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!"