprise. As a rule, I hate them. My +husband informed me that he would telephone you to meet him in Paris, +but I think he must have forgotten you, Jimmy." + +She was taking him in from his fresh panama to his boots, and she +apparently found an air of festivity about him. + +"Was it," she asked, "in honor of the fountains' playing that you have +made yourself so beautiful?" + +Bulstrode took the boutonniere out of his coat lapel and handed it to +her. "Can't you pin it in somewhere?" Mrs. Falconer laughed and +thrust the carnation into her bodice. + +"I dressed to-day, more or less," Mr. Bulstrode confessed, "in order to +attend--well, what shall I call it--a betrothal? That's a good +old-fashioned word." + +"Oh!" exclaimed the lady, "a _fiancailles_?" + +"Yes." + +The two had wandered slowly along, out of the Bosquet towards the +canals. + +"They make a great deal of these functions in France," Mrs. Falconer +said. + +Her companion agreed. "They made a great deal, rather more than usual, +out of this one." And his tone was so suggestive that his companion +looked up at him quickly. + +"Who _are_ your mysterious lovers?" she asked, "are they French? Do I +know them?" + +"They are not in the least mysterious," Bulstrode assured her. "I +never saw anything less complex and more simple. They are Americans." + +She seemed now to understand that she was to hear of "one of Jimmy's +adventures," as she called his dashes in other people's affairs. + +"I hope, Jimmy, in this case, that you have pulled the affair off to +your credit, and that if you have made a match the creatures will be +grateful to you for once! And, by the way," she bethought; "whatever +has happened to the pretty girl whom you were quixotic enough to think +you had to marry?" + +"The last time I saw her she appeared to be in the best of +circumstances," Bulstrode answered cheerfully. "In point of fact--it +was, singularly enough, to _her_ engagement party that I went to-day!" + +And Mrs. Falconer now showed real interest and feeling. "No! how +delightful. So she is really off your hands, Jimmy. Well, that is too +good to be true. There's one at least whom you don't have to marry, +Jimmy!" + +"Oh, they grow beautifully less," he agreed. + +Mrs. Falconer smiled softly. + +"They are narrowing down every year," Jimmy went on; "when I am about +sixty the number will be reduced, I dare say, to the proper quantity." + +"What a goose you are," she said jestingly. "What a tease and a bother +you are, Jimmy Bulstrode; _I'll_ find you a proper wife!" + +He accepted warmly. "Do, do! I leave myself quite in your hands." + +His companion extended him her hand as she spoke, and after lifting it +to his lips, Bulstrode drew it through his arm. It was clothed in a +glove of pale coffee-color suede. It was a soft, dear hand, and rested +as if it were at home on Bulstrode's gray sleeve. Side by side the two +friends walked slowly out toward the broader avenues leading to the +canals. The sky was faintly blue, touched with the edges of some +drifting cloud, like dashes of foam. The trees about them lifted dark +velvet masses and the air was sweet with the scent of the woods and +flowers. + +"Isn't this the most beautiful garden in the world?" murmured Mrs. +Falconer. "Isn't it _too_ beautiful!" + +"Very," he incorrectly and vaguely answered. And the lady went on to +say how brilliant she found the place with the suggestions and memories +of the past royal times, whilst Bulstrode said nothing at all, because +he did not want to tell her that Versailles and the charming alleys, +and France, and the great big world, from limit to limit, was full of +no ghosts to him, but of just one woman. + + + + +THE THIRD ADVENTURE + + + +III + +IN WHICH HE FINDS THERE ARE SOME THINGS WHICH ONE CANNOT BUY + +After not a great deal of hesitation, toward the middle of a warm June, +Bulstrode permitted himself to become the proprietor of a palace: not +an inhabitant of the ordinary dwelling modelled after some old-world +wonder, wherein American millionaires choose to spend their leisure in +their own country--but of a real traditional palace, in whose charming +rooms no object was younger than Bulstrode's great-grandfather, and +where the enchanting women of the Fragonards and Nattiers almost made +him, as he mused upon them, lose sight for a moment of a living lady. + +On the very first day he went over the Hotel Montensier from _grenier_ +to _caves_, Jimmy Bulstrode gave in, and accepted the Duc de +Montensier's proposition to "fetch his traps for a few months to the +hotel and turn Parisian." He was in the heart of Paris, yet all around +him, shut in by high walls, was a garden, to which the terraces of the +house gave in flights of marble steps. When his friend suggested that +Bulstrode turn Parisian, Jimmy laughed. "Do you think," he had asked, +"that a chap born in Providence, educated in Harvard, and, if +cosmopolitan, thoroughly American from start to finish, could, _mon +cher_, turn Parisian?" And the Duc had assured him that he did not +think Bulstrode had a "Latin eyelash," and that he needn't be at all +afraid to try his luck at what a French house would do for him! "Why, +your coat alone--the cut of it--" Montensier had laughed, "speaks of +Poole with a Boston compromise! + +The Duc had been in the United States--moreover, the Frenchman had +plans of his own and he wanted very much to go to Newport and leave his +house in the care of Jimmy Bulstrode. Whether the Puritan in him led +Bulstrode to excuse to himself his enjoyment of so much luxury, at any +rate he apologized, saying that nobody could expect a man with a love +of the beautiful, and who had more or less a desire to shut himself up +and to shut himself away for a time, to refuse. + +The Falconers were off somewhere _en auto_. He had thought they had +gone through Spain. It was pretty hot to do such a thing, however, and +he did not really know. He wanted very much to be able not to let +himself follow them, and he knew that there was little chance of his +reaching such stoicism unless he began by not finding out where they +were going! So he shut himself up with the books which the library +offered and gave many charming little dinners and parties on his +terraces in the bland summer nights, and tried with all his might and +main to forget the flight of a certain motor over the fair white roads +and, above all, to nerve himself up to refuse an invitation for the +middle of July. + +Directly opposite the white facade of the Montensiers' hotel was a +hostelry for beggars, for domestics without places; for poor +professors; for actors with no stages but the last; for laborers with +no labor; in short, for the riff-raff of the population, for those who +no longer hold the dignity of profession or pay rent for a term. +Sometimes Bulstrode would look out at the tenement, whose windows in +this season were wide open; and the general aspect indicated that +dislocated fortunes flourished. In one window, pirouetting or dancing +in it, calling out of it, leaning perilously over the sill of it, was a +child--as far as Bulstrode could decide, a creature of about six years +of age. She was too small to see much of, but all he saw was activity, +gesticulation, and perpetual motion. When the day was hot she fanned +herself with a bit of paper. She called far out to the wine-merchant's +wife, who sat with her family before the shop while her pretty children +played in the gutter. + + +In Paris, when the weather climbs to eighty, Parisians count themselves +in the tropics and the people, who lived apparently out of doors +altogether, wore a melted, disheartened air. But the De Montensier +garden, full of roses and heliotrope, watered and refreshed by the +fountains' delightful falling, was a retreat not to be surpassed by +many suburbs. Bulstrode gave little dinners on the terrace; little +suppers after the theatre, when rooms and garden were lighted with +fairy lanterns, and his chef outdid his traditions to please his +American master. + +One day as the American sat smoking on the terrace with nothing more +disturbing than the drip of the fountain and the remote murmur of Paris +to break his reverie, Prosper, his confidential man, made a tentative +appearance. + +"Would m'sieu, _who is so good_, see a young lady?" + +His master smiled as he rose, instinctively at the words "jeune +demoiselle," throwing away his cigar. + +"Pardon, m'sieu, I thought it might amuse m'sieu--" and Prosper stepped +back. + +Bulstrode had been intently thinking of the caravansary opposite him, +and he now saw that part of the _hotel meuble_ had come across the +street; he recognized it immediately for the smallest part. Before him +stood the ridiculous and pathetic figure of a dirty little girl in +rags, tatters, and furbelows, her legs clad in red silk stockings +evidently intended for fuller, shapelier limbs; her feet slipped about +in pattens. She had on a woman's bodice, a long flounced skirt pinned +up to keep her from tripping. Her head was adorned by a torn straw +hat, also contrived and created for the coquetry of maturity. + +"Monsieur is so good," she began in a flute-like voice. "I have come +to thank monsieur with all my heart." + +Bulstrode looked toward Prosper for enlightenment, but that individual +had cleverly disappeared. + +"To thank me, my child? But for what?" + +"Why, for the eggs and butter and sugar that monsieur was so good as to +send me. I have made the cake. It is beautiful! Monsieur le +cuisinier of this house baked it for me. It is perhaps a little +flat--but that was because I got tired stirring. See--it says--" She +had, so he now saw, a book under her arm; letting fall a fold of her +cumbersome dress with both hands and opening a filthy cook-book, she +laid it on the table, bending over it. "It says stir briskly half an +hour." (Her "rs" rolled in her throat like tiny cannons in a rosy +hollow.) "Quelle idee! It was _too_ stupid! Half an hour! I just +mixed it round once or twice and then--voila! it has white on the top +and shall have a candle." + +"So you've made a cake?" he said kindly. "I'm sure it's a good one." + +She nodded brightly. "It is for that I came to thank monsieur and to +ask if he would accept a piece of it." + +Poor Bulstrode, with dreadful suspicion, looked to see part of the +horror immediately offered for his degustation. "I don't, my dear, +understand. Why should you thank _me_--what had I to do with it?" + +Her gesture was delightful. "But for monsieur it would not exist; for +butter, eggs, and flour. Monsieur Prosper, when he gave them, said it +was of the kindness of '_Monsieur Balstro_.'" + +(Oh, Prosper! "I have corrupted _him_," his master thought. "He is as +bad as I am!") + +"Well, I'm very glad indeed," and he said it heartily. "But what did +you especially want to make it for--with the one candle? That means +one year old. Who's birthday may it then be?" + +"It is the birthday of maman." She shut the book, and as she did so +raised her great black eyes, which dirt and neglect could not spoil. +There was in her appearance so little suggestion of maternal care that +Bulstrode nearly incredulously asked, "Your mother? And what, then, +does your mother do?" + +"She's a fish," informed the child tranquilly. And Bulstrode, although +startled, could believe it. It too perfectly accounted for the +cold-blooded indifference to this offspring. Not even a mermaid could +have been guilty of so little care for her child. Still, he repeated: + +"A fish?" + +"Oui, a devil-fish in the aquarium at Bostock's. Oh, que c'est beau!" +she clasped her little hands. "Maman wears a costume of red--quite a +small, thin dress," she described eagerly. "And it is all spangles, +like fire when she dives into the water. I have been; the waiter at +the cafe downstairs took me. I screamed. I thought maman was drowned. +But no--she comes up always!" The child threw her head back and lifted +her eyes in ecstasy. "C'est magnifique!" + +"What is your mother's name?" + +"Mademoiselle Lascaze." + +"And yours?" + +"Simone." + +"What do you do all day, Simone?" + +"I wash and cook and sew and play--I have much to do--oh, much." She +assumed an important air. "The bad air of the room makes maman ill, so +she's out--'to breathe,' she says--and she locks me safely in. I play +Bostock and dive like maman. And sometimes"--she lowered her voice, +and looking back to see if they were alone--confided, "I cry." + +"Ah!" sympathized Bulstrode. + +"But, yes," she insisted, "when maman forgets to come home, and the +night is so black; then the seamstress next door knocks on the wall, +and I knock back for company." + +"I see," he understood gently, "for company." + +He rang for Prosper. "You will conduct mademoiselle home, Prosper, and +give her everything she needs for her kitchen always." + +"Yes, monsieur; I knew that monsieur would----" + +At sight of Prosper the mite gathered up her voluminous skirts and bade +her new friend a cordial good-by. + +From the corrupted Prosper Bulstrode extracted what he wished to know +concerning the child. + +"It is of a scandalousness, monsieur! Four nights of the seven the +poor little object is alone. The mother appears to have money enough, +she pays her rent regularly, and there is therefore nothing to do. She +sometimes even fetches her companions home with her, and Simone, when +she is not making sport for them, is tied to a chair to keep her from +falling off in her sleep." + +Bulstrode expressed himself strongly, violently for him, went to see a +lawyer and a charitable French countess and found out that so long as +the mother did not actually ill-treat the child she could not be +replaced by any other guardian. + +"Mon cher ami," said the spirituelle lady, "leave the fish to her +deviltry, and her child in her care. We are _fin de race_, if you +like, and in direct opposition to your American progressive schemes, +but we have a tradition that the family is sacred, and that, however +bad it may be, a child is better off in its home than elsewhere. You +will find it difficult to replace a mother by a _machine_ or an +_institution_, believe me." + +And Bulstrode at the words felt a new sense of failure in +philanthropies, and his benevolence seemed pure dilletantism. What was +he likely to accomplish in the case of this child? Nothing more than +the momentary pleasure a few toys and a few hours of play could secure. +"And yet," as he mused he philosophically put it to himself, "isn't it, +after all, about the sum total any of us get out of destiny?" + +In New York he would have quite known how to proceed in order to help +the child, but in the face of French law and strong family prejudice he +came up against a stone wall. + +"I'm no sort of a real benefactor," he remorsefully acceded, "and I +don't believe I'm fit to be trusted alone with the poor." + +Nevertheless he did not relinquish his idea entirely, and confided +Simone to Prosper's sympathetic care and that of an emotional +maid-servant, with the result that a cleaning woman penetrated by hook +or crook into the room of "the fish" and treated it to more _aqua pura_ +than the piscatory individual had cognizance of outside of the aquarium. + +The gentleman in this particular charity was surprised to find how +simple it sometimes is to do good. In this case no one had come to him +with a petition or a demand; on the contrary, a note of undeserved +thanks had, with the strange little creature, been presented to him. +It was so pleasantly easy to help a child! There were no _arrieres +pensees_--not that they would have troubled him, but there were none; +there were no wire-pullings, no time infringements, no suggestion or +criticism, no--he believed--expectations. Everything he could do was +so annoyingly little! The charwoman cleaned, Simone had a complete +wardrobe, the larder was full, and there remained nothing but toys to +buy. The little thing was so womanly and capable--he had seen it and +marvelled in their interviews at her age and accomplishments--her hands +were so apt and almost creative, that toys seemed inadequate. She took +her benefits charmingly; rushed over at the least provocation to pour +out her gratitude, and Bulstrode, who hated thanks, liked these. +Childhood, if it had been for sale on the Boulevard, even that he would +have bought Simone if he could! As it was, he found himself pausing +before a series of shops other than chemisiers--florists, and +jewellers'--shops where diminutive objects were displayed--and one +afternoon had been standing ridiculously long in front of a certain +window on the Rue de Rivoli when he was accosted by an agreeable and +familiar voice. + +"Jimmy! It isn't possible! don't tell me it has come so cruelly +_soon_?" + +The gentleman gave a violent, but an entirely happy start. Well, there +were rewards then for people who didn't follow speeding motors through +France! She was back and in Paris. + +"What--has come so soon?" he asked. + +Mrs. Falconer, on her way from a hat shop in her automobile, stopped by +his side. + +"Why, your second childhood, my dear man. Do you know what shop you +are standing before?" + +Bulstrode seemed to be perfectly aware of his dotage and to delight in +it. Behind the big window pane there was a bright and very juvenile +display. + +Ships sailed there; dolls hung gaudily and smilingly aloft; giant +parti-colored balls rounded out their harlequin sides; tiny dishes for +pygmy festivals were piled with delicious carrots and artichokes on +little white, blue-rimmed platters. + +"Have you a moment to spare?" Bulstrode asked her. + +"I have bought all my hats," she replied; "after that a woman's time +hangs heavy on her hands." + +"Ah!" he was as radiant as she had the genius for making him. "Come, +then, in with me and help me choose a _doll_." + +It was not the first purchase during the course of a long friendship +which Bulstrode had made with this charming woman by his side, but for +some reason he enjoyed it more than former errands. The bachelor and +the childless woman were hard to please and their choice consumed an +unconscionable time. As they lingered, the amiable shopman pressed +various toys on monsieur and madame "_pour les enfants_," and the lady, +finally depositing her friend with his parcels at the door of his +hotel, realized as she drove away that she knew nothing of the child +for whom the purchases had been made. On her way up the Champs Elysees +she smiled softly. "It's what you _share_," she mused, "what you give +of _yourself--with_ yourself--_that's_ charity! Jimmy gives himself. +I wonder who his new love is?" + +Bulstrode, in order to share what should be his "new love's" ecstasy at +first sight of the miraculous toy, sent for Simone. The Rue de Rivoli +doll, on a small chair designed for diminutive ladies of the eighteenth +century or for the king's dwarfs, held out stiff but cordial arms and +was naturally, to a child, the first and sole object of the +drawing-room. + +"_Monsieur!_" + +"For you, Simone." + +"_Monsieur!_" + +She said nothing else as she clasped her hands, and the color rushed +into her face, but she felt the doll, touched reverently its feet, +hair, dress, incontinently forgot Bulstrode, and quite suddenly, +passionately, caught the image of life to her heart. Just over its +blonde head, for it was nearly as large as herself, she met the +gentleman's eyes. + +"It's my child! I've prayed for it always, always! I've never had a +doll, a _bebe_, m'sieu." + +The tea-table with cakes and chocolate called them all too soon and, as +Prosper served, the fountains sang, the heat stole through the garden +and called up agreeable odors of sod and roses, the late afternoon sky +spread its expanse over the terrace of the hotel, where, perfectly +happy both of them, animated by as gentle and harmless pleasure as any +two in Paris that day, the child of the people and an American +gentleman chatted over their tea. + +Bulstrode, being an original, erratic, and reckless giver of alms, +quite by this time knew that, more than often, for him to give was, if +not to regret, to have at least misgivings whether in the hands of some +colder, less poetic person his money would not have accomplished more +good. In the case of Simone he had, as usual, happily gone on with +abandon, relegating any remorse to a future which he hoped would never +arrive. + + +But the middle of July did come and with it came poor Jimmy's exquisite +temptation. A telephone helped it dreadfully. There was something so +wonderful in the fact that in a couple of hours he could, if he would, +let himself reach the side of the lovely voice which called to him over +the wires. And being nothing but a human man, he threw all his good +resolves to the wind, and went down and stayed three days at +Fontainebleau. + +Out under the sky, where the elastic earth sprang softly beneath her +feet and the embowered forests were sifted through with gold, Mary +Falconer finally asked him, "And your doll, Jimmy? Have you broken her +yet?" Bulstrode felt a guilty twinge, for he had not once thought of +the little girl, nor did Mrs. Falconer's mention of her bring the +subject near enough for Bulstrode to tell her the pretty story. He had +other things to say, and many things not to say, and this, as it always +did when he was with his lady, kept him very absorbed and occupied. On +this occasion he forgot all about little Simone. + +The night of his return Paris was _en fete_ and in no sense impatient +to reach his lonely house--for it seemed to him this night the +loneliest house in the world--he walked without haste up town along the +quays. + +It was hard to forget that not fifty miles away he had left the cool +forests, their tempting roads, their alluring alleys. He had forgotten +that it was the annual celebration and that at this late hour the +_fete_ would be in full swing, and as he strolled meditating along the +Seine the spirit of the gay populace--good-humor, reckless pleasure, +and the _joie de vivre_--poured itself out around him like cordial, +like a generous gift from an over-charged horn of cheer. In his gray +clothes, modish panama, a little white rose plucked by a dear hand from +the trellis at Fontainebleau still in his buttonhole, Bulstrode +scarcely remarked the crowds or heard the music as he passed outdoor +dancing stands and was jostled by a dancing throng. + +His own street, as he approached it, welcomed him with a strong odor of +onions and fried potatoes; it had apparently turned itself out of doors +and all of the houses seemed to have emptied themselves into the narrow +alley. A hurdy-gurdy playing before the _hotel meuble_ tinkled and +jangled in the centre of a crowd of merry-makers, and the metallic +melody and wild ascending octaves were the first sounds Bulstrode +consciously heard since he left Fontainebleau. + +In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing like a mad child, +hair, arms, and feet flying; her voice, thin and piercing, every now +and then above the rattle of the hand-organ, cried out the lines of a +popular song whose meaning on her lips was particularly horrifying. +The wine-shop family encircled her, encoring her vociferously. As she +paused for breath the light from over the shop-door shone on her +excited little face. + +[Illustration: In the midst of this rabble little Simone was dancing] + +"I tired! Mon Dieu, que non! I could dance till morning. Play again, +monsieur l'organiste. Play again." + +Bulstrode, on the crowd's edge, watched her, and for once in his +philanthropic history made no attempt to rescue. As Prosper let his +master in he said: + +"It's a shame, isn't it, monsieur? The people over there have let her +run quite crazy. The poor little thing! Heaven knows where the mother +is!" + +Of which celestial knowledge Bulstrode had his doubts. It was close to +twelve, and dismissing Prosper for the night, he took his cigar out on +the terrace and to what solitude his garden might extend. Before long +the noise of the music subsided, the people, tired out with hours of +festivity, dispersed, and the alley settled into quiet. From the +distance now and then came the soft, dull explosion of fireworks, the +rumble and roar of Paris was a little accelerated; otherwise the +silence about Bulstrode's garden grew and deepened as the night +advanced. + +It was rare for him to allow himself to be the object of his own +personal consideration, or that indeed he at all thought of himself, +and when he did the man he had long ignored had his revenge and made +him pay up old scores. + +On the late afternoon of this very day he was to have walked for miles +through the Fontainebleau woods with Mrs. Falconer, and instead he had +fled. Pleading a sudden summons to Paris, he left Fontainebleau. + +It was well past four o'clock when he at last threw his cigar away and +rose. He had been musing all night in his chair. + +A sudden gust of noise blew down the quiet little street, the sound of +loud singing and the shrill staccato of a woman's laugh. By the time +the revellers had passed his house and the hubbub had died away, +Bulstrode, with an idea at length of going up to his room, walked +across the salon and prepared to extinguish the electricity, but the +sound of some one tapping without caught his ear, and going over to the +window that gave on the street, he looked out. From end to end the +alley was deserted except for the figure of a woman. As he saw in the +ruddy light of early morning she huddled against the threshold of the +_hotel meuble_--knocking persistently at the door. The tattered gauze +of her dress, whose bold _decolletee_ left her neck and shoulders bare, +a garland of roses on the bandeaux of her black hair, she epitomized +the carnival just come to its end--its exhaustion, its excess, spent at +length, surfeited, knocking for entrance at last to rest. Bulstrode, +as he remarked the sinuous figure that swayed as the woman stood, +exclaimed to himself with illumination: "Why, she's the _fish_, of +course! Simone's mother! And this is the state in which she goes to +the miserable child!" + +As, knocking at intervals, the object leaned there a few moments +longer, evidently scarcely able to stand, his pity wakened and he +slowly left the window, shut in its blinds, and crossed his +ante-chamber, where the artificial light of electricity was met by the +full sunshine of the breaking day streaming in through the open window +of his terrace. Not entirely sure of his motive or to what excess of +folly it might lead him, he nevertheless opened wide his front door, +only to see that the woman on the opposite street had gone. She had +been let in. With a glance of relief up and down the street where the +_confetti_ in disks of lilac and yellow and red lay in dirty piles or +swam on the flushing gutters that sparkled in the light, Bulstrode shot +to his door on the Parisian world and after a _nuit blanche_ went +upstairs to his rooms. + + +And there had intensely come to him during the period of his dressing +the next morning after a tardy wakening the idea of taking the child, +of--he was certain it could be done--buying the mother off. He would, +in short, if he could, legally adopt the Parisian _gamine_ for his own. +It would give him a distinct interest, and life was empty for want of +one; this, in a manner, however short of perfect, would supply the need +of a loving living creature in his environment and would--his thrill at +the idea proved to him how lonely he had been--give him companionship +and a responsibility of a tender, personal sort. He could make a home +at last for a child. Men are more paternal than they are credited with +being, and Bulstrode directly foresaw delightful _causeries_ in the +future with--(he knew many women)--_with one woman_ whose pretty taste, +whose wit and humor, should counsel him in his new role. Mrs. Falconer +would dress Simone--her hand should be wonderfully in it all. +Bulstrode had let his fancy linger over the scheme. Certainly, during +the hour in which he spun his fanciful plan, there was not one bar to +its execution. Nor did there come to him any hint of its intrinsic +sterility, or the idea that it was possibly an excuse for the +interweaving of another interest more closely with his life--no idea +that he was simply strengthening an old bond, or by means of this +little tug pushing a mighty vessel nearer port. + +He almost happily mused until a nursery grew out of thin air, a child's +little garments lay on a chair, and festivities, whose charm is of the +most mysterious, illuminated his reverie. Bulstrode, even without the +shudder of the climatician, contemplated the rigors of his own country, +for a rosy room grew out of his dream, fire-lit and fragrant with fir +and holly, and in the centre shone The Tree, whose shiny globes and +marvels were reflected till they danced in a child's eyes. + +There had been an hour earlier the quick, brusque dash of a French +thunder-storm, and the cooled air came refreshingly from the garden as +Bulstrode stood out on the terrace before going into the noonday +breakfast. Prosper, fetching his master's coffee at nine o'clock, had +been informed that they were leaving Paris that day and received +instructions as to the setting in order of the hotel before returning +it to its proprietor. Where his wanderings were to take him Bulstrode +had not as yet made up his mind. It, after all, mattered so very +little what a bachelor did with his leisure! It was the height of the +season along the seacoast and a dozen places brilliantly beckoned; +there were tri-weekly boats to the country, where he should most +properly be. + +"There is," he with recurrent leeway to his inclinations reflected, +"always plenty of time to decide what one does not want to do!" + +As he glanced at the little breakfast spread temptingly there for him +on the terrace he was arrested by the sound of French voices in quick, +agitated discussion, and looked up to see the unceremonious entrance of +quite a little band of people who had in point of fact penetrated his +seclusion. In a second of time a group was before him and he +remembered afterward that certain figures in a twinkling assumed +familiar shapes: the wine-shop keeper, his wife, one or two other +patrons of the hotel; but in the centre--he was sure of her!--pale and +staring, stood little Simone, her big doll clasped in her arms. + +Before the gentleman could ask their errand Madame Branchard, eager to +tell it, pushed forward. Bulstrode afterward, when he thought of the +scene, could always distinctly see her important red face, sleek, oily +hair, and in spite of summer heat the crocheted shawl over her cotton +gown. + +"We decided at once to address to monsieur, who is so good"--(he was +growing accustomed to the formula) "to monsieur who has been so like a +father to the poor little thing. Not but that we are ready ourselves +to do all we can for her--she is so sweet, so intelligent!" + +"The sweet, intelligent child" appeared, as Bulstrode's pitying gaze, +never leaving her, saw, to have shrunk overnight. In their midst she +stood of a ridiculous smallness, her big doll nearly hiding her and +over its blonde head Simone's eyes peered pathetically into, as it +were, a vague and terrifying world. Bulstrode asked shortly in the +face of the theatrical prelude: + +"What is this all about? What have you come to tell me?" + +"Ah, monsieur!" Madame Branchard's voice, particularly suited to +retailing the tragedies of the streets, quavered. "There has been a +_malheur_--it is too horrible--the mother!" + +"Stop!" Bulstrode put out his hand. "Simone!" + +The little thing dragged herself to him with a new timidity, as though +she believed him in league with the world against her. + +"Come," he encouraged, "come out here on the terrace, where you have so +often played with your doll, and don't be frightened, _mon enfant_; +everything will be all right." + +When he had so settled her in the smallest of chairs he went back to +the other bit of Paris street-life which had seethed in to him. + +Madame Branchard, whom his manner had reduced to, for her, marvellous +quiet and ease, approached impressively and lowered her voice as deeply +as it would fall. + +"Mademoiselle Lascaze, whom monsieur knows has been my tenant for +months past, is dead--dead, monsieur!" + +Bulstrode echoed, "Dead?" and his first thought was: "It was not she, +then, whom I saw striving for entrance this morning. Ah, poor +creature! Drowned?" + +"Monsieur then knows?" + +Knows--how should he know? He had thought of the aquarium and her +often repeated feat. + +"Monsieur is right, she is drowned; but it is not the aquarium--it is +the Seine. It appears," the wine-merchant's wife went on, "that last +night she made _la fete_ in the streets. We over here lock up, well, +at a decent hour, as monsieur will understand. Those who are in stay, +those who are out--well, monsieur will understand----" + +Yes, he understood. Would she go on? + +"Mademoiselle Lascaze had evidently lost her key of entry--so it +appears. We have this story from her comrades, a bad lot, like +herself. She tried to get in about five o'clock--they left her +knocking at the door. She must then have wandered the streets for an +hour, for it was six when they met her again by chance quite by the +Pont des Arts. They all had something to drink and started across the +river, when the poor thing offered to give an exhibition of her circus +feat and, before anyone could stop her, had dived off the bridge into +the Seine." + +He had, then, seen her knocking there in the dawn, and if he had +hastened a little--not held conventionally back---- + +"It is all _en regle_," assured Madame Branchard. "As my husband will +tell monsieur, he has been to the morgue to identify her." + +The wine-merchant now at his cue, nodded impressively. "Mais oui, I +assure monsieur she was quite natural--and she was une belle femme tout +le meme----" + +His wife glanced at him scornfully. "She was a bad mother, and all the +house will tell you so. Many times, monsieur, I have gone in with my +pass-key and taken the poor little thing downstairs in my arms to give +her all the supper she would have had, and many a time, on cold nights, +when there was not a stick of fire in their room, and the woman +abroad--many a time I have had her sleep in our bed with us--my husband +will tell monsieur." + +The wine-merchant nodded assent. "She speaks the truth, monsieur." + +Bulstrode found presence of mind to wonder. "I suppose Mademoiselle +Lascaze left debts?" + +The husband and wife exchanged glances. + +"_En verite_, monsieur," confessed Madame Branchard, "she has left a +few, but they are small and not significant; a hundred francs will +cover them. It is not for our pockets we are come to monsieur." + +Here the sentimentality having been disposed of by the woman, the +husband broke in: + +"It is like this, Monsieur Balstro" (Bulstrode saw how intimately the +_hotel meuble_ knew him): "In a few moments even the authorities will +be here to take charge of the woman's effects and Simone will become +the property of the State. She has no relatives, as Monsieur will +understand. Thinking, therefore, that monsieur, _who is so good_, +might for some reason care to take an interest in the child's +future----" + +Branchard coughed and paused. Having given Mr. Bulstrode ample time to +speak, to show some signs of life and of his usual quick benevolence, +and being greeted with nothing other than quiet, meditative silence, +the merchant shrugged and comprehensively relinquished suppositions and +hopes in one large gesture. + +"In which case" (evidently that of taking for granted that Bulstrode +was less good than they had supposed), "in that case we shall put in a +plea ourselves for Simone and adopt her." + +Madame's voice, now in full and customary volume, expressed frankly +_her_ goodness. "We have five children and our means are modest, +but"--and she put it sublimely--"_one is not a mother for nothing_." + +Her tirade, however, was quite lost on Bulstrode, who was occupied with +his own projects of benevolence. Turning to this contingent of the +_hotel meuble_ a back scarcely more imperturbable than his face had +been, he went out of the room to the terrace, where Simone sat just as +he had left her. She was, on her low chair, so tiny that in order more +nearly than ever before to approach her little point of view, to come +into her little sphere, Bulstrode knelt down on one knee. + +"Don't look so frightened, my child. Nothing will harm you--I assure +you of that; don't you"--he called her loyally to answer--"don't you +believe me, Simone?" + +The little thing drew in a struggling breath and whispered: "Oui, +m'sieu." + +"Good!" He was smiling at her and had taken her ice-cold, dirty, +little hands. "You are fond of me, Simone--you like a little M'sieu +Balstro'?" + +"Oh," she caught at her frightened voice and more clearly whispered, +"oh, oui, m'sieu!" + +"Bien encore!" + +He wanted tactfully to break the ice which shock and terror had formed +around the poor little heart, and yet not to prolong the moment. + +"_Voyons_," he said to her lightly, as if he were only to bid her come +and play in his garden, and not ask her to decide her destiny. +"_Voyons_, how would you like to come and live with me? to have toys +and pretty clothes and good things to eat--to be"--the bachelor put it +bravely--"to be _my_ little girl. How, Simone, would you like it?" + +If further startled she was humanized by his warmth, which was melting +her; her breast heaved, her lips trembled, and she asked: "Et +puis--maman?" + +Here Madame Branchard, in whom all feelings were subordinate to +curiosity and motherhood, had approached until she stood directly +behind the two on the terrace. Tears had sprung to her eyes and she +sniffled and wiped them frankly away with her hand. + +Bulstrode, singularly relieved by her appearance, turned and asked her, +"What does she then know?" + +"Nothing, m'sieur, nothing at all." + +Simone got up on her feet and her big doll fell with a crash on the +marble of the terrace and broke in a dozen pieces, but the catastrophe +did not touch her. + +"And maman?" she repeated. "Where is she? She did not come home last +night?" + +Bulstrode had descended to one knee in order to approach her, but +Madame Branchard got down on both knees and tenderly put her arms +around the child. + +"Look, ma petite--your mother has gone away forever to a beautiful +country, and she has left you here to be a good girl and do whatever +this kind gentleman says. Will you go to be his little girl? He will +give you everything in the world." She closed with this magnificent +promise, whose breadth and wealth no child-mind could grasp. In order +to give her more complete liberty in which to make her decision the +wine-merchant's wife, after kissing her, set her free. + +Simone made no audible reflection of wonder at her seeming desertion, +no exhibition of distress, no melodramatic outburst of grief or +surprise. She stood silent, absorbed, desolate, and ashamed, twisting +in and out between her frail little fingers the fringe of Madame +Branchard's black shawl. + +"Or," brightly continued the good woman, "you can come home with me and +play with Marie and Jeannette and have what we have. You can be my +little girl, as you will--it is for you to decide--chez moi, or with +this bon monsieur." + +Was it fair of them--thus to lay on her six years the burden of her own +destiny? + +Simone raised her head; her cheeks had reddened a little at Madame +Branchard's last words. She was unable to grasp the benefits that +Bulstrode's magnificence offered, but she knew Marie and Jeannette--she +knew the hands of Madame Branchard could tuck one in at night, and how +warm and soft was the bosom on which she had already wept her little +griefs. There were many beautiful things in the world, but Simone just +then only wanted one. Madame Branchard was not _her_ mother--but she +was still _a_ mother! Simone whispered so low that only the woman +heard: + +"I will go with you." + + +Prosper having embarked on a sea of indiscretion, went through the day +consistently. With a love of the melodramatic in his Latin temperament +he had admitted the _hotel meuble sans ceremonie_: and late that +afternoon he gave entrance to another group of quite a different order, +and without formality ushered the lady and her friends to the terrace, +where the solitary inhabitant of another man's house was taking a +farewell beverage before leaving Paris. + +"We have caught you in time, Jimmy!" Mrs. Falconer made a virtue of it. +"If you are absconding with the Montensier treasures, then let me show +Molly and the Marquis at least what has been left behind." + +His bags and boxes in the hall, his automobile at the door, and +Bulstrode himself in travelling trim, it looked very much like a +flight, indeed. Miss Molly and the Marquis, it transpired, were able +to explore for themselves and to find in the gallery and salons +pictures and objects of interest to excuse a prolonged absence. + +"They're engaged," Mrs. Falconer explained to her host. "Isn't it +ridiculous? As you know, she hasn't a cent in the world, and his +family are not in the secret, but Molly and De Presle-Vaulx _are_, and +_I_ am, and I brought them off in pity for a spin to Paris." + +The apparition of the lady, whose mocking beauty had a fresh charm +every time he saw her--her worldly wisdom and her keen +reasonableness--made, as he stood talking with her, his past debauch in +philanthropies seem especially grotesque. With a long breath of joy at +the sight of her Bulstrode also realized how wonderfully separated from +her the introduction of another life into his environment would have +made him. + +"Your garden is a waste," the lady criticised, "dusty and dull. I +don't wonder you're getting away. Fontainebleau, too, was only a +_faute de mieux_, and I have left it. One should get really far away +at this season. It's the time when only the persons who are actually +bred in its stones can stay in Paris--certainly the birds of passage +may now, if ever, fly." + +"We are going to Trouville," she said; "we are all going to motor +through Normandy. Won't you come--won't you come?" He shook his head. + +Mrs. Falconer looked across the terrace to where a little chair had +been overturned, and on the floor by its side lay a broken doll. + +"Jimmy!" she laughed in triumph at the sight. "You _have_ broken your +doll!" + +Bulstrode said: "Yes, beyond repair, and I don't want another." Then +in a few words, briefly, a little impatient, and still smarting under +the child's defection, he gave her the story. + +Listening, absorbed, her charming eyes on him or at one moment turned +suspiciously away, the lady heard him to the end, and at the end said +softly: + +"Jimmy, my poor Jimmy! What have you nearly done! What _would_ people +have thought? Not that it matters in the least--it's what people _do_ +that counts--but oh, I tremble for your next folly!" + +"It might"--he spoke with something like bitterness--"be less harmless +and leave me less alone." + +She had finished a glass of iced tea, put her goblet down on the tray +and rose, coming over to where Bulstrode stood; she lightly laid her +hand on his arm. + +"You are, then, so very lonely? So lonely that you would be capable of +doing this foolish thing? Oh, you would have found, as I have found, +that it is those things which come into our lives, not those which we +by force _take_, which mean all we want them to mean! This wasn't +_your child_!" Mrs. Falconer's face softened as he had never seen it. +"Nor yet is she the child of some woman you love. Believe me, it would +have made you far lonelier if it so happened--if you should ever come +to love--if you ever had loved----" + +Bulstrode interrupted her abruptly: + +"Yes, in that case I should no doubt be glad that Simone had gone back +on me." He waited silent for a second, and then continued gently, "I +_am_ glad, very glad indeed!" + + + + +THE FOURTH ADVENTURE + + + +IV + +IN WHICH HE MAKES THREE PEOPLE HAPPY + +There were times when Bulstrode decided that he never could see the +woman he loved any more: there were times when he felt he must follow +her to the ends of the world, just in order to assure himself that she +was alive and serene. Such is the gentleman's character and point of +view, that she must always be serene, no matter what his own troubled +emotions might be. + +He had the extraordinary idea that he could not himself be happy or +make a woman happy over the dishonor of another man. It was +old-fashioned and unworldly of Bulstrode: still, that was the way he +was constituted. + +It was on one of the imperious occasions when he felt as if he must +follow her to the ends of the earth, that he steered his craft toward a +little town on the edge of the Norman coast, to a very fashionable bit +of France--Trouville. As soon as he understood that Mrs. Falconer was +to be in Normandy for the race week, he packed his things and ran down +and put up at the Hotel de Paris. On this occasion the gentleman +followed so fast that he overleaped his goal, and arrived at the +watering-place before the others appeared. Bulstrode took his own +rooms, and in response to a telegram, engaged the Falconers' +apartments. He liked the way the little salon gave on the heavenly +blue