The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode

"And his family, Jimmy?"

"Damn his family!" risked the aroused Bulstrode.

Mrs. Falconer laughed.

"Really! It is casual of you! but you don't know them and can't! But they can quite spoil the whole thing as far as Molly is concerned. His tradition and race, his home and all it means to him – why you can't roughly run against all the old conventions like that, my dear man!"

"Well," said the ruthless gentleman, "then he can go and feed on their charity, can take to his flesh-pots and give up the girl. She is far too good for any foreign fortune-hunter anyway. You spoil a man, all of you. You'd prefer a disreputable roué to a cowboy with money in his pocket and a heart."

"Would it then prove to you De Presle-Vaulx's heart if he threw over his family and went West?"

"Yes," said the other quickly. "It would prove he loves the girl."

"You forget his mother."

Bulstrode fumed.

"I have not the honor to forget her; I don't know the Marquise de Presle-Vaulx."

"I do," interrupted his friend. "She is a charming, gentle old dear; narrow, if you call it so, clear-headed and delightful. She adores her only son, and thinks quite properly that his name, his estates, beautiful if mortgaged, are a fair exchange for an American dot. Maurice de Presle-Vaulx, after all, does not go poverty-stricken to the woman he marries. There are not so many ways to live after one is twenty-five, and to uproot this scion of an old race, to exact such a sacrifice – "

"It would make a man of him."

"He is one already. There are all kinds, I need not tell you so."

"He is head over heels in debt."

Mrs. Falconer laughed again.

"We make him out an acrobat between us."

"He gambles on borrowed money."

"You mean that you have forced him to borrow from you? He will pay what he owes, I am sure of him."

Bulstrode wheeled and scrutinized her, and said with the natural asperity of a man who is bored by a woman's too generous championship of another man:

"You stand for him warmly."

Mrs. Falconer, reading him, said quickly:

"Oh, I know him thoroughly! He has the faults of his race, but as an individual he is the right sort."

With their pretty habit, her cheeks had grown red in the course of the discussion.

"Please give me my parasol; it's awfully hot here."

He opened it for her and she held its rosy lining against the sun.

Mr. Falconer, who from the rail had been observing, through the haze formed by countless cocktails, the figure of his wife in her white dress, as well as the figure of her faithful squire, here came swaggering up to them both. He was never jealous, but Mr. Bulstrode's uniform courtesy and attention to the woman neglected by her husband often piqued him to attention. As he drew near, Mrs. Falconer asked quickly:

"And the Marquis, Jimmy? What do you suppose he will say to your Wild West scheme?"

Bulstrode smiled.

"Oh, you women understand us even when we are stupid mysteries to ourselves! Tell me, how will he take this?"

"He will refuse." The lady was quick in her decision. "He cannot in consistence do otherwise. He will consider your plan provincial and Yankee, and he will consider, what you ignore, that it will kill his mother. If he cannot marry Molly with the family consent in proper French fashion he will naturally give her up. But first of all, my dear Jimmy, he will put you in your place!"

Bulstrode cast a fatherly glance to where the young people sat talking together: the Marquis in gray clothes of the latest London make, a white rose in his button-hole, and monocle in his eye, a figure more unlike the traditional cowboy one could scarcely conceive.

"Your taste is good, ma chere amie," his voice was delighted. "Your instinct as a connoisseur is faultless; but you are not quite sure of your objet d'art this time." He nodded kindly at the Parisian – "He's all right! he's a true sport, a lover and a man. De Presle-Vaulx knows my Wild West scheme and has accepted."

Molly had put twenty-five francs on Bon Jour and expected to win it. The money Bulstrode played would have bought a very handsome present for his lady, and he felt as if he were making an anonymous gift to the woman he loved.

At the ringing of the bell Falconer left his post by the railing and came up and joined the little group of his friends just below the Grand Stand. He lit a cigar, threw down the match furiously, smoked furiously, and nerved himself for the strain.

