amazing swiftness, changed from a childlike confidence to a dignity not
without a certain rigidness, and as Bulstrode remarked this, he also
noticed that she was very young, and he was conscious in her of a
something he had never quite met in a woman before--an extreme dignity,
an ultra poise, an assurance.--Who was she?--And whom did she take him
to be? With every turn of the fast wheels of the express it was
growing more difficult to explain. She would more keenly feel the fact
that he had not cut her frankness short--he had no right to her
confidences even though she took their mutual knowledge of each other
for granted.
"When," he ventured it delicately--"did you last see me?" It was bold,
but it did perfectly.
"Oh, an age ago, isn't it? You were last on the Continent I think in
August at Trouville, during La Grande Semaine."
Ah, he reflected, _of course_! _That_ was where, amongst so many other
celebrities and beauties, she had attracted his attention. But his
rapid mental calculations of those seven days could reveal to him no
woman's face but one. He found himself even in this unique moment
recalling the time following hard on Molly's formal engagement to her
Marquis ... and those days were amongst the brightest in his life. No,
there had been no foreign element at Trouville for him in the dazzle
and freedom of that worldly fortnight--for Jimmy Bulstrode, in all the
scene she summoned up, there was but one woman. He came back with a
start to the other.
"Then yesterday, as you passed our table at the Carlton, and it seemed
as if heaven had sent you to us to help us--at least so we both felt."
And Bulstrode doubtfully smiled and, now determined, broke in, or would
have done so, but she waved him imperiously.
"Your mind," she spoke indulgently, "is on the wrong side to-day. Try
to think only of the happiness towards which I am going so rapidly, so
rapidly." Then, as she with her word glanced out of the window, she
cried: "Oh, what if something should happen to the train--what if some
horrible delay----"
And he shook himself to action.
"My dear lady," he began gravely, "you must hear me. You have made and
are making a great mistake. I am certainly not the man..."
"I _command_ you, sir," she flashed out at him--"surely you will not
disobey me--you will not make me think as well that I am making a
mistake in you."
"Ah, but that," he gasped, and caught her words gratefully, "is just
the point."
She smiled. "Please...! Let me judge! Only don't condemn me. Only
be glad you can so marvellously help a human soul to happiness--can so
generously lend yourself for these few hours to aid in my escape."
She was escaping! Well, he had nearly guessed it! The new luggage
alone was an indication. Unless her mania was for taking strangers to
be intimate friends, she wasn't fleeing a madhouse! From what did she
so determinedly run?--and how in heaven's name was he helping her? Did
she think he was going to marry her? Into what tangle had the man he
was unwittingly impersonating got himself--and in default of his
appearing on the scene in what would his absence involve poor Bulstrode?
He took off his hat and put it down on the seat--thus his fine head was
fully revealed to the lady's view.
"I do not know you," he said determinedly. "You do not know me, but
you seem bent on not acknowledging this fact or permitting me to state
it."
But even this plain statement did him no good, for she said, quite
agreeing with him:
"If I had ever spoken with you--been near you before, I would not be
here now. You see it is just your _impersonality_--your _having_ no
connection with anything in my life that makes it possible! But why,"
she exclaimed impatiently, "do you spend these few hours with me in
this meaningless warfare? You should, it seems, take the honor more
graciously, and since you are here, have consented to be here, show me
a little kindness. Since, after all, willingly or not, you are in
effect nobly helping me to do what I am doing."
And this brought him wonderfully up to the question of what was he
doing? What was he supposed to be furthering here? It was his
expression, no doubt, that made her ask with curious aptness: "Just how
much _do_ you know?"
The poor gentleman threw out his hands desperately. "You can't think
how in the dark I am! How beyond words mystified."
"How droll!" she laughed sweetly, "and how amusing and all the more
beautiful and like you, to be, in spite of yourself, here. You see we
have switched off--just as you said we would do."
So they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his
feet. He looked out: it was a fast express, a through train--the first
stop should have been Westboro' Abbey.
"Yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you
arranged so cleverly!--and the Westboro' people will go on without us."
Would they indeed! Lucky people, but not if he could prevent it. But
his attention to the train's procedure had come too late.
He opened the window and looked out. They stood at the side of a
switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the
far distance Bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train. He
drew in his head and quietly asked his companion:
"What has happened to us, do you know?"
She laughed deliciously. "Know? Why, of course, I do. You're
delightful! Of course I have followed every step of the plan--the
special for Dover picks us up here in three-quarters of an hour,
doesn't it? We make the boat for Calais, and there Gela meets me and
_your_ mission is done!"