sea, and with a nice fancy to make it something more home-like for +his friend to begin with, he filled it with flowers ... ran what +lengths he dared in putting a few rare vases and several pieces of old +Italian damask here and there. + +"Falconer," he consoled himself, "will be too taken up with his horses +to notice the _inside_ of anything but a stable! And I shall tell the +others that the hotel proprietor is a collector: most of these Norman +innkeepers are collectors." And, as his idea grew, he went to greater +lengths, with the curiosity shops on either side the Rue de Paris to +tempt him. The result was that when Mrs. Falconer came, she found the +hotel room wonderfully mellow and harmonious, and as a woman who revels +in beauty she responded to its charm. She was delighted, her eyes +sparkled, her cheeks glowed. And Jimmy Bulstrode had a moment of high +happiness as she looked at him and touched with her pretty hands the +flowers he had himself arranged. It was a delightful moment, a moment +that was much to him. + +The Falconers arrived with the usual lot of servants and motors and, +moreover, with a racing outfit, for Falconer had decided to enter his +English filly, Bonjour, for the events of August. There was also with +them a Miss Molly Malines and a young sprig of nobility, the Marquis de +Presle-Vaulx, to whom Bulstrode was a trifle paternal. + +"He can't, at least, be after Molly's _millions_," he reflected; "he +can't, at any rate, be a _fortune_ hunter, for the girl's face is the +only fortune she has!" + +On a bright and beautiful morning, the first of all the days for many +weeks--for Bulstrode reckoned his calendar in broken bits, beginning a +New Year each time he saw his lady again--a bright and beautiful +morning he walked out at the fashionable hour of noon and turned into +the Rue de Paris. + +The eyes of many women followed Bulstrode. + +Being an early riser, he had already taken a brisk walk over the +cliffs, had swum out beyond the buoys, and now in his flannels, his +panama, a gay rose in the lapel of his coat, amongst the many +debonnaire and pleasing people who filled the little fishing town, his +was a distinguished figure. He trusted very much to instinct to +discover his friend, and after a few moments found her at the extreme +end of the street which the papers of Paris tell you is "the most +worldly and fashionable in any part of the Continent, during race week +at Trouville." Mary Falconer was of course dressed in the very height +of the mode. She looked up and saw Bulstrode before he saw her, but +she could wait until he made his leisurely way down to her side. She +waited for him a great deal. He did not know how much, but then her +point of view and her feelings have never come into the history. It +amused her to make him her many clever little bits of speech, for he +was so appreciative of everything she said, and looking up at him now +as he approached she said: "These people never seem to have anything to +do, do they? Leisure is like money: to enjoy thoroughly either money +or leisure one should only have a little of each. Now for us +good-for-nothings who have no occupation it doesn't make much +difference what we do or where we do it!" + +The lady's camp-stool had been set down at the end of the street. +Those who are not promenading opened little _chaises pliantes_ and +watched from their little seats. Mrs. Falconer sat facing the ocean, +or what was visible of it between the bathing tents. Pagodas gay with +children's shovels and bright pails, striped bonbons and the sea of +muslins, ribbons and feathers and sunshades of the midsummer crowd. +All the capitals of Europe had poured themselves into Trouville, and +the resort overflowed with beauty and fashion. + +'"It's perfectly bewitching," Bulstrode said to her, "perfectly +bewitching, and it makes one feel as though there were nothing but +pleasure in the world." + +She wore a white dress and her hat was bright with flowers. She opened +her rose-lined parasol over her head. + +"Jimmy," she said abruptly, and brought his eyes to hers like a flash, +for he had been looking over the scene, "do you know I begin to see +where the innkeeper found his rare treasures; _there are a great many +other things_ that suggest them in this little street!" + +Bulstrode replied, "You don't want him to take them away, do you?" + +She shook her head. "No," she said slowly, "they have been a great +pleasure, but I don't want to _buy_ them from him, either." + +"I don't _think_ he'd sell them," Bulstrode was certain of it, "they're +extremely precious in his eyes." + +"I'm a good judge of works of art, however," she said after a moment, +"that is to say, I know a good thing when I see it. There was a little +picture in one of the shops back of me that I would have given a lot to +own." + +Her friend exclaimed: "Are you going to buy it! That is to say, will +Falconer buy it for you?" + +"My dear soul--with his horse running to-morrow! At any rate, the +bijou is already bought above my head. I went in yesterday to see what +was the least they would take for it, and found the Prince Pollona, the +Englishman who buys for the Wallace Collection, and somebody who, they +tell me, was the Rockefeller of St. Petersburg. Well, my little +picture was what they all wanted, and you can imagine that _I_ retired +from the running...! But I tell you this," she said, "only to show you +how very good my taste is, and so that you may rely on my selections." + +Bulstrode smiled in a way that said he thought he might rely on her, +but still he asked rather quizzically, "Well, what are you going to +recommend to me _now_?" + +The lady at the moment, not having anything in mind, looked suddenly +up, gave him whimsically: + +"Molly and her Marquis." + +The two young people with Jack Falconer were coming slowly along the +Rue de Paris toward them. The grace of the girl, her freshness under +her wide hat where flowers and ribbons danced and blended; the radiant +pleasure she exhaled, the swing of her dress, her youth, expressed so +happily the joy of life, recommended themselves easily in a flash.... + +"Oh, _Molly_--she's perfect!" + +"And the Marquis?" + +"He is perfectly in _love_," ... Bulstrode allowed him so much. + +"My dear friend, remember I know my _objets d'art_." + +"Oh, as an _objet d'art_...!" + +Bulstrode took the young man in: his white immaculateness, his +boutonniere, his panama--(not less than forty dollars a straw, as Jimmy +knew) his monocle. + +"As an _objet d'art_," he further conceded to her, "he's perfect, too!" + +"As an _homme de race_," said the American lady eagerly, with the true +Republican appreciation of blood and title, "as an _homme du monde_, as +a..." + +"Title?" he finished for her. "Oh, the Presle-Vaulx are all right! +I'll grant him a perfect title, sound as a bell, first Crusade--_Leonce +de Presle-Vaulx main droite, or sur azur--Pour toi seule_. It's a good +old tradition--a good old name." + +She scented his lack of sympathy. "Oh, I'll stand for him, Jimmy. I +know the _pate_, as they say. I know the ring and the tone; and you +must, at my valuation, take him." + +"Molly, dear lady, has done the taking." Bulstrode lifted his hat as +the trio came up. "And what, after all, can we--the rest of us do?" + +"The rest of them" watched the young couple with mingled emotions: Mary +Falconer with all the romance in her, and in spite of unusual cool +reasonableness she had a feminine share--Jimmy with the sympathy of a +kindly nature, a certain sting of jealousy at the decidedly perfect +completeness of young love, and with a singularly wide-awake practical +common sense for an impulsive gentleman whose pleasure in life is to +pour into people's hands the things they most long for and cannot +without him ever hope to enjoy! + + +Bulstrode, although owning his share of horse-flesh and a proper number +of automobiles and keeping, for the best part of the time, a yacht out +of commission, was a sport only in a certain sense of the word. The +people who liked him best and who were themselves able to judge, said +he was a "dead game sport," but Jimmy smiled at this and knew that the +human element interested him in life above all, and that he only cared +for amusements as they helped others to enjoy. He was backing +Falconer's horse, although he felt certain the winnings would go to the +Rothschild's gelding. On the afternoon, however, when De Presle-Vaulx +came up to him in the Casino and said: "On what are you going to put +your money, Monsieur?" Bulstrode looked at him thoughtfully. He had +stood by the young man the night before at baccarat and seen him lose +enough to keep a little family of Trouville fisherfolk for a year. + +"Are you going to play the races, Marquis?" + +"But naturally!" ... + +De Presle-Vaulx had an attractive frankness, and his smile +was--Bulstrode understood what a girl would think about it! + +"... But of course! One doesn't come to Trouville in _la grande +semaine_ not to play!" + +He put his hand cordially on Bulstrode's arm. + +"Entre nous," he said, "I don't believe Falconer's horse has a chance +against Rothschild's Grimace. And you?" + +"Oh, I shall back Jack Falconer's mare," the older man replied. + +The Marquis played with his moustache. "She doesn't stand a show." + +Bulstrode was walking slowly down the grand staircase by his +companion's side. "And you will back Grimace?" He ignored the young +man's prognostication. + +De Presle-Vaulx said ingenuously: "_I_? Oh, seriously, I'm not +betting. I lost at baccarat last night, and I haven't a sou for the +race." + +He looked boyish and regretful. The American put his hand in his +pocket and took out his portefeuille. + +"Let me," he suggested pleasantly, "be your banker." + +The light dry rustle of French bank-notes came agreeably from between +his fingers. + +The young man hesitated, then put out his hand. + +"A thousand thanks, Monsieur, you are too good--I _will_ back Grimace, +and after the race----" + +Jimmy handed him the notes to choose from. + +At the stair foot stood Molly and Mrs. Falconer. + +"We went this afternoon to see Jack's horse," Miss Malines said to the +Marquis. Whatever she said, no matter how general, she said to +him--others might gather what they could. "Bon Jour's a beauty--a +dear, and as fit as possible. Oh, she's in great form! Jack's crazy +about her, and so is the jockey. I know Bon Jour will win! I'm going +to put twenty-five francs on her to-morrow." + +Mary Falconer smiled radiantly. "And you, Jimmy," she took for +granted, "are of course betting on the favorite?" + +"If you mean Grimace--" his tone was indifferent--"no, I shall back +your husband's horse." + +"_Jimmy_!" Her tone changed, and her expression as well. + +De Presle-Vaulx saw it, and he knew what women's voices can mean. He +was a Frenchman, and he understood what a slow, delicious flush, a +darkening of the eyes, a sharp note in the voice can signify of +feeling--as well as of gratitude, surprise and a little scorn. There +was all this in Mary Falconer's exclamation and her face. + +"And Maurice!" Molly said, "of course, you're doing the same?" + +The Marquis met his fiancee's clear eyes, her girlish enthusiasm and +her confidence. He bit his lip, shrugged, hesitated, looked at +Bulstrode, at Molly, and laughed. The presence of the others and the +custom of his country made it only a pretty courtesy--he lifted Molly's +hand to his lips. + +"Of course--_chere Mademoiselle_, I am backing Bon Jour with all my +heart, _cela va sans dire_!" + +Miss Malines regarded her friend with a pretty grimace and a smile. + +As they walked along together all four, Bulstrode said to himself: + +"He's a sport, a true sport--that's five thousand francs to the bad. +He was game, however, he's a good sport and, better yet, he's a true +lover!" + +Whether or not Mary Falconer really had an exalted idea of the merits +of Bon Jour, or whether she thoroughly understood the situation, how +was her friend to know? + +Falconer adored the horse, and the lady showed in the matter, as in +everything else, a fine loyalty to her husband, which was undoubtedly +one of the reasons why--but this is going too deeply into the domain of +Bulstrode's feelings, which, since he keeps them honorably sealed, it +is unworthy to surprise even in the interest of psychology. + +Bulstrode saw that his friend was pleased: her color, her mounting +spirits at dinner, showed it. She spoke with interest of the races, +and with confidence greater than she had hitherto evinced in the +fortunes of her husband's racer--indeed she talked horse to Molly's +edification, her husband's delight, and Bulstrode's admiration. All +this--the sense that the party was, so to speak, with him--put Jack +Falconer in the best of spirits, and the unruffled course of the +dinner, and, above all, the humor of the elder of the two ladies, quite +repaid Jimmy Bulstrode for the sure loss of his stakes. + +"Does she really think that I have faith in the horse?" he +wondered---meeting her charming eyes over the glass of champagne she +was drinking. They did not answer in text his question, but their glow +and the light of content in them answered for him other questions which +were perhaps of greater interest. + +She was not unhappy. All his life, since his acquaintance with her, it +had been his aim, in so far as he could aid it, that she should not be +unhappy. His idea of affection was that in all cases it should bring +to the object--joy. In his own life these things which brought him, no +matter how pleasant they might be, the after taste of regret and misery +he strove with all his manliness to tear out: "and surely," he so +argued, "if my presence in her life cause her for one moment anything +but peace, it would be better that we had never looked into each +other's eyes." + +There was nothing especially buoyant, in the attitude of the young +Marquis! His inclination to feminine will had cost him--he was so +familiar with the turf and the next day's programme to feel sure--five +thousand francs, which he had not the means to pay. + + +Later in the evening, very much later, indeed well on to one o'clock, +Bulstrode, wandering through the baccarat rooms--for no other purpose, +it would be said from his indifferent air, than to study types--saw +Maurice de Presle-Vaulx just leaving the Casino. + +Bulstrode's air was as friendly and as naive as though he had not a +pretty clear idea of just how the tide of events was fluctuating toward +misfortune in the case of this young nobleman. + +"What do you say," he suggested, "to getting something to drink or eat? +What do you say to a piece of _perdreau_ and some champagne?" + +The Frenchman followed the older man, who in contrast to his pallor +looked the picture of health and spirits. Bulstrode cheerily led him +to a small table in the corner of the restaurant, where they sat +opposite one another, and for a little time applied themselves in +silence to the light supper served them. + +The Marquis drank more than he ate, and Bulstrode dutifully finished +the game and toast, quite glad, in truth, to break the fast of a long +evening which he had spent in the close rooms: for no other reason than +unseen, to befriend--and unasked, to chaperone Molly's lover. Finally, +when he felt that the right moment to say something had come, he smiled +at the young man, and said frankly: + +"Voyons, mon ami, don't you feel that you can talk to me a little more +freely than you could possibly to even so kind and charming a friend as +Mrs. Falconer? We are not of the same race, perhaps, but then under +certain circumstances such distinctions are not important. How do +you"--he handled the words as though in presenting them to the young +man he was afraid they might prick him--"How do _you_ now stand?--I +mean to say, the luck has been rather against you, I'm afraid." + +Bulstrode would never be so near forty again, and De Presle-Vaulx was a +spoiled child--at all events, all that could be spoiled in him had been +taken care of by his mother, and in his own way he had spoiled a large +part of what remained. He looked up smartly, for he had been following +the pattern of the table-cloth. If the frankness of the other +threatened to offend him, as he met the kind eyes of the American he +found nothing there that could do otherwise than please him. He +shrugged with his national habit, then threw out his hands without +making any verbal reply, but his smile and his gesture comprehended so +much that Bulstrode intelligently exclaimed: + +"Oh, but you don't mean to _say_----?" + +"I have not, monsieur, much to lose," the scion of an old house replied +simply. "We have the reputation of being poor; but to-night and last +night have quite 'wiped me out,' as you say in America. Je suis ruine." + +Bulstrode lit his cigar. De Presle-Vaulx took from his pocket one of +his own cigarettes and puffed at it gently. Bulstrode smoked silently, +and thought of the young man without looking at him. He liked him, and +did not understand him at all: not at all! He supposed, that with his +different traditions, his Puritanism, his New World point of view, he +could _never_ understand him, but he would enjoy trying to do so, for +aside from the quality of spoiled boy, there was something of the man +in De Presle-Vaulx to which the New Englander extremely responded. + +His next remark was impersonal: + +"Bon Jour, then, you think is not likely----?" + +"_Mon cher Monsieur_! ... She is not even mentioned for place! Even in +the event of her winning," De Presle-Vaulx was gloomy, "I should be +able to discharge my debt to you and nothing more." Again he looked up +quickly. "I shall, of course, be quite able to discharge _that_; I +only mean to say that _en somme_, I am _roule completement roule_." + +"What, then, are you going to do?" + +De Presle-Vaulx looked at the end of his cigarette as though he took +counsel from it, and said measuredly: + +"There is, in my position, but one thing possible for a man to do." + +"You mean to say, marry, make a rich marriage?" + +The Marquis flashed at him: + +"A month ago, yes! that would have been the one way out of my +embarrassment: but I am no longer in the market. It is the other +alternative." + +Bulstrode in no case caring to hear put in words a tragically +disagreeable means of solving the problems of debt and love, and having +less faith in this extravagant, explosive alternative than in the +_marriage de convenance_, did not urge the Frenchman further. He +simply brought out--his quiet eyes fixed on the other: + +"And the little girl?--Molly--Miss Malines?----" + +He gave him three chances to think of the pretty child, and for the +first De Presle-Vaulx's expression changed. He had with a nonchalance +submitted to the discussion of his fortune and his fate, but now he +distinctly showed dignity. + +"Don't, I beg of you, _speak_ of Mademoiselle Malines!" and then he +said more gently, "mille pardons, mon cher ami!" + +Bulstrode smoked his Garcia meditatively. He had not attempted the +solving of other people's questions, had not played the good fairy for +a long time. He had the hazy feeling--such as he often experienced +just before stepping into the mysterious excitement of doing some good +deed, of undergoing the effects of a narcotic which put to sleep reason +and practical common-sense, and left alive only a desire to befriend. +In this case, determined not again to be the victim of sentimentality, +determined for once to unite common sense and common humanity, he +forcibly dissipated the haze and said: + +"Your family! I have, as you know, understood from Mrs. Falconer, the +facts of the case. You must not be formal with me." He smiled +delightfully. "I am an American; you know we have all sorts of +barbarous privileges. We rush in quite where the older races fear to +tread ... and Molly Malines' father is an old friend of mine." + +(Mr. Bulstrode did not say what kind of an old friend! or even allow +himself to remember the I.O.U.s and loans that his bankers had made to +the visionary, good-humored, sanguine, unfortunate stockbroker.) + +"Your family--how do they take the idea of your marriage to a poor +American?" + +De Presle-Vaulx pushed his coffee cup aside, leaned his arms on the +table, bent over, and said with more confidence: + +"Oh, they are entirely opposed to it. That's one reason, to be quite +frank with you, why I have been so reckless." + +He added: "My mother has refused her consent, and I can never hope to +alter my father's attitude. I have their letters to-day as well as +telegrams from Presle-Vaulxoron--they bid me 'come home immediately,' +and so far as my people are concerned, their refusal puts an end to the +affair!" + +There was a mixture of amusement and reproach in Bulstrode's tone--"and +you have found nothing better to do than to throw away at baccarat what +money you had, and have found no other solution for the future than +to...?" he eyed the young man keenly, and a proper severity came into +his expression. "Nonsense," he said, and repeated the word with more +indulgence: "nonsense, _mon ami_!" + +His reproof was borne: + +"We are an old race, M. Bulstrode----" + +Bulstrode had heard this allocution before. It gave lee-way to so +much; permitted so much; excused so much! + +"... I don't need to tell you our traditions, or recall our customs. +You of course know them. If I marry without my parents' consent I +shall probably, during my mother's lifetime, never see her again, and I +am her only son. It means that I sever all relations with my people." + +Bulstrode knocked the ash off his cigar and said thoughtfully: + +"It's too bad! A choice, if there _is_ one, is always too bad. There +should in real things _be_ no choice. As soon as such a contingent +arises, it proves that neither thing is really worth while! When a man +loves a woman there can be no choice. My dear friend, when a +_man_"--he paused--"loves--there is nothing in the world _but the +woman_." + +The Marquis looked at the fine face of the elder man. Years had, with +their gentle history, and kindly records, touched Jimmy Bulstrode +lightly. Every experience made him better to look at; "like a good +picture," Mrs. Falconer had said, "painted by a master, and only +growing more splendid." Nothing of the worldliness of the roue marked +his expression. His memories were clear and honorable, and the +Frenchman experienced a sensation of surprise and also one of +enlightenment as he looked at him and responded to his expression. He +had never seen any one quite like this man of the world, could not +think of his prototype in France. + +He repeated: + +"Nothing but the woman in the world--? Honor--" Bulstrode quickly +added, "and the woman--they are synonymous." + +In watching his companion he wondered in how much of a tangle the +Frenchman's mind was, and just how deep his feet were sunk in the +meshes of conventionality and tradition, and decided: "Oh, is it too +much to believe that he could----!" + +As if in answer to his thoughts, De Presle-Vaulx spoke in the simplest +manner possible: + +"J'aime Molly." + +Quite surprised at the simplicity, Bulstrode beamed on him and waited. + +Then the other added: + +"But I can't ask any woman to share poverty and debts, and I have no +way of making a living; I'm not bred for it." + +"You are not an invalid?" + +"On the contrary." + +"You can work." + +De Presle-Vaulx smiled: "I am afraid not! No De Presle-Vaulx has done +a stroke of work in three hundred years." + +"It's time, then"--Bulstrode was tart--"that you broke the record. Why +don't you?" He said as though suddenly illumined--"make me your +banker, draw on me for whatever sum you will, and since you have faith +in her and are so well supported by the public opinion--bet on Grimace. +I believe, with you, that he is sure to win. You would recoup much of +your loss here." + +De Presle-Vaulx pushed back his chair and exclaimed: "Monsieur!" + +"Oh," shrugged Bulstrode, "a woman's caprice, my dear fellow! A +foolish little whim of a girl! You can't be expected to mix sport and +flirtation to the tune of two or three thousand dollars." + +He smiled deceptively. + +The young man laughed bitterly: + +"So that is something of what you think of me? for I see you are not +serious! It's a folly, of course, a sentimental folly," he met +Bulstrode's eyes that silently accused him of a like--"but only a man +in love knows what sentimental follies are worth! There is"--the young +man was suddenly serious, "a sort of prodigality in love only +understood by certain temperaments, certain races: it may be +degenerate: I suppose it is, and to push it quite to the last phase, +is, of course, cowardly, certainly very weak, and men like you, +Monsieur, will deem it so." + +"You mean--?" and now Bulstrode's tone urged him to make himself clear. + +"I mean," said De Presle-Vaulx firmly, "rather than renounce this woman +I adore I will without doubt--(given the tangle in which the whole +matter is!...") and he could not for the life of him put his intention +into words. He smiled nevertheless unmistakably. Bulstrode leaned +across the table and put his hand on the other's arm. + +"Then you don't love her well enough not to break her heart? Or well +enough to live a commonplace life for her?" + +"I don't know how to do it." + +"Well," said Bulstrode, "I have run upon quite a good many hard +moments, perhaps some, in their way, as difficult as this, and I have +never thought of getting out of the muddle. Perhaps it _is_ a +question, as you say, of temperament and race. I am inclined also to +think, stubbornly, that it is a question of the quality of the love +that one has for the woman. You won't think it impertinent of me, my +dear friend,"--and his tone was such that no one could have thought it +impertinent--"you won't, I am sure, take it amiss if we talk this over +to-morrow, and if I try to show you something that means _life_, +instead of what you plan." + + +"You know you as good as stood for De Presle-Vaulx." + +Bulstrode held Mrs. Falconer's parasol, her fan, as well as a gold bag +purse full of louis, a handkerchief and his own cane and field-glass. +For the lady, standing on a chair the better to see the race-track, was +applauding with enthusiasm the result of the first handicap. She had +placed a bet on a horse called Plum-Branch "from a feeling of +sentiment," as she said, because she had, that day, quite by chance, +selected a hat with a decorative plum-branch amongst other garnitures. + +"I am _standing_, certainly, Jimmy," she replied to his remark, "and to +the peril of my high heels!-- _There_, I've won! and won't you, like an +angel, go and cash my bets?--give me the purse, you might have your +hand picked! You can put my winnings in your pocket; they're not so +enormous." + +During his absence she watched the scene around her with animation. +The spotless day, if one might so call it, when the sky and the turf +and the whole world looked as though washed clean, and nature, seen in +the warm sunlight, seemed to palpitate and flutter in the wind that +gently stirred ends of ribbon or tips of plumes, and set the fragrance +of the country air astir. Back of the lady the tribune was like a +floral display: here and there a corner red as roses, there a mass of +lily-white dresses enlivened by pink and blue parasols, and the green +_pesage_ stretched between the spectators and the race-track in bands +of emerald, whilst across it promenaded or stood in groups those +interested in the races. Mrs. Falconer acknowledged a friend here and +there, glanced affectionately over to where Molly and the Marquis, +seated near, fixed their attention on the race-course, where the +winner, flying his blue ribbon, cantered triumphantly around the track. + +One of a little group Falconer, the worse for many cocktails, stood by +the railing, talking familiarly with his jockey, whilst Bon Jour, +blanketed to the eyes, was being led up and down the outside track +alongside of her rival, Rothschild's Grimace. + +Bulstrode returning, gave his friend a handful of gold, which she put +into her purse, and he repeated: "You remember that you stood, as it +were, for De Presle-Vaulx?" + +"I do," she said, "if you think the race-course is the place to take me +to account for anything so serious, I do remember, and I do stand. +What is the trouble that he needs me?" + +"He needs," Bulstrode was serious, "a good many things, it seems to me, +in order to get firmly on the plane where he should be!" + +"And that is----?" + +"On his feet, my dear friend." + +"Well, he is head over heels in love," she nodded, "but when he finally +lands I think you will find Maurice perfectly perpendicular." + +"He won't," returned the other, "at all events, land in the bosom of +his family." + +"No?"--she looked away from the race-course and laughed--"you mean to +say, Jimmy, has he heard, then?" + +"I mean to say that _they_ are quite clear in their minds about his +marriage! They seem to have all the firmness that the young man lacks. +Tell me," he asked his friend, "just what do you know about the matter? +What happened that you so strongly took up his cause with Molly? You +have not told me yet." + +She relinquished the interests of the moment to those of the +sentimental question. + +"It seems," she said, lowering her tone, "that they have been secretly +engaged for a year. Nothing that an American girl can do would +surprise me, but you can imagine that I was overwhelmed at his part in +the matter. When Molly joined me in Fontainebleau, De Presle-Vaulx +promptly followed, and I naturally obliged her to tell me everything. +I was dismayed at the lack of _tenue_ he had shown. I had a plain talk +with him. He said that he had first met Molly at some dance or other +in the American colony, I don't know where; that he understood that +American girls disposed of their own lives; that he loved her and +wanted to marry her, and that he was only waiting to gain the consent +of his family before writing to her father. He seemed delighted to +talk with me and perfectly conventional in his feelings. He further +told me that his parents until now knew nothing, that he had not been +able to tear himself away from Molly long enough to go down to the +country where they were and see them. I forced him to write at once; +exacted myself that until he received their answer there should be +nothing between Molly and him but the merest distant acquaintance. I +did not know that he had heard from the Marquise or his father. You +seemed to have suddenly entirely gained his confidence and taken my +place." She looked over at the young couple. "Poor Molly!" she +exclaimed. "He has not, I should say, told her: she looks so happy and +so serene! It's of course only a question of _dot_, otherwise there +could be no possible objection. She is perfectly beautiful, the +sweetest creature in the world; and she is a born Marquise!" + +Bulstrode interrupted her impatiently: + +"It would be more to the purpose if he were a born bread-winner and she +were a dairy-maid!" + +"Jimmy, how vulgar you are!" + +"Very--" he was wonderfully sarcastic for him--"money is a very vulgar +thing, my dear friend; it's as vulgar as air and bread and butter. It +is like all other clean, decent vulgarity, it can be abused, but it's +necessary to life." + +Mrs. Falconer opened her eyes wide on this new Bulstrode. + +"Why, what has happened to you?" + +He made a comprehensive gesture: "Oh, I am always supporting a family!" +he said with an amusing attempt at irritability. "I am always +supporting a family that is not mine, that does not sit at my +hearthstone or at my table. I am always marrying other people to some +one else, and dressing other people's children!" + +He finished with a laugh: "There, No. 5 is up! Aren't you interested +in this race?" + +Mrs. Falconer and Bulstrode had walked a little from where the young +couple chattered indifferent to everything but each other. + +"No; I am only interested in what you are saying. What have you +planned to do or thought out for them, Jimmy? What do your rebellious +phrases imply? _Are_ you really going to make a home for----?" + +Bulstrode said stubbornly. "No! I am going to show him how to make +one for himself." + +He stopped short where he stood: he had resumed the care of her +parasol, her fan, and purse. + +Her face, as she took in his exposition of his plan for the +regeneration of a decayed nobility, was inscrutable. Instead of +exclaiming, she stopped to speak a moment to some people who passed, +shook hands with the owner of the favorite, and when they were once +again alone said to her friend: + +"Isn't it too delightful! the whole scene? I mean to say, how +perfectly they do it all. How thoroughly gay it is, how debonnair, +graceful, and _bien compris_. Look at the wonderful color of the +_pesage_, and the life of the whole thing! These Latin most thoroughly +understand the art of living. You scarcely ever see a care-worn face +in France. Look at Jack now! Did you ever see such anxiety as he +represents? If Bon Jour is beaten I don't know _what_ will become of +him. What shall I do with him?" + +Bulstrode's interest on this subject was tepid. + +"Oh, he'll be all right!" he said indifferently. "Take him to the +Dublin Horse Fair." + +And then as though she had not capriciously left the other topic, Mrs. +Falconer asked: + +"Just what _is_ your plan for Molly and her Marquis? May I not know?" + +And Bulstrode who had never in any way thought out a plan or scheduled +a scheme for the wise distribution of the good he intended to do, +educated now, so he fondly hoped, by his failures, wiser, he was proud +to believe, by several sharp lessons--with no little confidence and +something of pride, said to his companion: + +"I have a ranch out West, you know; a little property I took for a bad +debt once. It has turned out to be a great and good piece of luck. +That time I was fortunate--" (his tone, was congratulatory and Mrs. +Falconer smiled prettily). "I now need a second overseer again--a man +of brains, good temper, and physical endurance, who can keep accounts. +Experience isn't at all necessary. There's my Englishman there, my +Christmas tramp, you recall; he'll show De Presle-Vaulx his duties. +It's a good enough berth for any determined chap who has his way to +make and an ideal to work for. I purpose to send this Frenchman out on +a salary and to see what stuff he's made of. After a year or two, with +good sense and push, he will be in a position to ask any girl to be his +wife. I'll raise his salary, and if Molly is the girl I take her for, +she will help him there." + +"And his family, Jimmy?" + +"Damn his family!" risked the aroused Bulstrode. + +Mrs. Falconer laughed. + +"Really! It is casual of you! but you don't know them and can't! But +they can quite spoil the whole thing as far as Molly is concerned. His +tradition and race, his home and all it means to him--why you can't +roughly run against all the old conventions like that, my dear man!" + +"Well," said the ruthless gentleman, "then he can go and feed on their +charity, can take to his flesh-pots and give up the girl. She is far +too good for any foreign fortune-hunter anyway. You spoil a man, all +of you. You'd prefer a disreputable roue to a cowboy with money in his +pocket and a heart." + +"Would it then prove to you De Presle-Vaulx's heart if he threw over +his family and went West?" + +"Yes," said the other quickly. "It would prove he loves the girl." + +"You forget his mother." + +Bulstrode fumed. + +"I have not the honor to forget her; I don't know the Marquise de +Presle-Vaulx." + +"I do," interrupted his friend. "She is a charming, gentle old dear; +narrow, if you call it so, clear-headed and delightful. She adores her +only son, and thinks quite properly that his name, his estates, +beautiful if mortgaged, are a fair exchange for an American _dot_. +Maurice de Presle-Vaulx, after all, does not go poverty-stricken to the +woman he marries. There are not so many ways to live after one is +twenty-five, and to uproot this scion of an old race, to exact such a +sacrifice----" + +"It would make a man of him." + +"He is one already. There are all kinds, I need not tell you so." + +"He is head over heels in debt." + +Mrs. Falconer laughed again. + +"We make him out an acrobat between us." + +"He gambles on borrowed money." + +"You mean that you have forced him to borrow from you? He will pay +what he owes, I am sure of him." + +Bulstrode wheeled and scrutinized her, and said with the natural +asperity of a man who is bored by a woman's too generous championship +of another man: + +"You stand for him warmly." + +Mrs. Falconer, reading him, said quickly: + +"Oh, I know him thoroughly! He has the faults of his race, but as an +individual he is the right sort." + +With their pretty habit, her cheeks had grown red in the course of the +discussion. + +"Please give me my parasol; it's awfully hot here." + +He opened it for her and she held its rosy lining against the sun. + +Mr. Falconer, who from the rail had been observing, through the haze +formed by countless cocktails, the figure of his wife in her white +dress, as well as the figure of her faithful squire, here came +swaggering up to them both. He was never jealous, but Mr. Bulstrode's +uniform courtesy and attention to the woman neglected by her husband +often piqued him to attention. As he drew near, Mrs. Falconer asked +quickly: + +"And the Marquis, Jimmy? What do you suppose he will say to your Wild +West scheme?" + +Bulstrode smiled. + +"Oh, you women understand us even when we are stupid mysteries to +ourselves! Tell me, how will he take this?" + +"He will refuse." The lady was quick in her decision. "He cannot in +consistence do otherwise. He will consider your plan provincial and +Yankee, and he will consider, what you ignore, that it will kill his +mother. If he cannot marry Molly with the family consent in proper +French fashion he will naturally give her up. But first of all, my +dear Jimmy, he will put _you_ in your place!" + +Bulstrode cast a fatherly glance to where the young people sat talking +together: the Marquis in gray clothes of the latest London make, a +white rose in his button-hole, and monocle in his eye, a figure more +unlike the traditional cowboy one could scarcely conceive. + +"Your taste is good, ma chere amie," his voice was delighted. "Your +instinct as a connoisseur is faultless; but you are not quite sure of +your _objet d'art_ this time." He nodded kindly at the Parisian--"He's +all right! he's a true sport, a lover and a man. De Presle-Vaulx knows +my Wild West scheme and has accepted." + + +Molly had put twenty-five francs on Bon Jour and expected to win it. +The money Bulstrode played would have bought a very handsome present +for his lady, and he felt as if he were making an anonymous gift to the +woman he loved. + +At the ringing of the bell Falconer left his post by the railing and +came up and joined the little group of his friends just below the Grand +Stand. He lit a cigar, threw down the match furiously, smoked +furiously, and nerved himself for the strain. + +Nodding toward the betting contingent he muttered: "They're sheep. +They're all betting on the favorite naturally. Bon Jour wasn't +mentioned for place even, poor little girl!" + +The ignored little racer had ambled around the field, her jockey in +crimson and white, doubled up upon her back after the manner of his +profession. Bon Jour was as golden red as a young chestnut; she had +four white feet that twinkled on the fragrant turf whose odors of +crushed blades and green blades, of earth and the distant smell of the +sea went to her pretty head. She threw it up eagerly as her disputants +filled the field. There were nine horses scheduled, but only five +qualified. The Rothschild gelding, an English gray, and two others +named for probable places. + +"She's cool as a rose," murmured Bon Jour's owner, "and just look at +her form, will you!" + +It was charming, and already the American's horse was attracting +attention. + +Molly, with De Presle-Vaulx's aid, rose on her chair, from which her +excitement threatened at any moment to precipitate her. + +"Oh, Maurice--of course she'll win. Isn't she a _dear_? How much +shall I make on twenty-five francs?" + +Bulstrode smiled. + +"A frightful amount! There are twenty to one up on her, Molly." + +The girl mentally calculated, exclaimed with pleasure and, with +sparkling eyes, watched the lining-up of the racers. Neck to neck they +stood, a splendid showing of satin and shine from fetlock to forelock, +equine beauty enough to gladden a sporting man's heart, and all five +were away before Miss Malines was even sure which one was the great +Grimace. + +From the first the favorite's nose was to the good. His shapely body +followed, and when the horses came in sight again beyond the right-hand +hedge, he had put four lengths between himself and the others. The +winner of the Grand Prix had all the field with him. But the gray +gelding who strained at Grimace's flanks had no staying powers, +although he was backed as strongly for place as was Grimace to win; as +he fell back Bon Jour began to attract notice. + +Bulstrode and De Presle-Vaulx exchanged glances over the absorbed +figure of Jack Falconer. "She may yet win place," murmured the younger +man. + +As they came up the wide turf sweep that lay like an emerald sea +crested by the dark waves of the hedges, as the horses rocked like +ships over the obstacle--Bon Jour closely followed the favorite. + +At the moment Miss Malines cried: "Oh, a jockey's off! Oh, Jack, it's +Bon Jour! She's _thrown_ her jockey! I see the red and white." + +But Falconer biting his cigar fiercely, laughed in scorn. "She's +thrown _them_ all right. She's left them all _behind_ her--see!" he +pointed, "there are only three running." And, indeed, as they came +again in sight, one of the horses was seen to be wandering loose about +the course, and another cantered nonchalantly some hundred yards behind. + +"She's not even trying," murmured her enchanted owner. "She's cool as +a rose." + +The cries which had named the Rothschild gelding from the start were +now mingled, and Bon Jour, flying around the emerald course, might have +heard her name for the first on the public lips. She was running +gracefully, her head even with the favorite's saddle and the English +gray was a far-off third. Bon Jour was pressing to fame. + +At the last hurdle as they appeared flying in full sight of the Grand +Stand it was evident the pretty creature had made her better good. The +horses leapt simultaneously and came down on all fours, with Grimace to +the rear, and amongst the frantic acclamation with which the public is +always ready to greet the surprise of unlooked-for merit, Bon Jour +passed Grimace by half a metre at the goal. Jack Falconer was an +interesting figure on the turf; his horse was worth twenty thousand +pounds. + + +Several hours later, Bulstrode, early in the salon, walked up and down +waiting the arrival of the ladies. He had paid downstairs a hundred +francs for the privilege of dining in the window of the restaurant, +because Mrs. Falconer chanced to remark that one saw the room better +from that point. And the head waiter even after this monstrous tip +said if "_ces dames_" were late there would be no possibility to keep +this gilt-edged table for them. It was the night of the year at +Trouville: Boldi and his Hungarians played to five hundred people in +the dining-room. + +Bulstrode looked at the clock; they had yet ten minutes' grace. + +Extremely satisfied with himself, with Bon Jour, above all with the +French Marquis--he felt a glow of affection for the whole French nation. + +"How we misjudge them!" he mused; "how we accuse them of clinging to +their families' apron strings, of being bad colonists; call them +hearthstone huggers, degenerates; and declare that they lack nerve and +force to rescue themselves from degeneration! And here without +hesitation this young man----" At this moment the salon door opened, +and one of the ladies he had been expecting came in, the youngest one, +Miss Molly Malines, in a tulle dress, an enormous white hat, a light +scarf over her shoulders, and the remains of recent tears on her face. + +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" she exclaimed, half putting out her hand and +drawing it back again, as she bit her lips: "I thought I should find +Mary here; I wanted to see her first to _cry_ with! but of course it is +you I _should_ see and not cry with!" + +She gave a little gasp and put her handkerchief to her eyes to his +consternation; then to his relief controlled herself. + +"Maurice has just told me _everything_," she repeated the word with +much the same desperation that De Presle-Vaulx had put into a gesture +which to Bulstrode had signified ruin. + +"He's too wonderful! too _glorious_, Mr. Bulstrode, isn't he? I loved +him before, but I _adore_ him now! He's glorious. I never heard +anything so terrible and so silly!" + +Bright tears sprang to brighter eyes, and she dashed them away. + +("She's adorable") he was obliged to acknowledge it. + +"Why, how could you be so cruel; yes, I will say it, so cruel, so hard, +so brutal?" + +"_Brutal_?"