tie, or bond to my life. I have freedom and money. So far--if what
you say is all true, don't start so, for I believe it, every word--so
far, I have spoiled your life."
But the girl shook her head.
"Oh, no, _you haven't_," she assured him. "We make our own lives, I
expect, and I told you that I could remember everything you ever said
to me in the past--you never lied to me, and you were never anything
but kind and dear. I've been a fool, a fool!"
Sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they
had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room
around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like
a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had
at last drifted along the shore to his feet. Unhappy and deserted, she
reached the very tenderest part of Bulstrode's nature. Cost him what
it would, he must save her.
But, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose
and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder:
"You must go _now_: that is what I ask you to do. I have seemed, and
indeed I have thrown myself upon your mercy; but, in reality, I don't
do any such thing. You will soon forget me, as you have been able to
do all these years. The table is full of your money. I am poor, and
yet I don't take it. Doesn't _that_ prove a little my good faith?
Doesn't it? Only think of me as the most romantic dreamer you ever
saw, and of nothing more. Oh, _no_," she breathed softly, "_no_, a
thousand times...!
"I've answered your question before you've asked it! No, I couldn't;
no woman who wants love is content with pity. I would rather starve
than take money from you although I have lived on your money for years.
I would rather be unhappy than take what you could offer me for love.
You mustn't speak; you mustn't ask me. The temptation is very great,
you know, and it _might_ wreck me. No, Mr. Bulstrode, and the reason
why I say it is because I've seen."
"'I've seen?'" he repeated her words. "You've seen, but what do you
mean--what have you seen?"
"I'm going to tell you why I sent for Prince Pollona, although you
don't ask me. I came to Trouville alone. I saw you; I've watched you
with your friends." Bulstrode accepted quietly. "The two young people
are engaged to be married and the other two are husband and
wife--well...?"
A spasm of pain crossed Felicia Warren's face and she put what she had
to say with singular delicacy for an actress who had risen from the
people.
"I know," she said, "I understand, but when I saw you, I knew that
there was no hope for any other woman who loved you--and I gave you up
then. I sent for Pollona."
The introduction of even so little into the room as the suggestion of
the woman he loved, startled Bulstrode as nothing else under the
circumstances could have done. It struck him like a lash. He was
disenchanted, and he more quietly considered the girl whose confession
and whose beauty had made him nearly disloyal.
Felicia Warren, as though she took it in her own hands and, mistress of
herself, knew how much she could take and what she could deny herself,
laid her hand on his arm.
"You can do nothing at all, just as you have always done--and I--I can
learn to forget. But I have refused your money to-night," she said
piteously, "haven't I? and I am penniless; I have refused more too;
perhaps what no woman who loves could refuse as well. Don't you think
that there is something due me? Answer me this? Tell me. You _do_
love her, you _do_?"
As she leaned against him, the years seemed to fall away and to leave
her a girl again, nothing more than a child he had known. He took her
face between his hands and looked into it as one might look into a
well. He saw nothing but his own reflection there.
"God knows," he said deeply, "I could not willingly pain a living
creature, and to think that I should have made you suffer, have made a
woman suffer for years. Let me do all I can, my dear, let me--let me!"
"You love her?" she persisted.
His hands dropped to his side. "With all my soul," he said, "with all
my soul!" He thought she would sink to the floor, but instead she
caught fast hold of the table on which his money lay. She leaned on it
heavily, refusing his aid. He took one of the girl's cold hands in his.
"Listen, listen! Let me say a word. How do you think it makes a man
feel to hear what you have told me to-night? to see you as you are, to
grow to know you in such a short--in such a terrible way, and in a few
hours to grow to know you so well, to find you dear, desirable, and
then to leave you, as you tell me I must leave you. I can't do it; I
have never been so miserable in my life, and if I find I am entirely
helpless to serve you I can never get over the regret."
Felicia Warren turned a little.
"I have found you near disaster," Bulstrode urged, "I must and will see
you to the shore. If you utterly refuse to let me take care of you as
I can and will, will you then," he hesitated, then brought it
out--"Will _you marry_ Prince Pollona?"
She drew from him with a cry, and by what he said she seemed to have
gained sudden strength.
