Part 12

"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 rôle 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 lèse-majesté, 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!

As the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more ventured to speak.

"I am not the cold-blooded traitor I seem, believe me," he tried to plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at Redleigh Bucks I was miserable to think I had, as it seems, betrayed your Majesty. But when as we came up to the station I saw the King on the platform----"

She stopped short in front of him: "The King!" she exclaimed incredulously.

Bulstrode nodded in a matter-of-fact way as if stray kings on mid-country platforms were the common occurrence of his travelling experiences.

"He had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to attach your carriage to the Dover express had been attempted, you would have been stopped by your husband himself. As it is you are simply going where you are expected to go--to Westboro' Castle."

This dénouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no place for ecstatics. She sat down in front of Bulstrode and repeated, dazed:--

"The _King_! The King had followed me! He had been warned then, but by whom? You above all did not....?"

"Oh no!" He was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this disloyalty. "I had nothing to do with it. The King had come on with the man who had played your Majesty false all along, the man who is indeed more the King's friend than he is Carmen-Magda's."

And sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him say: "I mean Lord Almouth Gresthaven."

She murmured some words in Poltavian, then besought: "Why, why do you play with me?" The tears started to her eyes.

"Lord Gresthaven," Bulstrode hurried now to his confession--"has plainly betrayed you. Either he failed to meet you as planned, or else he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your husband--at all events, both he and the King took the slow train."

"But _you_," she interrupted, staring at him--"You are not Lord Gresthaven?"

"No," he said quietly, "no, I am an American, nothing more than a friend and guest of the Duke of Westboro'. I tried over and over again to tell you this, but you would not hear me and I finally accepted the rôle you gave me with the firm intention of taking you with me to Westboro' Castle. My name is James Thatcher Bulstrode, I am from Boston, in the United States." Bulstrode thus tardily introduced himself.

And Jimmy, not pretending ever to have counted greatly on the favor of princes, was nevertheless taken aback. Not that he had any preconceived notion of what Carmen-Magda would do--when she eventually knew. He had been too absorbed in his mission, its entanglements, and his climax. He may have been prepared for some exhibition of scorn, but he more than likely looked for a social and commonplace ending to their ride, but for what Carmen-Magda did he was entirely unprepared.

As if in his declaration of himself and his identity he had taken a sponge and quite wiped himself off the slate, the Queen, after speechlessly staring at him for a few moments, quietly removed her attention from him altogether. She took from a little bag at her wrist a rouge stick with which she carefully touched her lips; from a tiny gold box she lightly dusted her cheeks with powder; she adjusted her tulle bow and her veil and then sat serenely back waiting until the train should arrive at her forced destination.

Although, one might say, unused to the manners of royalty, Jimmy was dumbfounded; the beautiful woman in forest-brown clothes picked out with hunting green had become as strange to him as in the first moment when she attracted his attention some few miles beyond London. That she should be angry at his interference he could admit, but that she should not be grateful to be saved from her husband's wrath he did not understand. Was he too plebeian for her to notice? He, of course, did not speak to her again, nor did she break the singular silence, and for some reason he did not even care to ask her forgiveness. Finally, he decided that she was thinking solely of Gela, the man at the other end of the route who would wait for her in vain, and when this sentimental view of the case occurred to him, he would have felt _de trop_ had he not seen how completely he was ignored.

They flashed past the last miles of wooded valley and hillside. Westboro' was very soft in line and very mellow in the evening light. The landscape, through a half-mist, was as brown and green as the dress of the beautiful silent woman in the opposite corner of the travelling carriage.

Bulstrode, looking at her rather timidly, felt as if he were in a dream.

At Westboro' Abbey the guard unlocked the compartment door and Bulstrode, who got out first, helped the Queen of Poltavia to descend. As she put foot to the ground she said, half leaning on the arm he gave: "I thank you--very much indeed."

He caught the few words eagerly, and was fatuous enough to fancy that she meant something more than the common courteous acknowledgment of a man's help from a travelling carriage.

The station was deserted. The express having arrived some half hour before without them, there had evidently been no preparation made to meet this train.

Surrounded by her luggage, her brand new luggage, the Queen waited on the side of the station that faced the open country, whilst Bulstrode made inquiries about telephoning or getting word to the castle.

At this juncture, down the lane, between red thickets and golden hedges, a smart dog-cart tooled along driven by a lady. She waved a welcoming hand.

"Jimmy," she said as she drove up and leaned out and nodded to him, "I knew you'd miss the express, you're so absent-minded about trains; and who could be expected to distinguish between a 3.50 and a 3.53? So, as you see, I drove down on the chance."

He had not greeted her in words. The long afternoon, the romantic extravagant episode, of which he had been unwillingly a part, made this woman seem so real. He felt as if from a burlesque extravaganza he had come out into the fresh air; their eyes had met and Mrs. Falconer did not miss any other greeting.

