The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode

"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.

It would be euphemistic to say that Westboro' poured out his heart to Bulstrode; Englishmen do not have such refreshments. Little by little, rather in short curt phrases, a cynical word whose mocking fellow only followed after some moments' silence – little by little, whilst the smoky wreaths of the men's cigars veiled their confidences, the Duke slowly told the story of ten years of married life. In this intimacy he disclosed the history of the separation which formed at the moment the subject of general public comment. Jimmy was relieved when the moment came that the Duke thought opportune to say:

"There, old chap, you have the whole story! It's this cursed tradition of marriage, and you're a lucky fellow to be free. I have never spoken to any one before – you know it. I don't need to tell you so, but you were in, as it were, at the start, and what do you think of the finish?"

Bulstrode reserved his opinion.

Westboro' Castle had been built in the sixteenth century by a lover of the Virgin Queen. The stones were paved with memories. In the Picture Hall the ardent gentleman three hundred years before had for one sole hour entertained Elizabeth at a feast. She left him, obdurate and unyielding, and he went crazy and followed the royal coach to the park gate, weeping, his hands before his face; and there on the ground, his fair curls torn, and the dust from the departing vehicles alone of the glory that touched him, his people found him.

"How they prate of inequality, and of the crime of grafting the American rose on these old stalks," Bulstrode mused. The beauty of Frances, Duchess of Westboro', he had himself been one of the first to concede; a portrait of her by Lehnbach did not to his eyes do her justice. The fresh purity of her type had not been seized by the German. She would be an ideal Duchess, he had said of her when the mission of Westboro' to America had been bruited, and Westboro' had thought: "She's a strong, fine woman, and will bear me beautiful children."

She had borne him two. Bulstrode, in passing through the house, had seen the low gates at the doors of two sunny rooms, the toys spread as they had been lain. His own were the only apartments in that wing of the castle, and the silence at the end of the hall was never broken. When Westboro' had come to this part of his narrative, he had waited quiet so long that his companion had naturally taken the evening to be at its end. The Duke had thrown his cigar away, and lifting from the table near him a leather case, opened it and handed over to Bulstrode the photograph of two little bare-legged boys in sailor clothes. They stood hand in hand, a pretty pair. Looking at it, and gently turning it over on the other side, Bulstrode read:

"Frederick Cecil John Edward, Marquis of Wotherington, three years old. Guy Perceval, Lord Feversham, aged two years."

Westboro's voice had a dull sound as he took the case from his friend's hand.

"They are Westboro's I think, neck and crop. Scarlet fever – in three days, Bulstrode – both in three days."

And that had been all.

Bulstrode had left the Duke and gone up-stairs. On the other side of his cheerful rooms the empty nurseries in the ghostly moonlight held their doors wide open as if to welcome at the low gates those bright heads if they should come.

Jimmy, whose sentimentality consisted in his acting immediately when anything was to be done, mixed a whiskey and soda from the array of drinks that always exists at an Anglo-Saxon's elbow, and after a turn or two in his dressing-room brought practically out:

"It's ridiculous! Sheer nonsense. There should be children here. The woman is selfish and puritanical, and the man is no lover —that's what's the matter! But Westboro' certainly loves her in his big, cold, affectionate way." Jimmy smiled at his own fashion of putting it. And how any woman, with a mind and common-sense, could help loving Westboro' Castle and countryside, as well as Cecil, tenth Duke of the line, the American visitor failed to see.

As the Duke of Westboro' thought of the members of his recent house party – the women of it passed before his mental mirror. There were several images of an American lady whose frocks and hats, whose wit and grace, whose dark beauty had made her stay at Westboro' brilliant and memorable. Possibly the remembrance of Mrs. Falconer, one night at dinner, was what most persistently lingered in the Duke's mind. She had sat on his left in a gown he remembered as becoming, and her jewels had shone like fire on her bosom. He had particularly remarked them in thinking of the idle jewels of his own house, left behind by the flight of the Duchess. Mary Falconer had been more brilliant than her ornaments, and Westboro' had thoroughly enjoyed his guest. He had asked this woman especially because she charmed him; without forming the reason he had a latent hope that she might do more than charm. He wanted to forget and to be eased from the haunting memory that stung and never soothed. From his first tête-a-tête with Mrs. Falconer he had at once seen that there was nothing there for him.

Bulstrode had said that Westboro' was not a lover. Reserved as far as all feeling was concerned, he had made no advances to the beautiful American, but contented himself with watching her. She could not be in love with her brutish husband who, out of the week spent at Westboro' was visible only two days. Then Bulstrode had come. Pictures of the two talking in the long twilights, riding together, walking on the terrace side by side, came vividly to Westboro's recollection.

"That," he decided, "is a real flesh-and-blood woman, the kind of woman I should have married. Bulstrode is a lucky devil."

"A chap," Westboro' said to Jimmy in a mild unpretentious mood of philosophy, "is, of course, a husband; more naturally than people give him credit for, a father; but first of all – and that's what so few women take into consideration —he is a man."

The Duke had fallen into the habit of breaking through the silences when each man, following his own thoughts, would forget the other. And remarks such as these his companion knew, referred in sense and detail to the long talks whose intenser personalities had ceased.