"My God!" she breathed, "You ask me _that_? Oh, it proves, it proves
how less than nothing I am..."
Bulstrode saw he could not, must not undeceive her.
"If you wish me to do _that_," she cried. "Oh, how dreadfully, how
cruelly, it breaks my dream!"
Bulstrode said authoritatively, "Listen! listen for one moment."
The eyes of the girl were dark with defiance; she brushed her hair off
her brow with the back of her hand and stared straight before her.
"--Otherwise," said Bulstrode, "I will remain here; I shall not leave
these rooms till morning and you will then be forced to marry me, and
since you think as you do, since I have told you my secret, ruin
perhaps three lives."
He had her at bay, and for a brief second, he thought she would accept
his menace. But then in a sudden her anger vanished and her face
softened.
"You know," she said, "that, loving you as I do, whatever you tell me
to do, I must. But let me go on with my career. Let me work, let me
work, and be free!"
He said decidedly, "No! You must be protected from yourself; you must
have some one with you who will take care of you as I cannot do. You
must do this for me. Is Pollona distasteful to you?" he pursued, "do
you _hate_ him?"
She made an indifferent shrug of her shoulders.
Bulstrode was watching her face keenly, and after a second said, "No,
you do not hate him. You sent for him to come to you here. He was the
one to whom you turned, Felicia; turn to him now."
As she wavered and hesitated, he insisted, coming close to her:
"You have an ideal, you told me--well we can't get on without them.
Your ideal has helped you, hasn't it? It seems pretty well to have
stood by you. I have one too, you must understand that, and I ask you
to help me to keep it secret now."
"Why, what do you mean?" she questioned breathlessly.
"I mean," he said gravely, "that I am a very lonely man. My days are
absolutely desolate excepting for those things that I can put into
them. I have nothing in my life and I am not meant for such a lot. I
am not meant for that! Such an existence has bitter temptations for
every man, and although I have never seen you before, possibly my fate
and Pollona's rest to-night with you."
Felicia Warren turned her great eyes with a sort of wonder to him.
They rested on him with a tenderness that he could not long have borne.
"You must not remain unmarried," he said, "you must not."
Without answering him she went slowly over to her little desk. She
wrote a few seconds there and came back and handed to him a little slip
of paper.
"When the telegraph office opens to-day, will you send this dispatch
for me? It will fetch Prince Pollona to me no matter where he may be.
I have asked him to meet me in Paris and I will take the morning train
from here myself."
She turned to the table on which his money lay and taking a roll of
notes said, "I will pay up everything I owe here. I think I have given
you every proof, every proof."
Bulstrode made no advance towards her. He saw how she struggled with
her emotion. He let her get herself in hand. Finally, with more
composure, she spoke again:
"I play next month in London. Will you come to see me play?"
"Oh, many times."
"No," Felicia Warren murmured, "only once, and after that I shall never
see you again."
He would have protested, but she repeated, "never again," with such
intensity that he bowed his head and he found that her decision brought
a pang whose sharpness he wondered would last how long.
He had started, with her last words, toward the door and she followed
him over to it. There, detaining him by her hand, she asked softly:
"Does she, too, love you as much as this?"
Bulstrode hesitated; then said, "I do not know."
"Not know?" cried the girl, "you don't know?"
It was with the greatest difficulty that Bulstrode could at any time
bring to his lips even the name of the woman he loved. At this moment
the vision of her as he had seen her lately on her husband's arm going
in under the pavilion of the hotel crossed his mind with a cruel
despair and cruel disgust. A sense of his solitude, of his defrauded
life, rushed over him as he looked into the eyes of this woman who
loved him.
"No," he said intensely, "I do not know, I do not know. I have a code
of honor a million years old, but I live up to it. She is a wife, I
have never told her that I love her."
The girl's incredulity and surprise were great. It showed in the smile
which, something like happiness, crossed her lips. She drew a long
breath; she held his eyes with hers, then she laid both her arms around
his neck and Bulstrode bent and kissed her. He held her for one moment
and his heart, if it beat for another woman, beat hard and fast and its
pulse ran through her own. Then Felicia heard the door close and the
footsteps of the man died away.
