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: