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!