It was seven o'clock when Bulstrode found himself out in the streets.
The fresh air in a keen, salt wind poured over him. Down on the beach,
for a couple of francs he bribed an attendant to open a bath-house for
him, and a few moments later, shivering a little in the keen air, he
could have been seen running down to the sea, and in a few moments more
his strong swift strokes had carried him far out into the waters which
the summer sun even at this early hour was fast turning into blue.
When Jimmy came to himself, he found that without either seeing Mrs.
Falconer again or having even bidden a decent good-bye or godspeed to
his fiancee, he was back again in Paris. He had run away. Well, that
wasn't any new thing, he was always at it. Paris, in the month of
August, gave him a hot, desolate welcome, and it was with difficulty
that he could find a lawyer who would help him down to bedrock and put
in motion the business of winding up the affairs of Molly and her
Marquis.
De Presle-Vaulx came to town and found his champion there and brought
him many messages from the ladies as well as a letter which Bulstrode
put in his pocket to read down in the country at the chateau of
Vaulxgoron in the seclusion of his own room.
Bulstrode played the part of the "American Uncle" to perfection. He
let the old Marquis beat him at backgammon; he wandered all over the
property with the Marquise. He bought the young man for Molly Malines
and closed up his beneficent affairs in a very decent manner indeed,
but on the night when Mrs. Falconer and Miss Malines should have
arrived at the chateau, Bulstrode ran away again. From then on he
became a wandering Jew. He ran up to Norway, fished a little, then
took a motor and some people, who did not know any one whom he had ever
known, and drove them through Italy. He continued to travel a little
longer, working his way northward until finally--so he put it--dusty as
"Dusty Dog Dingo," tired as "Tired Dog Dingo," Bulstrode found himself
in London, drew a deep breath and capitulated.
THE SIXTH ADVENTURE
VI
IN WHICH HE DISCARDS A KNAVE AND SAVES A QUEEN
The morning he left for Westboro' Castle, Bulstrode remembers as being
the most beautiful of days; it came to him like a golden gift of
unrivalled loveliness as it broke and showered sunlight over England.
"The very crannies of the island," he smiled at his own conceit, "must
filter out this gold to the sea."
England lay like a viking's cup full to the brim of sunlight;
especially entrancing because unusual in the British calendar, and
enchanting to the American gentleman because it absolutely accorded
with his own mood.
It was middle November, and yet there was not--so it seemed as one
looked at yellow and copper luxuriance--a leaf lost from the suave
harmony of the trees. Farms, tiled and thatched, basked in summery
warmth, forest, hedge and copse, full-foliaged and abundant, shone out
in copper and bronze, and the air's stillness, the patient
tranquillity, enfolding the land, made it seem expectantly to wait for
some sudden wind that should ultimately cast devastation through the
forests.
On leaving his ship at Plymouth the day before, Bulstrode found amongst
other letters in his mail the Duke of Westboro's invitation for a
week's shooting in the west of England: "There were sure to be heaps of
people Jimmy would know"--and Bulstrode eagerly read the subjoined list
of names until he saw in a flash the name of the One Woman in the
World. He at once telegraphed his acceptance.
The following afternoon he threw his evening papers and overcoat into a
first-class carriage whilst the guard placed his valise and
dressing-case in the rack.
As there had been several minutes to starting time, he had not
immediately taken his seat, but had stood smoking by the side of his
carriage. He might, and did, doubtless, pass with others of the well
set-up, well-looking men travelling on that day, for an Englishman, but
closer observation showed his attire to be distinguished by that
personal note which marks the cosmopolitan whose taste has been more or
less tempted by certain fantasies of other countries. Bulstrode's
clothes were brown, his gloves, cravat, and boots all in the same color
scheme--one mentions a man's dress only on rare occasions, as on this
certain day one has been led to mention the weather. That a man is
perfectly turned out should, like the weather, be taken for granted.