--he fairly whispered the word in his surprise. + +"Why, fancy Maurice in the West, in the dreadful Western life, in that +climate----!" + +"Why, it is the Garden of Eden," murmured Bulstrode. + +"Oh, I mean to say with cattle and cowboys." + +"Come," interrupted her father's friend, practically, "you don't know +what you are talking about, Molly. You don't talk like an American +girl. They've spoiled De Presle-Vaulx, and this will make a man of +him!" + +Miss Malines called out in scorn: + +"_A man of him_! What do you think he is? He's the finest man I ever +saw. You don't know him. Just because he has a title and his mother +spoils him, and because he has been a little reckless in debts and +things, you throw him over as you do all the French race without +knowing them!" + +Her tears had dried and her cheeks flamed. + +"Why, Maurice has served three years as a common soldier in the +Madagascar Army; and _that's_ no cinch! Cuba's a joke to it. He's had +the fever and marched with it. He's slept all night with no covering +but the clothes he had worn for weeks. He's eaten bread and drunk +dirty water. He's been a soldier three years. The way I came to know +him was at Dinard where he swam out into the sea to save a fisherman +who couldn't swim, and all the town was out in the storm to welcome +him! They carried him up the streets in their arms--" she waited a +minute to steady her voice--"He's been two years exploring in Abyssinia +with a native caravan--no white man near him, he's the youngest man +wearing the Legion d'Honneur in France. _And you want to send him out +to make a cowboy of him in the American West to turn him into a man_!" + +Mr. Bulstrode had never heard such impressive youthful scorn. Molly +threw back her pretty head and laughed. + +"Do you know many cowboys who have been three years a soldier; +travelled through unexplored countries; written a book that was crowned +by an academy? Well, I don't!" she said boldly. "Of course I like his +title, of course I am proud of his traditions. They're fine! And it +is no dishonor to love his chateau and his Paris hotel, and I'd love +his mother, too--if she'd let me. But I adore Maurice _as he is_, and +he's man enough for me!" + +The floor seemed to quiver under poor Bulstrode, who could scarcely see +distinctly the lovely excited face as he ventured timidly: + +"I didn't know all these things, Molly." + +She was still unpitying. + +"Of course not! Americans never do know. They only _judge_. You +didn't think Maurice would tell you all his good points! He doesn't +think they are anything. He only sees the fact that he has debts and +that we are both poor and his family won't give their consent." + +Mr. Bulstrode smiled and said: + +"He is naturally forced to see these things, my dear child." + +The girl softened at his tone and said more gently: + +"Well, they are terrible facts, of course. It only means that my heart +is broken, but it doesn't mean that I will consent to your plan, or to +his plan, Mr. Bulstrode. I won't make him break his mother's heart and +ruin his career for me." + +The gentleman came up and took her hands: his voice was very gentle: + +"What, then, will you do?" + +"Oh, wait," she said with less spirit. "Wait until his mother +consents, or until she dies...." She began to hang her head. Her +eulogy of her lover over, only the dry facts of the present remained. +She had no more enthusiasm with which to animate her voice. + +Here Mrs. Falconer and the Marquis opened the door, and started back as +the animated picture of beauty being consoled by kindness met their +view. + +"Oh, come along in!" cried the girl cheerily. "I have just been +ballyragging Mr. Bulstrode!" + +De Presle-Vaulx came eagerly forward: + +"Don't listen to her, Monsieur! Molly's tired out after so much +success." + +The startled benefactor looked doubtfully from her to the young man. + +"And you?" + +"Oh, I?" shrugged De Presle-Vaulx, "I'm already half cowboy!" + +Mary Falconer put her arm round Molly's waist, drew her to her, "and +Molly is more than half Marquise." + +"Mr. Bulstrode," again cried the girl impetuously. "_Please_ reason +with him! He's horribly obstinate. You have put this dreadful idea in +his head; now please tell him how _ridiculous_ it is. If he goes West +and spoils his career and breaks with his family, I'll never marry him! +As it is, I will wait for ever!" + +"But my dear child!" Mary Falconer was determined to have the whole +thing out before them, "you don't seem to get it into your head that +you have neither of you a sou, and Maurice can never earn any money in +France." + +Miss Malines, to whom money meant that she drew on her father, the +extravagant stockbroker whose seat even in the Stock Exchange was +mortgaged, and who had not ten thousand dollars' capital in the +world--lost countenance here at the cruel and vulgar introduction of +the commodity on which life turns. She sighed, her lips trembled, and +she capitulated: + +"Oh, if that's really true ... as I suppose it is----" + +Bulstrode watched her, she had grown pale--she drew a deep breath, and, +looking up, not at her lover, but at the elder man, said softly: + +"Why, I guess I'll have to give him quite up then." + +But here De Presle-Vaulx made an exclamation, and before them all took +Molly in his arms: + +"No," he said tenderly, "never, never! _That_ the last of all! Mr. +Bulstrode is right. I must work for you, and I will. We'll both go +West together. Couldn't you? Wouldn't you come with me?" + +... "And your mother?" asked the girl. + +"Nothing--" De Presle-Vaulx whispered, "nothing, counts but _you_." + +Over their heads Bulstrode met his friend's eye, and in his were--he +could not help it--triumph, keen delight, and in hers there was anger +at him and tears. + +At this moment the waiter put his head in at the door and implored +Monsieur to come down if he wanted the seat in the window. + +"Oh, we're coming!" Mrs. Falconer cried impatiently. "Molly, there's +some eau-de-cologne on the table. Put it on your eyes. Don't be long +or we'll lose our place. The West will keep!" + +She went out of the door and Bulstrode followed her. In the hall she +said tartly: + +"Well, I hope you're satisfied! I never saw a more perfect inquisitor. +Why didn't you live at the time of the Spanish persecution?" + +He ignored her scathing question: + +"I am satisfied," he said happily, "with both of them; they're bricks." + +The lady made no reply as she rustled along by his side to the elevator. + +From the floors below came the clear, bright sound of the Hungarian +music in an American cake-walk and the odor of cigars and wines and the +distinct suggestion of good things to eat came tempting their nostrils. + +As Bulstrode followed the brilliant woman, a sense of defeat came over +him and with less conviction he repeated: + +"I _am_ satisfied, but you, my friend, are not." + +"Oh," shrugged Mary Falconer desperately, "you know _I've_ no right to +think, or feel, or criticise! I never pretend to run people's lives or +to act the benefactor or to take the place of Fate." + +The light danced and sparkled on the jet in her black dress, on the +jewels on her neck. Under her black feather-hat her face, brilliant +and glowing, seemed for once to be defiant to him, her handsome eyes +were dark with displeasure. + +The poor fellow could never recall having caused a cloud to ruffle her +face before in his life. It was not like her. Her tenderness for a +second had gone. He could not live without that, he knew it, what ever +else he must forego. + +He said, with some sadness, "I suppose you're right: if one can buy +even _a honeymoon_ for another couple he shouldn't lose the +opportunity." + +She looked up at him quickly. They had reached the ground floor--they +had left the elevator and they stood side by side in the hall. The +lady had a very trifle softened, not very much, still he noticed the +change and was duly grateful. + +"We must wait here," she said, "for the others to come down. I can't +let Molly go in alone, and I don't know where my husband is; I haven't +seen him all day." + +Bulstrode continued spiritlessly: "Molly, if you remember, begged me to +tell De Presle-Vaulx how 'perfectly ridiculous' my scheme for the Wild +West is. I will tell him this--you will coach me,--there'll be some +pleasure in that, at least! and then I'll find out for what sum the +Marquise de Presle-Vaulx will sell her son. I'll buy him," he said, +"for Molly, and of course," he brought it out quite simply, "I shall +_dot_ the girl." + +And then the lady stepped back and looked at him. He felt, before that +she had merely swept him with her eyes; now she looked at him. She +cried his name out--"Jimmy!"--that was all. + +But in the exclamation, in the change of her mobile face, in the lovely +gesture that her hand made, as if it would have gone to his, Bulstrode +was forced to feel himself eminently, gloriously repaid, and it is not +too much to say that he did. + + + + +THE FIFTH ADVENTURE + + + +V + +IN WHICH HE MAKES NOBODY HAPPY AT ALL + +Bulstrode stood before the entrance of the Hotel de Paris bidding his +friends good-night. Watching them, at least one of them, enter in +under the shelter of the glass pavilion, he considered how much more +lonely he was at that special moment than he could remember having been +before. Of course he had bidden Mary Falconer good-night a hundred +dozen times in the course of his life, but it seemed to come with a +more sublime significance than ever how he gave her up every time he +said good-by and how he was himself left alone. And yet, had Mrs. +Falconer been asked, she would have said that she never found her +friend more cold and more constrained. In his correct evening dress +with the flower she herself had given him in his buttonhole, his panama +in his hand, he had been absorbed in her beauty, in the grace of her +dark dress, bright with scintillating ornaments--her big feathered hat +under which her face was more lovely, more alluring than ever; and +nothing in his eyes told the woman what he thought and felt. + +She touched his arm, saying: + +"Look, Jimmy." + +"Isn't that the lovely woman we've so often remarked? See, she's all +alone, how curious! She's going over to the Casino to play, I suppose. +_What_ can have happened to the man who has been with her all this +time? Where is the Prince Pollona?" + +As Bulstrode turned his head in the direction indicated, through the +trees passed along the figure of a slender woman, trailing her thin +gown over the pebbles and the grass. She disappeared in the lighted +doorway of the Casino. + +"You're quite bearish to-night," Mrs. Falconer said reproachfully, +"quite a bear. I believe you're angry! Dear Jimmy, you may, I +promise, carry out all your philanthropies without my interference; I +won't even criticise or tease. I promise you next time you shall go +sweetly and serenely on your foolish way!" + +"Oh," he got out with effort, "I believe I've suddenly grown awfully +selfish, for I find I'm so ridiculous as only to want things for +myself----" + +(When he stopped she did not help him but, instead, persisted gently +with the wicked feminine way she had of urging him, tempting him on.) + +"What, then, what do you wish? Can't you tell me?" + +He laughed almost roughly and said, "No, it's a secret, and I'm one of +those unusual creatures who can keep a secret." + +The woman's face changed. He saw the shadow that crossed it. "Come," +she sighed, "you must bid me good-night..." + +And at this moment he had seen Jack Falconer emerge from a still more +shadowy corner, a cigar between his teeth. Drawing his wife's arm +through his, Falconer nodded to the other man and said they had all +better be going up. Bulstrode noted bitterly the satisfaction on +Falconer's bestial, indulgent face and the content that man felt with +himself this evening, his triumph at the race's termination. His horse +had won the stakes and was famous, his wife had been called to-day the +loveliest woman in Trouville, and not for the first time Bulstrode +suffered from it, the proprietorship with which Falconer considered his +wife. For the smallest part of a second he fancied that the woman drew +away, half turned away, looked toward him; and in dread that he might, +if he met her eyes, see some look like appeal, Bulstrode avoided +meeting her glance. He saw them pass under the glass roof of the hotel +leaving him standing alone. + +The deserted lover waited until they had disappeared; then, turning +abruptly, vaguely in search of human beings with whom he might exchange +a word should he feel inclined to talk, dreading the deserted gardens +ami finding his own rooms the dreariest prospect of all, he went into +the Casino with the intention of waiting for the Frenchman who he +thought more than likely would come and join him there. The Marquis +failing him, Bulstrode chose a place not far from the table where the +lovely woman, that Mrs. Falconer and himself had remarked, seated +herself before the game. + +Bulstrode's sense of desolation and loneliness would not leave him. If +his luck had been bad, the excitement of the sport might have brought +him some sensation; but, on the contrary, he won. "Only," he said +humorously, as he gathered up his winnings, "only unlucky in love!" + +It was well on in the night when he thrust his last roll of bank notes +into his pocket. He had beaten the bank; he had raked up and stuffed +away a small fortune. As he wandered out through the deserted rooms, +he noted, bent over the table, her head in her hand, the woman who, in +spite of his sincere absorption in Mary Falconer, had, like a +temptation, crossed his mind when he first came into the Casino. No +one disturbed her, and she had remained in this dejected posture for +some time. This one amongst the many women in Trouville, Bulstrode and +his friends had remarked for several days. She had first appeared +alone; made a discreet _debut_ on the beach, passed through the Rue de +Paris and kept away from the more public parts of the town. Later she +had been joined by a man well known in the world, the Prince Pollona, +who was travelling incognito. The woman's beauty and manner were such +that her actual standing was a mooted question; it had even been +remarked that she was the princess herself incognita, but that they all +knew to be impossible. + +Before the official who waited to see the last players leave the +_salle_ could speak to her, she rose of her own accord, gathering her +silken cloak about her, and went quickly from the gambling room. Once +on the stairway, however, her footsteps halted and she went slowly down +as if reluctant to leave the shelter of the brightly lighted +apartments. Bulstrode following her, observed her closely; tall, very +slender, with a fine carriage and a lovely blonde head set on the most +graceful of necks, older than Molly and younger than Mrs. Falconer, she +was quite as _comme il faut_. All along she had worn a collar and rope +of pearls which had excited Molly's enthusiasm. To-night she was +denuded of her jewels; her neck was bare. Bulstrode remarked this as +he walked behind in full view of the soft adorable _nuque_ below the +curls of the girl's fair hair. She trailed her dress slowly through +the garden walks, her white figure in the darkness escaping from him a +little as the trees made an avenue for her. But Bulstrode distinctly +felt that he was expected to follow. Whether or not he might intrude +he did not ask, as he came along, surprised however to see her actually +stop short within a few feet of him. Under the full light of one of +the big lamps, she stood motionless, her arms by her side, her chin +raised. Now that he was quite near her he found her more lovely than +he had even imagined. + +He went up directly to her and, without asking how she might take his +interference, said: "You cannot remain here alone, Madame, the gardens +are deserted. What can I do for you?" + +As he so spoke in his kind voice the woman lifted her head and looked +full at him; Bulstrode was surprised at her words and more particularly +at her voice. + +"You--" she breathed, "you?" + +Taking it for granted that for some reason or other it might be him +more than any other man, Bulstrode went on. "You seem more or less to +be in trouble, if I may say so. Won't you please let me be of some +service to you--let me at least see you out of these gloomy gardens?" + +But the woman, whose face had flushed, exclaimed: "Oh, no, no! Please +don't bother; please leave me. I want to be alone." And, as she +spoke, she turned and went away from him some few steps. + +Jimmy Bulstrode never knew what impulse made him spring forward and +with one sudden gesture dash from her hand what it held. But the +little object fell some distance away, hard down in the grass, to be +found the next morning by the guardians of the place and considered as +a relic of the fortunes of Casino hazard. + +"Heavens!" exclaimed the gentleman, and he caught in his hand the +slender wrist from which he had just dashed the weapon. "My good God! +You poor child, why, why----" and he could go no further. The woman's +face, although moved, was singularly tranquil for the face of a woman +on the verge of self-destruction. + +"Won't you leave me," she whispered and Bulstrode, gathering himself +together, said firmly: + +"Leave you? Not now, certainly, not for anything in the world. And +you must let me take you home." + +After a few moments' silence in which she bit her lip and apparently +controlled a burst of hysterical weeping, the young woman accepted his +offer and very lightly put her hand on his arm. "You may, if you +like," she consented, "take me home, as you call it. I am staying at +the Hotel des Roches Noires." + +From the Casino gardens through the silent town without exchanging one +word with her--for he saw she wished to be silent--Jimmy took the lady, +as he called it, home. Once in the big corridor of the vast hotel, +into whose impersonal shelter they entered as the only late comers, he +stood for a second before bidding her good-night, whilst the porter +eyed them, scarcely with curiosity, so used was he to late entrances of +this kind which he imagined he fully understood. + +"Good-night--" Bulstrode started and at once cut himself short, for he +did not really intend to say it then--he had not spoken to her and he +knew he would never leave her until at least he was sure she would not +take her life before the next morning. + +The girl extended her hand, her beautiful face was gray. "Will you +not," she asked, "come up with me to my drawing-room? I am quite +alone." + +Bulstrode bowed and without hesitation followed her up the stairs to +the conventional suite of hotel rooms, where, in the little salon, +trunks stood about in the evident indications of hasty packing. + +The girl threw her gloves, her handkerchief and her soft silken cloak +on the table. She then seated herself in a corner of the sofa by an +open dressing-bag and Bulstrode, at her invitation, took a chair +opposite. He scarcely knew how to begin his conversation with her, but +he determined at once to go toward what he believed to be the most +crying need. + +"You lost to-night," he said. "I saw it. As it happened, I was lucky. +I have no need of money, none." He had drawn from his pocket piles of +louis; he took out from his wallet a roll of notes. + +He saw, too, as well as the look of passion and admiration, that her +face was familiar, at least that there was about it something that +suggested remembrance. + +"This," she said, "is a fortune!" Her accent was British and her voice +very soft and sweet. "It is quite a large fortune, isn't it? My debts +here are small. I have not fifty pounds in the world," she said +smiling, "I work for my living, too. I have been extravagant, for I +had really made a lot of money, but lately I've thrown everything away. +Yesterday my pearls were sold, and my jewels went last week; the races +and the Casino did the rest! This would make me quite rich." + +"Work for her living!" Bulstrode thought, with a pang as he looked at +her. "Heavens, poor dear!" A thousand questions came to his lips, but +he asked her none. He was mastering the feelings her personality, her +trouble, and the night, aroused. He also decided to go at once, while +there was still time. + +"It is very droll that this money should have come from _you;_" she +repeated "from you," with the insistence on the pronoun that he had +before remarked as strange. "Even now you don't know me, do you? +Don't you know who I am?" + +"No," Bulstrode wondered, "and yet I have certainly seen you before, +but save as I have noticed and admired you here, I don't _think_ I know +you. Should I?" + +"You _have_ seen me then here?" she caught delighted, "you have +actually noticed me? You said 'admire'; did you perhaps find something +in me to like?" + +"Who," he said with sincerity, "could help himself! Of course I've +seen you and remarked you with your friend." + +Here she bit her lip and put up her hand. "Oh, please," she frowned, +"Oh, please!" + +Bulstrode, surprised at her accents of distress, murmured an excuse and +said he was much at fault, he should remember. But here the girl +smiled. "Well, it is not exactly a duty to know me; my name is not +quite unknown. I play in 'The Shining Lights Company,' 'The Warren +Company,' I am Felicia Warren--_now_, haven't you seen me play!" + +He was sorry, very, very sorry that he had not! Oh, but he knew her +name and her success; they were famous. He wished he could have +assured her that he had admired her before the footlights ...! + +Felicia Warren's eyes strayed down at the table on which the money was +so alluringly spread. + +"I've been touring in Australia and the Colonies, still I go now and +then to the Continent, though I am almost always in London." She +paused, then regarded him fully with her great blue eyes. "Don't you +remember, Mr. Bulstrode, a great many years ago when you took a +shooting-box in Glousceshire? Don't you remember...?" + +Staring at her, trying to place the image which was now taking form, he +did; he _did_ remember it and she? + +"There was a mill there on the place. Rugby Doan was the miller, he is +the miller still." Didn't Mr. Bulstrode remember that Doan had a +daughter? She had been fifteen years old then, she had ambitions, she +was altogether a ridiculous and silly little thing; didn't he remember? + +Bulstrode was silent. + +The gentleman, Mr. Bulstrode, took a strong liking to Doan; he gave him +the money to educate his daughter. Oh, dear me, such a generous lot of +money! Then, as the girl was extraordinarily silly (she had ambitions) +she went on the stage. Her father never forgave her; poor father! She +had never seen him since. "Mr. Bulstrode, don't you remember Felicia +Doan?--I am the miller's daughter." + +Bulstrode extended his hand. He wanted to say: "My poor child, my poor +little girl," but Miss Warren's dignity forbade it. "No wonder your +face was familiar," he said quietly; "no wonder! How I wish I might +have seen you play, but we must do something to make your father look +at things in a reasonable way. What can we do?" + +The girl shook her head. "Nothing" she said absently, "oh, nothing. +You know what an English yeoman is! or perhaps you don't! My greatest +kindness is to keep away from the Mill on the Rose" ... + +But Felicia Warren was not thinking of Glousceshire or of her father. +Still looking down at the money on the table, not even toward her +newly-found friend, she went on, "It is not half as curious, our +meeting here, as one might think. I knew you were here when I came and +I have watched you every day with--with your friend." A slight +expression of amusement crossed her face as, looking up, she caught his +puzzled expression. "Ah, you wonder about it!" she laughed gently. +Coming a little nearer to him, she went on: "You see, you have been my +benefactor, haven't you?" + +(Bulstrode wondered in just how far he _had_ been beneficent!) "It's +natural I should remember you with gratitude, isn't it? Thanks to you +I have made my name." Her pride was touching. "You've made it +possible for me to know the world, to know life and to realize my +career. And now," she emphasized, "you've come to save my life and +afterward give me a little fortune." Here she again pointed to the +money. "My father took your money for years, Mr. Bulstrode, but _this, +this_ must all go back. You must take it back soon--not that it could +really tempt me, but it hurts me to see it there." + +Bulstrode, more wretched than he had yet been in his philanthropic +failures stared at her helplessly. This blind beneficence, this gift +made to the miller in a moment of enthusiasm had produced--how could he +otherwise believe--fatal results? Here was this delicate creature in +the fastest place in Europe, deserted by a man who had brought her +here--on the verge of suicide. + +Whilst speaking, Felicia Warren gathered up the gold and notes and she +was thrusting the money into his hand. + +"Please, please be reasonable," he pleaded. "You must let me help you. +There isn't any question of delicacy in the situation where you find +yourself to-night. If ever a man should be a woman's friend, I should +be that friend to you, and you must let me. Don't refuse. Money is +such a little thing, such a stupid little thing." + +Miss Warren shook her head obstinately. "Oh, that depends! I've +worked so hard that money often seems to me everything. Indeed, I +thought so to-night when I had not a sou! I shall think so to-morrow +when they seize my trunks for the hotel bill." + +"Seize your trunks!" he exclaimed. "Why--you don't mean to say----?" + +The actress blushed crimson. "Oh, of course you thought otherwise," +she said, throwing up her pretty head. "I pay for my own livelihood, +Mr. Bulstrode," she told him proudly, "I pay for _everything_ I have +and wear and eat and do. Don't feel badly at misunderstanding," she +comforted him sweetly--"You have nothing to apologize for. Why should +you or anyone think otherwise? But I don't care in the least what +people say or think; that is, _I only care what one person says_." + +With some of his gold in her palm and some of his bills in her hands, +Felicia Warren put both her hands on Bulstrode's arm. "No," she said +softly, "_I only care what one person thinks_. Can't you see that you +mustn't give me this?" + +"No," he persisted doggedly, charmed by her beyond his reason and angry +to find that she would not let him help her in the way he wished, "I do +_not_ see! You must let me help you, you shall not be driven to +desperation." + +"Driven to desperation!" her expression seemed to say. Yes, so she had +been, but not through financial anxieties. + +"Why, I had rather starve than take your money. I could far sooner +have taken it from poor Pollona; and he left me so dreadfully angry +this morning." + +For a second neither spoke. He saw the soft mobile face touched to its +finest. Felicia's eyes were violet and large, and their expression at +the moment pierced him with its appeal. + +"Don't you see?" she whispered. Her voice broke here. Her hands +trembled on his arm, some of the gold rattled on the floor and rolled +under the divan. She swayed and Bulstrode caught her. + +"... Ever since you came to the mill," she whispered, +"ever--since--you--came--to--the--mill." + +Before Bulstrode had time to realize what she said, or the fact that +his arm was about her, she had rushed across the room, thrown open the +window and gone out on the balcony. Left alone with what her words +implied, Bulstrode watched her go. + +The clock on the mantel pointed to three and through the open window +came the long, rushing sound of the sea on the beach. The day was +breaking and Bulstrode could see the white figure of Felicia Warren +between the lighted room and the dawn. + +He told himself that there was no reason why he should look upon her as +anything but an adventuress--and a very clever one--a very dangerous +one. But, at all events, there _was_ no doubt that she was Felicia +Doan. She refused his money, and she told him that she loved him. But +Jimmy Bulstrode, man of the world as he was, did not reason at all +along those lines. Whether because he was vain, as most men are, or +because he was susceptible as he always told himself he was, he +believed what she said. More than once during the week at Trouville, +when she should have been absorbed in Polonna, Bulstrode had caught her +eyes fastened upon himself and as soon as she had met his own she had +turned hers away. He had no difficulty now in recalling the Mill on +the Rose, or the lovely bit of country where his shooting-box had held +him captive for nearly the whole hunting season. Nor had he any +difficulty in recalling the miller and his pretty daughter. Felicia +even then had been a wonder of good looks, and very intelligent and +mature. He could even see her as a child more plainly than he could +recall the woman who had just left him. She had been a pretty, +romantic girl and--she had deeply charmed him. He had walked with her +under the willows; he had told her many things; he had gone boating +with her on the Rose; he had tramped with her along the English lanes. +Of course he had been wrong. He had known it at the time--he had known +it. And perhaps one reason why he never reverted willingly to the days +spent with the girl was because his conscience had not left him free. +The money given to Doan, Bulstrode had always felt, was a sort of +recompense for hours of pleasure to which he had no right. Even at the +time he had feared that he had disturbed the girl's peace, and because +he had not wished to disturb his own, he had given up his lease and +left the place. Twelve years! Well, they had altered her enormously, +and her life had altered her and her experiences, and she was a very +charming creature. She was, in a measure, his very own work--almost +his creation. He had helped her to change her station, to alter her +life. What had she become? + +Bulstrode's reflections consumed twenty minutes by the clock. He had +smoked a cigarette and walked up and down the deserted room, passing +many times the table where his gold lay scattered. + +Finally--he did not dare to trust himself to go out to her--he called +her name, Felicia Warren's name, gently, and she came directly in. + +Whilst alone on the balcony she had wept. Bulstrode could see the +trace on her cheeks and she was paler even than when he had struck the +pistol from her hand in the gardens of the Casino. She came over to +where he stood and said: + +"It's not a ruse, Mr. Bulstrode. Girls like me always have ideals. It +is fame with some, money with others, dress and a social craze for a +lot of them. But with me, ever since you came it has been +YOU--everything you said to me twelve years ago I have remembered. +Silly as it seems, I could almost tell the very words. I have seen a +lot of men since, too many," she said, "and known them too well. But I +have never seen anybody like you." + +Bulstrode tried to stop her. + +"But no," she pleaded, "let me go on. I've dreamed I might grow great, +and that some day you would see me play and that I should play so well +that you would go crazy about me! I have thought this really, and I +have lived for it, really--until--until----" + +As he did not question her or interrupt, she went on: + +"I said it was an ideal. Thinking of you and what I'd like to grow for +you kept me, in spite of everything--and I fancy you know in my +profession what that means--good." + +Here Felicia Warren met his eyes frankly with the same look of entire +innocence with which she might have met his eyes under the willows near +her father's mill. + +"I've been so horribly afraid that when you _did_ come there might be +heaps of things you would not like that I have been awfully hard on +myself, awfully!" + +She was lacing and unlacing her slender fingers as she talked. + +"I went to Paris this spring because I saw that you were there, and +after passing you several times in the Bois and seeing that as far as I +could judge you were just the same as you had been, I took a new +courage hoping, waiting, for you, and being the best I knew. It seems +awfully queer to hear a woman talk like this to a man," she understood +it herself--"but you see I am used to speaking in public and I suppose +it is easier for me than for most women." + +Bulstrode, more eager than anything else to know what her life had +really been, surprised and incredulous at everything she said, broke in +here: + +"But this--this man?" + +"Oh, Pollona," she replied, "has been there for years, for years. He +has loved me ever since I first made my _debut_ and he follows me +everywhere like a dog. I have never looked at any of them, until this +week." + +With a sigh as if she renounced all her dreams, she said: "I grew tired +of my romantic folly. I was ill and nervous and could not play any +more, and that was dreadful. So, when Pollona came to me in Paris this +spring, I gave him a sort of promise. I told him that I was going to +Trouville for the Grande Semaine, that I would think things over and +that I would send him word." + +She picked up her handkerchief from the table where it lay beside her +gloves and her cloak and twisted the delicate object in her hands, +whose whiteness and transparency Bulstrode remarked. They were clever +hands, and showed her temperament and showed also singular breeding for +one born in the state of life from which she had come. + +"Well," she said shortly, "as you have seen, I gave in--I gave in at +last." + +"Why," Bulstrode asked abruptly, "did he leave you?" + +But instead of answering him, the girl said: "But you don't ask me why +I sent for him to come?" + +He was silent. + +Here she hid her face and through her fingers he could see the red rise +all along her cheek. Her attitude, and more what she implied than what +she said, and what he thought and feared, made the situation too much +for him. With a slight exclamation he put his arm about her and drew +her to him. As she rested against him he could feel her relax, hear +her sigh deeply. But, as he bent over her, she besought him to let her +go, to set her free, and he obeyed at once. + +"There," she said, "don't do that again--don't! Pollona left me +because he was jealous of you." + +But at this, in sheer unbelief, her hearer exclaimed: "Oh, my dear +girl!" + +"Oh, yes," she nodded, "when he found that I did not love him, that I +could never love him, he forced me to tell him the truth. Oh, don't be +afraid," she said, as though she anticipated his anger, "you are in no +wise connected with it. He thinks of me as a romantic, foolish girl. +He has laughed at me, tried to shake my faith, to destroy my ideal, but +at least he was honest enough to believe me; and that is all I asked of +him." + +Not for a moment did Bulstrode feel that she was weaving a web for him. +There was something about her so sincere and simple, she was so fragile +and fine and fair, there was so much of distinction in all she did and +said that it put her well nigh, one might say touchingly, apart from +the class to which she belonged. Her art and her knocking about, +instead of coarsening her, had refined her. She looked like a bit of +ivory, worn by experience, and struggle, to a fine polish; there was a +brilliance about her and he understood and felt, he instinctively saw +and knew, that she was unspoiled. + +It took him some half second to pull himself together. Then to turn +her thoughts from him, his from her, if he might, he questioned: + +"What sort of a man is Prince Pollona?" + +"Oh," she cried warmly, "the best! a kind, good, honorable friend. He +deserves something better than the horrors I have put him through, poor +dear!" + +"He seemed very devoted to you," Bulstrode said, "if one could judge." + +Not without pride she admitted that he was, and that the Prince had +always wanted to marry her. "I might have married him," she repeated, +"easily a score of times. But how it appears to interest you----" she +said jealously. + +"Only as he interests you," replied Bulstrode, "and what you tell me is +a great satisfaction. To be the Princess Pollona is an honor that many +women would be glad to have conferred upon them." Felicia Warren's +good looks were undeniable, her _genre_ was exquisite, and Bulstrode, +again with no effort, believed all she said. Princes had married far +less royal-looking women, of far more humble antecedents than Felicia +Warren. + +"Oh, his rank didn't dazzle me," she murmured absently, "they seem all +alike, and when they find out that I am not a certain kind they ask me +to marry them... But if I could only get back to the Mill on the Rose, +Mr. Bulstrode! If I might again see it as I used, if I could see you +there as I used to see you--walk by your side; row with you on the +river; if I could hear the wheel again as I used to hear it, then"--her +voice was delicious, a very note of the river of which she spoke. Oh, +she must act well, there was no doubt about that; no wonder she had +been a success: "If I might walk there with you--titles, even my art +and all the rest"--she did not apparently dare to look at him as she +spoke, but fixed her eyes across the room as if she saw back twelve +years into ----shire ... "if I could _only, only_ go back again with +you!" + +In spite of himself, carried away by her voice, Bulstrode said: + +"You shall, you shall go back with me!" + +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she gave a little cry and caught his hand, +steadying herself by the act. + +"Wait," he murmured, "wait, let me think it all out." And, as she had +done, Bulstrode walked over to the window, to the balcony where the +fresh air met his face, where the breath from the sea fanned him, +blended with the scent of the meadow. Before Bulstrode the first +reflection of the morning lay like silver on the sea. + +When he finally went back into the room, Felicia Warren had not moved. +Just as he left her, she sat, deep back into the divan, leaning on her +hand, with something like the glory of a dream on her face. Standing +in front of her, he said slowly: + +"I'm entirely free. No one in the world depends upon me. I have no +tie, or bond to my life. I have freedom and money. So far--if what +you say is all true, don't start so, for I believe it, every word--so +far, I have spoiled your life." + +But the girl shook her head. + +"Oh, no, _you haven't_," she assured him. "We make our own lives, I +expect, and I told you that I could remember everything you ever said +to me in the past--you never lied to me, and you were never anything +but kind and dear. I've been a fool, a fool!" + +Sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they +had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room +around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like +a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had +at last drifted along the shore to his feet. Unhappy and deserted, she +reached the very tenderest part of Bulstrode's nature. Cost him what +it would, he must save her. + +But, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose +and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder: + +"You must go _now_: that is what I ask you to do. I have seemed, and +indeed I have thrown myself upon your mercy; but, in reality, I don't +do any such thing. You will soon forget me, as you have been able to +do all these years. The table is full of your money. I am poor, and +yet I don't take it. Doesn't _that_ prove a little my good faith? +Doesn't it? Only think of me as the most romantic dreamer you ever +saw, and of nothing more. Oh, _no_," she breathed softly, "_no_, a +thousand times...! + +"I've answered your question before you've asked it! No, I couldn't; +no woman who wants love is content with pity. I would rather starve +than take money from you although I have lived on your money for years. +I would rather be unhappy than take what you could offer me for love. +You mustn't speak; you mustn't ask me. The temptation is very great, +you know, and it _might_ wreck me. No, Mr. Bulstrode, and the reason +why I say it is because I've seen." + +"'I've seen?'" he repeated her words. "You've seen, but what do you +mean--what have you seen?" + +"I'm going to tell you why I sent for Prince Pollona, although you +don't ask me. I came to Trouville alone. I saw you; I've watched you +with your friends." Bulstrode accepted quietly. "The two young people +are engaged to be married and the other two are husband and +wife--well...?" + +A spasm of pain crossed Felicia Warren's face and she put what she had +to say with singular delicacy for an actress who had risen from the +people. + +"I know," she said, "I understand, but when I saw you, I knew that +there was no hope for any other woman who loved you--and I gave you up +then. I sent for Pollona." + +The introduction of even so little into the room as the suggestion of +the woman he loved, startled Bulstrode as nothing else under the +circumstances could have done. It struck him like a lash. He was +disenchanted, and he more quietly considered the girl whose confession +and whose beauty had made him nearly disloyal. + +Felicia Warren, as though she took it in her own hands and, mistress of +herself, knew how much she could take and what she could deny herself, +laid her hand on his arm. + +"You can do nothing at all, just as you have always done--and I--I can +learn to forget. But I have refused your money to-night," she said +piteously, "haven't I? and I am penniless; I have refused more too; +perhaps what no woman who loves could refuse as well. Don't you think +that there is something due me? Answer me this? Tell me. You _do_ +love her, you _do_?" + +As she leaned against him, the years seemed to fall away and to leave +her a girl again, nothing more than a child he had known. He took her +face between his hands and looked into it as one might look into a +well. He saw nothing but his own reflection there. + +"God knows," he said deeply, "I could not willingly pain a living +creature, and to think that I should have made you suffer, have made a +woman suffer for years. Let me do all I can, my dear, let me--let me!" + +"You love her?" she persisted. + +His hands dropped to his side. "With all my soul," he said, "with all +my soul!" He thought she would sink to the floor, but instead she +caught fast hold of the table on which his money lay. She leaned on it +heavily, refusing his aid. He took one of the girl's cold hands in his. + +"Listen, listen! Let me say a word. How do you think it makes a man +feel to hear what you have told me to-night? to see you as you are, to +grow to know you in such a short--in such a terrible way, and in a few +hours to grow to know you so well, to find you dear, desirable, and +then to leave you, as you tell me I must leave you. I can't do it; I +have never been so miserable in my life, and if I find I am entirely +helpless to serve you I can never get over the regret." + +Felicia Warren turned a little. + +"I have found you near disaster," Bulstrode urged, "I must and will see +you to the shore. If you utterly refuse to let me take care of you as +I can and will, will you then," he hesitated, then brought it +out--"Will _you marry_ Prince Pollona?" + +She drew from him with a cry, and by what he said she seemed to have +gained sudden strength. + +"My God!" she breathed, "You ask me _that_? Oh, it proves, it proves +how less than nothing I am..." + +Bulstrode saw he could not, must not undeceive her. + +"If you wish me to do _that_," she cried. "Oh, how dreadfully, how +cruelly, it breaks my dream!" + +Bulstrode said authoritatively, "Listen! listen for one moment." + +The eyes of the girl were dark with defiance; she brushed her hair off +her brow with the back of her hand and stared straight before her. + +"--Otherwise," said Bulstrode, "I will remain here; I shall not leave +these rooms till morning and you will then be forced to marry me, and +since you think as you do, since I have told you my secret, ruin +perhaps three lives." + +He had her at bay, and for a brief second, he thought she would accept +his menace. But then in a sudden her anger vanished and her face +softened. + +"You know," she said, "that, loving you as I do, whatever you tell me +to do, I must. But let me go on with my career. Let me work, let me +work, and be free!" + +He said decidedly, "No! You must be protected from yourself; you must +have some one with you who will take care of you as I cannot do. You +must do this for me. Is Pollona distasteful to you?" he pursued, "do +you _hate_ him?" + +She made an indifferent shrug of her shoulders. + +Bulstrode was watching her face keenly, and after a second said, "No, +you do not hate him. You sent for him to come to you here. He was the +one to whom you turned, Felicia; turn to him now." + +As she wavered and hesitated, he insisted, coming close to her: + +"You have an ideal, you told me--well we can't get on without them. +Your ideal has helped you, hasn't it? It seems pretty well to have +stood by you. I have one too, you must understand that, and I ask you +to help me to keep it secret now." + +"Why, what do you mean?" she questioned breathlessly. + +"I mean," he said gravely, "that I am a very lonely man. My days are +absolutely desolate excepting for those things that I can put into +them. I have nothing in my life and I am not meant