Nodding toward the betting contingent he muttered: "They're sheep. They're all betting on the favorite naturally. Bon Jour wasn't mentioned for place even, poor little girl!"

The ignored little racer had ambled around the field, her jockey in crimson and white, doubled up upon her back after the manner of his profession. Bon Jour was as golden red as a young chestnut; she had four white feet that twinkled on the fragrant turf whose odors of crushed blades and green blades, of earth and the distant smell of the sea went to her pretty head. She threw it up eagerly as her disputants filled the field. There were nine horses scheduled, but only five qualified. The Rothschild gelding, an English gray, and two others named for probable places.

"She's cool as a rose," murmured Bon Jour's owner, "and just look at her form, will you!"

It was charming, and already the American's horse was attracting attention.

Molly, with De Presle-Vaulx's aid, rose on her chair, from which her excitement threatened at any moment to precipitate her.

"Oh, Maurice – of course she'll win. Isn't she a dear? How much shall I make on twenty-five francs?"

Bulstrode smiled.

"A frightful amount! There are twenty to one up on her, Molly."

The girl mentally calculated, exclaimed with pleasure and, with sparkling eyes, watched the lining-up of the racers. Neck to neck they stood, a splendid showing of satin and shine from fetlock to forelock, equine beauty enough to gladden a sporting man's heart, and all five were away before Miss Malines was even sure which one was the great Grimace.

From the first the favorite's nose was to the good. His shapely body followed, and when the horses came in sight again beyond the right-hand hedge, he had put four lengths between himself and the others. The winner of the Grand Prix had all the field with him. But the gray gelding who strained at Grimace's flanks had no staying powers, although he was backed as strongly for place as was Grimace to win; as he fell back Bon Jour began to attract notice.

Bulstrode and De Presle-Vaulx exchanged glances over the absorbed figure of Jack Falconer. "She may yet win place," murmured the younger man.

As they came up the wide turf sweep that lay like an emerald sea crested by the dark waves of the hedges, as the horses rocked like ships over the obstacle – Bon Jour closely followed the favorite.

At the moment Miss Malines cried: "Oh, a jockey's off! Oh, Jack, it's Bon Jour! She's thrown her jockey! I see the red and white."

But Falconer biting his cigar fiercely, laughed in scorn. "She's thrown them all right. She's left them all behind her – see!" he pointed, "there are only three running." And, indeed, as they came again in sight, one of the horses was seen to be wandering loose about the course, and another cantered nonchalantly some hundred yards behind.

"She's not even trying," murmured her enchanted owner. "She's cool as a rose."

The cries which had named the Rothschild gelding from the start were now mingled, and Bon Jour, flying around the emerald course, might have heard her name for the first on the public lips. She was running gracefully, her head even with the favorite's saddle and the English gray was a far-off third. Bon Jour was pressing to fame.

At the last hurdle as they appeared flying in full sight of the Grand Stand it was evident the pretty creature had made her better good. The horses leapt simultaneously and came down on all fours, with Grimace to the rear, and amongst the frantic acclamation with which the public is always ready to greet the surprise of unlooked-for merit, Bon Jour passed Grimace by half a metre at the goal. Jack Falconer was an interesting figure on the turf; his horse was worth twenty thousand pounds.

Several hours later, Bulstrode, early in the salon, walked up and down waiting the arrival of the ladies. He had paid downstairs a hundred francs for the privilege of dining in the window of the restaurant, because Mrs. Falconer chanced to remark that one saw the room better from that point. And the head waiter even after this monstrous tip said if "ces dames" were late there would be no possibility to keep this gilt-edged table for them. It was the night of the year at Trouville: Boldi and his Hungarians played to five hundred people in the dining-room.

Bulstrode looked at the clock; they had yet ten minutes' grace.

Extremely satisfied with himself, with Bon Jour, above all with the French Marquis – he felt a glow of affection for the whole French nation.