Bulstrode on this day, travelling as he was towards a goal, towards the
one person he wanted above all to see, had spent some unusual thought
on his toilet. At all events, on passing a florist's in Piccadilly,
after giving his order for flowers to be boxed and expressed to
Westboro', he had selected a tiny reddish-brown chrysanthemum which now
covered the button-hole of his coat's lapel; it created a distinctive
scheme of color. In point of fact it caught the eye of the lady who,
hurrying from the waiting-room towards the Westboro' express, caught
sight of the American and started. It appeared as if she would speak
to him, half advanced, thought better of it, and said to the guard, who
was about to fasten a placard on the window of a carriage:
"Please---just a second--won't you, guard?"
The bell rang, and Bulstrode found himself helping the lady into his
own compartment. The guard shut the door, which closed with the
customary soft thick sound of a lock setting, and pasted over the
window the exclusive and forbidding paper--RESERVED.
Then it was in his corner by the window, once chimney pots and suburbs
left behind, that the traveller to Westboro' watched the landscape with
the pale, transparent smoke from the little farms floating like veils
across the golden atmosphere; the slow winding streams between
low-bushed, rosy shores, and red-tinged thickets; the flocks of rooks
across fields long harvested: the flocks of sheep on the gently
swelling downs.
"England, England," he murmured, as if it were a refrain in whose
melody he found much charm, as if his traditions of insular forebears
might in some way be recalled in the word, as if it spoke more than a
chance traveller's appreciation for the melodious countryside.
He had letters, read them, and put his correspondence aside, then
comfortably settling himself in his corner, began to construct for
himself a picture of Westboro', whose lines and architecture he knew
from photographs, although he had never been there. It was agreeable
to him as he mused to fancy himself for the first time with Mrs.
Falconer in England, in the country they preferred to all the others in
the Old World. They were in sympathy with English life and manners,
and here, if (oh, of course, a world of "ifs")--here no doubt they
would both choose to live when abroad, were there any choice for them
of mutual life.
Westboro' is Elizabethan and of vast proportions. The house would
naturally be very full--how much of the time would they discover for
themselves? There would decidedly be occasions. Mary Falconer did not
hunt, and although Jimmy Bulstrode could recall having postulated that
"there are only two real occupations for a real man--to kill and to
love," he also knew what precedence he himself gave, and how little the
sportsmen of Westboro' would have cause to fear his concurrence if by
lucky chance in more or less of solitude he should find his lady there.
It was months since he had seen Mrs. Falconer--months. It had been a
long exile. Each time that he started out to run away, it was just
that--running away--it was with a curious wonder whether or not on his
return he should not find a change. Time and absence--above all, time,
worked extraordinary infidelities in other people. Why should they two
believe themselves immune? The long months might have altered _her_.
The mischief was yet to be seen. But when in the list of noble names
he had in his hand, his eyes fell upon the single prefix--_Mrs._--and
found it followed by _The Name_, if he had not sincerely known before,
his pulse at sight of the written words told Jimmy that he had not, at
all events, changed!
Thinking at this point to light a cigarette, he became at the second
mindful of the other passenger in his carriage and that they were
alone. As he looked across towards the lady who had unwound her dark
veil, he observed that she was herself smoking, holding the cigarette
in her hand as with head turned from him she scanned the landscape
through the window of the compartment.
He saw with a little start of pleasure what a delight she gave to the
eye, tastefully dressed as she too was, in leaf brown from head to
foot, with the slightest indication of forest green at buttons and hem
of her dress. Her hat, with its drooping feathers, fell rather low
over her wonderful hair, bronze in its reflections. Indeed, the lady
blended well with the November landscape, and as she apparently was not
conscious of her companion, he enjoyed the harmonious note she made to
the full.
"What scope," he mused, "what scope they all have--and how prettily
they most of them know it! So just to sit and be a thing of beauty;
with head half-drooping, and eyelash meditative, one hand ungloved, and
such a perfectly lovely hand...! (It held the half-smoked cigarette,
but his taste was not offended.) He thought her a whim too debonnaire
for a Parisian of the best world, and of _that_ she most distinctly
was--Austrian more than likely. Every woman has her history--only when
she is part of several has she a past. What had this woman so to
meditate upon? She turned and he met her eyes.
"You have naturally waited for me to speak first," she said with a
gracious gesture of her bare hand. "And _I_ was waiting till you
should have finished your letters! I, too, have wanted to think."