The gentleman opposite her listened quietly, and before speaking waited
a second, staring down at her, his hands in his pockets: there they
touched a little coin which he always carried: a coin that opened at a
sacred point to discover to his eyes alone a picture of a woman as
lovely as this woman, as human, and one whom he had good cause to
suppose loved another man than her husband. The woman opposite him was
escaping from her husband. _That_ was what she was doing! He who had
striven for fifteen years to prevent the like in the life of the one
woman of all, now appeared to be helping this poor thing to the same
thing. He did not believe he was to be waylaid and robbed, or that any
trick had been played upon him. The only thing he did _not_ believe
was that the woman knew him! Before, however, brushing the delusion
aside, he asked, his candid eyes upon her: "And my mission being so
done, what then becomes of you?"
The shrug of her shoulders was neither an indication of indifference
nor a pretty desperation! it rather was a relinquishing of herself
wholly to Fate--an abandon.
"What becomes of a happy woman who goes with the man she loves?"
"Her Fate," said her companion, "has no single history. She is most
often disillusioned, many times tragic, and always disgraceful."
"Ah, hush," she said angrily, "you presume too far. If you only
intended to lecture me--to condemn me--why did you come?"
At this sincerely humorous challenge Bulstrode smiled.
"I did not, to be quite accurate, come," he said, "and I assure you I
am here against my will. You refuse to listen to me; you turn my
efforts to put things straight against me--and now."
The handsome creature gave him a flash from angry eyes.
"Your Excellency is scarcely polite. But I understand. Even my rank
doesn't protect me: and although your old friendship for Gela did
overcome your scruples, and our letters did touch you--still we should
have remembered that you are, above all else, the King's friend."
Bulstrode fell a step back. Before he could take in the curious honors
that were being thrust upon him, the lady went hotly on:
"You know how indulgent of me the King has been: how he adores me
still, how blind he is, and you pity him and have no mercy for me."
Here, for she, too, had left her seat, she went over to the compartment
window and turning her back full on Bulstrode, stood looking out, and
she thus gave him time and he took it, not to consider his part of the
affair, but, as if it had been suddenly revealed to him by her words,
the woman's part in it. After all it was scarcely important whom, in
error, she believed him to be. In a strange fashion, through some
trick of resemblance, he was here and in her confidence in another's
stead--impersonating some man who, in spite of the reputation for
goodness and honor accredited him by this lady, would scarcely,
Bulstrode felt confident, be as scrupulous regarding the adventure as
he himself was fast becoming. The woman--the woman was all that
mattered. She was a Queen then? A Queen! And he had so naively
ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of
_lese-majeste_--that she, poor thing, attributed his _sans gene_ to her
fallen state!
Kings and Queens, poor dears, how human they are! What royalty could
she be? And what King's friend was he so closely supposed to be? The
King's friend--well, so he was--so he must be in spite of his quick
pity for the lovely creature--in spite of chivalry and the trust she
displayed. But to be practical: what in half an hour could he hope to
accomplish--how could he keep a determined woman from wrecking her life?
His mind flew to Paddington, and his first sight of the lady on the
platform. There had been near the hour two trains for Westboro', one
of them a local which left London some few minutes later than the
Western express. _That_ later train, no doubt of it, would fetch the
real accomplice to the eloping lady. Bulstrode argued that, should he
declare himself to the Queen at this point for a total stranger, the
revelation would plunge her in despair, anger and frighten her, and
lose him his cause--There was, in view of the cause, he now felt and
nerved himself to the deception, nothing to do but to assume his role
in earnest and play it as well as he might. He had never sat alone in
a travelling carriage and hobnobbed with a Queen, but he gracefully
made his try at the proper address: "Your Majesty," he began, and she
whirled quickly round, pleasure on her face.
"Oh, Gresthaven!" she exclaimed with touching gratitude, extending her
hand. "Thanks, mon ami! I shall not have my title long, and I shall,
I suppose, miss it with other things."
Bulstrode, with her naming of him, knew at length who he was, and
recalled his supposed likeness to a certain Lord Almouth
Gresthaven--famous explorer, traveller and diplomat, cosmopolitan in
his tastes and a dabbler in the politics of other and less significant
countries than his own. In accepting his new personality, the American
winced a little as he bowed over the royal little hand and kissed it.
"Your Majesty will miss many things indeed," he said gravely--"your
kingdom, your people, and the King--the King," he repeated, dwelling on
the word, "who, as you say, loves you."
"My good friend," the lady made a little _moue_--"I know everything you
would say. You can't suppose I haven't thought of it all? To be so
far on my way must I not have carefully considered every step? One is,
after all, a woman--and I am a woman in love."
"One word then," pleaded her unwilling imposter--"one word. Have you
also asked yourself: what chance for happiness a woman can possibly
hope for with a man who allows her to make the sacrifice you are about
to make?"
If his words were straws before the wind to the woman, his simplicity
was impressive to her. "It has seemed to me," Jimmy Bulstrode said,
"that there is a great distinction between love and passion--and that
however great his passion for her, a man should supremely--_supremely
love_ the woman he singles out of all the world."