"How we misjudge them!" he mused; "how we accuse them of clinging to their families' apron strings, of being bad colonists; call them hearthstone huggers, degenerates; and declare that they lack nerve and force to rescue themselves from degeneration! And here without hesitation this young man – " At this moment the salon door opened, and one of the ladies he had been expecting came in, the youngest one, Miss Molly Malines, in a tulle dress, an enormous white hat, a light scarf over her shoulders, and the remains of recent tears on her face.

"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode!" she exclaimed, half putting out her hand and drawing it back again, as she bit her lips: "I thought I should find Mary here; I wanted to see her first to cry with! but of course it is you I should see and not cry with!"

She gave a little gasp and put her handkerchief to her eyes to his consternation; then to his relief controlled herself.

"Maurice has just told me everything," she repeated the word with much the same desperation that De Presle-Vaulx had put into a gesture which to Bulstrode had signified ruin.

"He's too wonderful! too glorious, Mr. Bulstrode, isn't he? I loved him before, but I adore him now! He's glorious. I never heard anything so terrible and so silly!"

Bright tears sprang to brighter eyes, and she dashed them away.

("She's adorable") he was obliged to acknowledge it.

"Why, how could you be so cruel; yes, I will say it, so cruel, so hard, so brutal?"

"Brutal?" – he fairly whispered the word in his surprise.

"Why, fancy Maurice in the West, in the dreadful Western life, in that climate – !"

"Why, it is the Garden of Eden," murmured Bulstrode.

"Oh, I mean to say with cattle and cowboys."

"Come," interrupted her father's friend, practically, "you don't know what you are talking about, Molly. You don't talk like an American girl. They've spoiled De Presle-Vaulx, and this will make a man of him!"

Miss Malines called out in scorn:

"A man of him! What do you think he is? He's the finest man I ever saw. You don't know him. Just because he has a title and his mother spoils him, and because he has been a little reckless in debts and things, you throw him over as you do all the French race without knowing them!"

Her tears had dried and her cheeks flamed.

"Why, Maurice has served three years as a common soldier in the Madagascar Army; and that's no cinch! Cuba's a joke to it. He's had the fever and marched with it. He's slept all night with no covering but the clothes he had worn for weeks. He's eaten bread and drunk dirty water. He's been a soldier three years. The way I came to know him was at Dinard where he swam out into the sea to save a fisherman who couldn't swim, and all the town was out in the storm to welcome him! They carried him up the streets in their arms – " she waited a minute to steady her voice – "He's been two years exploring in Abyssinia with a native caravan – no white man near him, he's the youngest man wearing the Legion d'Honneur in France. And you want to send him out to make a cowboy of him in the American West to turn him into a man!"

Mr. Bulstrode had never heard such impressive youthful scorn. Molly threw back her pretty head and laughed.

"Do you know many cowboys who have been three years a soldier; travelled through unexplored countries; written a book that was crowned by an academy? Well, I don't!" she said boldly. "Of course I like his title, of course I am proud of his traditions. They're fine! And it is no dishonor to love his château and his Paris hôtel, and I'd love his mother, too – if she'd let me. But I adore Maurice as he is, and he's man enough for me!"

The floor seemed to quiver under poor Bulstrode, who could scarcely see distinctly the lovely excited face as he ventured timidly:

"I didn't know all these things, Molly."

She was still unpitying.

"Of course not! Americans never do know. They only judge. You didn't think Maurice would tell you all his good points! He doesn't think they are anything. He only sees the fact that he has debts and that we are both poor and his family won't give their consent."

Mr. Bulstrode smiled and said:

"He is naturally forced to see these things, my dear child."

The girl softened at his tone and said more gently:

"Well, they are terrible facts, of course. It only means that my heart is broken, but it doesn't mean that I will consent to your plan, or to his plan, Mr. Bulstrode. I won't make him break his mother's heart and ruin his career for me."

The gentleman came up and took her hands: his voice was very gentle:

"What, then, will you do?"