This day Westboro' brought out his little paragraph as, between the hedges of a lowland lane, the two rode at a walk after a long hard canter from Penhaven, some eight miles behind them on the hill. On either side the top of the thorn was veiled with rime. Down the hedge's thickness from his seat on his horse, Bulstrode could look into the dark tangled interstices of the thicket and its delicious browns and greens. Into the thorns here and there dried leaves had fallen, and from the hedge as well as from the country, clouded and gray with mist, came a sharpened sweetness; a blended smell of fields over which early winter had passed; a smell of woods over which the fires cast smoky veils. In the freshness and with the eager exercise, Bulstrode's cheeks had reddened. He sat his horse well, and his enjoyment of life, his ease with it, his charming spirit, shone in the face he turned to the Duke. For some miles given over to the sympathetic task of managing his horse, he had enjoyed like a boy, and during the ride had thought of nothing but the physical delight of the open air and the motion.

"Yes," he returned to his friend's remark, "as far as any point of interest goes, we may grant you that we began as men. I mean to say that monkeys aren't useful in one's deductions for emotional hypotheses, at any rate. I'll grant you for our use that we were men to begin with."

"Damn it all," said his host, "aren't we just as much so to-day, for all our civilization?"

"Well, we don't primarily knock on the head a woman whose physique has pleased us, and carry her off while she's unconscious."

"It might in some cases be a good thing if we did," Westboro' growled.

Bulstrode ran his hand along the silky neck of his horse, from whose nostrils smoke came in little puffs that met the moisture of the air.

"Oh, we're not, you know, so awfully far away from our instincts in anything, old man! There isn't any cast-iron rule about feelings. They depend on the individual."

"Oh, you've never married," Westboro' tried frankly to irritate him, "and you can't, you know – "

The sweet temper of the other accepted the Duke's scorn. "I'm not married, or very theoretical about it, either. One can only, after all, have his own point of view."

"We're not, I expect, fair to the women," the Duke generously acknowledged. "We look for so much in them. We expect them to be so much."

"A wife," Bulstrode completed for him, "a mother, a friend."

And Westboro' finished it. "For them and for other men. And a mistress."

And here Bulstrode took him up for the first time with a note of challenge in his voice.

"And what, my dear man, did you intend that the Duchess should take you for? No, I mean to say, quite man to man, given that any woman could or does contain all the qualities you so temperately ask?"

Westboro' smiled at the first curtness he had ever heard in his friend's voice.

"Oh, you know, we men don't fuss about ourselves."

"You married her at eighteen," Bulstrode said. "You made her a Duchess. You had already lived a life and she was a child beside you in experience. You required motherhood of her, and in return…"

"Well," Westboro' turned about in his saddle and faced his earnest friend. "What then, in your opinion, might I have been?"

"You might have been from the start," Bulstrode said it shortly, "a lover. It's not a bad rôle. We Anglo-Saxons have no sentimental education. Our puritanism makes us half the time timid at courtship and love."

The gentlemen rode a little on with slackened rein. Westboro's eyeglass cord was almost motionless as he stared out between his horse's ears down the lane.

"Perhaps, after all," he fetched it out slowly, "there's something in what you say."

Whether or not there was any truth in Bulstrode's commonplace remark, it lingered in his host's mind all day. It gave him, for the first time, a link to follow – an idea – and the Duke, entirely unused to analysis, accustomed to act if not on impulse, certainly according to his will and pleasure without concession, harked back in a groping, touching fashion like an awkward boy looking for a lost treasure, upsetting, as he went, old haunts, turning over things for years not brought to the light of day. And it took him all the afternoon and a good part of the evening to reach the place where he thought he had lost originally his joy. Unlike the happier boy, he could not seize his bliss once recovered, and stow it away; it was only remembrance that brought him back, and with a tightening heart as he realized once more the form and quality of his lost happiness – there he must leave it and see it fade again into the past.

Jimmy gave his host a chance to follow his absorbed reflections. He effaced himself, and behind a book whose lightness of touch made him agreeably forget the heavier hand of current and daily events, he sat in his dressing-room reading "The Vicar of Wakefield."

When Westboro' came in to him Jimmy looked up and quoted aloud: "When lovely woman stoops to folly and finds at length that men betray…"

"Oh, they console themselves quickly," Westboro' finished. "Don't fancy anything else, my dear fellow, they console themselves."

"They may pretend to do so."

"They succeed."

Westboro' took the little book from his friend's hand and shut it firmly as if afraid that the rest of the verse might slip out and refute him.

"Bulstrode, she consoles herself, she is perfectly happy."

"How are you then so sure?"

"Oh, I hear of her in Paris." The Duke's features contracted. "She's contriving to pass her time – to pass her time."

Bulstrode leaned over towards his friend and, for Westboro' sat opposite him, he put his hand on the Duke's knee.

"You must certainly go to her."

Westboro' stroked his moustache before he answered:

"Not if I never see her again."

"You should decidedly go to her."

The other shook his head. "Not if it meant twice the hell it is now."

"Why not?"

"I went to her once. I may say twice," he slowly said, "since we separated." And as he stopped speaking Bulstrode could only imagine what the result had been.

"I don't think I'm a Westboro' really, for I couldn't follow any woman's carriage puling like a schoolboy as my ancestor did. There's a great deal of my mother's blood in me, and it's a different blend."

Bulstrode's eyes were on the little book between the Duke's aristocratic hands.

"She has, I grant you, a lot to forgive; but she quite well knows all the blame I acknowledge, quite well. I don't believe I'm any worse than the run of mankind, and whether I am or not, I've made all the amends I can and I have nothing more to say."

His eyeglass had dropped; his face looked worn; he showed his age more than a happier man would have done at his years His mood of thinking it out by himself continued for so long that Bulstrode finally asked:

"What, if I may be so near you as to question, do you mean, old chap, to do?"