The Queen of Poltavia looked at the gentleman before her, who stood
very straight, his head alone bent, his clear fine eyes fixed upon her
own.
"Love!" she repeated softly, "how well you say the word."
A slight flush stole up the American's cheek.
"Supreme love," he ventured to continue, "means protection to the
woman...."
Here the Queen made an impatient gesture as though she shook away the
impression his tone made.
"My dear Gresthaven," she exclaimed, "love means above all else
happiness! One is happy with one person and miserable with another.
It's all a lottery and unless our plans miscarry I am going towards the
greatest happiness in the world. But come"--She altered her tone to
one of practical command--"Let us address ourselves to our flight. You
have your train schedule of course? The Dover train is due here at
4:50 and it only waits for the taking on of our carriage." As she
looked up at him she saw the trouble in his face, and a solicitude for
her to which she was unaccustomed.
"Mon cher ami," she said quizzically, "what, may I ask, since your
scruples are so great, ever led you to accept this mission....?"
"Frankly," he eagerly answered, and was honest in it, "the hope, the
desire that I might...."
"Persuade a woman in love against her heart?" she smiled, and so
sweetly, so convincingly, and so reasonably, he was for an instant all
on her side.
"I see my folly, your Majesty."
"There's nothing but _force majeure_, Gresthaven...."
"Yes" ... he admitted reluctantly. "Let me go out now and see to our
manoeuvres here." He was able to open the door which a passing guard
had unlocked unobserved....
The innocent royalty let him pass, thanking him with a smile, and saw
him go down the track toward the little squat station, with the guards.
Bulstrode, whose mind as he walked along was busy with train schedules,
recalled, nevertheless, the Duke's letter, which he still had in his
letter case, and he took it from his pocket and re-read it.
"... We are to have over the week-end a dash of royalty. Carmen-Magda,
the Queen of the petty kingdom of Poltavia." (This mention of the
Westboro' guests had quite escaped Bulstrode's mind in his
contemplation of the last page of the Duke's note.... "We are to have
a compatriot of your own, a Mrs. Jack Falconer.") And royalty being
very relative to the unsnobbish American, he had simply transferred the
title (with possibly a possessive pronoun before it) to the other lady!
He smiled as he reflected that the Westboro' express was destined to
arrive at the Abbey without either the royal guest or Mr. James
Thatcher Bulstrode. But more to the point, more instantly absorbing
was the fact, that within ten minutes the slow train from London to
Westboro' would arrive at Radleigh Bucks, the little station before
which he now stood, and from it, undoubtedly, would descend the real
Lord Gresthaven. If Jimmy needed encouragement in his self-imposed
role of Master of Fate, if he needed to forget the ardor and the
determination of the little Queen, if he needed to forget how, in
youth, he had cordially hated those interfering people who, on
horseback and in chaises, tore after flying lovers to waylay them at
Gretna Green--he found his stimulus in recalling that he was "the
King's friend."
"It's after all something of a distinction," he mused, entertained by
the idea, "a sort of royal _noblesse oblige_--and since the poor dear
herself has so made me out to be, given King the precedence, how could
I, in the cause of gallantry, have proceeded otherwise! It's this
diabolical little brown chrysanthemum," he mentally laid the fault
there. "It is evidently a telling mark. People in books are always
meeting unknowns who are to wear a red flower in the right lapel of the
coat".... and he had unintentionally gone over into a romance--and his
_triste_ part in it was that of an unsympathetic spoiler of a romance.
As after a prolonged parley with the station officials he walked
leisurely back to his carriage, his wallet grown very thin indeed and
his honest heart suffering many sincere pangs at the contemplation of
his conduct altogether, he argued: "She is absurdly young--she will,
after a little, go back to her allegiance (he put it so), and I don't
take much stock in that barbaric Gela anyway, he probably is a
Hungarian band-master or a handsome ticket-agent, a plebian creature
whose very remoteness from her own life has fascinated her."
Bulstrode, not quite sure just whom he was supposed to be by the train
people, found himself bowed and escorted back to the carriage which had
been turned and manipulated and side-tracked--reswitched and displaced,
till even its own locomotive and train of cars would have been at a
loss to find it. He had the sense of being a traitor, brute, imposter,
and Providence all in one--which combination of qualities was
sufficient to explain his embarrassment and his nervous manner when he
at length rejoined the Queen.
There was a slight transformation in the lady whose dressing bag had
aided, evidently, a brisk toilet. Under her chin flowered out a snowy
bow of tulle, and she had swathed herself in the thick veil she had
worn when first boarding the train. Indicating her disguise to
Bulstrode, she said with her pretty accent: "I think it well to be
thus." And he agreed that it was well.