"Oh, wait," she said with less spirit. "Wait until his mother consents, or until she dies…" She began to hang her head. Her eulogy of her lover over, only the dry facts of the present remained. She had no more enthusiasm with which to animate her voice.

Here Mrs. Falconer and the Marquis opened the door, and started back as the animated picture of beauty being consoled by kindness met their view.

"Oh, come along in!" cried the girl cheerily. "I have just been ballyragging Mr. Bulstrode!"

De Presle-Vaulx came eagerly forward:

"Don't listen to her, Monsieur! Molly's tired out after so much success."

The startled benefactor looked doubtfully from her to the young man.

"And you?"

"Oh, I?" shrugged De Presle-Vaulx, "I'm already half cowboy!"

Mary Falconer put her arm round Molly's waist, drew her to her, "and Molly is more than half Marquise."

"Mr. Bulstrode," again cried the girl impetuously. "Please reason with him! He's horribly obstinate. You have put this dreadful idea in his head; now please tell him how ridiculous it is. If he goes West and spoils his career and breaks with his family, I'll never marry him! As it is, I will wait for ever!"

"But my dear child!" Mary Falconer was determined to have the whole thing out before them, "you don't seem to get it into your head that you have neither of you a sou, and Maurice can never earn any money in France."

Miss Malines, to whom money meant that she drew on her father, the extravagant stockbroker whose seat even in the Stock Exchange was mortgaged, and who had not ten thousand dollars' capital in the world – lost countenance here at the cruel and vulgar introduction of the commodity on which life turns. She sighed, her lips trembled, and she capitulated:

"Oh, if that's really true … as I suppose it is – "

Bulstrode watched her, she had grown pale – she drew a deep breath, and, looking up, not at her lover, but at the elder man, said softly:

"Why, I guess I'll have to give him quite up then."

But here De Presle-Vaulx made an exclamation, and before them all took Molly in his arms:

"No," he said tenderly, "never, never! That the last of all! Mr. Bulstrode is right. I must work for you, and I will. We'll both go West together. Couldn't you? Wouldn't you come with me?"

… "And your mother?" asked the girl.

"Nothing – " De Presle-Vaulx whispered, "nothing, counts but you."

Over their heads Bulstrode met his friend's eye, and in his were – he could not help it – triumph, keen delight, and in hers there was anger at him and tears.

At this moment the waiter put his head in at the door and implored Monsieur to come down if he wanted the seat in the window.

"Oh, we're coming!" Mrs. Falconer cried impatiently. "Molly, there's some eau-de-cologne on the table. Put it on your eyes. Don't be long or we'll lose our place. The West will keep!"

She went out of the door and Bulstrode followed her. In the hall she said tartly:

"Well, I hope you're satisfied! I never saw a more perfect inquisitor. Why didn't you live at the time of the Spanish persecution?"

He ignored her scathing question:

"I am satisfied," he said happily, "with both of them; they're bricks."

The lady made no reply as she rustled along by his side to the elevator.

From the floors below came the clear, bright sound of the Hungarian music in an American cake-walk and the odor of cigars and wines and the distinct suggestion of good things to eat came tempting their nostrils.

As Bulstrode followed the brilliant woman, a sense of defeat came over him and with less conviction he repeated:

"I am satisfied, but you, my friend, are not."

"Oh," shrugged Mary Falconer desperately, "you know I've no right to think, or feel, or criticise! I never pretend to run people's lives or to act the benefactor or to take the place of Fate."

The light danced and sparkled on the jet in her black dress, on the jewels on her neck. Under her black feather-hat her face, brilliant and glowing, seemed for once to be defiant to him, her handsome eyes were dark with displeasure.

The poor fellow could never recall having caused a cloud to ruffle her face before in his life. It was not like her. Her tenderness for a second had gone. He could not live without that, he knew it, what ever else he must forego.

He said, with some sadness, "I suppose you're right: if one can buy even a honeymoon for another couple he shouldn't lose the opportunity."

