Part 11

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 naïve 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."

With these words the incognita drew herself up, and her manner, with 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 naïvely ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of _lèse-majesté_--that she, poor thing, attributed his _sans gêne_ 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 rôle 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.