"That lady," he then said, "whom you see standing on the edge of the platform surrounded by her luggage, like a shipwrecked being on a desert island, is the Queen of Poltavia."

"Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Falconer.

"Yes," he said indifferently, "we came down from London together."

"Why, the whole castle is in a state about her. A coach and postillion went to fetch her at the express. Telegrams are flying all over the country. Why did she take a local--and with you--Jimmy?"

"Perhaps she is absent-minded about trains as well," he smiled, "at all events here she certainly is and it will be charming of you to drive her up."

"But I don't know her!"

"Oh," he shrugged, "one doesn't exactly _know_ queens, I don't know her either, but that wouldn't prevent my doing her a service. I am sure she'd rather be driven up to a cup of tea and a fire by an American than stand here waiting for a postilion and four. It will be nice of you to speak to her," he suggested, and stepped back.

Gathering up her reins, Mrs. Falconer whisked her horse about and drove up to the lady's side. Bulstrode, from a little distance, watched her graceful inclination and heard her lovely voice. He saw Carmen-Magda lift her disguising veil, displaying her dark, foreign face. Slowly going up to the dog-cart's side, together with the groom's help, he bestowed the Queen's belongings in the trap.

"I will walk on slowly up the road," he suggested, "and most possibly you will send back for me."

"Oh, I'll drive back myself." She was quite certain about it. As he helped the Queen into the dog-cart, as she leaned on his supporting hand, she said:

"Thank you, thank you very much indeed." And he was so vain as to fancy that into tone and words Carmen-Magda put more warmth, more of meaning, than a woman usually puts into the phrase of recognition of a man's helping hand. He could not, moreover, have sworn that at the end of the sentence was not murmured a word in a foreign tongue which might in Poltavian mean "friend," but as he did not understand the language of the country he could not be sure.

As he watched the trap up the hedged lanes out of sight, he rubbed his eyes as if he were not certain whether or not he had not dozed and dreamed in his compartment on the slow train from London.... But at any rate he had the delightful heavenly certainty that this was Westboro' of an Indian summer afternoon--and that of the two women who had just driven up the lane out of sight, one at least was adorably real.

THE SEVENTH ADVENTURE

VII

IN WHICH HE BECOMES THE POSSESSOR OF A CERTAIN PIECE OF PROPERTY

As Bulstrode stood in the window of his room at Westboro' Castle, his face turned toward the country, it seemed to beckon him. It called him from the park's end where suave and smooth the curving downs met the preciser contour of the eastern field; from hedges holding snugly in the roadways, the roads themselves running off on pleasant excursions to townships whose names are suggestive of romance, whose gentle beauties have mellowed with the ages which give them value and leave them perfect.

With the sweetness of a bell, with the invitingness of a beckoning hand, the English countryside summoned the gentleman to come out to it, to explore and penetrate for himself. He gazed charmed and entranced at the expanse of rippling meadow where, enclosed by the curtains of soft old trees, the thatch of the eaves lifted their breast to the sun and mist, and chimneys black with immemorial fires indicated the farms of Westboro', rich, homely and respectable, as they left upon the landscape harmonious color and history of thrift. To the east was the dim suggestion of the little town, and some few miles in a hollow lay the farmlands known as The Dials, and each second growing more distinctly visible in the deepening light rose the towers of Penhaven Abbey.

At the Duke's urging, Bulstrode had been led to stop on at Westboro' Castle after the house party had dissolved at the end of their week's sojourn; and there had since been many long tramps across country, with the dogs at his heels and by his side the Duke, for the time diverted from his semi-melancholy, semi-egotistical cynicism, and transformed into an enthusiastic sport.

The Duke of Westboro' was a _désenchanté_, more truly speaking a victim of other peoples' temperaments. There were, however, not a few little scores in the character of moral delinquencies which at least, so he felt, he had been called upon quite fully to discharge.

The American man gave himself over to his host, and from the time Westboro' put out a bait of "Oh, you're decidedly not turning in at this hour, old man?" he flanked the Duke on the opposite side of the fireplace in the East Library, there after coffee to wear away half the night. During the following fortnight, Bulstrode found that he had tallied up with his friend very closely the scores of the last few miserable years.

Westboro's friendship with him dated back some ten years. Bulstrode had first known the Englishman at Newport where, then not a young man, he had come obviously and frankly in search of an American wife. The search was unusual in that it was not for money, but, as Westboro' put it, for type and race. His mother had been an American. He had adored her, and wanted an American mother for his children. The woman herself--and how Bulstrode saw it as he followed the deserted husband's narrative--the woman had been a secondary thing. He recalled easily the summary and conventional courtship and the vulgar brilliance of the wedding. He had been one of Westboro's ushers, and his smaller part of the affair left him with the distressing idea that he had assisted at a sacrifice.