for such a lot. I +am not meant for that! Such an existence has bitter temptations for +every man, and although I have never seen you before, possibly my fate +and Pollona's rest to-night with you." + +Felicia Warren turned her great eyes with a sort of wonder to him. +They rested on him with a tenderness that he could not long have borne. + +"You must not remain unmarried," he said, "you must not." + +Without answering him she went slowly over to her little desk. She +wrote a few seconds there and came back and handed to him a little slip +of paper. + +"When the telegraph office opens to-day, will you send this dispatch +for me? It will fetch Prince Pollona to me no matter where he may be. +I have asked him to meet me in Paris and I will take the morning train +from here myself." + +She turned to the table on which his money lay and taking a roll of +notes said, "I will pay up everything I owe here. I think I have given +you every proof, every proof." + +Bulstrode made no advance towards her. He saw how she struggled with +her emotion. He let her get herself in hand. Finally, with more +composure, she spoke again: + +"I play next month in London. Will you come to see me play?" + +"Oh, many times." + +"No," Felicia Warren murmured, "only once, and after that I shall never +see you again." + +He would have protested, but she repeated, "never again," with such +intensity that he bowed his head and he found that her decision brought +a pang whose sharpness he wondered would last how long. + +He had started, with her last words, toward the door and she followed +him over to it. There, detaining him by her hand, she asked softly: +"Does she, too, love you as much as this?" + +Bulstrode hesitated; then said, "I do not know." + +"Not know?" cried the girl, "you don't know?" + +It was with the greatest difficulty that Bulstrode could at any time +bring to his lips even the name of the woman he loved. At this moment +the vision of her as he had seen her lately on her husband's arm going +in under the pavilion of the hotel crossed his mind with a cruel +despair and cruel disgust. A sense of his solitude, of his defrauded +life, rushed over him as he looked into the eyes of this woman who +loved him. + +"No," he said intensely, "I do not know, I do not know. I have a code +of honor a million years old, but I live up to it. She is a wife, I +have never told her that I love her." + +The girl's incredulity and surprise were great. It showed in the smile +which, something like happiness, crossed her lips. She drew a long +breath; she held his eyes with hers, then she laid both her arms around +his neck and Bulstrode bent and kissed her. He held her for one moment +and his heart, if it beat for another woman, beat hard and fast and its +pulse ran through her own. Then Felicia heard the door close and the +footsteps of the man died away. + +It was seven o'clock when Bulstrode found himself out in the streets. +The fresh air in a keen, salt wind poured over him. Down on the beach, +for a couple of francs he bribed an attendant to open a bath-house for +him, and a few moments later, shivering a little in the keen air, he +could have been seen running down to the sea, and in a few moments more +his strong swift strokes had carried him far out into the waters which +the summer sun even at this early hour was fast turning into blue. + + +When Jimmy came to himself, he found that without either seeing Mrs. +Falconer again or having even bidden a decent good-bye or godspeed to +his fiancee, he was back again in Paris. He had run away. Well, that +wasn't any new thing, he was always at it. Paris, in the month of +August, gave him a hot, desolate welcome, and it was with difficulty +that he could find a lawyer who would help him down to bedrock and put +in motion the business of winding up the affairs of Molly and her +Marquis. + +De Presle-Vaulx came to town and found his champion there and brought +him many messages from the ladies as well as a letter which Bulstrode +put in his pocket to read down in the country at the chateau of +Vaulxgoron in the seclusion of his own room. + +Bulstrode played the part of the "American Uncle" to perfection. He +let the old Marquis beat him at backgammon; he wandered all over the +property with the Marquise. He bought the young man for Molly Malines +and closed up his beneficent affairs in a very decent manner indeed, +but on the night when Mrs. Falconer and Miss Malines should have +arrived at the chateau, Bulstrode ran away again. From then on he +became a wandering Jew. He ran up to Norway, fished a little, then +took a motor and some people, who did not know any one whom he had ever +known, and drove them through Italy. He continued to travel a little +longer, working his way northward until finally--so he put it--dusty as +"Dusty Dog Dingo," tired as "Tired Dog Dingo," Bulstrode found himself +in London, drew a deep breath and capitulated. + + + + +THE SIXTH ADVENTURE + + + +VI + +IN WHICH HE DISCARDS A KNAVE AND SAVES A QUEEN + +The morning he left for Westboro' Castle, Bulstrode remembers as being +the most beautiful of days; it came to him like a golden gift of +unrivalled loveliness as it broke and showered sunlight over England. + +"The very crannies of the island," he smiled at his own conceit, "must +filter out this gold to the sea." + +England lay like a viking's cup full to the brim of sunlight; +especially entrancing because unusual in the British calendar, and +enchanting to the American gentleman because it absolutely accorded +with his own mood. + +It was middle November, and yet there was not--so it seemed as one +looked at yellow and copper luxuriance--a leaf lost from the suave +harmony of the trees. Farms, tiled and thatched, basked in summery +warmth, forest, hedge and copse, full-foliaged and abundant, shone out +in copper and bronze, and the air's stillness, the patient +tranquillity, enfolding the land, made it seem expectantly to wait for +some sudden wind that should ultimately cast devastation through the +forests. + +On leaving his ship at Plymouth the day before, Bulstrode found amongst +other letters in his mail the Duke of Westboro's invitation for a +week's shooting in the west of England: "There were sure to be heaps of +people Jimmy would know"--and Bulstrode eagerly read the subjoined list +of names until he saw in a flash the name of the One Woman in the +World. He at once telegraphed his acceptance. + +The following afternoon he threw his evening papers and overcoat into a +first-class carriage whilst the guard placed his valise and +dressing-case in the rack. + +As there had been several minutes to starting time, he had not +immediately taken his seat, but had stood smoking by the side of his +carriage. He might, and did, doubtless, pass with others of the well +set-up, well-looking men travelling on that day, for an Englishman, but +closer observation showed his attire to be distinguished by that +personal note which marks the cosmopolitan whose taste has been more or +less tempted by certain fantasies of other countries. Bulstrode's +clothes were brown, his gloves, cravat, and boots all in the same color +scheme--one mentions a man's dress only on rare occasions, as on this +certain day one has been led to mention the weather. That a man is +perfectly turned out should, like the weather, be taken for granted. +Bulstrode on this day, travelling as he was towards a goal, towards the +one person he wanted above all to see, had spent some unusual thought +on his toilet. At all events, on passing a florist's in Piccadilly, +after giving his order for flowers to be boxed and expressed to +Westboro', he had selected a tiny reddish-brown chrysanthemum which now +covered the button-hole of his coat's lapel; it created a distinctive +scheme of color. In point of fact it caught the eye of the lady who, +hurrying from the waiting-room towards the Westboro' express, caught +sight of the American and started. It appeared as if she would speak +to him, half advanced, thought better of it, and said to the guard, who +was about to fasten a placard on the window of a carriage: + +"Please---just a second--won't you, guard?" + +The bell rang, and Bulstrode found himself helping the lady into his +own compartment. The guard shut the door, which closed with the +customary soft thick sound of a lock setting, and pasted over the +window the exclusive and forbidding paper--RESERVED. + +Then it was in his corner by the window, once chimney pots and suburbs +left behind, that the traveller to Westboro' watched the landscape with +the pale, transparent smoke from the little farms floating like veils +across the golden atmosphere; the slow winding streams between +low-bushed, rosy shores, and red-tinged thickets; the flocks of rooks +across fields long harvested: the flocks of sheep on the gently +swelling downs. + +"England, England," he murmured, as if it were a refrain in whose +melody he found much charm, as if his traditions of insular forebears +might in some way be recalled in the word, as if it spoke more than a +chance traveller's appreciation for the melodious countryside. + +He had letters, read them, and put his correspondence aside, then +comfortably settling himself in his corner, began to construct for +himself a picture of Westboro', whose lines and architecture he knew +from photographs, although he had never been there. It was agreeable +to him as he mused to fancy himself for the first time with Mrs. +Falconer in England, in the country they preferred to all the others in +the Old World. They were in sympathy with English life and manners, +and here, if (oh, of course, a world of "ifs")--here no doubt they +would both choose to live when abroad, were there any choice for them +of mutual life. + +Westboro' is Elizabethan and of vast proportions. The house would +naturally be very full--how much of the time would they discover for +themselves? There would decidedly be occasions. Mary Falconer did not +hunt, and although Jimmy Bulstrode could recall having postulated that +"there are only two real occupations for a real man--to kill and to +love," he also knew what precedence he himself gave, and how little the +sportsmen of Westboro' would have cause to fear his concurrence if by +lucky chance in more or less of solitude he should find his lady there. + +It was months since he had seen Mrs. Falconer--months. It had been a +long exile. Each time that he started out to run away, it was just +that--running away--it was with a curious wonder whether or not on his +return he should not find a change. Time and absence--above all, time, +worked extraordinary infidelities in other people. Why should they two +believe themselves immune? The long months might have altered _her_. +The mischief was yet to be seen. But when in the list of noble names +he had in his hand, his eyes fell upon the single prefix--_Mrs._--and +found it followed by _The Name_, if he had not sincerely known before, +his pulse at sight of the written words told Jimmy that he had not, at +all events, changed! + +Thinking at this point to light a cigarette, he became at the second +mindful of the other passenger in his carriage and that they were +alone. As he looked across towards the lady who had unwound her dark +veil, he observed that she was herself smoking, holding the cigarette +in her hand as with head turned from him she scanned the landscape +through the window of the compartment. + +He saw with a little start of pleasure what a delight she gave to the +eye, tastefully dressed as she too was, in leaf brown from head to +foot, with the slightest indication of forest green at buttons and hem +of her dress. Her hat, with its drooping feathers, fell rather low +over her wonderful hair, bronze in its reflections. Indeed, the lady +blended well with the November landscape, and as she apparently was not +conscious of her companion, he enjoyed the harmonious note she made to +the full. + +"What scope," he mused, "what scope they all have--and how prettily +they most of them know it! So just to sit and be a thing of beauty; +with head half-drooping, and eyelash meditative, one hand ungloved, and +such a perfectly lovely hand...! (It held the half-smoked cigarette, +but his taste was not offended.) He thought her a whim too debonnaire +for a Parisian of the best world, and of _that_ she most distinctly +was--Austrian more than likely. Every woman has her history--only when +she is part of several has she a past. What had this woman so to +meditate upon? She turned and he met her eyes. + +"You have naturally waited for me to speak first," she said with a +gracious gesture of her bare hand. "And _I_ was waiting till you +should have finished your letters! I, too, have wanted to think." + +Her familiar address, perfectly courteous and made in a pleasant voice, +with a very slight accent, was a surprise to her companion, who +mechanically lifted his hat as he bowed to her across the narrow +distance between their seats. + +"The guard," she smiled, "came very near putting the placard on the +other window! But I think we are now quite sure to be alone!" She +pointed to the seat opposite. "Sit there," she more commanded than +permitted, "we can talk better and I can watch your kind face, which +always looks as if you understood--and I shall be able to please you +better--perhaps to make you not unkind to me." + +He obeyed, taking the place indicated without hesitation, and as he sat +facing her, he saw her to be one of the most beautiful women he had +ever seen. There was at once something dazzling about her--and at the +same time familiar... He had surely met her, and not long ago. Where? +And how stupid of him to have forgotten! Or had he only seen her +photograph and remarked her as a celebrity whose type of looks had +pleased him? But no, she knew him: that was clear. He met her +friendly eyes, where liking was evident as well as the suggestion of +something akin to an appeal. Bulstrode was greatly intrigued. + +"Unkind?" he repeated vaguely. "But why should you think that? Please +me?"--and his graciousness did not fall short of her own--"But why +should you...?" + +"Oh, true," she interrupted him, "quite true. There is no reason +why--" and she made a rather petulant gesture--"yet every woman wants +to please, and none of us relishes being judged. Never mind, however, +don't think of me as a _person_--just let me talk to you frankly, be +myself for once with someone if I can." + +Jimmy Bulstrode gathered himself together and sat back in his corner. +She was very lovely at it, this being herself. Gallantry would not let +him bluntly tell her that she had made a mistake. A second more would +clear the matter and would be quite soon enough, for him at least, to +find that they were total strangers. Unless, indeed, he had met her +and forgotten it. They had possibly held some conversation together in +a London drawing-room. But how could he have been such a boor as to +forget her? She was neither a crook nor a mad woman--she might be an +adventuress; if so, she was an unusual one. He glanced at her luggage +as if it might help him--a dark-covered dressing-case, bundle of furs, +and rugs--new, everything new. Her left hand was bare of rings, she +clasped it with her gloved fellow and said warmly: + +"I can't believe it possible that you came, actually came, and that we +have so smoothly met! I can't believe nothing has hitched or missed, +or that everything is so cleverly planned and arranged for me, and +least of all I can believe that it should be _you_ who are so sublimely +doing this." + +"Ah--" But here Bulstrode tardily started up. _He_ doing it all? At +least if he was, then he must, if nothing else--know! He smiled at her +with a pleasant sense of being in the secret and with indulgent +amusement at her mistake. + +"I think--you made a mistake," he began it with commonplaceness, but +his gesture softened the words. + +But the lady made a little annoyed "tchk" with her tongue against her +teeth, and threw up her head with an impatient toss, an intensely +foreign way of dismissing his interpolation. + +"Don't, in pity's sake, talk like this," she exclaimed. "_Mistake_? +Who under the blue heavens _doesn't_ make them--Certa! Haven't you, +yourself, in spite of your moral, spotless life, haven't even _you_ +made them?" + +"How," flushed the naive gentleman, on the sudden betrayed into a +mental frankness of self-approval near to conceit, "how does _she_ know +me so well?" + +"Who is there," his companion gave him the question in a challenging +tone "to tell each other and every one of us what is or will be a +mistake in his life? Where were everyone's eyes when I married?--Why +didn't someone tell me then that my marriage was a hideous mistake? As +for the rest of it..." she turned away for a second towards the window, +and Bulstrode saw how the hot blood had mounted and her eyes had +changed when after a moment she came back to him again. She put out +towards him a beseeching hand: "_You_ above all men, who are faithful +to an ideal, must not give me old platitudes!" + +Bulstrode's head reeled. He felt like a man who after a narcotic finds +his brain suddenly alight and real things grow strange. He wanted to +rub his eyes. She appeared singularly to appreciate his daze. + +"It is as strange to me as it is to you, to find myself here with a man +to whom I have never spoken before--to be under his protection, and to +talk with him like this; and yet I have seen you so often, I have +watched you in the distance, and long since I singled you out as the +one man in whom I could fancy confiding--the one man to whom I could +give a sacred trust." + +With these words the incognita drew herself up, and her manner, with +amazing swiftness, changed from a childlike confidence to a dignity not +without a certain rigidness, and as Bulstrode remarked this, he also +noticed that she was very young, and he was conscious in her of a +something he had never quite met in a woman before--an extreme dignity, +an ultra poise, an assurance.--Who was she?--And whom did she take him +to be? With every turn of the fast wheels of the express it was +growing more difficult to explain. She would more keenly feel the fact +that he had not cut her frankness short--he had no right to her +confidences even though she took their mutual knowledge of each other +for granted. + +"When," he ventured it delicately--"did you last see me?" It was bold, +but it did perfectly. + +"Oh, an age ago, isn't it? You were last on the Continent I think in +August at Trouville, during La Grande Semaine." + +Ah, he reflected, _of course_! _That_ was where, amongst so many other +celebrities and beauties, she had attracted his attention. But his +rapid mental calculations of those seven days could reveal to him no +woman's face but one. He found himself even in this unique moment +recalling the time following hard on Molly's formal engagement to her +Marquis ... and those days were amongst the brightest in his life. No, +there had been no foreign element at Trouville for him in the dazzle +and freedom of that worldly fortnight--for Jimmy Bulstrode, in all the +scene she summoned up, there was but one woman. He came back with a +start to the other. + +"Then yesterday, as you passed our table at the Carlton, and it seemed +as if heaven had sent you to us to help us--at least so we both felt." + +And Bulstrode doubtfully smiled and, now determined, broke in, or would +have done so, but she waved him imperiously. + +"Your mind," she spoke indulgently, "is on the wrong side to-day. Try +to think only of the happiness towards which I am going so rapidly, so +rapidly." Then, as she with her word glanced out of the window, she +cried: "Oh, what if something should happen to the train--what if some +horrible delay----" + +And he shook himself to action. + +"My dear lady," he began gravely, "you must hear me. You have made and +are making a great mistake. I am certainly not the man..." + +"I _command_ you, sir," she flashed out at him--"surely you will not +disobey me--you will not make me think as well that I am making a +mistake in you." + +"Ah, but that," he gasped, and caught her words gratefully, "is just +the point." + +She smiled. "Please...! Let me judge! Only don't condemn me. Only +be glad you can so marvellously help a human soul to happiness--can so +generously lend yourself for these few hours to aid in my escape." + +She was escaping! Well, he had nearly guessed it! The new luggage +alone was an indication. Unless her mania was for taking strangers to +be intimate friends, she wasn't fleeing a madhouse! From what did she +so determinedly run?--and how in heaven's name was he helping her? Did +she think he was going to marry her? Into what tangle had the man he +was unwittingly impersonating got himself--and in default of his +appearing on the scene in what would his absence involve poor Bulstrode? + +He took off his hat and put it down on the seat--thus his fine head was +fully revealed to the lady's view. + +"I do not know you," he said determinedly. "You do not know me, but +you seem bent on not acknowledging this fact or permitting me to state +it." + +But even this plain statement did him no good, for she said, quite +agreeing with him: + +"If I had ever spoken with you--been near you before, I would not be +here now. You see it is just your _impersonality_--your _having_ no +connection with anything in my life that makes it possible! But why," +she exclaimed impatiently, "do you spend these few hours with me in +this meaningless warfare? You should, it seems, take the honor more +graciously, and since you are here, have consented to be here, show me +a little kindness. Since, after all, willingly or not, you are in +effect nobly helping me to do what I am doing." + +And this brought him wonderfully up to the question of what was he +doing? What was he supposed to be furthering here? It was his +expression, no doubt, that made her ask with curious aptness: "Just how +much _do_ you know?" + +The poor gentleman threw out his hands desperately. "You can't think +how in the dark I am! How beyond words mystified." + +"How droll!" she laughed sweetly, "and how amusing and all the more +beautiful and like you, to be, in spite of yourself, here. You see we +have switched off--just as you said we would do." + +So they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his +feet. He looked out: it was a fast express, a through train--the first +stop should have been Westboro' Abbey. + +"Yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you +arranged so cleverly!--and the Westboro' people will go on without us." + +Would they indeed! Lucky people, but not if he could prevent it. But +his attention to the train's procedure had come too late. + +He opened the window and looked out. They stood at the side of a +switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the +far distance Bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train. He +drew in his head and quietly asked his companion: + +"What has happened to us, do you know?" + +She laughed deliciously. "Know? Why, of course, I do. You're +delightful! Of course I have followed every step of the plan--the +special for Dover picks us up here in three-quarters of an hour, +doesn't it? We make the boat for Calais, and there Gela meets me and +_your_ mission is done!" + +The gentleman opposite her listened quietly, and before speaking waited +a second, staring down at her, his hands in his pockets: there they +touched a little coin which he always carried: a coin that opened at a +sacred point to discover to his eyes alone a picture of a woman as +lovely as this woman, as human, and one whom he had good cause to +suppose loved another man than her husband. The woman opposite him was +escaping from her husband. _That_ was what she was doing! He who had +striven for fifteen years to prevent the like in the life of the one +woman of all, now appeared to be helping this poor thing to the same +thing. He did not believe he was to be waylaid and robbed, or that any +trick had been played upon him. The only thing he did _not_ believe +was that the woman knew him! Before, however, brushing the delusion +aside, he asked, his candid eyes upon her: "And my mission being so +done, what then becomes of you?" + +The shrug of her shoulders was neither an indication of indifference +nor a pretty desperation! it rather was a relinquishing of herself +wholly to Fate--an abandon. + +"What becomes of a happy woman who goes with the man she loves?" + +"Her Fate," said her companion, "has no single history. She is most +often disillusioned, many times tragic, and always disgraceful." + +"Ah, hush," she said angrily, "you presume too far. If you only +intended to lecture me--to condemn me--why did you come?" + +At this sincerely humorous challenge Bulstrode smiled. + +"I did not, to be quite accurate, come," he said, "and I assure you I +am here against my will. You refuse to listen to me; you turn my +efforts to put things straight against me--and now." + +The handsome creature gave him a flash from angry eyes. + +"Your Excellency is scarcely polite. But I understand. Even my rank +doesn't protect me: and although your old friendship for Gela did +overcome your scruples, and our letters did touch you--still we should +have remembered that you are, above all else, the King's friend." + +Bulstrode fell a step back. Before he could take in the curious honors +that were being thrust upon him, the lady went hotly on: + +"You know how indulgent of me the King has been: how he adores me +still, how blind he is, and you pity him and have no mercy for me." + +Here, for she, too, had left her seat, she went over to the compartment +window and turning her back full on Bulstrode, stood looking out, and +she thus gave him time and he took it, not to consider his part of the +affair, but, as if it had been suddenly revealed to him by her words, +the woman's part in it. After all it was scarcely important whom, in +error, she believed him to be. In a strange fashion, through some +trick of resemblance, he was here and in her confidence in another's +stead--impersonating some man who, in spite of the reputation for +goodness and honor accredited him by this lady, would scarcely, +Bulstrode felt confident, be as scrupulous regarding the adventure as +he himself was fast becoming. The woman--the woman was all that +mattered. She was a Queen then? A Queen! And he had so naively +ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of +_lese-majeste_--that she, poor thing, attributed his _sans gene_ to her +fallen state! + +Kings and Queens, poor dears, how human they are! What royalty could +she be? And what King's friend was he so closely supposed to be? The +King's friend--well, so he was--so he must be in spite of his quick +pity for the lovely creature--in spite of chivalry and the trust she +displayed. But to be practical: what in half an hour could he hope to +accomplish--how could he keep a determined woman from wrecking her life? + +His mind flew to Paddington, and his first sight of the lady on the +platform. There had been near the hour two trains for Westboro', one +of them a local which left London some few minutes later than the +Western express. _That_ later train, no doubt of it, would fetch the +real accomplice to the eloping lady. Bulstrode argued that, should he +declare himself to the Queen at this point for a total stranger, the +revelation would plunge her in despair, anger and frighten her, and +lose him his cause--There was, in view of the cause, he now felt and +nerved himself to the deception, nothing to do but to assume his role +in earnest and play it as well as he might. He had never sat alone in +a travelling carriage and hobnobbed with a Queen, but he gracefully +made his try at the proper address: "Your Majesty," he began, and she +whirled quickly round, pleasure on her face. + +"Oh, Gresthaven!" she exclaimed with touching gratitude, extending her +hand. "Thanks, mon ami! I shall not have my title long, and I shall, +I suppose, miss it with other things." + +Bulstrode, with her naming of him, knew at length who he was, and +recalled his supposed likeness to a certain Lord Almouth +Gresthaven--famous explorer, traveller and diplomat, cosmopolitan in +his tastes and a dabbler in the politics of other and less significant +countries than his own. In accepting his new personality, the American +winced a little as he bowed over the royal little hand and kissed it. + +"Your Majesty will miss many things indeed," he said gravely--"your +kingdom, your people, and the King--the King," he repeated, dwelling on +the word, "who, as you say, loves you." + +"My good friend," the lady made a little _moue_--"I know everything you +would say. You can't suppose I haven't thought of it all? To be so +far on my way must I not have carefully considered every step? One is, +after all, a woman--and I am a woman in love." + +"One word then," pleaded her unwilling imposter--"one word. Have you +also asked yourself: what chance for happiness a woman can possibly +hope for with a man who allows her to make the sacrifice you are about +to make?" + +If his words were straws before the wind to the woman, his simplicity +was impressive to her. "It has seemed to me," Jimmy Bulstrode said, +"that there is a great distinction between love and passion--and that +however great his passion for her, a man should supremely--_supremely +love_ the woman he singles out of all the world." + +The Queen of Poltavia looked at the gentleman before her, who stood +very straight, his head alone bent, his clear fine eyes fixed upon her +own. + +"Love!" she repeated softly, "how well you say the word." + +A slight flush stole up the American's cheek. + +"Supreme love," he ventured to continue, "means protection to the +woman...." + +Here the Queen made an impatient gesture as though she shook away the +impression his tone made. + +"My dear Gresthaven," she exclaimed, "love means above all else +happiness! One is happy with one person and miserable with another. +It's all a lottery and unless our plans miscarry I am going towards the +greatest happiness in the world. But come"--She altered her tone to +one of practical command--"Let us address ourselves to our flight. You +have your train schedule of course? The Dover train is due here at +4:50 and it only waits for the taking on of our carriage." As she +looked up at him she saw the trouble in his face, and a solicitude for +her to which she was unaccustomed. + +"Mon cher ami," she said quizzically, "what, may I ask, since your +scruples are so great, ever led you to accept this mission....?" + +"Frankly," he eagerly answered, and was honest in it, "the hope, the +desire that I might...." + +"Persuade a woman in love against her heart?" she smiled, and so +sweetly, so convincingly, and so reasonably, he was for an instant all +on her side. + +"I see my folly, your Majesty." + +"There's nothing but _force majeure_, Gresthaven...." + +"Yes" ... he admitted reluctantly. "Let me go out now and see to our +manoeuvres here." He was able to open the door which a passing guard +had unlocked unobserved.... + +The innocent royalty let him pass, thanking him with a smile, and saw +him go down the track toward the little squat station, with the guards. + + +Bulstrode, whose mind as he walked along was busy with train schedules, +recalled, nevertheless, the Duke's letter, which he still had in his +letter case, and he took it from his pocket and re-read it. + +"... We are to have over the week-end a dash of royalty. Carmen-Magda, +the Queen of the petty kingdom of Poltavia." (This mention of the +Westboro' guests had quite escaped Bulstrode's mind in his +contemplation of the last page of the Duke's note.... "We are to have +a compatriot of your own, a Mrs. Jack Falconer.") And royalty being +very relative to the unsnobbish American, he had simply transferred the +title (with possibly a possessive pronoun before it) to the other lady! +He smiled as he reflected that the Westboro' express was destined to +arrive at the Abbey without either the royal guest or Mr. James +Thatcher Bulstrode. But more to the point, more instantly absorbing +was the fact, that within ten minutes the slow train from London to +Westboro' would arrive at Radleigh Bucks, the little station before +which he now stood, and from it, undoubtedly, would descend the real +Lord Gresthaven. If Jimmy needed encouragement in his self-imposed +role of Master of Fate, if he needed to forget the ardor and the +determination of the little Queen, if he needed to forget how, in +youth, he had cordially hated those interfering people who, on +horseback and in chaises, tore after flying lovers to waylay them at +Gretna Green--he found his stimulus in recalling that he was "the +King's friend." + +"It's after all something of a distinction," he mused, entertained by +the idea, "a sort of royal _noblesse oblige_--and since the poor dear +herself has so made me out to be, given King the precedence, how could +I, in the cause of gallantry, have proceeded otherwise! It's this +diabolical little brown chrysanthemum," he mentally laid the fault +there. "It is evidently a telling mark. People in books are always +meeting unknowns who are to wear a red flower in the right lapel of the +coat".... and he had unintentionally gone over into a romance--and his +_triste_ part in it was that of an unsympathetic spoiler of a romance. + +As after a prolonged parley with the station officials he walked +leisurely back to his carriage, his wallet grown very thin indeed and +his honest heart suffering many sincere pangs at the contemplation of +his conduct altogether, he argued: "She is absurdly young--she will, +after a little, go back to her allegiance (he put it so), and I don't +take much stock in that barbaric Gela anyway, he probably is a +Hungarian band-master or a handsome ticket-agent, a plebian creature +whose very remoteness from her own life has fascinated her." + +Bulstrode, not quite sure just whom he was supposed to be by the train +people, found himself bowed and escorted back to the carriage which had +been turned and manipulated and side-tracked--reswitched and displaced, +till even its own locomotive and train of cars would have been at a +loss to find it. He had the sense of being a traitor, brute, imposter, +and Providence all in one--which combination of qualities was +sufficient to explain his embarrassment and his nervous manner when he +at length rejoined the Queen. + +There was a slight transformation in the lady whose dressing bag had +aided, evidently, a brisk toilet. Under her chin flowered out a snowy +bow of tulle, and she had swathed herself in the thick veil she had +worn when first boarding the train. Indicating her disguise to +Bulstrode, she said with her pretty accent: "I think it well to be +thus." And he agreed that it was well. + +His own agitation as the other train rushed in, slowed and halted, was +scarcely less than hers, indeed perhaps greater, for Carmen-Magda, pale +and quiet, her handsome brown eyes fixed on the window-pane, gave no +sign of life, until after a series of jerks, jolts and bumps, they +slowly but certainly became part of a moving train, once more +undertaking its journey. Then Bulstrode, who stood determinedly in the +window, filled it up on the station side, giving her no chance to look +out had she wished to do so, nor did he think it needful to tell the +Queen what he saw: A distinguished-looking man in rough brown clothes, +and oh, the curious coincidence: a reddish-brown chrysanthemum in his +buttonhole. His Striking Resemblance was accompanied by another +gentleman--short and stout with military mustaches, and swarthy +complexion. The two men were gesticulating wildly together, and as the +train pulled away from them, Bulstrode turned about and faced the +little Queen. + +She had again lifted her veil, and he thought her pallor natural; in +the momentary excitement her large eyes were fastened upon him with a +touching confidence that nearly made the soft-hearted imposter regret +the boldest act of his history. + +"Are you sure," she asked him softly, "that this is the right train?" + +The coquetry of her bow of snowy tulle, the debonnaire costume of brown +and green, her gray hat with its feathers, were pathetic to him--her +attire contrasted sadly with her pale face. She was to him like a +wilful child. Not more, he decided for the sixth time, than twenty +years old. She was like a paper queen out of a child's fairy book, all +but her anxious face. "She regrets," he joyfully caught at the thought +to arm himself and give himself right. "Poor little thing, she already +regrets." + +Leaning forward, he suggested kindly: + +"Can't your Majesty rest a little?" + +As he spoke the hypocrite knew that in less time than it would take to +settle her they would bump into the station at Westboro' Abbey. + +But Carmen-Magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she was +_en route_ for her plebian Gela. She leaned over and picked up one of +the illustrated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages, +reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph +displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a +military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin. She +held it out to Bulstrode and said: + +"It's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the +King?" + +Bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on +his face. + +"Yes, it is good of the King, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much +animation. It was strikingly so, he could with truth say it. + +Gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the King par +excellence--the King seemed to have many friends---and the poor little +woman opposite--with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence +in a stranger--her madder confidence in Lord Almouth Gresthaven--where +were _her_ friends? Jimmy leaned to her, and Mrs. Falconer could have +told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that +Jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of +his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined +to help in spite of themselves." + +"Your Majesty has done me great honor," Bulstrode said. "You have said +I was the King's friend, I should like instead to be _your_ friend. +Women need friends ... even queens. Would it be too vast a presumption +if I should from henceforth feel myself to be...." He waited and +dared--"Carmen-Magda's friend?" + +His innocent lese-majeste, coupled with the tone he used, reached the +woman in her---not to speak of his personal charm. + +"Didn't I imply friendship when I chose you for this mission?" she said. + +He winced. "Of course--but I mean from now on----" + +She nodded sweetly. "_Cela va sans dire_, Gresthaven." + +"Don't call me so," he interrupted, "say _friend_, to please me." + +She laughed. + +"You are too amusing. I will say it for you then in Poltavian. It's a +sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with +the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she +knighted him. It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to +ask her: + +"What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you +had arranged he should do--he should betray you--should have warned +your husband and have gone so far _as to fetch the King to waylay you +and stop your flight_!" + +But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition +with a word of disbelief. + +"Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?" + +She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis +were real to her at last: + +"He would be the most despicable traitor in the world." + +Bulstrode pursued: "What--would you think of Gresthaven--if in order to +save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter +your decision--he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as +surely betraying your good faith?" + +Here she looked keenly through him--read him--then waited a second +before intensely exclaiming: + +"Gresthaven--_what have you done_?" + +His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him. He did +not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all +women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over +admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in +their own minds. + +"Oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matter _what_ reason, she had only +changed her _own_ mind!" + +"In five minutes," he said bravely--"your Majesty will be at Westboro' +Abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which +followed us from London." + +With a smothered cry the Queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window +and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to +her in what part of England she was. Bulstrode had put his hand out +before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open +window. + +"Oh," she cried furiously, shrinking back from him, "how have you dared +... dared?" + +... "To save your Majesty? Well, it _was_ hard!" he acknowledged +practically. "Harder than you will ever believe. I may say that no +decision was ever more difficult to make. To be so trusted by you, and +to feel myself a double-dyed villain wasn't agreeable, but the issue +was a warrant for any treachery." + +"Great heavens!" she exclaimed. "Who made _you_ judge of my actions, +who gave _you_ leave to decide my fate, what a fool I was to trust +you--what a fool! You have spoiled my life!" she accused him--"You +have taken from me everything in the world." + +If she had been alone he knew she would have wept, and he kept his face +turned from her for some few seconds. "I have certainly established a +precedent for myself," he mused with humor. "_I_ can never run away +with a woman now--never." + +Small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk +it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing. +She spoke, he supposed, in Poltavian, for he could not follow the +meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise +among the incoherences that she called him friend! + +As the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and +sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more +ventured to speak. + +"I am not the cold-blooded traitor I seem, believe me," he tried to +plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at Redleigh Bucks I +was miserable to think I had, as it seems, betrayed your Majesty. But +when as we came up to the station I saw the King on the platform----" + +She stopped short in front of him: "The King!" she exclaimed +incredulously. + +Bulstrode nodded in a matter-of-fact way as if stray kings on +mid-country platforms were the common occurrence of his travelling +experiences. + +"He had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to +attach your carriage to the Dover express had been attempted, you would +have been stopped by your husband himself. As it is you are simply +going where you are expected to go--to Westboro' Castle." + +This denouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no +place for ecstatics. She sat down in front of Bulstrode and repeated, +dazed:-- + +"The _King_! The King had followed me! He had been warned then, but +by whom? You above all did not....?" + +"Oh no!" He was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this +disloyalty. "I had nothing to do with it. The King had come on with +the man who had played your Majesty false all along, the man who is +indeed more the King's friend than he is Carmen-Magda's." + +And sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him +say: "I mean Lord Almouth Gresthaven." + +She murmured some words in Poltavian, then besought: "Why, why do you +play with me?" The tears started to her eyes. + +"Lord Gresthaven," Bulstrode hurried now to his confession--"has +plainly betrayed you. Either he failed to meet you as planned, or else +he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your +husband--at all events, both he and the King took the slow train." + +"But _you_," she interrupted, staring at him--"You are not Lord +Gresthaven?" + +"No," he said quietly, "no, I am an American, nothing more than a +friend and guest of the Duke of Westboro'. I tried over and over again +to tell you this, but you would not hear me and I finally accepted the +role you gave me with the firm intention of taking you with me to +Westboro' Castle. My name is James Thatcher Bulstrode, I am from +Boston, in the United States." Bulstrode thus tardily introduced +himself. + +And Jimmy, not pretending ever to have counted greatly on the favor of +princes, was nevertheless taken aback. Not that he had any +preconceived notion of what Carmen-Magda would do--when she eventually +knew. He had been too absorbed in his mission, its entanglements, and +his climax. He may have been prepared for some exhibition of scorn, +but he more than likely looked for a social and commonplace ending to +their ride, but for what Carmen-Magda did he was entirely unprepared. + +As if in his declaration of himself and his identity he had taken a +sponge and quite wiped himself off the slate, the Queen, after +speechlessly staring at him for a few moments, quietly removed her +attention from him altogether. She took from a little bag at her wrist +a rouge stick with which she carefully touched