Part 10

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 _début_ 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:

"I'm entirely free. No one in the world depends upon me. I have no 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 hôtel 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 fiancée, 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 château 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 château, 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.