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.