her lips; from a tiny +gold box she lightly dusted her cheeks with powder; she adjusted her +tulle bow and her veil and then sat serenely back waiting until the +train should arrive at her forced destination. + +Although, one might say, unused to the manners of royalty, Jimmy was +dumbfounded; the beautiful woman in forest-brown clothes picked out +with hunting green had become as strange to him as in the first moment +when she attracted his attention some few miles beyond London. That +she should be angry at his interference he could admit, but that she +should not be grateful to be saved from her husband's wrath he did not +understand. Was he too plebeian for her to notice? He, of course, did +not speak to her again, nor did she break the singular silence, and for +some reason he did not even care to ask her forgiveness. Finally, he +decided that she was thinking solely of Gela, the man at the other end +of the route who would wait for her in vain, and when this sentimental +view of the case occurred to him, he would have felt _de trop_ had he +not seen how completely he was ignored. + +They flashed past the last miles of wooded valley and hillside. +Westboro' was very soft in line and very mellow in the evening light. +The landscape, through a half-mist, was as brown and green as the dress +of the beautiful silent woman in the opposite corner of the travelling +carriage. + +Bulstrode, looking at her rather timidly, felt as if he were in a dream. + +At Westboro' Abbey the guard unlocked the compartment door and +Bulstrode, who got out first, helped the Queen of Poltavia to descend. +As she put foot to the ground she said, half leaning on the arm he +gave: "I thank you--very much indeed." + +He caught the few words eagerly, and was fatuous enough to fancy that +she meant something more than the common courteous acknowledgment of a +man's help from a travelling carriage. + +The station was deserted. The express having arrived some half hour +before without them, there had evidently been no preparation made to +meet this train. + +Surrounded by her luggage, her brand new luggage, the Queen waited on +the side of the station that faced the open country, whilst Bulstrode +made inquiries about telephoning or getting word to the castle. + +At this juncture, down the lane, between red thickets and golden +hedges, a smart dog-cart tooled along driven by a lady. She waved a +welcoming hand. + +"Jimmy," she said as she drove up and leaned out and nodded to him, "I +knew you'd miss the express, you're so absent-minded about trains; and +who could be expected to distinguish between a 3.50 and a 3.53? So, as +you see, I drove down on the chance." + +He had not greeted her in words. The long afternoon, the romantic +extravagant episode, of which he had been unwillingly a part, made this +woman seem so real. He felt as if from a burlesque extravaganza he had +come out into the fresh air; their eyes had met and Mrs. Falconer did +not miss any other greeting. + +"That lady," he then said, "whom you see standing on the edge of the +platform surrounded by her luggage, like a shipwrecked being on a +desert island, is the Queen of Poltavia." + +"Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Falconer. + +"Yes," he said indifferently, "we came down from London together." + +"Why, the whole castle is in a state about her. A coach and postillion +went to fetch her at the express. Telegrams are flying all over the +country. Why did she take a local--and with you--Jimmy?" + +"Perhaps she is absent-minded about trains as well," he smiled, "at all +events here she certainly is and it will be charming of you to drive +her up." + +"But I don't know her!" + +"Oh," he shrugged, "one doesn't exactly _know_ queens, I don't know her +either, but that wouldn't prevent my doing her a service. I am sure +she'd rather be driven up to a cup of tea and a fire by an American +than stand here waiting for a postilion and four. It will be nice of +you to speak to her," he suggested, and stepped back. + +Gathering up her reins, Mrs. Falconer whisked her horse about and drove +up to the lady's side. Bulstrode, from a little distance, watched her +graceful inclination and heard her lovely voice. He saw Carmen-Magda +lift her disguising veil, displaying her dark, foreign face. Slowly +going up to the dog-cart's side, together with the groom's help, he +bestowed the Queen's belongings in the trap. + +"I will walk on slowly up the road," he suggested, "and most possibly +you will send back for me." + +"Oh, I'll drive back myself." She was quite certain about it. As he +helped the Queen into the dog-cart, as she leaned on his supporting +hand, she said: + +"Thank you, thank you very much indeed." And he was so vain as to +fancy that into tone and words Carmen-Magda put more warmth, more of +meaning, than a woman usually puts into the phrase of recognition of a +man's helping hand. He could not, moreover, have sworn that at the end +of the sentence was not murmured a word in a foreign tongue which might +in Poltavian mean "friend," but as he did not understand the language +of the country he could not be sure. + +As he watched the trap up the hedged lanes out of sight, he rubbed his +eyes as if he were not certain whether or not he had not dozed and +dreamed in his compartment on the slow train from London.... But at +any rate he had the delightful heavenly certainty that this was +Westboro' of an Indian summer afternoon--and that of the two women who +had just driven up the lane out of sight, one at least was adorably +real. + + + + +THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE + + + +VII + +IN WHICH HE BECOMES THE POSSESSOR OF A CERTAIN PIECE OF PROPERTY + +As Bulstrode stood in the window of his room at Westboro' Castle, his +face turned toward the country, it seemed to beckon him. It called him +from the park's end where suave and smooth the curving downs met the +preciser contour of the eastern field; from hedges holding snugly in +the roadways, the roads themselves running off on pleasant excursions +to townships whose names are suggestive of romance, whose gentle +beauties have mellowed with the ages which give them value and leave +them perfect. + +With the sweetness of a bell, with the invitingness of a beckoning +hand, the English countryside summoned the gentleman to come out to it, +to explore and penetrate for himself. He gazed charmed and entranced +at the expanse of rippling meadow where, enclosed by the curtains of +soft old trees, the thatch of the eaves lifted their breast to the sun +and mist, and chimneys black with immemorial fires indicated the farms +of Westboro', rich, homely and respectable, as they left upon the +landscape harmonious color and history of thrift. To the east was the +dim suggestion of the little town, and some few miles in a hollow lay +the farmlands known as The Dials, and each second growing more +distinctly visible in the deepening light rose the towers of Penhaven +Abbey. + +At the Duke's urging, Bulstrode had been led to stop on at Westboro' +Castle after the house party had dissolved at the end of their week's +sojourn; and there had since been many long tramps across country, with +the dogs at his heels and by his side the Duke, for the time diverted +from his semi-melancholy, semi-egotistical cynicism, and transformed +into an enthusiastic sport. + +The Duke of Westboro' was a _desenchante_, more truly speaking a victim +of other peoples' temperaments. There were, however, not a few little +scores in the character of moral delinquencies which at least, so he +felt, he had been called upon quite fully to discharge. + +The American man gave himself over to his host, and from the time +Westboro' put out a bait of "Oh, you're decidedly not turning in at +this hour, old man?" he flanked the Duke on the opposite side of the +fireplace in the East Library, there after coffee to wear away half the +night. During the following fortnight, Bulstrode found that he had +tallied up with his friend very closely the scores of the last few +miserable years. + +Westboro's friendship with him dated back some ten years. Bulstrode +had first known the Englishman at Newport where, then not a young man, +he had come obviously and frankly in search of an American wife. The +search was unusual in that it was not for money, but, as Westboro' put +it, for type and race. His mother had been an American. He had adored +her, and wanted an American mother for his children. The woman +herself--and how Bulstrode saw it as he followed the deserted husband's +narrative--the woman had been a secondary thing. He recalled easily +the summary and conventional courtship and the vulgar brilliance of the +wedding. He had been one of Westboro's ushers, and his smaller part of +the affair left him with the distressing idea that he had assisted at a +sacrifice. + +It would be euphemistic to say that Westboro' poured out his heart to +Bulstrode; Englishmen do not have such refreshments. Little by little, +rather in short curt phrases, a cynical word whose mocking fellow only +followed after some moments' silence--little by little, whilst the +smoky wreaths of the men's cigars veiled their confidences, the Duke +slowly told the story of ten years of married life. In this intimacy +he disclosed the history of the separation which formed at the moment +the subject of general public comment. Jimmy was relieved when the +moment came that the Duke thought opportune to say: + +"There, old chap, you have the whole story! It's this cursed tradition +of marriage, and you're a lucky fellow to be free. I have never spoken +to any one before--you know it. I don't need to tell you so, but you +were in, as it were, at the start, and what do you think of the finish?" + +Bulstrode reserved his opinion. + +Westboro' Castle had been built in the sixteenth century by a lover of +the Virgin Queen. The stones were paved with memories. In the Picture +Hall the ardent gentleman three hundred years before had for one sole +hour entertained Elizabeth at a feast. She left him, obdurate and +unyielding, and he went crazy and followed the royal coach to the park +gate, weeping, his hands before his face; and there on the ground, his +fair curls torn, and the dust from the departing vehicles alone of the +glory that touched him, his people found him. + +"How they prate of inequality, and of the crime of grafting the +American rose on these old stalks," Bulstrode mused. The beauty of +Frances, Duchess of Westboro', he had himself been one of the first to +concede; a portrait of her by Lehnbach did not to his eyes do her +justice. The fresh purity of her type had not been seized by the +German. She would be an ideal Duchess, he had said of her when the +mission of Westboro' to America had been bruited, and Westboro' had +thought: "She's a strong, fine woman, and will bear me beautiful +children." + +She had borne him two. Bulstrode, in passing through the house, had +seen the low gates at the doors of two sunny rooms, the toys spread as +they had been lain. His own were the only apartments in that wing of +the castle, and the silence at the end of the hall was never broken. +When Westboro' had come to this part of his narrative, he had waited +quiet so long that his companion had naturally taken the evening to be +at its end. The Duke had thrown his cigar away, and lifting from the +table near him a leather case, opened it and handed over to Bulstrode +the photograph of two little bare-legged boys in sailor clothes. They +stood hand in hand, a pretty pair. Looking at it, and gently turning +it over on the other side, Bulstrode read: + +"Frederick Cecil John Edward, Marquis of Wotherington, three years old. +Guy Perceval, Lord Feversham, aged two years." + +Westboro's voice had a dull sound as he took the case from his friend's +hand. + +"They are Westboro's I think, neck and crop. Scarlet fever--in three +days, Bulstrode--both in three days." + +And that had been all. + +Bulstrode had left the Duke and gone up-stairs. On the other side of +his cheerful rooms the empty nurseries in the ghostly moonlight held +their doors wide open as if to welcome at the low gates those bright +heads if they should come. + +Jimmy, whose sentimentality consisted in his acting immediately when +anything was to be done, mixed a whiskey and soda from the array of +drinks that always exists at an Anglo-Saxon's elbow, and after a turn +or two in his dressing-room brought practically out: + +"It's ridiculous! Sheer nonsense. There should be children here. The +woman is selfish and puritanical, and the man is no lover--_that's_ +what's the matter! But Westboro' certainly loves her in his big, cold, +affectionate way." Jimmy smiled at his own fashion of putting it. And +how any woman, with a mind and common-sense, could help loving +Westboro' Castle and countryside, as well as Cecil, tenth Duke of the +line, the American visitor failed to see. + +As the Duke of Westboro' thought of the members of his recent house +party--the women of it passed before his mental mirror. There were +several images of an American lady whose frocks and hats, whose wit and +grace, whose dark beauty had made her stay at Westboro' brilliant and +memorable. Possibly the remembrance of Mrs. Falconer, one night at +dinner, was what most persistently lingered in the Duke's mind. She +had sat on his left in a gown he remembered as becoming, and her jewels +had shone like fire on her bosom. He had particularly remarked them in +thinking of the idle jewels of his own house, left behind by the flight +of the Duchess. Mary Falconer had been more brilliant than her +ornaments, and Westboro' had thoroughly enjoyed his guest. He had +asked this woman especially because she charmed him; without forming +the reason he had a latent hope that she might do more than charm. He +wanted to forget and to be eased from the haunting memory that stung +and never soothed. From his first tete-a-tete with Mrs. Falconer he +had at once seen that there was nothing there for him. + +Bulstrode had said that Westboro' was not a lover. Reserved as far as +all feeling was concerned, he had made no advances to the beautiful +American, but contented himself with watching her. She could not be in +love with her brutish husband who, out of the week spent at Westboro' +was visible only two days. Then Bulstrode had come. Pictures of the +two talking in the long twilights, riding together, walking on the +terrace side by side, came vividly to Westboro's recollection. + +"That," he decided, "is a real flesh-and-blood woman, the kind of woman +I should have married. Bulstrode is a lucky devil." + + +"A chap," Westboro' said to Jimmy in a mild unpretentious mood of +philosophy, "is, of course, a husband; more naturally than people give +him credit for, a father; but first of all--and that's what so few +women take into consideration--_he is a man_." + +The Duke had fallen into the habit of breaking through the silences +when each man, following his own thoughts, would forget the other. And +remarks such as these his companion knew, referred in sense and detail +to the long talks whose intenser personalities had ceased. + +This day Westboro' brought out his little paragraph as, between the +hedges of a lowland lane, the two rode at a walk after a long hard +canter from Penhaven, some eight miles behind them on the hill. On +either side the top of the thorn was veiled with rime. Down the +hedge's thickness from his seat on his horse, Bulstrode could look into +the dark tangled interstices of the thicket and its delicious browns +and greens. Into the thorns here and there dried leaves had fallen, +and from the hedge as well as from the country, clouded and gray with +mist, came a sharpened sweetness; a blended smell of fields over which +early winter had passed; a smell of woods over which the fires cast +smoky veils. In the freshness and with the eager exercise, Bulstrode's +cheeks had reddened. He sat his horse well, and his enjoyment of life, +his ease with it, his charming spirit, shone in the face he turned to +the Duke. For some miles given over to the sympathetic task of +managing his horse, he had enjoyed like a boy, and during the ride had +thought of nothing but the physical delight of the open air and the +motion. + +"Yes," he returned to his friend's remark, "as far as any point of +interest goes, we may grant you that we began as men. I mean to say +that monkeys aren't useful in one's deductions for emotional +hypotheses, at any rate. I'll grant you for our use that we were men +to begin with." + +"Damn it all," said his host, "aren't we just as much so to-day, for +all our civilization?" + +"Well, we don't primarily knock on the head a woman whose physique has +pleased us, and carry her off while she's unconscious." + +"It might in some cases be a good thing if we did," Westboro' growled. + +Bulstrode ran his hand along the silky neck of his horse, from whose +nostrils smoke came in little puffs that met the moisture of the air. + +"Oh, we're not, you know, so awfully far away from our instincts in +anything, old man! There isn't any cast-iron rule about feelings. +They depend on the individual." + +"Oh, you've never married," Westboro' tried frankly to irritate him, +"and you can't, you know----" + +The sweet temper of the other accepted the Duke's scorn. "I'm not +married, or very theoretical about it, either. One can only, after +all, have his own point of view." + +"We're not, I expect, fair to the women," the Duke generously +acknowledged. "We look for so much in them. We expect them to be so +much." + +"A wife," Bulstrode completed for him, "a mother, a friend." + +And Westboro' finished it. "For them and for other men. And a +mistress." + +And here Bulstrode took him up for the first time with a note of +challenge in his voice. + +"And what, my dear man, did you intend that the Duchess should take you +for? No, I mean to say, quite man to man, given that any woman could +or does contain all the qualities you so temperately ask?" + +Westboro' smiled at the first curtness he had ever heard in his +friend's voice. + +"Oh, you know, we men don't fuss about ourselves." + +"You married her at eighteen," Bulstrode said. "You made her a +Duchess. You had already lived a life and she was a child beside you +in experience. You required motherhood of her, and in return...." + +"Well," Westboro' turned about in his saddle and faced his earnest +friend. "What then, in your opinion, might I have been?" + +"You might have been from the start," Bulstrode said it shortly, "a +lover. It's not a bad role. We Anglo-Saxons have no sentimental +education. Our puritanism makes us half the time timid at courtship +and love." + +The gentlemen rode a little on with slackened rein. Westboro's +eyeglass cord was almost motionless as he stared out between his +horse's ears down the lane. + +"Perhaps, after all," he fetched it out slowly, "there's something in +what you say." + +Whether or not there was any truth in Bulstrode's commonplace remark, +it lingered in his host's mind all day. It gave him, for the first +time, a link to follow--an idea--and the Duke, entirely unused to +analysis, accustomed to act if not on impulse, certainly according to +his will and pleasure without concession, harked back in a groping, +touching fashion like an awkward boy looking for a lost treasure, +upsetting, as he went, old haunts, turning over things for years not +brought to the light of day. And it took him all the afternoon and a +good part of the evening to reach the place where he thought he had +lost originally his joy. Unlike the happier boy, he could not seize +his bliss once recovered, and stow it away; it was only remembrance +that brought him back, and with a tightening heart as he realized once +more the form and quality of his lost happiness--there he must leave it +and see it fade again into the past. + + +Jimmy gave his host a chance to follow his absorbed reflections. He +effaced himself, and behind a book whose lightness of touch made him +agreeably forget the heavier hand of current and daily events, he sat +in his dressing-room reading "The Vicar of Wakefield." + +When Westboro' came in to him Jimmy looked up and quoted aloud: "When +lovely woman stoops to folly and finds at length that men betray...." + +"Oh, they console themselves quickly," Westboro' finished. "Don't +fancy anything else, my dear fellow, they console themselves." + +"They may pretend to do so." + +"They succeed." + +Westboro' took the little book from his friend's hand and shut it +firmly as if afraid that the rest of the verse might slip out and +refute him. + +"Bulstrode, she consoles herself, she is perfectly happy." + +"How are you then so sure?" + +"Oh, I hear of her in Paris." The Duke's features contracted. "She's +contriving to pass her time--to pass her time." + +Bulstrode leaned over towards his friend and, for Westboro' sat +opposite him, he put his hand on the Duke's knee. + +"You must certainly go to her." + +Westboro' stroked his moustache before he answered: + +"Not if I never see her again." + +"You should decidedly go to her." + +The other shook his head. "Not if it meant twice the hell it is now." + +"Why not?" + +"I went to her once. I may say twice," he slowly said, "since we +separated." And as he stopped speaking Bulstrode could only imagine +what the result had been. + +"I don't think I'm a Westboro' really, for I couldn't follow any +woman's carriage puling like a schoolboy as my ancestor did. There's a +great deal of my mother's blood in me, and it's a different blend." + +Bulstrode's eyes were on the little book between the Duke's +aristocratic hands. + +"She has, I grant you, a lot to forgive; but she quite well knows all +the blame I acknowledge, quite well. I don't believe I'm any worse +than the run of mankind, and whether I am or not, I've made all the +amends I can and I have nothing more to say." + +His eyeglass had dropped; his face looked worn; he showed his age more +than a happier man would have done at his years His mood of thinking it +out by himself continued for so long that Bulstrode finally asked: + +"What, if I may be so near you as to question, do you mean, old chap, +to do?" + +Westboro' had it all laid out for himself--his ready answer showed it. + +"You say I'm not a lover," he reminded his friend; "no doubt you're +right, but I'm an affectionate chap, at any rate, I can't bear this--" +He looked about hopelessly. The words were forced out by the high mark +of his unhappiness: "--this infernal solitude. Even when a good +comrade like yourself is in it, the house seems to speak to me from the +empty rooms in this wing." (Bulstrode knew he was thinking of the +nurseries with the low latches and little gates.) "I can't stand it. +When I get out of England and abroad the place fetches me back again +like a magnet. I'm a home-keeping sort of man, and I want my home." + +His friend gently urged in the silence: "Well?" + +"I shall wait," the Duke went on with the plan he had been forced to +make out for himself. "I shall hold on, keep along a bit, and then--_I +shall go to the other woman_." And the Duke, as he raised his eyes to +his companion, fixed his glass firmly and felt that he challenged in +every way Bulstrode's disapproval. "The Duchess will get her +divorce--it goes without saying--will get her divorce. Why she has not +already done so I can't imagine." + +As Westboro' appeared inclined to leave the subject there, Bulstrode +pressed him further: "And then?" + +"I fancy I shall marry the other woman." + +Bulstrode started. The complexion of the idea was so foreign to him +that he could not for a moment let himself think that he understood it. + +"You will," he said, "marry one woman whilst you distinctly love +another?" + +The Duke nodded. "Love," he reflected, "I begin to believe I don't +know anything about. It must, of course, suppose some sort of return. +If, as you say, I love another woman, I'm not made of the stuff that +can go along doing so without anything on her side." + +The dressing clock at the bedside on the little stand chimed the hour. +It was two o'clock. The Duke of Westboro' rose. + +"You must think me a colossal ass, my dear friend, but if it had not +been for your awfully good companionship and your kindness, I dare say +that by now I should have already made some sort of fatal blunder." + +At the door Bulstrode put his hand on his friend's arm, and, as though +nothing in the conversation apart from the Duchess had any real +significance, he said simply: + +"You are then, in sum, simply waiting...?" + +"Oh, yes," agreed the other rather blankly. And the other man knew +that he had been told only half the thought in his friend's mind. + +"She may get a divorce at any time, you know, quite easily, without my +taking any further steps." + +"Oh, I see perfectly," Jimmy accepted; and as the door closed after his +host, he said, almost aloud: "He thinks, then, there is half a chance +that the Duchess will return." And wondering very much how far a woman +is willing to sacrifice herself for a man, granted that she loves him, +he did not finish his phrase. + + +The next day Bulstrode, no longer able to resist the beckoning country, +went out, as it were, to it as if he said "Here I am--what will you do +with me?" + +If Glousceshire could, for a while, make him forget the problems he had +been housed with, brush him up a bit, he thought it would be a good +thing. Therefore, when his horse came up to the door he threw himself +on the animal in a nervous haste to be gone, and setting off in the +direction of Penhaven, obeyed its summons at last. + +Westboro' had run up to London for overnight, and Bulstrode, at the +Duke's something more than invitation, a sort of appeal, was to stay +indefinitely on. It must be confessed that he rather selfishly looked +forward to the course of an untroubled afternoon, to an evening amongst +the books whose files had tempted him for days. + +But the pity of all he had sympathetically been closeted with was great +in his mind. Whereas his native delicacy and slow judgment had led him +to keep silent until now towards his host, it was in no wise because +Jimmy had not quite made up his mind that he would not spare Westboro' +at all when the moment, if it ever came, should present itself for him +to speak. + +As he rode along he thought of the Duchess naturally in Paris, +surrounded by a train of ardent admirers; she had them always, +everywhere. She was disillusioned, of course, probably angry, piqued, +and unfortunately she had been betrayed; and he shrugged with a gentle +desperation as he made a mental picture of the last scene: the +inevitable divorce, the wrecking of another household, +unless--unless--one of them loved sufficiently to save the situation. + +His thoughts came to a standstill as his horse stopped short before a +gate: his riding had fetched him up before it. The mare stretched out +her long neck, set free by a relaxing rein; she sniffed the latch and +put her head over the wicket, and the rider saw that they had come +across fields, and were at the entrance of a deserted property. The +gate gave access to a forest road where the thick underbrush was +untidy, and on whose walk the piles of leaves lay as they had fallen. +He could see no farther in, and thinking to come at the end upon a +forsaken garden, the precincts of an untenanted country house, he +leaned down, tried the gate which fairly swung into his hand, and the +mare passed through. There was the delicious intimacy about the woods +which the sense of coming alone and unexpectedly upon the old and +forsaken gives the traveller. He is a discoverer of secrets, a +legitimate spy upon stories which he flatters himself he is the first +to read. He becomes intimate with another man's past, and as he must +necessarily, in all ignorance, tell himself his own tales, indiscretion +may be said to be a doubtful quantity. + +A bit back in the bare brown woods he saw the flash of a marble pillar; +it shone white and clear in the setting of russet and against the boles +of the trees. A little farther away gleamed another figure on its base +of fluted marble, and still farther along, leaf-overlaid and thus +effaced, he could discern the contour of a sunken garden. The place +grew more pretentious as he slowly picked his way, and he was +unprepared for coming suddenly onto a gravel path from which he thought +the leaves had been blown away. Here Bulstrode dismounted, and, with +the bridle over his arm, walked towards the path's end, pleasantly +interested, and now, as he thought it should by this do, the house +struck on him through an archway contrived by the training of old trees +over a circle of stone. The house broke on him in the shape of an +Elizabethan manse; long and old with soft rose-color of brick in +places, and the color of a faded leaf in others where the dampness had +soaked in and had, through countless mid-summer suns, been burned out +again. Before the windows flashed the red of bright curtains. The +house was distinctly, and he thought it seemed happily, occupied. He +stopped where he stood by the arch, a little confused and a little +balked in his romantic treat, and not the less feeling himself an +intruder. But before he could turn his horse and unobtrusively lead +her back the way they had come, the house's occupant, no doubt she who +gave it the air of being so happily tenanted, had come out with a +garden hat on her head, a pair of garden shears in her hands, and with +the precision of intention, turned sharply towards the arched forest +walk, and in this way squarely upon Bulstrode. + +The surprise to him was, without doubt, the greater, for she knew him +at once, and he for a second did not recognize her. Her extreme +English air--the straw hat tied under her chin and the face it framed, +so decidedly altered, bewildered him. His first greeting, mentally, +before he spoke aloud to her, was masculine. "Why, her beauty! What +in heaven's name had she done with it?" + +"_What_ are you doing here?" + +They both asked it at once, and the lady having lived so long in an +insular country was adept in its possibilities of great hospitality as +well as of freezing out an unwelcome visitor. She froze the poor +gentleman and then, touched by his utter bewilderment and his innocence +of wilful intrusion, she smiled more humanly. + +"Won't you, since you _are_ here, Mr. Bulstrode, come in and have a cup +of tea?" + +She at once followed their mutual question by saying: "As for being +here, you will admit that given the part of the country it is, no one +has a better right!" + +"Oh, I'll admit anything you like," he laughed, "if you'll only admit +us. You see we are two." + +The lady came up to him in a more friendly manner; she gave him her +hand and she really smiled beautifully. Then she put her hand on the +nose of the horse, with the touch one has for familiar things. + +"She's a perfect dear, isn't she--a dear. So you are riding her then? +Well, you'll find her easy to tie, she stands well. There's nothing +she can spoil, that's the charm of such an old, tumble-down place." + +As Bulstrode followed after the trailing dress just touching the gravel +with a rustling sound, he had the feeling of being suddenly, +willy-nilly, taken and put into the heart of a story book. He smiled. +"Well, I've done the first chapter and now I've got to go on in the +book, I suppose, whether I want to be here or not, to the end." + +"I thought I was making a voyage of discovery," he told her as they sat +in the low room before a fire and before her table and tea cups. "I +fancied I was the only person within miles round. I expect no one has +a right to be so bold, but I really didn't dream the place was lived +in, as, of course, you know." + +"Drink your tea," she bade, "and eat your toast before I make you tell +me if you have come to see me as a messenger." + +"And if I have?" + +It was delicious tea, and the American of her had somehow found cream +for it, which, un-English luxury, the American in him fully +appreciated. The liquid in the blue-and-white cups was pale as saffron +and the toast was a feather. + +"At five o'clock there's nothing like it in the world," he breathed. +"I didn't hope for this to-day. I had recklessly thrown five o'clock +over, for I'm alone at the castle." He drank his tea, finished, and +with a sigh. Then he said: "I can actually venture to ask you for +another cup, for I am nobody's messenger or envoy, my dear, nobody's. +I'm just an indiscreet, humdrum individual who has been too charmingly +rewarded for an intrusion. You saw my surprise, didn't you? And I'm +not very clever at putting on things." + +The Duchess tacitly accepted, it is to be supposed, for she made him a +second cup of tea, slowly. + +"You don't know that I've been thinking about you all day," he said, +"and I can frankly say that I've been making a very different picture +of you indeed." + +She took no notice whatsoever of his personality. + +"You are in England, then," she said rather formally. "I never think +of my own country people as being here. I always think of Americans as +being in the States, men above all, for they fit so badly in the +English atmosphere, don't they? It's always incongruous to me to hear +their "r's" and "a's" rattling about in this soft language. It's +horrid of me to speak so. You, of course, are out of the category. +But as you stood there, with Banshee's nose over your shoulder you +fitted quite beautifully in with everything. I don't believe I should +mind you, ever, anywhere, and yet I more naturally think of you at +Newport, don't you see?" + +Her companion cried: "Oh, no, I'm in England, and you can't alter the +fact, at least if you can, please don't; for Newport on the fifteenth +of December, and with no such tea or fire----" + +"Oh," she permitted, "you may stay. I said you fitted--only----" + +Bulstrode interposed: "Don't at least for a few moments entertain any +'buts' and 'onlys'--they are nearly as bad as those magical travelling +trunks that would transport me to the United States. It is so--let me +say--neutral in this place, I should think I might remain. I don't +know why you are here or with whom, nor for how long, or for how deep, +but it is singularly perfect to have found you." + +His hostess had left her seat behind the table, and taking a chair by +the fireside where Bulstrode was sitting, undid the ribbons of her +garden hat and let the basket-like object fall on the floor. + +"You must promise me, first of all, that you will not say you have seen +me. Otherwise I shall leave here to-morrow and nobody shall ever again +know where I am." + +However her command might conflict with what was in his mind, he was +obliged to give her his word. He had no right not to do so. + +"And nothing," she said, "must make you break this promise, Mr. +Bulstrode. I know how good you are, and how you do all sorts of +Quixotic funny things, but in this case please--please----" + +"Mind my own business?" he nodded. "I will, Duchess, I will." + +She looked at him steadily a moment and seemed satisfied, for she +relaxed the tensity of her manner, which was the first Americanism she +had displayed, and in her pretty soft drawl asked him, with less +perfunctory interest than her words implied: "You are at Westboro'?" + +"Yes, since the twenty-fifth." + +"And you're staying on?" + +"I seem to be more or less of a fixture--until the holidays, I expect." + +"Lucky you," she breathed, and at his expression of candid surprise she +half laughed. "Oh, I mean as far as the castle goes--isn't it really +too delightful?" + +He was able to say honestly: "Quite the most beautiful house I have +ever seen." + +"Yes, I think so too," she nodded. "It's not so important as many +others but it's more perfect, more like a home." + +Bulstrode sat back in his chair and tried to make her forget him. +Between the fire and the shadow he wanted to watch her face from which +he now saw that the beauty he remembered had not faded but had been +transformed. She was beautiful in another way: the brilliant, blooming +girl, fully blown at eighteen, with the dazzling charm of health, no +longer existed in the Duchess of Westboro'. She had refined very much +indeed. The aggressive bearing of the American princess had been +replaced by the colder, more serene hauteur of the English Duchess. +She was evidently a very proud woman, the arch of her brows said so, +and the line of her lips. All her lines were sharper and finer. Her +color, and he could not, as he studied her, quite regret it; her color +was quite gone. Her pallor made her more delicate, and her eyes--it +was in them that Bulstrode thought he saw the greatest change of all; +they were now fixed upon him, there was something melancholy in their +profound and deeply circled gray. + +"What rooms will they have given you?" she asked after a moment. +Then--"Wait," she commanded, "I know. The south wing, the Henry IV. +rooms that look into the gardens. I always gave those to the men. +There's something extremely homelike about them, don't you think so? +And have you ever seen anything like those winter roses in that court? +Did any bloom this year? The trellis runs up along the terrace +balustrade--or possibly you don't care for flowers? Of course you +wouldn't as a girl does." + +A _girl_--with that face and those eyes? Why, she must have been +talking back ten years. Bulstrode drew a breath. + +"I know the roses you mean. It would be difficult to forget them. +Your gardener takes such pride in them. For some reason they are never +gathered; they fall as they hang. The gardener, it so happened, told +me so." + +She was looking at him with an intensity almost painful, but she said +nothing further, and after a moment more Bulstrode replied to another +question. + +"As it happens I don't occupy the Henry IV. rooms. I have mine quite +on the other side of the castle. Don't they call them the 'West +Rooms'?" + +She caught her breath a little, but she was in splendid training with +all her years of English life behind her. Her face, nevertheless, +showed how well she knew those rooms, without the added note in her +voice as she said: + +"Oh, those West Rooms--you have those." + +And in the quiet that fell as her eyes sought the fire, he quite knew +how her thoughts travelled down the hall to the open nursery doors with +their waiting gates. Whatever were her reasons for being here, +Bulstrode saw that he had surprised her in a moment of sadness, and +that his visit in spite of his indiscretion, was not wholly unwelcome. +But in the sudden way coming upon some one connected with her own life, +she had been completely taken unawares, and her lapse into something +like sentiment was short. Even as he looked at her she hardened. + +"You have naturally not asked me anything, Mr. Bulstrode," she said, +coldly enough now, "and more naturally still I have no explanations to +give. By to-morrow I may be gone. I may live here for the rest of my +life. I never leave my garden, I am quite unknown to the people about. +If any one in Westboro' learns that I am here I shall leave at once. +You will not come again. It is discourteous to say so--to ask it." + +He had risen from his chair. + +"Oh, but it's quite, quite dark. However will you manage?" + +"We'll pick our way back well enough," he assured her. "The distance +to the road is nothing, and from here on it runs straight to the abbey." + +The Duchess followed him slowly to the door, and there she asked +abruptly: "Is Westboro' to be down all winter? I didn't know it. I +thought he was out of England or I should not have come here at all." + +"Oh," Bulstrode answered, "he's too restless to be long anywhere. I +expect he'll pack up and be off before we know it. He's away just now +at any rate, and I'm kicking my heels up there quite alone. I'm not to +return--ever?" he ventured. "You may so fully trust me that--" and he +saw that she hesitated and pursued, "I shall ride up to the little gate +again, and if it is unlatched...." + +"Oh, don't count on it," she advised him, "don't--it's against all my +plans." + +Somebody in the shape of a lad had unfastened the mare, and preceded +Bulstrode on foot with a lantern, by whose flicker, with much delicate +caution and pretended shyness, Banshee picked her way to the road, +through the woods which Bulstrode an hour before had fancied led into a +deserted garden. + + +"You see," he put it to her delicacy to understand, "it's scarcely, in +a way, fair to him--I feel it so at least. It gives me the sensation +of knowing more than he does in his own house about that which +presumably should be Westboro's secret." + +"You mean to say,"--the Duchess pinned him down, "that you'll give me +away because of one of those peculiar crises of honor that makes a +person betray a trust in order to salve his conscience?" + + +Bulstrode had come again faithfully, making the pilgrimage to the +forest road, and he was not surprised that it should have finally +turned out so that one day the gate yielded to his touch, and he found +the Duchess if not waiting for him, distinctly there. During their +delightful little talks--and they had been so--not once had the name of +Bulstrode's host been mentioned; and if the lady had a curiosity +concerning her lord and once master, she did not display it to the +visitor. + +"I mean to say," Bulstrode replied in answer to her challenge which was +fiery, "that I really don't want to play false to Westboro', more false +than I shall in the course of events be forced to be. Of course, your +secret--I need not say so--is entirely safe. But the Duke comes back +in a day or two, and rather than face him with this silence which you +have imposed upon me I am going back to London before he returns." + +The sewing she had chosen to finger--a Duchess, and an American one at +that, is not expected to do more--lay at her feet. By her side was a +basket of considerable proportions, and it was full to the brim with +linen: the very fine white stuff overflowed from the basket like snow. +The Duchess of Westboro's handiwork had already caught the eye of her +guest. And now, as her long hands and her long finger, tipped by its +golden thimble, handled her sewing, Bulstrode watched her interestedly +and found great loveliness in her bending face. + +"I didn't think any of you knew how to sew," he mused aloud. + +"Any of us!" she smiled. "Do you, by that, mean American Duchesses? +Or do you mean women who have left their husbands? Or in just what +class do you think of me, regarding your last remark?" + +She folded up her work and dropped her thimble in the nest of snow. +Bulstrode acknowledged that his conclusion, whatever it had been, was +wrong. + +"When I married," the Duchess said, "I was the best four-in-hand whip +for a woman in my set. I don't think I am a keen needlewoman, really, +and I know then I didn't recognize a needle by sight. When my little +boys were born I sent to Paris for everything they wore, and I can +remember that I didn't even know for what the little clothes were +intended, many of them, when they came home in my first son's layette. +I have learned to sew since I came here to The Dials. I've been three +months here, now, and I really must have proved a clever pupil, for I +assure you that they tell me I have made some pretty things." As she +spoke she held up the seam she ran, and Bulstrode, who himself +confessed to not knowing a needle by sight, was forced to peer over the +seam and endeavor to find her tiny stitches. He exclaimed: + +"Three months! You must have been terribly dull!" + +"No." + +"You are known," he said, "throughout the countryside--not that I've +been making inquiries, but in spite of myself I have heard--as a +stranger, presumably a Frenchwoman, a widow who will probably buy The +Dials." + +"Oh, I shall never buy the place," she assured him, and then abruptly: +"Had you been free to speak of me, what would you have told Westboro'?" + +He waited a second, then answered her lightly, but with a feeling which +she did not mistake: "I should have asked him to come and see you run +up that seam." + +"He would not have come." + +Remembering very clearly how determined Westboro's decision had been, +he did not affirm to the lady his belief that Westboro' would in +reality have flown to her. + +At the door, later, she bade him good-bye and appeared to gather her +courage together, and, with a lapse into a simplicity so entire that +she seemed only Frances Denby and to possess no more of title or +distinction than any lovely woman, she said to him: + +"Mr. Bulstrode, please don't leave the castle." + +"Oh, I couldn't sit opposite my friend at dinner, I couldn't meet his +eyes now, my dear child." + +The Duchess touched his arm. "It's sweet of you to call me so. You +are really as young as I am, and certainly I feel an age beyond you. +Please stay." + +The pleasure which his visits had been to her had brought something of +an animation and interest to her cold face. Dressed in a dark and +simple gown, her fur stole about her neck, she had this afternoon +followed him out of the house into the garden and walked slowly along +by his side towards the gate. + +"Of all the people in the world one would choose you, I think, to be +the friend of..." She caught herself up. "I mean to say, can't you +forget those stupid little ideas of honor and