His own agitation as the other train rushed in, slowed and halted, was
scarcely less than hers, indeed perhaps greater, for Carmen-Magda, pale
and quiet, her handsome brown eyes fixed on the window-pane, gave no
sign of life, until after a series of jerks, jolts and bumps, they
slowly but certainly became part of a moving train, once more
undertaking its journey. Then Bulstrode, who stood determinedly in the
window, filled it up on the station side, giving her no chance to look
out had she wished to do so, nor did he think it needful to tell the
Queen what he saw: A distinguished-looking man in rough brown clothes,
and oh, the curious coincidence: a reddish-brown chrysanthemum in his
buttonhole. His Striking Resemblance was accompanied by another
gentleman--short and stout with military mustaches, and swarthy
complexion. The two men were gesticulating wildly together, and as the
train pulled away from them, Bulstrode turned about and faced the
little Queen.
She had again lifted her veil, and he thought her pallor natural; in
the momentary excitement her large eyes were fastened upon him with a
touching confidence that nearly made the soft-hearted imposter regret
the boldest act of his history.
"Are you sure," she asked him softly, "that this is the right train?"
The coquetry of her bow of snowy tulle, the debonnaire costume of brown
and green, her gray hat with its feathers, were pathetic to him--her
attire contrasted sadly with her pale face. She was to him like a
wilful child. Not more, he decided for the sixth time, than twenty
years old. She was like a paper queen out of a child's fairy book, all
but her anxious face. "She regrets," he joyfully caught at the thought
to arm himself and give himself right. "Poor little thing, she already
regrets."
Leaning forward, he suggested kindly:
"Can't your Majesty rest a little?"
As he spoke the hypocrite knew that in less time than it would take to
settle her they would bump into the station at Westboro' Abbey.
But Carmen-Magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she was
_en route_ for her plebian Gela. She leaned over and picked up one of
the illustrated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages,
reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph
displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a
military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin. She
held it out to Bulstrode and said:
"It's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the
King?"
Bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on
his face.
"Yes, it is good of the King, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much
animation. It was strikingly so, he could with truth say it.
Gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the King par
excellence--the King seemed to have many friends---and the poor little
woman opposite--with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence
in a stranger--her madder confidence in Lord Almouth Gresthaven--where
were _her_ friends? Jimmy leaned to her, and Mrs. Falconer could have
told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that
Jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of
his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined
to help in spite of themselves."
"Your Majesty has done me great honor," Bulstrode said. "You have said
I was the King's friend, I should like instead to be _your_ friend.
Women need friends ... even queens. Would it be too vast a presumption
if I should from henceforth feel myself to be...." He waited and
dared--"Carmen-Magda's friend?"
His innocent lese-majeste, coupled with the tone he used, reached the
woman in her---not to speak of his personal charm.
"Didn't I imply friendship when I chose you for this mission?" she said.
He winced. "Of course--but I mean from now on----"
She nodded sweetly. "_Cela va sans dire_, Gresthaven."
"Don't call me so," he interrupted, "say _friend_, to please me."
She laughed.
"You are too amusing. I will say it for you then in Poltavian. It's a
sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with
the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she
knighted him. It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to
ask her:
"What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you
had arranged he should do--he should betray you--should have warned
your husband and have gone so far _as to fetch the King to waylay you
and stop your flight_!"
But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition
with a word of disbelief.
"Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?"
She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis
were real to her at last:
"He would be the most despicable traitor in the world."
Bulstrode pursued: "What--would you think of Gresthaven--if in order to
save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter
your decision--he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as
surely betraying your good faith?"
Here she looked keenly through him--read him--then waited a second
before intensely exclaiming:
"Gresthaven--_what have you done_?"
His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him. He did
not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all
women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over
admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in
their own minds.
"Oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matter _what_ reason, she had only
changed her _own_ mind!"
"In five minutes," he said bravely--"your Majesty will be at Westboro'
Abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which
followed us from London."
With a smothered cry the Queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window
and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to
her in what part of England she was. Bulstrode had put his hand out
before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open
window.
"Oh," she cried furiously, shrinking back from him, "how have you dared
... dared?"
... "To save your Majesty? Well, it _was_ hard!" he acknowledged
practically. "Harder than you will ever believe. I may say that no
decision was ever more difficult to make. To be so trusted by you, and
to feel myself a double-dyed villain wasn't agreeable, but the issue
was a warrant for any treachery."
"Great heavens!" she exclaimed. "Who made _you_ judge of my actions,
who gave _you_ leave to decide my fate, what a fool I was to trust
you--what a fool! You have spoiled my life!" she accused him--"You
have taken from me everything in the world."
If she had been alone he knew she would have wept, and he kept his face
turned from her for some few seconds. "I have certainly established a
precedent for myself," he mused with humor. "_I_ can never run away
with a woman now--never."
Small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk
it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing.
She spoke, he supposed, in Poltavian, for he could not follow the
meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise
among the incoherences that she called him friend!