Her familiar address, perfectly courteous and made in a pleasant voice,
with a very slight accent, was a surprise to her companion, who
mechanically lifted his hat as he bowed to her across the narrow
distance between their seats.
"The guard," she smiled, "came very near putting the placard on the
other window! But I think we are now quite sure to be alone!" She
pointed to the seat opposite. "Sit there," she more commanded than
permitted, "we can talk better and I can watch your kind face, which
always looks as if you understood--and I shall be able to please you
better--perhaps to make you not unkind to me."
He obeyed, taking the place indicated without hesitation, and as he sat
facing her, he saw her to be one of the most beautiful women he had
ever seen. There was at once something dazzling about her--and at the
same time familiar... He had surely met her, and not long ago. Where?
And how stupid of him to have forgotten! Or had he only seen her
photograph and remarked her as a celebrity whose type of looks had
pleased him? But no, she knew him: that was clear. He met her
friendly eyes, where liking was evident as well as the suggestion of
something akin to an appeal. Bulstrode was greatly intrigued.
"Unkind?" he repeated vaguely. "But why should you think that? Please
me?"--and his graciousness did not fall short of her own--"But why
should you...?"
"Oh, true," she interrupted him, "quite true. There is no reason
why--" and she made a rather petulant gesture--"yet every woman wants
to please, and none of us relishes being judged. Never mind, however,
don't think of me as a _person_--just let me talk to you frankly, be
myself for once with someone if I can."
Jimmy Bulstrode gathered himself together and sat back in his corner.
She was very lovely at it, this being herself. Gallantry would not let
him bluntly tell her that she had made a mistake. A second more would
clear the matter and would be quite soon enough, for him at least, to
find that they were total strangers. Unless, indeed, he had met her
and forgotten it. They had possibly held some conversation together in
a London drawing-room. But how could he have been such a boor as to
forget her? She was neither a crook nor a mad woman--she might be an
adventuress; if so, she was an unusual one. He glanced at her luggage
as if it might help him--a dark-covered dressing-case, bundle of furs,
and rugs--new, everything new. Her left hand was bare of rings, she
clasped it with her gloved fellow and said warmly:
"I can't believe it possible that you came, actually came, and that we
have so smoothly met! I can't believe nothing has hitched or missed,
or that everything is so cleverly planned and arranged for me, and
least of all I can believe that it should be _you_ who are so sublimely
doing this."
"Ah--" But here Bulstrode tardily started up. _He_ doing it all? At
least if he was, then he must, if nothing else--know! He smiled at her
with a pleasant sense of being in the secret and with indulgent
amusement at her mistake.
"I think--you made a mistake," he began it with commonplaceness, but
his gesture softened the words.
But the lady made a little annoyed "tchk" with her tongue against her
teeth, and threw up her head with an impatient toss, an intensely
foreign way of dismissing his interpolation.
"Don't, in pity's sake, talk like this," she exclaimed. "_Mistake_?
Who under the blue heavens _doesn't_ make them--Certa! Haven't you,
yourself, in spite of your moral, spotless life, haven't even _you_
made them?"
"How," flushed the naive gentleman, on the sudden betrayed into a
mental frankness of self-approval near to conceit, "how does _she_ know
me so well?"
"Who is there," his companion gave him the question in a challenging
tone "to tell each other and every one of us what is or will be a
mistake in his life? Where were everyone's eyes when I married?--Why
didn't someone tell me then that my marriage was a hideous mistake? As
for the rest of it..." she turned away for a second towards the window,
and Bulstrode saw how the hot blood had mounted and her eyes had
changed when after a moment she came back to him again. She put out
towards him a beseeching hand: "_You_ above all men, who are faithful
to an ideal, must not give me old platitudes!"
Bulstrode's head reeled. He felt like a man who after a narcotic finds
his brain suddenly alight and real things grow strange. He wanted to
rub his eyes. She appeared singularly to appreciate his daze.
"It is as strange to me as it is to you, to find myself here with a man
to whom I have never spoken before--to be under his protection, and to
talk with him like this; and yet I have seen you so often, I have
watched you in the distance, and long since I singled you out as the
one man in whom I could fancy confiding--the one man to whom I could
give a sacred trust."