friendship and all that?" +She put it beautifully. "I, of course, will give up seeing you," she +renounced, "but it will be a world of comfort just to feel that you are +there." + +As he did not at once succumb to her blandishments, she asked point +blank: + +"Promise me to stop on." + +"I at least won't go without letting you know of it." + +"Without my permission?" + +"I won't say that." + +"But I'm sure that you mean it," she nodded happily, "and you're _such_ +a help." + +She was so affectionate as she bade him good-bye, that only at the +little road did he begin to wonder just what help he was. Was he +aiding her to detective poor Westboro'? Was he adding an air of +protection to some feminine treachery? + +"Oh, no," he decided; "she's incapable of any thing of the sort. But I +must clear out;" and he decided that at once, so soon as Westboro' +should be at home, he would take himself to ground still more neutral +than The Dials had proved to be. But Westboro' showed no intention of +coming immediately home. Instead, with a droll egoism, as if the fact +that he had made poor Bulstrode a party to his unhappiness gave him +thereafter a right to the other's time even in absence, he laid a firm +hold on Jimmy. Westboro' finally put pen to paper, and the scrappy +letter touched the deserted visitor; it proved to have been written at +a _bureau de poste_ in Paris: + +"Don't, for God's sake, go off, old man. Keep up your end." (His +end!) "Stop on at Westboro'--Use the place as if it were all put up +for your amusement. Just live there so I may feel it's alive. Let me +find a human being at home when I turn up. I'll wire in a day or so." + +"So he is in Paris, then." Bulstrode had supposed so, and did not +doubt that the Duke had gone there to find news of his wife, possibly +as well to see Madame de Bassevigne. + +Poor fellow, if he were searching for the Duchess! Well, Bulstrode +would keep up his end, he had nothing else for the time being to do but +to mind other people's business. He put it so to himself. Indeed he +could not but believe it was fortunate for more than one person that +something could keep him from minding his own. + +An undefined discretion kept him from going to the Moated Grange, as to +himself he styled the retreat the Duchess had made of The Dials. And, +in spite of the absolute freedom now given him to prowl about amongst +the books, in spite of his "evenings out" as he called them, Jimmy +found the time at Westboro' to drag lamentably. His own affairs, which +he so faithlessly denied, came to him in batches of letters whose +questions could not be solved by return mail. He became over his own +thoughts restless, and he sent a telegram to his host: "Better have a +look at things here yourself. Can't possibly stop on longer than...." +And he set a day. + +"If Westboro', poor devil, has to look forward to a life of this +unaccompanied grandeur," he pitied him. The lines and files of +soft-footed, impersonal servants, the perfect stilted attention, the +silence, and the inhumanness of a man's lonely life, became intolerable +to Jimmy Bulstrode. Even though Frances, Duchess of Westboro', had +truly said that the castle was a delightful home, Bulstrode began to +wonder what that word comprised or meant: certainly nothing like his +occupation of another man's house or like any life that is lived alone. + +At the end of the week that the American spent at Westboro' he had +condensed the castle, as he said to himself, as far as possible, to the +proportions of a Harlem flat, and he lived in it. In the almost small +breakfast room whose windows gave on the terrace, and where all the +December sun that was visible came to find him, he took his meals; each +of them but dinner, which was determinedly and imperially served by +five men in one of the dining-rooms, and at which function, as he +expressed it, he shut his eyes and just ate blindly through. He lived +out of doors all day, took his tea in his dressing-room, and read and +smoked until the august dinner hour called him down to dress and dine +alone. For a week he lived "without sight of a human being," so he +said, for the domestics were only machines. And, towards the end of +the week, he would have gone to see any one: an enemy would have been +too easy, and the only person within range was, of course, the Duchess +of Westboro'. + + +Westboro' had made a confidant of Bulstrode, and the woman had not. +Bulstrode liked it in her. To be sure, the cases were quite different: +there was no reason why the man deserted and bruised in his pride and +in his heart, should not have talked to his old friend. Westboro' +accused himself of weakness. + +"I've blabbed like a woman," he acknowledged ruefully. + +The Duchess had not spoken nor had she, on the other hand, with the +fine courage of the true woman, been in any eager haste to discover +what her husband had said of her, nor had she asked if he had spoken at +all. On the other hand, aided by an extreme patience and with still +greater delicacy, she had waited, understanding that her guest, whose +mettle and character she knew would not permit him to betray a trust, +might, however naively, disclose what he knew without being conscious +of it. + +But if Bulstrode gave himself or his host away, the Duchess made no +sign that she had profited by indiscretions. The impersonality of +their conversations was indeed a relief to Bulstrode, and it made it +possible for him to feel himself less a traitor at the Duke's hearth. +But she talked very sweetly, too, of her children. She had the second +picture to the Duke's of the little boys, a picture like the one +Bulstrode had seen at the castle, and showed it to him as the father +had done. + +"Westboro' has the companion to this," he had not minded telling her as +they sat together in the small room he had grown to know as well as the +larger rooms of the castle. And at the end of a few moments Bulstrode +quite blurted out: "Why, in Heaven's name do you women make men suffer +so?" + +The Duchess, who had been working, dropped her bit of muslin and +looked, with her cherry lips parted and her great serious eyes, for all +the world like a lady in a gift book. Her face was eighteenth century +and child-like. + +Bulstrode nodded. "Oh, yes, you've got so easily the upper hand, the +very least of you, you know, over the best of us. It's such an unfair +supremacy. You've got such a clever knowledge of little things, such a +sense of the scale of the feelings, and you certainly make the very +most of your power over us all. Can't you--" and his eyes, half +serious and half reproachful, seemed, as he looked at her, to question +all the womankind he knew--"Can't you ever love us well enough just +quite simply to make us happy?" + +The Duchess had taken up her sewing again, and her eyes were upon it. +Bulstrode waited for a little, following her stitches through the +muslin and the flash of her thimble in the light. + +"Can't you?" he softly repeated. "Isn't it, after all, a good sort of +way of spending one's life, this making another happy?" + +"American women aren't taught so, you know," she said. "It isn't +taught us that the end and aim of our existence is to make a man happy." + +Her companion didn't seem at all surprised. + +"And so you see," she went on, "those of us that do learn that after +all there may be something in what you say--those of us that learn, +only find it out after a lot of hard experiences, and it is sometimes +too late!" + +She seemed to think his direct question called for a distinct answer, +for she admitted: "Oh, yes, of course there are some of us who would +give a great deal to try. And you see, moreover," she went on with her +subject as she turned the corner of her square, "you put it well when +you said 'love enough.' You see that's the whole thing, Mr. Bulstrode, +to love enough. One can, of course, in that case, do nearly all there +is to do, can't one?" + +"Nearly all," he had smiled, and added: "_And a great deal more_." + + +The household gods, whose dignity and harmony had not been disturbed +during the absence of the master of Westboro', were unable, however, to +give him very much comfort on his return. The Duke's motor cut quickly +up the long drive and severed--clove, as it were--a way through the +frosty air and let him into the park. The poor man had only a sense of +wretchedness on coming home--"coming back," he now put it. Huddled +down deep in his fur coat, its collar hunched round his ears, his face +was as gloomy as that of a man dispossessed of all his goods; doors +thrown open into the fragrant and agreeably warmed halls fetched him +further home. But the knowledge that the house had been lived in +during his absence was not ungrateful. He sniffed the odor of a +familiar brand of cigar, and before he had quite plumbed the melancholy +of the place to its depths, Jimmy Bulstrode had sunned out of one of +the inner rooms, and the grasp of the friendly hand and the sound of +the cheerful voice struck a chord in Westboro' that shook him. + +"I've been like a fiend possessed," he said to Jimmy, in the evening +when they found themselves once more before the fire. "I've scarcely +known what I've been doing, or why; but I know one thing, and that is +that I'm the most wretched man alive." + +Bulstrode nodded. "You _did_ go to Paris, then!" + +"Yes," said the Duke, "and what I've found out there has driven me +insane." + +Although ignorant of the variations of his friend's discovery, +Bulstrode was pretty certain of one that had not been made. + +"You may, old chap," he said smoothly, "not have found out all the +truth, you know." + +Westboro' raised his hand. "Come," he said, "no palliations; you can't +smooth over the facts. Frances is not in Paris. She has not been in +Paris for several months." He paused. + +"In itself not a tragedy," murmured his friend. "Paris is considered +at times a place as well _not_ to be in." + +But Bulstrode's remark did not distract his friend from his narrative. + +"She has not been in Paris since I saw her twelve months ago, and she +has left no sign or trace of where she has gone. There is no address, +no way that I can find her. Not that a discovery is not of course +ultimately possible, but what, in the interval, if I should wish to +write to her? What if I should need to see her? What if I should die?" + +"Would you, in any of those cases, send for her?" + +"I don't know," the Duke admitted. + +"But," Jimmy asked him, "did you go to Paris this time to see the +Duchess?" + +"Since you ask me frankly," the Duke admitted, "I don't think that I +did." + +"At all events," the other said, "you surely did not go to spy on her, +Westboro'?" + +The Duke was silent, then answered quietly: + +"I should never ask a question--not if it meant a certain discovery of +something that I feared or suspected. I don't think I should ever seek +to find out something she didn't want me to know." + +Bulstrode, at the blindness of a man regarding his own intentions, +smiled behind his cigar. "Well?" he helped. + +"I went over to France," said the Duke--"and I suppose you'll scarcely +believe a man who you say is not a lover to be capable of such +sentimentality--simply, if possible, to have a sight of my wife, to see +her go out of the door, or to see her go in, to see her possibly get +into a carriage; and how did I know that it would not be with another +man?" + +"How did you find out that she had left?" + +"I asked for her at her hotel." + +"The first question, then," Jimmy smiled. + +"A fair one?" + +"Oh, perfectly." + +"I was told that the Duchess had left Paris months before." + +"And then?" the other man's voice was placid as he spoke for the Duke. +"Then you went to her bankers, her bakers and candlestick makers; in +short, you asked all over the place, didn't you?" + +The Duke swore gently. "Well, what would you have a man do?" + +"Why I would have him do that," nodded Jimmy, "by all means. Any man +would have done so." + +In the half second of interval whilst the Duke was obliged to swallow +his friend's sarcasm, Bulstrode had time to think: "Here I am, once +more in the heart of an intrigue. Its fetters are all about me and I +am wretchedly bound by honor not to do the simple, natural thing." +Then he asked boldly: "Well, what do you think about it, Westboro'?" + +"Think?" Westboro' repeated, "why, that she has deliberately escaped +from me, put herself out of any possible reach; she doesn't want a +reconciliation and she has gone away. She may have gone away alone and +she may not, that I don't know, and I don't believe I want to know." + +"Oh, you'll find her." It was with the most delightful security and +contentment that his friend was able to tell the Duke this. But the +cheerful note struck the poor husband the disagreeablest of blows. + +"Gad!" he laughed, "what a cold brand of creature a bachelor is! 'Find +her!' as one might speak of finding an umbrella that you've left by +mistake at your club. Of course she can be found. There are not many +mysteries that search can't solve in these days. And Duchesses don't +drop off the face of the earth. I could no doubt have found her in +twenty-four hours, but I didn't try to. I don't know that I want to +find her. It isn't the fact of where she's gone that counts--that she +wanted to go--that she has voluntarily made the separation final and +complete." + +"Then," persisted the bachelor, "you don't really _want_ to find her?" + +"Jove!" the Duke turned on him. "You don't know what it is to love a +woman! You've got some imagination--try to use it, can't you? Can't +you?" + +He met the American's handsome eyes. A flush rose under Bulstrode's +cheek. Westboro' put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "I beg your +pardon, dear old chap." + +"Oh, that's all right, old chap," Bulstrode assured cheerfully. + + +"My dear Duchess, it seems an unconscionable waste of time and life for +any one to ignore the inevitable! It's such a prodigal throwing out of +the window of riches!" + +Bulstrode took her hands, both of them, in his as she stood in the +winter sunshine, the open house door behind her, the terrace and its +broken stairs of crumbling stone before her. + +"Why, my dear lady, if I kept a diary of daily events I couldn't write +down one page of good reasons why you should be living here and +Westboro' up there, and I a comic go-between, in the secret of both and +the confidence of one." + +"Oh," she interrupted, "then you're in the confidence...?" + +"Of your husband, yes," Bulstrode found himself startled into betrayal. + +She drew her hands from him and walked on a little in the sunshine, and +he followed by her side. + +"I don't mind," she permitted, "you're such a perfect dear. I +shouldn't mind at all if I thought that the confidence were a good one." + +Her tone was light and cool, but the gentleman never failed to notice +when the Duchess spoke of the Duke that there was a tremor under her +words, a warmth, an agitation, which she vainly tried to control. + +"Confidences," she said, "are very rarely just, you know, and _les +absents ont toujours tort_." + +"Oh, you don't mean...?" Jimmy emphasized. + +"It was a confidence, wasn't it?" + +"A real one," she was assured. + +"Well then, you'll keep it, of course." + +She drew the stole up round her long fair neck; her delicate head came +out of the soft fur like a flower. But before she could follow up her +words Bulstrode said: + +"You, of course, then know how he loves you." + +He felt more than knew that she trembled, and he saw an instinctive +gesture which he understood meant that he should be silent. + +"You and I put it quite clearly, Mr. Bulstrode, the other day." Her +voice was serene again. "If only one cares enough--that's the +necessary thing for every question." + +"Well?" + +She half shrugged, made a little motion with her white hands, and this +answer said for her: "That is indeed the question, and I haven't solved +it." + +They stopped at the terraced walk. The low stones, dark and black, +were filled in their interstices with fine lines of greenish moss. On +the sunny corner the dial's shadow fell across the noon. The Duchess +put her hand on the warmed stones. + +"It's a heavenly day," she said, "I don't believe that the Riviera is +warmer. I never have seen such an English December." + +Her eyes, which had been fixed on the woods below the garden, now +turned towards the house and rested on one of the upper windows where +the sun fell on the little panes. The Duchess remained looking up a +few seconds, then she came back to her guest. + +"I started, you know, to tell you something," Bulstrode smiled at her. +"I once served on a jury in the West, and although the case was a +miserably sad one in every way, I suppose, I couldn't take it as +seriously as I should have done, for from the first the whole thing +seemed so unnecessary, and the crisis could so easily have been +avoided." + +"I know," she interrupted him, "but you're rather wrong. Not from the +first." + +He capitulated. "Well, grant it so if you like, only agree with me +when I say from my own--" he put his hand down on the dial's edge. +"From this lovely noon-time on, every hour you waste is clear loss. +The Duke loves you as women are rarely loved, and after all," he said +with something like passion in his agreeable voice "what _do_ you all +expect? Love doesn't hang on every tree for a woman to pluck at will, +and you have the great luck, my dear Duchess, to be loved by your own +husband. Why don't you go to him?" + +"Go to him?" she echoed. + +He curtly replied: "Why not?" + +"My dear friend!" + +"Why, didn't you forbid him to go to you?" + +"Ah," she nodded, "the confidence, it was intimate indeed. But since +you have got it, won't you agree that any man, if he loved a woman, +would disobey her?" + +"Westboro' would not." + +The Duchess said coldly: "Pride is not love." + +"You didn't mean him, then, to keep his vow?" + +"Yes," she slowly thought out, "I did indeed, with all my heart." + +"And now?" + +She turned towards the house again, and as she walked back, said: "I +don't quite know." + +And Bulstrode asked her: "That is why you are here, to find out?" + +"Partly." + +Her companion's face grew stern. The Duchess did not see it for her +eyes had again swept the upper window. At her side Bulstrode went on: +"You have taken ten years to discover that you did not love your +husband. You have taken one year to begin to wonder, to doubt, to +suspect, to half think that you do; it's an unstable state of heart, +Duchess, terribly unstable." + +The woman stopped short at his side, and now as she lifted up her eyes +and saw him, was a little startled if not frightened at his expression. + +"Unstable," she repeated, with a world of scorn in her voice. "How can +you use that word to me, knowing the facts of the case?" + +"Oh, a man," said Bulstrode rather impatiently, "is a worthless, +wretched piece of mechanism altogether. I grant you that--utterly +unworthy the love and confidence of any good woman. He is capable of +all the vagaries and infidelities possible. We'll judge him so. But," +he continued, "these wandering, vagrant derelicts have been known to +tie fast, to find port, to drop anchor. They have even brought great +riches and important treasure into harbor, fetched a world of good luck +home. There's only one thing in the universe that can keep a man, +Duchess, only one." + +"Well?" she encouraged him. + +"A woman's heart," he said deeply, "a woman's true tenderness; and it +needs all that heart, all its love, all its patience and sacrifice to +keep that man--all and forever." + +He saw her bosom heave; she had thrown her fur off, as if its warmth +stifled her. Vivid color had come into her face. Her pallor for the +time was destroyed, and as she flashed a rebellious look at him, a look +of revolt and selfhood, he seemed to see again the American +girl--wilful, egotistical, spoiled--an imperious creature whose +caprices had been opposed to the Duke's Anglo-Saxon temperament and +national egoism. + +At this moment, the window the Duchess looked towards opened part way: +it was under the eaves and there must have been a dovecote near, for +there came the soft sound of cooing like the call of a young bird. +Possibly the gentle note reached the woman's hearing as well, for her +face transcendently softened. + +"I think," she said with evident effort to speak in a commonplace tone, +"it would be quite futile to urge Cecil to come." + +"Oh, I shan't advise him so." + +Bulstrode's quick answer made her look at him in so much surprise that +he went on to say: "I would not, in justice to him, in justice to the +great love I have been permitted to see, advise him to come." + +The Duchess, during the months of analysis, suffering and experience, +had not admitted to herself that should her husband return she would +receive him, nor had she decided as to quite how obdurate she would be, +and she was curious at the attitude of this gentle friend. She naively +asked: + +"Why would you not advise him so?" + +Bulstrode said, still continuing his pleasant sententiousness, "The +woman's heart must be as stable as the man's is uncertain, and the man +who comes back after such a separation must not find a woman who does +not know her own mind. He must, on the contrary, find one who has no +mind or will or life but his." + +As he looked at the person to whom he spoke he was somewhat struck by +the maternal look in her: he had never clearly discovered it before. +Her breast from which the fur had fallen, as it rose and fell under her +soft gown, was full, generous, and beautiful; even as he spoke in a +certain accusation against her, she seemed to have altered. + +"Westboro'," he said a little confused, "must come back to a woman, +Duchess, to a woman--to a consoler. I wish I could express +myself--almost to a mother--as well as to a wife." + +The ardent color dyed her face again; her lips moved. She put out her +hand towards him, and as he took it he understood that she wished him +to bid her good-by and to leave her alone. He heard what she struggled +to say: + +"He must not come, he must not come." + +"No," he accepted sadly for his friend, "No, he must not come." + + +Bulstrode had chosen those times for going to The Dials when his host +was least likely to take note of his absence; but it happened that more +than once the Duke missed him at just the wrong moment, and more than +once had been given the direction in which Bulstrode's footsteps had +turned. + +One morning, during a talk with his agent, Westboro'--the map of the +district before him--enquired what had ever been done with the property +known as The Dials, and into whose hands the old place had fallen. It +seemed that it had been let for some months to a foreigner, a widow, +who lived there, and alone. + +Westboro' considered the farms and forests, as they lay mapped out +before him, at the extreme foot of the castle's parks. It was a little +square of some fifty acres by itself; it had never interested him +before. + +How long did the lease run on? Did the agent know? He believed for +another year. + +The Duke gave instructions to have the property looked into, with a +view to purchase. And as the man put up his papers, he vouchsafed to +his employer: + +"The present tenant is very exclusive; she sees nobody, has never, I +believe, even been to the Abbey. An old gardener who has been kept on +says the servants are all foreign." + +The Duke gave only a tepid interest to the information which would have +passed entirely from his mind had it not been for his next meeting with +Jimmy Bulstrode. + +As much to shake off the impression his last talk with the Duchess had +left on his mind, as to prolong his exercise, Jimmy had gone down out +of the garden and across the place on foot over the rough winter fields +with their rimy furrows and their barren floors. As he made his way +towards the bottom hedge, looking for a stile he knew would be there a +little farther on, cutting an entrance out through the thorn to the +road, he met Westboro', like himself, on foot, and with his hand upon +the stile. The presence of the Duke where Bulstrode knew he was least +thought to be, and where he was now sadly sure he was not opportune, +made Jimmy stop short, troubled, and, not for a moment thinking that +the fact of his being there _himself_ was singular, he made his way +determinedly through the stile. As he greeted his friend, his own +demeanor was decidedly one which said: "Don't go on in that direction, +follow rather out of the turnstile with _me_." And he led his friend +rather brusquely down the bank, hitching his arm in Westboro's, forced +him along with him into the road. + +"I ran down here to look over these meadows," said Westboro.' "You +seem yourself, in a way, to be pacing the land off!" + +"Oh, I _love_ cross-country walking," said Bulstrode warmly. + +"You must," smiled the Duke, "to have cut off into those barren fields. +Were you lost?" Westboro' stopped and looked back. "You must have +come directly down through The Dials." + +"_The Dials_?" the American helplessly repeated. "Do you mean the old +house and garden?" + +Bulstrode's manner and speech were rarely curt and evasive, but he +seemed this time embarrassed and taken unawares. As the two men sat in +the motor which waited for the Duke down the road, Westboro' fixed his +glass in his eye and looked hard for a second at his friend. +Bulstrode's cheerful face was distinctly disturbed. + +"I'm thinking something of buying The Dials," Westboro', after a +moment, said against the wind. + +Poor Jimmy. If the house had not sufficiently up till now materialized +out of his fancy as a possession, it declared itself at once, without +doubt, as something he must look after. It was only a little bit of +England, luckily---- + +"Well," he exclaimed, "to be frank, old man, I've, too, been thinking I +should like to buy that property. You could surely spare me this +little corner of Glousceshire." + +"Spare it!" cried Westboro', "my dear chap, fancy how ripping to have +you a landlord here! To catch and hold you so! We'll go over the +whole place together. My agent shall put the matter through for you." + +"Good God, no!" said Bulstrode, "don't let your man have wind of any +such a deal. The place would go up like a rocket in price. If you +really yourself care to withdraw as much as possible, that's the most +you can do. But for God's sake keep off the place, like a good fellow." + +Behind his long moustaches the Duke covered a smile, but he conciliated +his agitated friend. + +"I'll keep off the grass until the turf is all your own, my dear +Bulstrode." + +"Thanks!" said the other cordially, and sat back with a sigh of relief. +"There," he reflected peacefully, "my presence is explained--it's quite +perfect. I shall be a landowner in England. At all events, it's lucky +the property is sympathetic. I'm glad I didn't get balled up in this +affair in, let us say, _New Jersey_, and find myself forced to purchase +the Hackensack Meadows. + +"Did the old house look deserted?" asked the Duke wickedly. + +"Oh, rather!" replied the other gentleman. + +"Really!" wondered Westboro'. "Why, they tell me that it is let to a +Donna Incognita--a foreign lady." + +Bulstrode, whether at his own lie or at the shock of his companion's +knowledge, blushed, and his friend saw him redden. And the Duke, in +whom candor was a charm, stared at his friend, half-opened his mouth, +and then sat speechless. The suggestiveness of the whole affair rushed +over him so rapidly that he had not time to ask himself whether he +credited his suspicions or not. + +"Good heavens! _Jimmy_ carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple +country village!" He looked at the face of the man by his side, but +Jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and +showed no intention of meeting the Duke's eyes. If it were not a +vulgar intrigue, what could it be? How difficult it grew to connect +such a _liason_ with his friend. But as he thought on, the Duke began +to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary! Why should he +suppose Jimmy so unlike the rest of his set? More scrupulous, more +sinless than other men--than himself? He couldn't answer his own +question, but he did so think of Bulstrode, and since his late house +party had believed that Jimmy cared for Mrs. Falconer. The lady at The +Dials was certainly not she. + +Bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in +the mind of the Duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human, +rather consolingly human. In their mutual intercourse the Duke had +felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed. +Along by Bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his +own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be. +And although Jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt +himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes. + +By the time he had reached this point in his reflections the motor had +stopped at one of the side doors of the castle. + +"There is, of course, some perfectly proper explanation--" the Duke +decided. It's a harmless flirtation, if any flirtation at all. +Perhaps it's a beneficent bit of benevolence; at any rate it's Jimmy's +own affair, and after all, he's going to _buy_ the property--perhaps +he's going to marry. Why not? + +Ashamed to have placed his friend, if only momentarily, in an equivocal +position, he turned about as they got out of the car and put an +affectionate hand on the American's shoulder. + +"Oh, I expect, old man, that you've got some wonderful scheme up your +sleeve! You're going to be married and fetch your bride to The Dials." + +Poor Bulstrode unfortunately echoed: "_Married_!" with a world of scorn +in his tone. "My poor Westboro,' after what I've lately seen and heard +here--forgive me if I say that for the time at least I'm not too +sharply tempted." + + +"Since," he said as he greeted her, "you appear to be intending to live +here forever, you'll welcome me when I come back from London. I'm +coming back for Christmas, but if I don't run in before you'll +understand, won't you, that it is because I simply haven't dared. +Westboro' has already seen me cut across to this place." + +The Duchess interrupted him. "Oh, in that case, I shall, of course, be +obliged to move away." And to her great surprise Bulstrode quickly +agreed with her. + +"I should think it wise--not of course in the least knowing why you +originally came." + +She looked at him rather quizzically. + +"You mean to say then that you don't really know?" + +"Oh,"--he was truthful--"I have rather an idea, and I hope a more or +less true one." + +But the lady did not confess or in anywise help him. He went on to say: + +"Your love for the castle couldn't, of course, long continue to keep +you mewed up here; and you'll be shortly discovered. As far as your +own interests are concerned it will be rather better to obtain the +divorce as soon as possible." + +"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she interposed, "don't misread me." + +He nodded sagely. "On the contrary, I am translating you from sight, +my dear Duchess. And you are decidedly in your right regarding the +Duke." + +She was so at his mercy that she hardly moved her lips, watching his +face. And as Bulstrode lit the cigarette she permitted him, and took +his seat before the tea things which she had set at his elbow, he went +on to make out her case for her. + +"He has quite spoiled your life. He has been a brute, and not in the +least worth your----" + +But the Duchess had dropped her tongs; they fell ringing on the +hard-wood floor. She raised a scarlet face to him. + +"It's a _piege_," she murmured, "an _autodafe_." + +"No," he said quietly, "it's a plain truth. Westboro' has told me +everything. I must think that he has done so. The man of me naturally +condones him, and the friend in me is inclined to be lenient. But the +justice and right, my dear Duchess, are all on your side." + +"Oh, justice and right!" she dismissed, "only criminals need such +words." + +Bulstrode said cooly: "But Westboro' has been a criminal!" + +"If he were," emphasized the Duchess, "didn't I forgive him?" + +"Of course, you did, my dear," her friend agreed warmly, "how +wonderfully, how beautifully, everyone knows. And he is all the more, +therefore, dreadfully to be blamed." + +She said passionately: "What do you mean, Mr. Bulstrode? How--why do +you speak to me like this?" + +Her extraordinary guest drank his tea with singular peace of mind. + +"I think he is dreadfully to be blamed." + +"But why should you tell it to me?" + +"Why not?" he returned, his charming eyes on hers with the greatest +tribute of affection and sympathy--"I've known you for years, I'm fond +of you, you've been horribly wronged, and I'm going to see that things +are made right for you. I've been very blind. I have longed for a +reconciliation, I admit, with this husband who, poor stuff as he is, +loves you still. But I see what a sentimental ass I've been, and how +right you are." + +She put her hand to her throat as if the soft lace suffocated her; she +had grown very pale indeed. + +"What," she gasped, "do you know of my plans and my intentions, Mr. +Bulstrode? I have not told them to you." + +"But I've been able to guess them," he replied. + +"You've dared to, then?" she flashed. + +"Oh, don't blame me," he returned. "Seeing you as I have all the +while, I've been forced to make out something--to attach some reason to +your living in this isolation. You've wanted, not unnaturally and very +cleverly, I acknowledge, to see what's been going on at Westboro', what +the Duke's been up to." + +Her voice was suffocated as she said: + +"Oh, stop, please! Whatever has come to you, Mr. Bulstrode, I don't +know, or why you dare to speak to me as you do." + +Seeing her agitation he said smoothly: "My dear child, you're so right +in everything you've done, and of course I shall stand by you." + +She made a dismissing gesture. "Oh, I don't need you, I don't want +you." + +He smiled benignly on her. "But I'm here, and I'm going to see you +through." + +"See me through what?" + +"Through your divorce," he said practically. + +"But you're Westboro's friend," she stammered, and he repudiated with +just a little hesitation in his voice: + +"Oh, not so much as yours. But I'm the friend of both of you in this. +It's the best thing all round." + +The gentleman's attitude so baffled her, he was so serious, and yet he +took it so lightly, apparently, that she was obliged to believe he +meant what he said. + +"You talked to me very differently," she reminded him, and he shrugged. + +"Oh, I've been far too emotional and unpractical. I'm going henceforth +to look at things from the worldly and conventional stand-point." + +She put out her hand beseechingly. "Oh, leave that for the rest of us. +It quite spoils you." + +"I don't pretend to think--" He made his gaze small as he looked past +her in an attitude of reflection. "Oh, I don't claim that, it's an +ideal way of looking at things. But there is not much idealism in the +modern divorce, is there?" + +The Duchess took a turn across the floor, twisting her fair hands +together, then came round to his side and sat down on a low chair near +him. + +"Are you quite serious?" she asked. "But I know that you are not. Let +me at least think so. Your words shock me horribly"--and she looked +piteously at him. "I have felt you to be such a gentle person, and +yours is such an understanding atmosphere." + +Bulstrode had given himself methodically another cup of tea, and helped +himself now to sugar. + +"Oh, atmosphere!" he repeated scornfully. "One can't live on air, you +know. And I have been of the most colorless kind." + +"Well, you've changed terribly," she accused him. + +"I've only come down to solid earth," he explained. "And the earth's +after all where we belong, Duchess. Stand firm, keep to your own part +of it, and don't cloud-gaze, or somebody with a claim will knock you +off your little foothold." + +"Oh, _heavens_!" exclaimed his companion. + +The gentleman, who appeared at length quite to have finished his +material enjoyment of the tea, put his second empty cup down and looked +at the lady. + +"You should have married an American husband," he said to her, "a man +who would have idolized you, not cared whether you developed or not. A +duchess isn't far enough up. An American empress is higher." + +The lady listening to him, shuddered a little. + +"As it is," he went on regretfully, "you've been forced to develop, +whether or not you wanted to, to grow finer and freer, to go farther +on, to become more delightful. Here you are progressed and civilized, +after years of education, experience and suffering, and, my poor child, +here you are all alone." + +She cried out, "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," with a little gasp. + +"Oh, no, no," he softly ejaculated, "it is not fair! You're terribly +wasted, and you've been, as you too well know, terribly betrayed." + +But here he felt her hand on his arm with a strong grasp. She shook +the arm a little. + +"Don't go on," she said deeply. "I tell you not to go on." After a +few seconds, in which he heard the fire and the slow bubbling of the +gently boiling water and the cooing of the doves without, under the +eaves, the Duchess said: "Listen to me. I haven't talked at all to +you, let me say something now." + +Her companion reflected to himself: "Well, at all events, she's not +going to malign the Duke; that's a foregone conclusion." + +The Duchess clasped her hands round her knee and raised her face to him. + +"Do you think," she asked, "that there's any egoist as nasty as a +feminine one? Men are admitted to be generally selfish, but we +specialize, and each one of us has the faculty of getting up some new +and peculiar brand, I begin to believe. At any rate, when I married, I +was an egoist, and I've stayed on being one until a very little time +ago. I suppose I must in a way have more or less ornamented my +position, as the papers say. I did have two children as well, and in +that way fulfilled my duty as a Westboro'. But really and truly, I +have never in the least been a wife, and very little of a mother. I +was as silly and vain as could be, and I never for a moment valued my +husband. I wasn't indifferent to my children, but I was absorbed by my +worldly life, and when my little boys were taken ill and died, I was on +a dahabeah on the Nile, and I don't think that Cecil ever forgave us +for being so far away." + +She remained quiet for a long time, looking down at her hands, and when +she lifted her face Bulstrode saw that she had wept. + +"That," she went on, "broke the ice round my heart, when I came home to +those empty rooms." + +He said soothingly, "There, there, my child." + +"Oh, let me go on," she urged him, "let me speak. I shall probably +never feel like doing so again. But at that time when I turned to find +my husband, I discovered that I had no power over him, and I realized +that for years I had not possessed his love. I suppose you'll tell me +that it is unusual for a woman to see so clearly as this. Perhaps it +is. At any rate, just because I did so clearly, I forgave him when he +came to me last year, at Cannes." + +"You were wonderful!" he repeated again, "perfectly noble, and, as I +said before, Westboro' did not deserve you." + +She did not here, as she had done before, catch him up; on the +contrary, after a few moments, she asked him point-blank: + +"What then do you advise us, knowing us both, to do?" + +He was distinctly disappointed that she should have put the question to +him, and gave her time to withdraw it as he asked tentatively: "You +really feel that you must ask me, Duchess?" + +"Tell me, at all events." + +"You are quite sure that you could not go back to your husband?" + +After a little pause, she lingeringly said: + +"Yes, quite sure. You must know that he will not be the first to break +the ice now." Then she pushed: "You would advise my filing my papers +for divorce?" + +Held in this way pitilessly for a direct challenge, he met her eyes +with his own, asking her gently: + +"Is there nothing that speaks for Westboro' more distinctly than +anything I can say? And more appealingly than anything which you in +all your pride feel?" + +The Duchess assented that there was, with a movement of her lips; she +put her hands over her face and so sat quietly for a few moments, and +when she spoke again to her visitor, her words were irrelevant. When +some few moments after she bade him good-by, she regretted his absence +in London and begged him to come and see her as soon as he returned. + +"Come," she said, "at least to see whether I am here or whether I have +pitched my tent and gone away." + +As Bulstrode stood in the doorway she asked him: "I understand there +are a lot of people at the castle for Christmas, and among them will be +Mrs. Falconer? Isn't it so? Is she really so very lovely?" + +"It's a different type of loveliness from yours," Bulstrode returned. +And the Duchess supposed: "A happier type?" + +"Well, she's rather happy I think, take it all together," Jimmy said. + +"Has she children?" + +"None." + +"Is she in love with her husband?" + +And he was so long searching for a reply that the Duchess laughed +quietly. + +"Poor man," she said, "don't bother. But then since she's so happy, +she must be in love with somebody else's husband." + +But he put her right immediately. + +"I don't think she in the least is. And why," he went on, "since +happiness is so greatly the question of other people's state of mind, +might we not let it go at the fact that she is herself very much loved?" + +The Duchess looked at her guest rather absently. She was thinking of +the happy beauty, the woman of a different type from her own, whose +presence at Westboro' had been sought by her husband for the second +time. + +"Oh," she answered rather absently, giving Jimmy her hand, "she +wouldn't, you know, be happy if the feeling were all on the other side." + + +When the Duke had casually asked his guest's plans for Christmas week, +Bulstrode had come near to offending his host by declaring that he +could not possibly be one of a second house party. + +"Do you, then," Westboro' had asked, "_hate_ the holidays?" + +The genial Bulstrode had assured him to the contrary. + +"Nor do I," continued the Duke, "even though I'm a miserable man on the +verge of a divorce. I expect there's too long a line of jolly +Christmases back of the Westboro's for me to mope through the season. +But I don't want to have Christmas coming to an empty house, my dear +fellow"--He put it pathetically, "there's no one in this gloomy place +but yourself and myself. We must have a Christmas party. The tenants +will, of course, be noisy and cheerful, but I'm going to ask a lot of +people down and make the list out now." + +And Bulstrode had, however, firmly insisted that he could not really +stop on--that he must go away. "There are," he wound up his arguments, +"a thousand reasons why I should go." + +But Westboro' had comprehendingly suggested that they might together +bring "every reason" down to the country. "And," continued his Grace, +"we'll narrow things into the most intimate circle possible. For I +shall ask the Ravensworths of Surrey and their children, there are +eight of them, ripping little things; they used to play with my boys. +We'll turn them loose and have a tree, old man." + +Jimmy watched his face with a keen pity, for there had not been one ray +of light in it as he planned for his celebration. + +"But you arrange to come back for Christmas Eve. There _must_ be some +one in charge--I mean to say, some one so that if the whole thing is +too much for me, why I'll bolt and you'll have to stand by." + +He was, as he spoke, writing the names on a sheet of paper. Bulstrode +felt the plan to be rather _triste_ and lifeless, and he knew that he +could not and would not keep the Duchess' secret much longer, let its +revelation cost him what it would. + +"Westboro'," he said, "I shall have to be getting off to-morrow. You +know I would stand by you if I could possibly see my way clear." + +"I know perfectly well," the Duke acknowledged, "what a rotten bore +I've been, and how sick of me you must be." He wrote on: "I shall ask +Mrs. Falconer (her husband is in the States); she is quite alone in +town at Lady Sorgham's." As he quoted this last name the Duke folded +his list up. He nodded affectionately at Jimmy. "You'll arrange +perhaps to come down with Mrs. Falconer on the Friday train?" + +And Bulstrode capitulating weakly, murmured, "Oh, we'll fetch the toys +and things for the tree," he offered. + +"Ripping!" his Grace nodded. + + +Jimmy, on his way at last to London, stopped once more at The Dials, +and was hurrying across the forest when the Duchess herself appeared to +him at the big dial. She wore her furs, muff, and big enveloping +stole, her hat with fur on it, and a veil. She was not in house or +garden trim. The urban air of her toilet was a surprise to Bulstrode, +and he took in her readiness for something he had not expected, +something great, something decisive. + +"It's good of you to come when you must be full of delightful ways of +passing your time, Mr. Bulstrode," she said, "and I wanted so much to +see you again." + +"Again?" + +"Of course," she replied nodding, "again and many times. But I mean I +wanted to see you _here_." Bulstrode did not want her to tell him a +piece of final news. He did not care to learn of an arbitrary +departure, and he said, laughing: "Then you don't like my property? +Any repairs you...?" + +"Oh, I adore The Dials," she said gravely, "and I can't think why they +ever let you buy it, or what you'll do with it after I'm gone." She +smiled. ".... or with whom." Before he could speak she added: "Where +is my husband to-day?" + +"I left him wandering about the house like a lost spirit," Bulstrode +replied. "Looking," he went on, "all about for something or other. I +expect he himself didn't quite know what. For something to cheer up +the empty rooms." + +"Oh, don't," she murmured. + +But he seemed pleased with the picture he drew. "I doubt if Westboro' +stops in the house alone; he's probably gone out shooting." + +"But he has a house full of people....?" + +"No one has come, or is coming, after all." + +"You don't mean to say that they've all refused!" + +"Yes," Jimmy said, "every man of them, and all the women as well." + +The Duchess put out her hand quickly, and said touchingly: "Oh, but you +don't for a moment think----" + +"That it's because of the scandal, dear lady?" he smiled. "Well, that +would be a new phase. No, I think on the other hand they would revel, +and the only reason in the world that they have not come down is that +they were really asked too late. Christmas week, you know-- + +"And, of course, then, Mrs. Falconer," the Duchess's face brightened. +"She----" + +"Oh, _she_!" Bulstrode exclaimed, "she's as right as possible. She's +sure to be along in good season." + +"Oh!" accepted the Duchess, "and with whom does she come?" + +Bulstrode waited. "Well, of course, the poor thing expects to find +more or less some one to help her bear up her end. And I can't say how +she will take the fact of only us two." + +The Duchess interrupted cheerfully: + +"Why, she, of course, will go directly back! You don't think for a +second that she would stop on alone like that?" + +"Alone?" Bulstrode gave her with a little malice. "But she'll have +Westboro' and me so entirely to herself and one can always ask in the +rector or curate or corral a neighbor." + +But the Duchess shook her head as if she understood. "Oh, no, not at +this time." + +Bulstrode miscomprehended blithely: "Christmas time? You see, I know +the visiting lady pretty well, and I believe she'll feel me to be more +or less of a standby, and I know her spirit and her human kindness. I +am inclined to think that she will feel it's up to her not to run off +like a hare; to think that Westboro' may, in a way, need her; and that +when she finds everybody's gone back on the poor man, and there's to be +no tree after all, why, I'm tempted, by jove, to think----" + +The Duchess helped him: "That she'll make a charity of it." + +"Yes, if you like," he laughed. "Or be a sport," he preferred to put +it. "Stay on, stand by. It will be perfectly ripping of her, you +know." + +But the Duchess had no sympathy for the other woman. Her eyes fixed +themselves on the trees before her, and as a shot rang out in the +distance she said abruptly: "Why, that might be Cecil, mightn't it? +Does he shoot birds on your premises?" + +Bulstrode wondered very much for what reason she was habited in street +dress and furs, whether she had planned to leave The Dials or had +intended going up to see her husband. + +"Forgive me," he said, "if I seem to be shockingly in a hurry, but I +must have a look at the time, for as it happens, even in this far-off +place, I have an engagement." + +Impulsively putting out her hand the Duchess exclaimed: "I can't ever, +ever thank you." + +"Oh, after your divorce----" + +But she cried out so against his words that he hastened: "You want me +to think then that you do not believe...." + +"Believe!" she ardently repeated, "Oh, I don't know what I believe or +think," and he saw that the poor thing spoke the truth. "It's I who am +as unstable as the sea, I who am the derelict." + +He contradicted her gently: "My dear, you're only trying to solve alone +a problem which it takes two to answer. When you see Westboro' you +will know." + +She turned on him with the first sparkle of humor he had ever seen her +display. "Why don't you marry Mrs. Falconer?" + +He didn't start; indeed, the idea had such a familiar sound it would +have been hard to frighten him with it from any corner. + +"I thought you didn't believe in divorces?" + +"Oh, but you'd make a wonderful husband!" + +He laughed. "No one has ever thought so--_la preuve_....?" + +With great frankness in her gesture and a great--he was quick to see +it--a great affection--she put out her hand to him and said: "Oh, yes, +you'd make a wonderful companion, and you've been a wonderful friend. +If anything good comes to me now, I shall in great measure owe it to +you." + +He protested: "You owe me nothing, nothing." + +There were tears in her eyes as she said: "But I want to, I like to, +and I do. I don't know," she went on, "that I might not have been +reconciled ultimately to my husband, but I feel quite sure it would +only have been the basting up of the seam--it would have ripped away +again. Did you ever--" she challenged him with still a little sparkle +of humor, "hear of a thing called a change of heart?" + +"Yes, at Methodist meetings." + +She said gravely: "That's not what I mean. But whatever _has_ happened +it's only been since you told me things." + +Her face was so girlish, her eyes so sweet, her humility so sudden, +that her companion found himself embarrassed and could hardly find +words to say good-by to her. She went on to say, in a tone so low that +he bent a little over the dial to hear her. "You told me you could not +advise my husband to come to me." + +Ah, had he! It was hard to remember that. _Had_ he said so? + +"I think," she whispered, "you need not keep him away now, if he should +want to come." + +As her friend said nothing, she added in a voice more like a child than +a great Duchess, "You may trust me. I _want_ him to come-- There, +I've said it. I _hope_ he'll come. If he doesn't-- + +"Why, then, you'll go away," he finished. "You can't bear it." + +The Duchess shook her head. "I'll go to him, on the contrary." + +"You were going?" + +"Yes, when you came." + +He cried out: "Oh, I'm off then, I'm off for London, and I shan't be +back for the Christmas holidays. You may count on me." + +The Duchess smiled delightfully, and was in a second the elusive woman, +intangible, and impossible to seize. + +"No, no," she said, "please don't exile yourself either to-day or +to-morrow. It isn't after all the moment, and I want to prove to you +that I'm not jealous. I've decided to wait until that lovely woman has +gone away." + + +The waste of his territory, its largesse to no purpose, its vastness +through which only unbearable silences echoed; accumulated revenues and +hereditary title, only added to the Duke's melancholy. + +He had planned the Christmas house party too late as it proved, and +refusals, one after another, came in during the week. The poor +gentleman's mood led him to resent each fresh defection on the part of +his guests as personal wounds inflicted by old friends at a time when +charity would have been sweet. And it was with really tragic +melancholy that he threw the last letter down exclaiming: + +"And they all with one consent began to make excuse." + +He quite waited for a line from Mrs. Falconer, which would tell him +that she, too, had decided to abandon him: and the thought of what he +believed to be Jimmy's complications at The Dials caused him half to +regard the matter with a pity for her. + +"If Jimmy _isn't_ married, he's the most whited of sepulchres!" + +The satin shine of holly, the glimmer of pearly mistletoe, the odor of +spruce and pine, and heavier scent of hemlock bewitched the castle +throughout with their fragrance. Setting and decoration suggested a +feast, and the Duke as he passed through the upper halls, and by the +doors of his children's rooms, saw holly wreaths on the walls and that +the little gates were twisted with green. + +The day was dampish and the Duke, unable to bear the silence of the +house, with his gun and his dogs and with a lack of resource and +superfluity of ennui to urge him from the castle, started to tramp off +his unrest. The afternoon was young, and the bare, naked sunlight fell +over the bare nakedness of the land. The little low clumps of +neutral-colored underbrush, the reddish-brown thickets between wood and +field, would hide the birds well, and with his gun across his back, his +hands in his pockets, his Grace covered many miles before he at length +stopped to take in the length of the land or to listen for wings. + +Coveys had flown up and away unseen by him, and their whirring unheard. +His dogs had run off, and without being abruptly brought to heel, +skulked back by themselves shamefaced and bewildered by the hunter's +indifference. The holly reddened on the hedges, the scarlet berries +bright among the glowing leaves; high in the poplars the parasite +mistletoe with crystal balls, hung tiny white globules like fairy +grapes; holiday in the air, and over the grey winter landscape the +finest possible powder of snow lay pale under the furtive sun. As the +forest edges closed about him and the Duke with still no idea of where +he was going, continued to tramp, he unconsciously entered the property +Bulstrode had lately acquired, and which he had begged his friend to +avoid. + +There was something in the country air, in its pungent sweetness, and +in the season, that penetrated even Westboro's melancholy, and every +now and then he lifted his head to breathe in deeply the fragrance of +hemlock and the cold earthy aroma, the spice of bracken and the balm of +a fragrant thicket that smelled like a rose. It was winter, however, +and although a snow bird piped in it and the sun was out, there was a +December quality that, in the mood he was in, overcame all the +festivities of the time. He heard the bird who was persistent and +sharp-voiced, and, for the first time thinking of the other game he had +come out for, he paused. His dogs were gone, the beggars! He called +them to no purpose, whistled and waited. They were a new brace and +young. God knew where they had cut away to. + +Before him, as he stood, the brown vistas of the winter forest opened +out here and there into ochre circles and filled at this hour with +brilliant sunlight, their round openings overflowing; the light +filtered gently out and was swallowed up by the cold and closer wood. +Under his feet there was only the faint ghost of the late snowfall on +the turned-up, curled-up edges of the dry leaves. There beeches, red +as copper, and iron-strong oaks struck their roots deep down into the +mould. Westboro' did not know where he had wandered to, but here and +there through the bare trees gleamed the white of a statue on its mossy +base, and a little farther along, a broken pedestal held its slender +column up amongst the tree trunks as mossy and veined as they, and +right in the heart of the bowl, on a brick pedestal was a sundial, a +round brass disc, cut into with the tooth of time, and all black and +green. The sun at this moment shone full on it and its slight shadow +fell along the noon. The Duke stooped down and through the glass read +the inscription: + +_Utere dum licet_. + +"I'm a trespasser," he thought. "This is Bulstrode's property." + +Through an opening just to the right he could see a brown path, and at +the end of it a gate. + +"What the deuce could Jimmy have so wanted this old place for? What +was he hiding here?" + +He turned back with the intention of taking as sudden leave of the +place as he had made an entrance. He saw his dogs in front of him and +called them. Before him lay the clean low fall of the meadow with the +line of high hedge, and directly opposite him he could see the elms of +his own park. He had not gone more than a couple of hundred feet away +before he paused again and turned about to have one last look back at +the enchanting place. As he stood thus, in Jimmy's property, he at +first took it to be a trick of vision, for he stood perfectly rigid, +peering back at the opening he had left not five minutes before. He +leaned forwards, setting his eyeglass and staring at two figures who +had come into the bowl and stood close by the big dial. + +He set his gun on the ground and leaned upon it. There was a cordial +meeting; he could hear the voices but he could not distinguish their +words, and during all the interview, which must have consumed some +fifteen minutes, the Duke never stirred. Finally, and curiously enough +it seemed a short time to him, they took leave of each other, the man +going out of the forest by a different path, the woman slowly turning +down the neat walk that led to the brick arch, and to the old house. +Whether or not the Duke had at this moment the vaguest suspicion of +her, suspicion of his friend or of his wife that did them wrong, he +never had time or clearness to reflect or to ask himself. A dense +blindness took his senses away from him. He put his hands out to +steady himself in vain, and staggered. His dogs were at his feet, he +fell over them, struggled to get his balance back and like a stricken +tree went down. In his heavy fall on his gun it discharged, filling +his upper arm and shoulder with a quantity of bird shot. The +scattering pain, instead of finishing his faint, roused him with a +sharp, ugly sting, and the rush of the warm, wet blood. He half picked +himself up, and then, aware of the pain tearing his muscles and flesh, +he fell back like a dog on his haunches. Through his confusion he +still contrived to remember a little path, and inch by inch he dragged +himself towards it. He pulled along over the leaves and russet paths +of ground. His bare hand finally struck the bricks of the little walk +and he could still know that he was wonderfully in the road. There was +a cloud before his swimming eyes and his troubled mind; his face, pale +as death, was lifted towards the arch; leaving a bloody trail as he +crawled along the ground, he contrived to reach the gate and fell +across its threshold. His head lay on his arm, the string of his +broken eyeglass wound pathetically about his wrist. The Duke proved to +be a modern replica of the poor knight who fell, face downwards, on the +grass when Elizabeth's carriage passed him by, some four hundred years +before the present Duke. + + +After Bulstrode had left her, the Duchess of Westboro' hurried back to +the house that was not her home; to the little long drawing-room that +was not hers. For the first time since her voluntary exile, since her +occupation of this asylum, she found it bereft of charm and the cosey, +dear place as cold to her as if the snows had drifted in and filled a +deserted nest. It had nevertheless been a cloister, and she knew it, +where the best of her had prayed, where the true woman--and the true +woman is always something of a saint--had folded submissive hands, +where self had gone away and left nothing at all but love. + +On this Christmas Eve, The Dials was the loneliest corner of England. +The scarcely occupied house suggested to the Duchess the thought of a +stocking hung before a chimney when there were no children who cared +whether it was filled or not, when there was no reason why St. Nicholas +should pass. But it was only the very edge of her thoughts that +touched anything so fantastic as this picture. The Duchess was serious +and lonely. With a sigh, and winking back tears she threw off her +furs, laid off her hat, and, after poking up the fire into sparkling +brightness, she wandered up-stairs to the apartment that she had made +her bedroom. Under the low eaves the bed-chamber shone out gay with +chintz, fresh and sweet as a midwinter bouquet, the frostiness coming +in around it through the slightly opened window, and there was the +scent of the firs and the cedar wood that closely hemmed the old place +in. + +"Heavens!" thought the Duchess, half aloud. "How dreadfully in love +Jimmy Bulstrode is, how dreadfully, faithfully in love!" And then she +went on to say: "How dreadfully I am myself in love, and no one is +hurrying to _me_!" + +She walked aimlessly about the pretty room, irritated and annoyed at +the cloister effect. She found it too remote, too virgin, and no room +for a wife. "I promised," she mused, "to wait until Mrs. Falconer has +gone. I shall break my promise. Oh, I can't really wait at all! If +things are going to be as bad as this, I want to leave England, I want +at least to know. And Jimmy will forgive me, it's such a wonderfully +good cause ... a woman going to find her husband on Christmas Eve!" + +The Duchess threw open the window to its widest. Down in the garden on +the stone wall the big dial lay in the shadow of the afternoon. She +could not read its motto, but she knew perfectly what it said--_Utere +dum licet_. As she leaned out above her garden, under her window the +snowballs hung their waxen globes in a green tree. There were a few +winter roses blooming, and the English garden had the beauty of summer +in winter time. + +The Duchess heard a sharp sound close to the house. It was a rifle +shot, and died instantly on the still air. Shots were not uncommon in +this season, but here in The Dials woods they were entirely out of +character; in fact, they were quite inadmissible. There was no +shooting let, and a shot could only mean poaching, or something more +serious. The Duchess waited a few moments, but no other sound +followed. She nevertheless drew the casement in, and, going down +stairs threw her stole about her shoulders and opened the house door +into the garden. At the sight of her, down by the other end of the +wall, the gardener lifted up his bent form, and with a little pannier +of hot-house violets in his hands, hurried towards his lady. + +"Mellon," said she, "have you any violets?" + +The Duchess took the fragrant basket with its delicate burden. + +"A mort, my lady." + +"Pick them all, Mellon, and all the flowers from the green-house too, +every one of them, and fetch up whatever there is to the cottage." + +The old man was deaf, as well as discreet, and if this sudden command +to vandalism surprised him, he did not say so. Holding his hand behind +his ear, he nodded. + +"I shall send them," the Duchess thought, "up to Jimmy Bulstrode. I +think he will understand, and I will ask him at the same time to take +his friend off somewhere in a motor that I may go unobserved to the +castle." + +She said a few more words to the old man, asked him a few questions, +then with the basket on her arm she was about to turn away when she +remembered the shot. + +"Did you hear a shot, Mellon? They should not be shooting about here, +you know." But the old man had heard nothing, and, intending to find +the lodgekeeper who was clipping the trees on the lower terrace and ask +him to go through the woods for her, the Duchess walked toward the gate +and in the direction of the brick path. + +As she came up to it she gave a low cry, lifted her hands to her heart; +the basket of flowers fell to the earth and scattered their purple +blooms at her feet. Then the hands that had gone to her heart +extended, she held out her arms and went forwards, crying her husband's +name. + +The Duke of Westboro' had managed to pick himself up. He was a strong +man, in the fulness of health and vigor; there was nothing of the +mollycoddle about the last Duke of the line. The sound of voices had +reached his dull ear, his swoon was over, and he had manfully, with a +few sturdy curses, pulled himself up and now stood, albeit very pale, +clinging to the gatepost, leaning on it, finding his legs shaking and +his balance not all he could wish. Before him was a little brick +house, with bright curtains in the windows, and between it and himself, +lovely as a ghost, and no less white, was his wife, and her arms were +extended towards him. + +"Cecil!" she cried. "Oh, my God! Cecil, what has happened to you?" + +Before Westboro' knew it, the arms to which he had gone in visions were +about him and the soft shoulder gave him a prop more fragile perhaps +than the stone against which he leaned, but it was a living support, +and it felt warm and wonderful. + +"Don't," he said vaguely, "get near me. I'm nasty and bloody. It's +all right; I'm only a bit scratched, really. A lot of beastly shot has +gone off into my shoulder. Just call some one to help me, will you?" + +"Cecil," she said, "lean on me, put your arm around my shoulder; you +can perfectly well get along with only me. Come, come!" + +The Duke saw that he could perfectly get along with another faint--he +was near to it, but something besides his wound and his light head kept +him manfully to his feet. With his left hand he very firmly pushed the +Duchess a little away from him. + +"Come?" he repeated. "Come where?" + +"Home," said the Duchess with a catch in her voice--she was bearing up. +"Oh, lean on me! You'll fall, you'll fall! Mellon!" she cried. "O +Mellon!" + +But the Duke put up his hand. "I'm all right," he said. "Don't call. +What house is that? What home do you mean?" + +"Mine," said the Duchess, "my house--that is, I mean to say, Mr. +Bulstrode's." + +The Duchess saw a slight wave of red rush up her husband's pale cheek. + +"Damn Bulstrode!" he breathed. "What the devil does he do here? I saw +you together--I saw you not half an hour since--that is the whole +mischief of it--it was too much for me--it took away my senses and I +fell on my gun, and the beastly thing went off. If I ever get back to +where Bulstrode is----" + +"Cecil!" cried the Duchess. She again wound her arms around him, and +it was as well that she was a strong, fine creature and that the +columns of the gate were back of him, for Westboro' was swaying like a +child that has just learned to walk. + +"He is fainting!" she cried. "Mellon, Mellon!" + +The old man had not heard his mistress but he had seen her, and after +staring open-mouthed at the couple at the gate, he came scurrying like +a rabbit, dropping his shears on the wall. They hit the big dial with +a ring. + +The Duke heard the steps and tried to start forwards; also tried weakly +to extricate himself from his wife's embrace. "I beg your pardon," he +said, with a coolness that had something of the humorous in its +formality--"I beg your pardon, but I am _not_ going to Bulstrode's +house, you know." + +"_Cecil_," pleaded the woman tenderly, "how ridiculous you are! +Bulstrode's house! Why, it's mine! Oh, don't break my heart. He's +only bought it, you know, that's all." + +"Break her heart!" It was a new voice that spoke to the Duke of +Westboro'. He had never heard it in all his life. It was warm and +struggling for clearness, it was full of tears and quivering, it was +the voice of love, and unmistakable, certainly, to a lover. + +"What was Bulstrode doing here?" he persisted. + +"Going to Mrs. Falconer," breathed the Duchess. + +The Duke moved a step forwards: "What are you doing here?" + +"Going to you, Cecil--I have _been_ going to you all day. I think I +have been going to you ever since you left me that night on the +Riviera; at any rate, I was on my way to the castle as you came." + +The Duke halted again on his crawling way. Mellon, who had really +reached his side, was doing his best to be of some use and kept himself +well under the wounded arm, on which the blood had clotted and dried, +but ceased to flow. + +"Lean hard on me, your Grace," pleaded the gardener, and with his word, +he looked over at his mistress to see if she realized who their noble +visitor was. + +With fine disregard for his help or existence, the Duke said crossly: +"Send this damned gardener away." + +"Oh, Cecil, no, no; you can't stand without him." + +They had reached the garden wall, just at the place where the big dial, +round and shining, had come a little out of the shadow and the last of +the afternoon sun touched its edges. Westboro' lurched towards the +wall. "Send this man away," he commanded. + +"He is deaf, Cecil, as the stones." But at her husband's face she +motioned to Mellon: "Stand away a bit. His Grace wants to rest on the +wall. I'll call you." + +With his wife's arms about him, Westboro' leaned on the garden wall, +his ashen face lifted to her. + +"I've only one arm," he said. He put it around her and he drew her +down as close to him as he could. He felt her face warm against his, +wet against his with tears. As the Duke, who, Bulstrode said, was no +lover, kissed his wife, the dial seemed to sing its motto aloud. + +"You _were_ coming to me?" he breathed. "Do you forgive me? ... Then," +said Westboro', satisfied by what he heard, "I'm cured. I love you--I +love you." + +The woman could not find her voice, but as she held him she was the +warmest, sweetest prop that ever a wounded man leaned upon. After a +few seconds she helped him to rise, helped him on, and he found his +balance and his equilibrium to be very wonderful under the +circumstances, and managed to reach the door-sill. Mellon and the +maids were there, and as the Duchess passed in, leading her husband, +she bade them send for a doctor as fast as they could and to send at +once for Bulstrode at the castle. + +Westboro's wound had become a sort of intoxication to him, and he +assured her, "I'll be all right in an hour. I need no one but you; +send them all away, all away." + +He had never commanded her before, he had let her rule him, he had been +indifferent to her disobedience. But now she did what he bade her, and +led him to the drawing-room, suddenly repossessed of all its old charm; +led him to the lounge, where he sank down. Here, by his side, she gave +him stimulants and bathed his head and hands, waiting for the doctor to +come; and Westboro', like his ancestors who had fought in the King's +wars, bore up like a man with no resemblance whatsoever to the amorous +cavalier whose curls had met the dust of the road for love of Queen +Elizabeth. + +The Duchess found him that best of all things--very much of a man, and +knew that he was hers. And he, more wild with love for her than +suffering physical pain, found her a woman and knew that she loved him +and that she was his. + +The house, so deserted and desolate an hour ago, grew fresh, warm, and +rosy as over the west meadows the sunset, gilding the wall and The +Dials, flushed the windows red, and the deserted bird's-nest, lately +"filled with snow" appeared to have, as the light rained upon it, +filled itself with roses. So, an hour later, it seemed to Bulstrode, +when he came and found it housing the lovers. + + + + +THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE + + + +VIII + +IN WHICH HE COMES INTO HIS OWN + +England, the heart of the countryside, freshened by December and +drifted over by delicate breaths that are scarcely fog, and through +which like a chrysanthemum seen behind ground glass the sun contrives +to shine, the English country in December is one thing, London quite +another. + +Jimmy wandered across from Paddington to his destination, part of the +time on foot, part of the time peering from a crawling hansom in +immediate peril of collision with every other object that like himself +lost bearings in the nightmarish yellow fog. + +He fetched up before No. ----, Portman Square, at mid-day, and rang the +door bell of Lady Sorgham's town-house, and in his eagerness to find +his friend did not ask himself how the time accorded with calling hours. + +She was at home. + +An insignificant footman told him this, and the gentleman reflected +that it was astounding what the words, heard often in the course of ten +years, meant to him still. + +In the sitting-room, before a coal fire, a writing table at her side, a +pen in her hand, he found Mrs. Falconer. + +He sincerely struggled with an inability to speak at once, even the +consoling how-d'-dos that cover for us a multitude of feelings, were +not at his tongue's end. + +The fire had burned away a few feet of fog and lighted lamps and +candles shone pallidly through an obscurity about whose existence there +could be no doubt. + +The inmates of Lady Sorgham's thoroughly English and thoroughly +comfortable drawing-room were aliens, possessing neither of them a +hearthstone within range of several thousand miles. But no sooner had +they greeted--Bulstrode triumphantly peering at her through both real +and mental haze--shaken hands, and each found a seat before the grate, +than an enchanting homeliness overspread the place. Bulstrode felt it +and smiled with content to think she did as well, and remembered an +occasion in America when they had both of them missed a train for some +out-of-the-way place and found themselves side by side in a mid-country +station to pass there three hours of a broiling afternoon. The flies +and mosquitoes buzzed about them, the thermometer registered ninety +degrees, but happy, cool and unruffled Mary Falconer, smiling up at him +from her hard bench, had said: + +"Jimmy, let's _build_ here!" + + +"No one, Jimmy, is old"--Mrs. Falconer had once said to him on an +occasion when a word regarding gray hairs had drifted into their +conversation. Noticing the smooth reflection of the light along her +hair, Bulstrode had spoken of its golden quality, and the lady had +suddenly covered the strand with her hand; she knew that there ran a +line she did not want him to see. + +"No one is old, Jimmy, who has even the least little bit of future +towards which he looks! It's only those people whose doors are all +shut, whose window blinds are all drawn to, who, no matter which way +they look, see no opening into a distance towards which they will want +to go--only those people are old!" + +And as for Bulstrode, if Mrs. Falconer's idea were right, he was a very +young man still, for at the end of every path others opened and led +rapidly away. Scene gave on to scene, dissolved and grew new again. +Every door gave to rooms whose suites were delightful, indefinite, and +all followed towards a future whose existence Bulstrode never doubted. +But there were certainly times, as the days went methodically on, there +were decidedly many times when it took all his faith and his spirit to +endure the _etape_ that lay between self and life. Such a little +tranquil home as a certain property he had lately acquired was what he +dreamed of sharing with Mrs. Falconer. He did not, with any degree of +anxiety, ask himself whether or not it were dead men's shoes he was +waiting for, and no clear, formulated thought of tangible events took +existence in his mind. But he knew that he waited for his own. + +It was with some such personal feeling that in something that looked +like a future he might one day lead the woman he loved home, that he +had taken any pleasure whatsoever in his involuntary purchase of the +old property known as The Dials. The gray house down in Glousceshire +in its half-forsaken seclusion, the lie of the land round it, its +shut-offness from the world, its ancient beauty, had been a constant +suggestion to him of a future dwelling, and the doors, the windows, the +low-inviting rooms, the shadowy stairways, ingles, gables, terraces, +the dials and sunken gardens, had appeared to him conceived, planned +and waiting to be the settings for a life of his own. He wanted very +much to tell Mrs. Falconer all about the lovely English country-seat. + +In the room where they now talked, wreaths of fog filled the corners +like spiders' dusty webs that poised and swung. The odor that stamps +England hung in the mist, furthermore permeated with the scent of a +bouquet at Mrs. Falconer's elbow and which at one moment of his visit +Jimmy recognized for a lot of roses sent by parcel post from the +Westboro' greeneries. + +"Do you ever sew?" he asked her, and she admitted to a thimble which +persistently, with a suggestion of reproach, turned up every now and +then amongst her belongings; now falling out from a jewel box, then +stowed away in a handkerchief case, out of place and continually +reproachful: kept because it had been her mother's. + +If he did not speak other than in a general way of the rather long +visit he had been making to the Duke of Westboro' in Glousceshire, he +did tell his friend all about The Dials and dwelt on the fascination +that the old place possessed. The Dials was, in point of fact, very +agreeably described to Mrs. Falconer, who looked it out on the map of +Glousceshire, and Bulstrode's purchase (for he had legally gone in for +it, the whole thing), was made to seem a very jewel of a property. + +"It's as lovely as an old print," she said, "as good as a Turner. +You're a great artist along your lines, Jimmy. Don't have it rebuilt +by some more than designing architect in trouble, or landscape-gardened +by some inebriated Adam out of charity. Leave it beautifully alone." + +"Oh, I will," he assured her. "It shall tumble away and crush away in +peace. You shall see it all, however," he assured, "for you really +will come down for Christmas? You see, poor old fellow, Westboro's +house is rather empty." + +"Yes," nodded Mrs. Falconer. + +"You see, every one else has gone back on him." + +"Poor dear," sympathized the lady. "Of course we'll go down." + +No matter to what extent he had thought of her, and it was pretty sure +to be a wide one, her beauty struck him every time afresh. There was +the fine exquisiteness of _fin de race_ in Mary Falconer. Her father +had been an Irishman born, and the type of his island's lovely women +was repeated in his daughter's blue eyes, the set of her head and her +arms; her taper and small-boned little wrists, her cool hands with the +slender fingers told of muscle and moulding and completed the +well-finished, well turned-out creature whose race it had taken +generations to perfect. These distinctions her clever father +bequeathed her as well as her laugh and her wit, her blue eyes and her +curling hair. + +Bulstrode stayed on in the dingy delightful room, until at an order of +his hostess, luncheon was served them on a small table, and over the +good things of an amazingly well-understood buffet and a bottle of +wine, they were left alone. Bulstrode stayed on until the fog in the +corners darkened to the blackest of ugly webs and choked the fire and +clutched the candles' slender throats as if to suffocate the flame. +Tea was served and put away and the period known as _entre chien et +loup_ at length stole up Portman Square alongside the fog and found +Bulstrode still staying on.... + +Later, much later, when the lamps in the street and the square found +themselves, with no visible transition, lighting night-time as they had +lighted day--when the hansoms began to swing the early diners along to +their destinations, a hansom drew up before No. ----, Portman Square. + +It was at the hour soft-footed London had ceased to roll its rubber +tires down the little street, and only an occasional cab slipped by +unheard. But a small hand cart on which a piano organ was installed +wheeled by No. ----, Portman Square, and stopped directly under the +Sorghams' window and a man began to sing: + + "I'll sing thee songs of Araby + And tales of old Cashmere." + + +The creature was singing for his living, for his supper doubtless, +certainly for his breakfast, but he chanced to possess a remarkable +gift and he evidently loved his trade. The silence--wherein all London +appeared to listen, the quiet wherein the magically suspended room had +swung and swung until even Bulstrode's clear mind and good sense began +fatally to blur and swing with the pendulant room--was broken into by +the song. + +And as Bulstrode moved and turned away his eyes from the woman's lovely +face, she sighed and covered her own eyes with her hands. The small +coffee table had been taken away. Mrs. Falconer was in a low chair +leaning forwards, her hands lying loosely in her lap. The distance +between the two his hand could have bridged in one gesture. The voice +of the street singer was superb, liquid and sweet. He sang his ballad +well. + + "I'll sing thee songs of Araby + And tales of old Cashmere." + + +Mrs. Falconer's guest rose. + +"You'll come down for Christmas," he said, "and I'll meet you as we +have arranged, to-morrow." + +"Jimmy," she protested, "it's only ten o'clock." + +"I must, however, go." + +"Nonsense. Where will you pass the next hour and a half? There's not +a cat in town." + +"Nevertheless, I promised a man to meet him at the...." + +"_Jimmy_!" + +He had reached the door, making his way with a dogged determination +and, like a man who has touched terra firma after months on a dancing +brig, still not feeling quite sure of the land or its tricks. + +"How you hurry from me," she said softly. + +"Oh, I'm hurrying off," he explained brightly, "because I want to get +hold of that chap out there and take him to supper, and to find out why +he isn't on the operatic stage. He's got a jolly voice. Good night, +good night." + +He was gone from her with scant courtesy and a brusquerie she knew +well, adored and hated! During these last years she had done her cruel +best, her wicked best, to soften and change and break it down. + +The curtains, as she drew them back, showed that the fog had for the +most part lifted, and she was just in time to see the piano and the two +musicians disappear in the mist which still tenaciously held the end of +the street in shadow--a gentleman in long evening cloak and high hat +hurried after the street people. The woman's face was tender as she +watched the distinguished figure melt into the fog, and at her last +glimpse of her friend she blew a kiss against the pane. + + +Bulstrode did not go back that night to Westboro'. He wired out that +Mrs. Falconer and himself would be down for dinner the following day +and he also wired for a motor to meet him some few miles from Penhaven +Abbey, as the motor did the next day. + +As he speeded towards Penhaven Bulstrode leaned towards the man who +drove him. + +"Stop first at the inn, will you, Bowles? I'll order tea there, and +then drive on to the station at the Hants. It's the three o'clock from +London we're to meet, you know, and we've just the time." + +The Abbey and its clustering village hung on the hill side some fifteen +lovely miles away to the south of them. And Bulstrode, who was at +length obediently answering the call of it, and in response to the +fancied bell of the entire country side, religiously hastening to +whatever might reward him, settled himself back in his corner. + +He saw the mist fly by him as his carriage cut out its way rapidly +through Glousceshire. The air was not too cold in spite of the +dampness, for the vapor rose high, and above and below it the +atmosphere was clear. + +Mrs. Falconer herself had chosen Penhaven as a place possible to drive +over to as far as Bulstrode was concerned, and far enough away to stop +over in, for tea. Bulstrode carried in his pocket the note of it, she +had written out for him. It bore the arrivals of trains, the address +of the inn; she had herself written this, recurring to a pretty fallacy +she liked to indulge in that Jimmy forgot trains, missed them, and +forgot rendezvous, and that he never really knew. Well, at all events, +he was not likely to miss meeting this one. He had thought about +nothing else since he left her in London and prepared for her as he was +always preparing for her as one makes ready for the dearest guest at a +feast. + +The fact that not only had she divinely consented to the Penhaven +scheme, but that she had herself arranged the whole thing, made the +romance of the idea first appeal to herself and then readily to +Bulstrode; the fact that she had been the creator of the little +excursion that gave them to each other for several hours before what +the castle had to offer them of surprise or dulness--did not in any +measure rob the occasion of the charm of the _imprevue_ for the lady +herself. Nor did she in the least feel that it was any the less his +because it was so essentially her own plan. + +It proved either too cold or too late to see the cathedral, to see +anything more than the close which, side by side, they had wandered +through together a few moments before tea. Penhaven's distinguished +gloom was not disturbed, and in their subterranean vaults lying all +along their stones, the dukes and the abbes and the duchesses remained +unlit in their stern crypts by the verger's candle on this Christmas +Eve. + +At the little vulgar inn (in a stuffy sitting-room a fire had +spluttered for some quarter of an hour before the train arrived), Mrs. +Falconer had made Jimmy his tea in a vulgar little bowl-like teapot, +and as her hands touched the pottery's blue glaze served very well for +a halo. As she buttered him slices of toast herself, and spread them +with gooseberry jam and herself ate and drank and laughed and +chattered, she had been, with the tea things about her and her sleeves +turned back as she cut and buttered and spread, she had been with the +roundness of her wrists and the suave grace of her capable hands, most +adorably a woman, most adorably dear. + +Her furs and coat laid aside, the hat at his asking laid aside in +order, although he did not tell her so, that the air of home might be +more complete for them. _Vis-a-vis_ they had eaten together and +laughed together and talked together till it grew later and later, and +the motor waited without in the yard amongst the ravens and the ducks +who peered from the straw of their winter quarters at the big awkward +machine. + +"Jimmy" ... she had started when the crumbs and dishes had been cleared +away, and for some seconds did not follow up his name with any other +word. It was always Bulstrode who took wonderful care of the time. It +was he who gave her her hat, its pins, her coat, her furs, her gloves, +one by one, her muff last, his eyes on her, as each article slowly went +to place, until her big white veil wound and wound and pinned and +fastened and hid her. "Jimmy," she whispered, as he ruthlessly and +definitely opened the door and the cold rushed in, "let's build _here_." + +Still it was she who took all the blame of their tardy departure from +the homely hospitality of the inn; she assured him that she could make +a wonderful toilet and in an incredibly short time, and that for once +she wouldn't be late for dinner at the castle. + +"Not," Bulstrode assured her, "that it in the least matters, but the +Duke, as likely as not, would choose to dine alone; he was a man of +moods." + +"In which case," she had stopped with her foot on the auto step, +"Penhaven isn't a bad place for tea, and why wouldn't dinner at this +perfect inn...." + +But Bulstrode met her words with a shake of his head and a shrug of his +shoulders, and helped her firmly into the motor and sat again by her +side. + +"I can't tell you," he said, "what will be going on at the castle. I +haven't been back since I left it two days ago, and almost anything can +have happened in that time. The Duchess of Westboro' herself, in the +interval, may have gone back to her husband." + +"Heavens!" Mrs. Falconer exclaimed, "in which case how horribly _de +trop_ we shall be." + +But Bulstrode consoled her with the thought that if they were _de trop_ +they would at least be _de trop ensemble_. + + +Amongst the handful of letters waiting for her in her dressing-room at +the castle there had been a despatch from America. Even this, and a +hasty look at her mail had not succeeded in holding her attention or +even carrying it beyond the house. Her husband had expected to land in +Liverpool at the end of the coming week; he was to take her home with +him. And until he arrived she was breathing, as she always did in his +absence, deeply. + +There had been no one to greet them as Bulstrode and herself came into +the castle, and she had hurried to her rooms to begin without loss of +time her boasted rapid toilet. The dress, whose harmony had impressed +her host, the Duke, on a former visit at the castle, had been laid out +for her; its sumptuous color overspread the bed. But the lady chose +instead a white gown whose art of holding to her, and holding her, in +its simple lines and splendid sheen, made its beauty. + +There was much of the true woman in this entirely lovely creature, as +she stood before her glass and saw herself, the best example of the +really beautiful American. Her naturalness gave her a freedom, a +frankness, a grace, a certain imperial set of the head. + +Bulstrode had once said to the Duchess of Westboro' that a woman should +above all "console." Mary Falconer would have known what he meant. +That sex she gloriously represented! The sweetness and dearness of +her. Well, there were few women no doubt like her. Jimmy hoped so for +the sake of the race, for the sake of the hearts of other men. She was +the ideal fireside of home, and when, as she had twice done, she bade +him, as that time she had said, "Build here," he knew what she meant +and felt, and that she herself was exquisitely home. + +Leaning over her dressing-table she scrutinized not her face, whose +ardent beauty seemed to bloom upon the glass, but her hair as it fell +and rippled and flowed round her brows. Along the edge of one of the +lustrous waves was a touch as if her powder puff had brushed her hair. +Mrs. Falconer put up her hand, smoothed the line, then let it lie as it +grew. It so declared itself to be the first unmistakable white. A +gardener's basket full of roses and camelias, gardenias and carnations +had been sent up for her; but under the diamond at her breast she chose +rather to fasten in a spray of mistletoe with its pale, grape-like +berries. A long green scarf fell over her arm and against the +whiteness of her dress like a branch of spring verdure, and permitted +by the fashion of the day, there shook and trembled in her ears long, +pear-shaped pearls which, like her thimble, had been her mother's. + +As she left the security of her room and fire for the corridors and the +publicity of the lower rooms, for the first time in her life she had a +sudden feeling of _pruderie_ at the bare beauty of her neck and arms. +She felt as if she were coming unclad into the street, and drew her +scarf across her breast. But she found herself to be quite alone in +the drawing-room, and before she had time to be bewildered at her long +desertion, a letter was handed her with a few murmured words by a +footman. It perhaps served her right, she reflected, for so blandly +coming into a house during a state of domestic upheaval, that she +should turn out to be not alone the only guest, but without host or +friend! The letter told her, as gently as it could without the +satisfaction of any explanation, that both Bulstrode and the Duke of +Westboro' were unavoidably absent. She turned the letter over with +keen disappointment. Her dress, her beauty which the drive from +Penhaven and the afternoon's happiness had heightened to a point that +she might be pardoned for seeing, was then all for nothing! On what +extravagant bent could the two men have gone? + +"Both of them," she soliloquized with a shrug, "off on a hunt, I dare +say, after a fool of a woman who doesn't know enough to stop at home." + +Before she could further lash at her absent hostess, she found herself +a few seconds later taking the scarcely palpable arm of the rector, +whom the Duke, in a moment of abstraction, had asked to the +Christmas-tree and whom he had subsequently forgotten to put off. The +rector alone, of all the expected, turned up, his smile vacuous and his +appetite in order. At the table laid for four, and great enough for +forty, the clergyman and the lady faced each other. Mrs. Falconer +smiled kindly, for as her friend had told the Duchess on the same +afternoon, she was kind; and if she resented the apology for a man her +slender _vis-a-vis_ presented, she did not show her scorn; she smiled +kindly at him. His cloth and habit, and cut even, wore the air of +disapproval. Her jewels, the bare splendor of her neck and arms, +seemed out of place, and yet she could not but be perfectly sure that +even the dull eyes of her _vis-a-vis_ not alone reflected, but +confirmed, how lovely she was. + +The reverend gentleman was new to Glouceshire, but it turned out that +he already knew its hearsays and its _on dits_ and he knew when she +asked him, something of the country and The Dials. It may have been +that the bright aspect of the lady, her light mockery--for as she would +she could not help falling into them even with this half-human +creature--wickedly drew him on, gave the man license as he thought, to +descend to scandal; at all events, after dinner, over a cigar smoked in +her presence, the empty glass of Benedictine at his elbow, in his +cheeks a muddy red diffused from his wine, the gentleman leaned +forward, and tried to adapt his speech and topic to the worldly vein +which he imagined was the habitual tenor of a fashionable woman's life. + +"Even this lovely shire," he drawled its beauty--"cannot, so it would +seem, be free from scandal. And where a minister would naturally look +for help, wretchedly enough for the most part he only finds examples +and warnings." + +The rector lifted his eyes to the fine old ceiling as if in its shields +and blazons he was impressed by the blots of recent sins. + +His hand touched the little liqueur glass. He picked it up and in a +second of abstraction tried to drain its oily emptiness. + +"Let me ring," said Mrs. Falconer, "and send for some more Benedictine, +or better still, for some _fine_." + +"No," he refused, and sedately put her right. "No more of anything, I +think, unless it might be a bottle of soda. You spoke of lovely +Glousceshire and then spoke of The Dials. Do you know the place?" + +Only, she told him, by hearsay. + +He solemnly supposed so; so he himself chiefly knew it, as indeed all +the country side was growing to know it. + +The eyes of the lady to whom the rector was retailing his little gossip +were intently on him. But Mrs. Falconer in reality was not looking at +him, neither did she at once find ready words to refute, to cast down, +to blot out, his hideous suggestion that filled the room with it sooty +blot. + +Mrs. Falconer, who had good-humoredly been amused by his intense +Britishness thus far, his pale lack of individuality, his perfect type, +now looked sharply at her companion. + +The rector had been more than right, Mrs. Falconer was used to the +indifferent, rather brutal handling by society of human lives. +Possibly as she adored people, no one of her set was more interested in +the comedies and dramas of her _contemporains_. But there are ways and +channels: what runs clear in one runs muddy in another. + +The rector, in his own way, told her that for several weeks a very +beautiful lady had been living at The Dials. She had, it appeared, +never been out of the garden gate, and the servants were foreign, all +save a deaf old gardener. But the beautiful lady who sought such +peculiar seclusion, had a very constant visitor. Of course the rector +was not able or sufficiently daring to affirm; with a cleverness worthy +a better story he left his hearer to guess, imagine, who the visitor +might be. + +"Don't you think," Mrs. Falconer breathed, after a very short lapse +into silence, "that we might let such ghosts alone on Christmas Eve?" + +She rose and stood before him in her soft, luminous dress; her eyes +were intent on him, but in reality she was not looking at him. + +He had grown so detestable that she could bear his presence no longer; +she found herself, however, wanting to learn all his knowledge to its +finest detail. She found that she despised herself for any interest +she might take. She got rid of him at length, how, she never knew. +But she saw him leave her presence with relief. + + +When the miserable man, as she called him, had taken his leave, the +deserted guest looked about her rather defiantly, as if the objects +with which the room was filled were hostile. Then, with a half-audible +exclamation she sank down in a chair, her elbow on the left arm of it, +and her chin in her hand. + +Well, the imputation, the character of what she had just heard vulgarly +said and to which, for a bewildered second, she had perhaps vulgarly +listened--was highly dreadful, highly disordering to her fashion of +thinking and believing about Jimmy Bulstrode! Oh, for a moment she had +half believed what that creature said, and her eyes had winked fast at +the game before them! In the swiftness of the revolutions it had +seemed for a sole flash real; but now that the noise had stopped and +the carousel as well, she saw how _wooden_ the horses were and that +they were as dead as doornails! If she had been disturbed, she came +loyally back now, with a glow and a rush of tenderness as she instantly +re-instated what could never lose caste. + +Oh, The Dials! She couldn't conceive what Jimmy had in reality, +rashly, delightfully done there; what he had planted or installed, if +he had planted or installed anything. But whatever the truth was, it +was sure to be essentially right, as far as ethics went--she knew that +at least. But Jimmy's delicacy and his heart were all too fine for the +crude wisdom of the world or for her common-sense, which would have +told him no doubt, had he cared to ask, that he was rash and wild. + +She was prepared to hear that he had made some Magdalen a home in this +prudish country place. At this possibility Jimmy's kindness and +charity stood out graciously in strong contrast to the prudish judgment. + +There were several long mirrors set in the panels of the room like +lakes between green shores of old brocade, and they reflected her as +she leaned forwards in her chair and looked about her, taking in the +brightness of the perfect little room. It had been cut off from the +wider, grander spaces for more intimate passages in the social course +of events, but there was nothing newly planned in its colors and +tapestries, its hangings and furnishings; the effect was sombre rather, +the objects had the air of use, of having participated in past +existences, and like faithful servants, they seemed to wait to serve +perfectly new events. + +The especial brightness of the room came from the gay festooning that +had found its way throughout the castle. The mirrors were dark with +the velvet rounds of hemlock from which the miserable face of scandal, +the sardonic face of divorce, under the conditions of the present +domestic situation might well grin satyr-like from the Christmas +wreaths. No doubt there were lots of ghosts about, ready to stride, to +flutter, or to walk; the American woman put their histories and their +legends impatiently by. + +The facile way in which the Duchess of Westboro' had slipped out from +the chafing of domestic harness, the egotistical _geste_ with which she +had so widely thrown over her responsibilities, fetched Mrs. Falconer +up to her own life, from whose problems indeed her husband's absence +alone set her free. Her affairs had lately rapidly progressed, flying, +whirling. The circles the event of her marriage had originally +created, touched at last the farthest limit; there was nothing left for +them now but to scatter. The vortex had rapidly narrowed down, was +narrowing down, and nothing remained but a sole object in the bed of +the clear water; and as Mary Falconer looked at it she knew that the +thing was a stone. + +"We spend," she had once said to Bulstrode, "half our lives forging +chains, and the other half trying to make ourselves free." Hadn't she +wrenched with all her might to be rid of hers? materially she still +wore her bonds and moved with a ball. + +As she had driven away from Charing Cross Station, a month ago, after +seeing her husband aboard the Dover and Calais special, she had +breathed--breathed--breathed--stretched her arms and hands out to +London, felt on her eye and brow a dew that meant the very dawning of +liberty broke for her, and that she was for the time at least blessed +by it, and free. + +The Sorghams' London house had opened its refuge wide for her, and she +had gone into it like a child, to sleep and rest, and there she had +grown up again, to begin to think and to plan, project and puzzle as +those who grow up must do. She had never thought to such practical +purpose as she did in these days, and never come so nearly reaching an +end. + +Just before dressing for dinner on this night, at the sensation the +touch of her husband's telegram gave her, she realized how near to a +not unusual decision she was, and when she put the envelope by with the +rest of her mail, the part of her mind which she would not let herself +look into was in confusion and doubt. + +More effectively than Falconer's coming could have done, his few +telegraphed words brought him to his wife's consideration. And the +fantastic story of The Dials helped her, ridiculous as it was, +burlesque as it was, to think; in the very humor of it, a shock, and +helped her more reasonably to consider what otherwise her feelings +would have turned to tragedy. + +Jimmy's ecstasies about the place recurred to her with renewed +cordiality. He had spent an hour at least describing it, and when he +had finished with "A woman must be there, it is made for a woman," Mary +Falconer had only seen herself in the frame that the old place +presented. She exclaimed aloud: "Oh, no, no," and continued to affirm +to herself that it was too fantastically absurd--"Jimmy!" + +"It's only some delightful bit of charity, and he's too afraid of my +wretched conservatism and my ironies to have told me frankly about it." + +Having in a very unfeminine way opened a crack for reason, its honest +face peered through, and Mary Falconer glanced at it with a sigh and a +half-amused recognition, as if she had not been face to face with +anything so cool and eminent for a long time. + +Jimmy had hinted to her of a secret, in London; there was something he +said he wished to tell her about, would tell her in full later, +something that involved much happiness to others, and could it have +been this? Could it have been that he was really secretly married? +That at last the step of which he had constantly spoken, for which +indeed there had been times when together they had half-heartedly +planned for it, could it be that the one safeguard for them both had +actually been formed by him, and alone? But only a second would she +permit this conception of The Dials to obtain hold. "Ridiculous!" she +repeated, "ridiculous! Not that I believe a word or any innuendo of +the shocking old wizard, but it only shows, it only shows the +helplessness of a woman who is not bound to a man, and how entirely the +man is free!" + +Nothing a man does counts well for him with a woman but those things he +does in accordance with her estimate of what his attitude towards her +should be! And Bulstrode's high-minded control, the reserve--which +since her marriage had been maintained, only counted now against him. + +Wasn't she, in it all, rather counting without her host? Their bond +was so tacit, so silent, so unworded. Indeed, he had made no bond, had +asked her for no pledge. She was tied hand and foot, but he was free. +And over that freedom what vague right had she? What dominion could +she have? Isn't it, after all, in the life of a clever, delightful +man, something not strictly a burden, the soul-absorbing entire +devotion of a woman not too old and more or less not generally +disliked? What did it--heavens, but she was analyzing--what did it +cost him? Hadn't he always gone from her at a moment's warning, and +stopped away for months and months? Imperious as by nature she was, +she had always been wise enough to reserve a summons from her that, she +had every reason to believe, would fetch him from any distance to her +side. She never tested him, she scarcely ever wrote to him; she had +been at the Sorghams', and alone for a month, and save for one +perfectly delightful day he had not once turned up to keep her company. + +As the woman's thoughts encompassed the subject they brought it up to +this: that as far as things went, at all events, there was no blame: no +matter how society had coupled their names, she had at least the +conscience of her acts clear. Jimmy was to be thanked for it from +beginning to end; as far as the conscience of her thoughts went, well, +those were her own affair. Oh, she could recall skirmishes and narrow +impasses! Her tactics had more than once been those only permitted by +the codes of battle, and of another passion. + +Her chair, which she had left, she passed and repassed as she walked up +and down, trailing her soft dress across the floor. She stood before +the fire, her foot held out to the fervent flame. + +Her face softened as there came out clearly to her the real picture of +Jimmy that always kept itself somewhere between her eyes and her brain. +Ah, there were men of talent and fashion, who did not hesitate to make +merry, who were more or less good, more or less anti-pathetic, and for +whom society never had a word of reproach--but Jimmy! distinguished and +charming, with every taste and means to gratify them, with--so to put +it--the woman of his heart at his very doors--how did he live? Why, +for everybody in the world but for himself. And through it all, in +spite of the fact that he appeared blindly to shut his eyes against +their mutual love, he lived for her. Oh, he was the best, the best! + +She listened as she stood there for the hum of the motor which might +tell her he was coming back. She wanted to ask him to tell her the +truth about The Dials. She wanted, above all else, to see him again. + +She remembered them, one by one, the happy occasions they had caught +and made the most of, and each after the other they became lovely +harbors where like ships her thoughts lay at anchor. Penhaven was +certainly one of the best. She congratulated herself that she had +conceived that day, and without any blame she acknowledged it to +herself, that if Jimmy had only wished it they would have been there +together now. + +She had taken her chair again and sat back deeply in the great +fauteuil. The brocade made a dark-hued background against which her +head, frankly thrown back, defined its charming lines. Her bare arms +folded across her breast, her foot swinging gently to and fro, she +continued to muse and dream, and as she thought of Bulstrode, to love +him. + +Some one came in and piled up the fire and slipped out, but no message +was brought her to tell her what had become of her host and her friend. + +The long sympathetic silence beginning at the fireside flowed through +the vast rooms and corridors, and out into the night, down the lanes +and the road until its completeness and tonelessness were broken by the +memory of the bells of Penhaven, as she and Jimmy had heard them whilst +they rang the angelus in the close. And the discordant note of The +Dials was drowned, confused and lost in her intense listening to the +Penhaven bells. Some chord or other, or some fine spring touched as +she so thought on, brought back to her the fact of the despatch +upstairs, which if it had any, had an imperative importance. Falconer +had sent it from Palm Beach where he had gone to get rid of a +troublesome grippe. He did not, in the few lines which told he was +seedy and had put off his sailing, suggest that she should go back. +But he would not resent her return, she knew that, he would probably +treat her decently for at least a fortnight. + +"I don't know a creature," she praised herself, "who would have stayed +on with Jack, and nothing but Jimmy has helped me to stick it out. If +he really loved me would he have let me go on as I have gone on? I +don't know. Unless he loved me could he have helped me at all? I +think not." + +Round the figure of her friend there began to group, as if for some +special purpose, the kindnesses and charities she had seen him display. +One by one she added up his gifts and benefits until the poor and +outcast and forgotten and despised claimed all of them to be his +friends; they gathered round him and in place of the categoric +histories of self-love and indulgence, of passion that had in more or +less degree characterized the men of her set, these things came till +the dawn of them and the light of them made his figure shine. How, she +thought, could he ever have been what he so wonderfully is, if he had +lived for himself or been anything but the best? Upstairs, in her +room, a few hours before, the mark of silver on her hair had been a +whip to urge on her rebellion; to tell her to seize and make the most +of the fleeting time, to warn her of the age which when her beauty and +her youth were gone, was all that could remain for them both. But now +there began to blow across her soul a freshness. She had indeed been +drawing long breaths in her husband's absence, but free as they were +they left her stifled and panting, as if to get the oxygen she had been +obliged to climb too far. Now, on the contrary, she was lifted as by +wings, and whilst they fluttered about her she breathed evenly yet +fully, and the air on the heights was something better than wine. + +There is an unspoiled enjoyment in the thing which has never given us +pain. It may be a sensual and ecstatic prerogative of passion to make +the object suffer, but there is a different sense of happiness in that +which never does harm or hurt or wrong to the thing it loves. So she +could think of Bulstrode, without pain, without regret, without +reproach. And if the ardor and passion in her became suffused and +slowly paled, there was a starry brightness, a beauty in her face and +in her eyes such as Bulstrode, when he came in to find her waiting, had +never seen before. + + +With every mile of the short run from The Dials back to the castle, +Mrs. Falconer's friend had been preparing himself for his meeting with +the woman he had left some few hours before. All his emotions +culminated in a high, swinging excitement. The fact that he was going +back alone to find Mary Falconer there, was the big motif, and as he +thought of the dark, charming envelope the castle made, holding the +treasure she was, keeping her there for him, his heart beat so high +that he knew there was nothing more for him to feel. The ecstasy he +had witnessed in the little house his chivalry had purchased, the +meeting of the husband and wife, come together there after so much +unhappiness, put it poignantly to him that sterile love is a very +unsatisfactory thing indeed. And if the highest quality of gallantry +is to consider a woman's honor before her love, it at least makes real +happiness--so he felt then--impossible in the world. + +One false swerve of the motor at the pace they were going, and there +would not be any more problems to solve. If he died now he might +justly say that he had not lived, he had not lived! Who would give him +back what he had missed? The motto on the dials repeated itself to +him: _Utere dum licet_. + +He pushed into the castle on his arrival, hurried to dress, and went +downstairs. It seemed to him as he put aside the portieres, that these +curtains were at last all there was between himself and her, that he +was going home, coming home at last; that ways he had for years seen +approaching, met at length to-night here. It was with the very clear +realization of the culmination of the time that Bulstrode went in to +find his friend. + +He had stopped to make himself irreproachable, and expected to find her +waiting and friendly and lovely. What, had he found her anything else? +But as rising from her chair, the scarf slipping back from her bare +shoulders, she put out her hand and greeted him, the dazzling sense +that breaks on a man's consciousness when he finds himself alone with +the woman he loves, proved for a second that he had need of all his +control. He could not speak. + +"Jimmy!" she exclaimed, "you're as white as a ghost! You look as +though you'd been to a wake; and I don't believe you've had a mouthful +of dinner." + +He remembered that it might be polite to apologize to her for the +entire desertion of the household. + +"My poor friend, what in Heaven's name must you think of us all!" + +"Of you all?" (True enough, there had been another!) She had thought +volumes, comedies, tragedies, melodramas, but what she thought didn't +so much matter as did the fact that he had not, whatever festivities he +had honored, dined. Shouldn't they have something here together before +the fire? + +"I seem," she said, "to have a blighting effect upon my host." + +"My friend Westboro' is the happiest man in Glousceshire." + +"Which means that he has found his Duchess?" + +"He has found his Duchess." + +When her friend entered the room, by the light on his face like the +brightness of the morning as he caught sight of her, Mary Falconer saw +that for Jimmy Bulstrode she was still the one woman in the world. In +the relief that this knowledge brought her she half attempted to play +with what had been her suspicions, and to tease him, but this mood +passed. + +"That's a horrid old parson they chose to have me dine with," she said. +"He told me dreadful scandals but I think now that I see through them +all. The Duchess of Westboro' has been living incognita at The Dials, +hasn't she, and her husband at last found her there?" + +Bulstrode acknowledged that she had read the drama correctly. And Mary +Falconer laughed. + +"Yes, evidently the Duchess has a strong dramatic sense; she's very +romantic, isn't she?" + +And the man absently exclaimed: "Oh, I dare say, I dare say." Then +turning to her with unusual vehemence: "Do, for Heaven's sake leave +them and everybody. I want to forget them all." + +He threw up his hand with a sort of supplication. He had seated +himself on a tapestried stool close beside the chair she had taken +again. Using her Christian name for one of the rare times in his life, +he pleaded: "Can't we leave all other people, Mary, can't we?" + +She looked at him startled and said that their host seemed pretty +effectually to have left _them_, rising from her chair with the words, +and crossing the room to one of the long windows, drew back the curtain. + +The cold glass against which she pressed her cheek sent a shock through +her, but she stayed for a second close to the pane as if she would +implore the newer transport, the stiller transport, of the icy cold to +transfuse her veins. + +The changed temperature had chased away the fog, and the night spread +its serene beauty over the park, where the moonlight lay along the +terrace like snow. Far down the slope rose the outlines of the bare +trees, and the wide landscape shone and shone until it finally was lost +in the mists. + +Bulstrode had followed over and stood by Mary Falconer's side, and the +scene before him seemed full of joy, full of gifts, full of largesse. +The ornament on the woman's bosom stirred with her breathing, shot a +million fine sparkles, and below it the spray of mistletoe rose and +fell, rose and fell. + +He put his hand out and took the spray and fastened it in his +buttonhole, saying that the mistletoe was above her head. + +His voice, one she had never heard, made her unwisely turn to meet his +eyes, to shake with the emotion of the adventurer trembling on the edge +of the precipice; just to hang over which, and to shudder, he has +climbed high. She put her hand out between them, holding him back. + +"I've had a telegram from my husband. He's very ill. He's in Palm +Beach and I'm going over to him next week." + +[Illustration: "I've had a telegram from my husband"] + +Falconer's name was sovereign for breaking spells as far as Jimmy was +concerned, but the wife's phrase this time gave him only a more violent +revelation of his cruel hope. She went on: + +"It's not alarming, but with a heart like Jack's, anything might +happen. It's only when I'm with him that he keeps up any sort of +shape." + +The fact of his holding in his the hand that she had put out to keep +him from her, did not serve to aid in a serene continuation of her +plans, and the silence became a burden which if she did not herself +lift would crush her. + +She said hurriedly: "And you will help me to go." + +And then Bulstrode spoke: "No," he said, "Oh, no." + +For the briefest space she yielded to what he meant and was at last +wicked enough and human enough to promise to do. But she had on this +solemn evening--for it had so been--come too far, gone up too high to +drag down all the way with him on a single word. In supremest +happiness, however, at what he said and how he said it, she gave a +little soft laugh, and although she was under the mistletoe, she felt +that she looked down on him, loving him so much more that in adorable +weakness he had suddenly grown small and dear. + +"Oh, Jimmy," she whispered, "how heavenly of you, but you can't go back +on ten years in one week. You can't, you know! You've thrown me like +a giant so _far_, I've gone right on up." + +Still looking at her he shook his head as she repeated: "You'll help +me, you'll help me! You can't go back!" + +"I _can_ go back," he said deeply, "_on everything and everybody in the +world_." + +At the frank simple words, and the sense of what they meant, at the +sound of his new voice, it was as if all the dykes at last were down; +and strong, bright, but most beautiful, the sea came rushing in. As +she saw him coming toward her and knew that in a moment more she would +be in his arms, and that at his first touch she would let everything +go, she found one word to say and it proved only to be his name: + +"Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy!" + +But there was in it an appeal. She could count the times she had wept +in her life, very nearly, she had often said that a woman weeps only +when she has nothing else to do, and there had always been so much, +every minute in her life; and as if in logical affirmation there seemed +now for her nothing to do but to cry. The tears which covered her face +and fell into her palms and against the chair on which she leaned, +comforted her in a measure and served to loosen the tension of her +mind. She had succeeded in miraculously keeping away from him, just +within touch of her, held back by a hand whose white gentleness was not +so exquisitely strong but that he loved her too well to break the +tender barrier. She never afterward knew what appeals she made or how +she besought, but it must have been of great force to keep him so +transfixed and pale. + +"Oh, you _have_ told me over and over again! Do you think I am deaf or +blind, or that I have found you dumb? Such love, Jimmy, such high, +sweet perfectness! Why, there isn't a woman in a million who has known +it or even dreamed what such love could mean. Why, there hasn't been a +day or an hour for ten years that you have not spoken it to me in the +most adorable way, in the most beautiful way; and in every kind thing +you have done, in every foolish, dear thing, I have been so vain as to +think that I counted for something in it, that you did it a little for +me. Other women have had their lovers, their scandals, their great +passions. But I have had you without flaw, without a change, without +regret. Hush!" she cried, wiping her tears away, "Hush. It's quite +safe to let me go on. The only fear is that _you_ may speak." + +The arm which she had held out to keep him from her had fallen upon his +shoulder, lay about his neck as he knelt by her chair. + +"It's been horrible!" she said, shaking her head, "Horrible--the days +and the nights, the days and the nights! There have been times when I +could have killed him and killed myself as well. But then you've come, +and your presence has helped me, and that's the way I've pulled along; +because by your silence you told me to pull along, because by the fact +that you didn't speak I understood that you thought I should be brave, +and I have been--thanks to you, and I shall be--thanks to you! Oh!" +she cried passionately, "if you think because I am saying it all out +that I want to go back, that I don't see what I am running away from, +and what you mean, you're cruel, you're cruel!" + +Her other hand had found its fellow and they both lay on his shoulders. + +"I only think of you," he breathed, "and of how..." + +She covered his lips. "Oh, hush, hush, you have told me, in the only +way there was to tell. I'm too stupid to be able to combine a lover +and a husband. The day and the hour you spoke I should never have seen +my husband again. And that's where it stands; that's how it is, and +you know it. You loved me because I was like that, and I love you +because you are the bravest of the brave. There you are!" she cried, +and drew away from him triumphantly, letting her arms fall. "There we +both are!" + +"Have you any vague conception of what this is for me?" Bulstrode asked. + +"Oh, I dare say," she exclaimed, with a kind of petulance, "that I am +only thinking of my own bewildering happiness. There," she exclaimed +at his face, "I see you have a new weapon: pity. Oh, don't use that +against me, and I warn you that everything in the world will crumble if +you speak." + +Her hands, which he was holding closely, she drew from him and laid +them both on his breast and met his eyes full with her own. Her lips +were slightly trembling, and she was as white as a winter day. In the +moment of silence they passed like this, she seemed to him like some +great precious pearl, some priceless rose fragrant, lustrous, made for +him, gathered for him, and yet beyond his right. She seemed, above +all, the woman, the mate; her glorious sex, her tenderness, her +humanness, drew him and dazzled him; and, nevertheless, through his +daze and over his desire, he heard with his finest her cry: + +"Jimmy, Jimmy, don't speak, don't speak. Ah, if you really love me..." + +He really loved her. Rising from where he knelt by her chair, +Bulstrode went over, stood a second by the chimneypiece, and then took +a few paces up and down the room, came back to her and said the thing +the real man says to the woman he really loves: + +"I want to make you happy, Mary. I will do whatever you wish me to do." + +"Ah, then, go!" + +Bulstrode looked wearily about as though of its own accord a door might +unclose or a portiere lift. + +"Go where, pray, at this time of night, or morning?" + +"Oh, to The Dials. Ring for a motor; they will take you in again; or +go to the rector's." + +The last of the fire had flared up. The flame went out. + +Sinking back in her chair, she waited in a tranced stillness, her eyes +on the ashes of the fire. She had said her say out, perhaps the man +knew it, and as she leaned back in the cushions he saw how completely +it all lay with him at the end. She thought he came back and waited a +second at her side; she thought he bent a moment over her, but she did +not stir until the cold wind from an opening door, till the clicking of +a latch made her start, and then she turned to see that he had gone. + + +Bulstrode came back to the castle Christmas Day at nine o'clock. But +the hour had the effect of being much earlier. The winter morning +panoplied with festivity began its life slowly, and not all the day's +brightness through which he had speeded his motor had yet come into the +house. Bulstrode, drawn by it, went directly back to the room he had +left several hours before, as though he expected still to find the +woman he loved sitting before the extinguished fire. + +Two parlor maids were whisking their skirts and dusters out of the +opposite door, a footman at their heels. Touches of the inevitable +order which reduces an agreeable disarray to the impersonal had already +been put to the scene of Jimmy's tenderness, and the curtains drawn +well away from the long windows let in the morning that entered broadly +and fell across the hearth and the fresh-lit fire. + +Clean logs replaced the cold ashes: the match had just finished with +the kindlings, and Bulstrode went over to welcome the crackling of the +young blaze. The absence of his host, the castle once more handed over +to him for the time, gave him a feeling of proprietorship in the bright +cordial room, but looking up at the portraits of Westboro's in puffs +and velvets, Jimmy couldn't find an ancestor! Their amours and +indulgences had written brilliant and amusing history; the gentlemen +had gone mad at ladies' carriage wheels, they had carried off their +scandals with the highest of hands, and still held their heads well. +They had carved and raped and loved their way down to the present time, +and were none the less a proud line of pure British blood. The +American bachelor, about whose fine head nothing picturesque or worthy +of history circled, looked up at the Dukes of Westboro' musingly, and +there was not a peer or a noble better to look upon or who had been at +heart a truer lover, although he did not know it. + +During the lapse of time between leaving this same room and his present +return, Bulstrode had not tossed on a sleepless bed; he had slept +soundly, and during his rest the several dials had called out like +bells, their voice, _Utere dum licet_; and finally a real bell had +roused him to the fact that it was day, a new day, and that unless he +was killed en route to the castle, nothing could keep him from the +place and from her. + +He had no consolation in the fact that the honor and decency of society +were by him strengthened and retained, nor did he plan out the sane, +wise project of not seeing her again. Nor did he weigh or balance his +charge or responsibility. There had been a cessation of vibration of +any kind, and only one supreme, sovereign reality took possession of +the world and of himself, and the limitless beauty and the limitless +delight he had breathed in ever since he left her and knew how she +loved him. Nothing in life, he had so felt, could dull or tarnish the +glory of her face; nothing, no matter what life held for them both, +could efface the touch she had laid upon him, as her arms were about +him. Through the interval his past life appeared to have been, on +through the new and unlived interval to come, she would be as last +night she had been, she would look at him as last night she had looked. +"Heavens!" he meditated, in the faces of the self-indulgent, cynical +Westboro's, "I am not going to be blase through six paradises just +because there happens to be a seventh!" + +A new fire spun its lilac flames behind his back. The spicy breath of +the wreaths of hemlock was deliciously sweet. Little by little the sun +had made its eastern way and sparkled at the pane outside, and in the +radiant clarity the terrace and its charming railing, the urns with the +little cedars, stood out clearly; and more than all else, the truth +cried itself to him, that whatever happened, she was still here, still +in the house with him. + +He had chosen a Christmas gift for her in London, and determined to +send it up to her now with some roses, and in this way to announce the +fact that he had come back from The Dials and was ready to use the day +as she liked. He felt only how beautiful it would be to see her, that +it did not for a second occur to him to wonder if she on her part would +feel a certain embarrassment. + +In answer to his ring, not a man servant, but the perfect housekeeper +rustled in, her crisp silks, her cameos, and her "Christmas face," as +one of the little Westboro' chaps had called her rosy countenance, on +one of his few Christmas days. + +"Where would Mr. Bulstrode please to have breakfast?" + +"Why, wherever it best suited, went with the house, with the day. +Where, indeed, and that was more to the point, would Mrs. Falconer have +it?" + +"Mrs. Falconer? Why, Mr. Bulstrode didn't know then that Mrs. Falconer +had gone?" + +She saw by his face that he knew nothing less in the world. + +Why, directly the despatch had been fetched over from the Abbey +station. There had been but twenty minutes between the getting of it +and her starting away. A motor had been sent with her and the maid, +and Mrs. Falconer had fortunately been able to make the train; the only +one, it so happened, being Christmas Day, that connected with the Dover +and Calais special. + +The matter-of-fact bit of news came to Bulstrode so coldly and so +ruthlessly that it took some seconds for the bitter thought that she +had gone because she couldn't trust him, to penetrate. Then this gave +place to an effulgent hope that it might be _herself_ she couldn't +trust! But the discovery that she had left him no message of any kind, +and that she was above all irrevocably gone, struck him more cruelly +than had any blow in his kindly life. He could not suffer in peace +before the bland creature in silks and cameos. Crises and departures, +battle, murder, and sudden death, he felt the housekeeper would accept +serenely should any of them chance to occur at Westboro', and above all +if they were part of the sacred family history. But Mrs. Falconer and +he were not Westboro's, and he wanted to be rid of his companion and to +find himself alone in order to consult time tables, to find out why it +had been imperative to go to Calais, with what boat for America a +Christmas-Day train could possibly connect, and to turn it all over in +his mind. He at first believed that there had never been any telegram +and that she had only employed a polite ruse in order to facilitate her +flight. + +Why, at all events, couldn't she have left him a line? She might, he +ruefully complained, have strained a point and wished him a Merry +Christmas! As he walked to and fro in the room now supremely deserted, +he began slowly to approach a certain hypothesis which as soon as he +granted, he as violently discarded. But the thought was imperious: +something of its kind always haunted him like a bad ghost. It could +usually be dismissed, but now it was persistent. A despatch from +Falconer had certainly come the night before. Another might have +followed on this morning, hard upon it? To have been sent over from +the Abbey on a holiday must have been a very grave message indeed; "a +matter," as the old term went, "of life and death." The phrase began +to repeat itself and the conviction to grow, and as he was obliged to +give it admittance and to face it, and to wonder what the shock would +be to her, and what the news would be to him, how it would change +things, and how they would both meet it--his promenade to and fro in +the room brought him up before the centre table and he looked down upon +it at length with a seeing eye. Why not? why not? he was wondering. +We are all essentially mortal, and lightning never had struck yet, _why +not in this place_? And since there had been neither shame nor blame, +why couldn't he face the possibility of a perfectly natural mortality? +Before him on the table lay Mrs. Falconer's green scarf, and as +Bulstrode lifted the soft thing he saw that underneath it lay a +despatch. + +Then he knew instantly that Mary Falconer had left both scarf and +telegram there, and that this was her message to him. He seemed, as +the word he had not yet read met him in this form, to have been waiting +all his life for just this news. The road, so long in winding home, +had wound home at length, and now that he believed the crisis was +really reached, there was something infinitely stilling in its +solemnity. + +Bulstrode could not at once draw the sheet from its envelope. He lit a +cigar and sat down before the fire. + +He knew, as though he saw it all before his eyes, how the despatch had +found her this early Christmas Day, in her room--he knew how she had +read it first and borne it well--for she was a brave, strong woman--he +knew that his absence had been a relief to her. He knew how she had +worn her long, dark cloak and thick veil, and had gone out to travel +home alone. Oh, he knew her, and as he thought of the picture she had +made, and how she would begin her sad and dreadful journey, he for the +first time thought of himself--of themselves. He was too human not to +know that there would be a future and that they would build anew. In +the new house there would be no driftwood now; nor would they ever be +haunted by the sound of a bell in the dark, for with the few brave +souls who sail across the seas of life they had both of them stood by +the sinking ship until it put into port. + +Mrs. Shawles came in again presently and told him that she had laid his +breakfast in the little room facing the gardens. Then she waited, and +as Bulstrode looked up at her he forced himself to smile faintly and +wished her a Merry Christmas. + +She thanked him, gave him many, and said it was a happy morning for all +of the Westboro's, and that the castle and the house would see new +times and better things, and when he had stirred himself to the point +of putting what he had for her into her hand, he was not sure whether +he wanted her to go, or not, this time and leave him alone. + +She still hesitated. It was a custom with them, she told him, with the +Westboro's, to have hall prayers on holidays. When the Duke himself +was there, he always read them; the servants and the children of the +place had already come in. In the absence of the family _would_ Mr. +Bulstrode...? + +"Oh, no, on no account, on no account," he hurried. "Wasn't there some +one else?" + +"Well, to be sure, there was Portman." + +The guest was sure that Portman would do it quite in the proper way, +and as for himself, he would have his breakfast in a few moments, he +thanked her. + +And Mrs. Shawles, who had expected a more favorable answer, left open +on the table the little Book which she had brought in with her. + +Bulstrode took it up after she was gone. + +In a few seconds he heard from the distance the sound of the children +singing. Their voices ceased, to be followed by the subdued murmur of +reading. As Bulstrode opened the Book he held, the leaves fell apart +at the marriage rite. He hurriedly passed this over, and his eyes were +arrested by the opening lines of a more solemn service. He paused to +read the beautiful, pitiful words, and then, still with the open Book +in his hands, he drew the telegram out of its cover.... + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy +Bulstrode, by Marie Van Vorst + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMY BULSTRODE *** + +***** This file should be named 34065.txt or 34065.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/4/0/6/34065/ + +Produced by Al Haines + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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