She looked up at him quickly. They had reached the ground floor – they had left the elevator and they stood side by side in the hall. The lady had a very trifle softened, not very much, still he noticed the change and was duly grateful.

"We must wait here," she said, "for the others to come down. I can't let Molly go in alone, and I don't know where my husband is; I haven't seen him all day."

Bulstrode continued spiritlessly: "Molly, if you remember, begged me to tell De Presle-Vaulx how 'perfectly ridiculous' my scheme for the Wild West is. I will tell him this – you will coach me, – there'll be some pleasure in that, at least! and then I'll find out for what sum the Marquise de Presle-Vaulx will sell her son. I'll buy him," he said, "for Molly, and of course," he brought it out quite simply, "I shall dot the girl."

And then the lady stepped back and looked at him. He felt, before that she had merely swept him with her eyes; now she looked at him. She cried his name out – "Jimmy!" – that was all.

But in the exclamation, in the change of her mobile face, in the lovely gesture that her hand made, as if it would have gone to his, Bulstrode was forced to feel himself eminently, gloriously repaid, and it is not too much to say that he did.

THE FIFTH ADVENTURE

V

IN WHICH HE MAKES NOBODY HAPPY AT ALL

Bulstrode stood before the entrance of the Hôtel de Paris bidding his friends good-night. Watching them, at least one of them, enter in under the shelter of the glass pavilion, he considered how much more lonely he was at that special moment than he could remember having been before. Of course he had bidden Mary Falconer good-night a hundred dozen times in the course of his life, but it seemed to come with a more sublime significance than ever how he gave her up every time he said good-by and how he was himself left alone. And yet, had Mrs. Falconer been asked, she would have said that she never found her friend more cold and more constrained. In his correct evening dress with the flower she herself had given him in his buttonhole, his panama in his hand, he had been absorbed in her beauty, in the grace of her dark dress, bright with scintillating ornaments – her big feathered hat under which her face was more lovely, more alluring than ever; and nothing in his eyes told the woman what he thought and felt.

She touched his arm, saying:

"Look, Jimmy."

"Isn't that the lovely woman we've so often remarked? See, she's all alone, how curious! She's going over to the Casino to play, I suppose. What can have happened to the man who has been with her all this time? Where is the Prince Pollona?"

As Bulstrode turned his head in the direction indicated, through the trees passed along the figure of a slender woman, trailing her thin gown over the pebbles and the grass. She disappeared in the lighted doorway of the Casino.

"You're quite bearish to-night," Mrs. Falconer said reproachfully, "quite a bear. I believe you're angry! Dear Jimmy, you may, I promise, carry out all your philanthropies without my interference; I won't even criticise or tease. I promise you next time you shall go sweetly and serenely on your foolish way!"

"Oh," he got out with effort, "I believe I've suddenly grown awfully selfish, for I find I'm so ridiculous as only to want things for myself – "

(When he stopped she did not help him but, instead, persisted gently with the wicked feminine way she had of urging him, tempting him on.)

"What, then, what do you wish? Can't you tell me?"

He laughed almost roughly and said, "No, it's a secret, and I'm one of those unusual creatures who can keep a secret."

The woman's face changed. He saw the shadow that crossed it. "Come," she sighed, "you must bid me good-night…"

And at this moment he had seen Jack Falconer emerge from a still more shadowy corner, a cigar between his teeth. Drawing his wife's arm through his, Falconer nodded to the other man and said they had all better be going up. Bulstrode noted bitterly the satisfaction on Falconer's bestial, indulgent face and the content that man felt with himself this evening, his triumph at the race's termination. His horse had won the stakes and was famous, his wife had been called to-day the loveliest woman in Trouville, and not for the first time Bulstrode suffered from it, the proprietorship with which Falconer considered his wife. For the smallest part of a second he fancied that the woman drew away, half turned away, looked toward him; and in dread that he might, if he met her eyes, see some look like appeal, Bulstrode avoided meeting her glance. He saw them pass under the glass roof of the hôtel leaving him standing alone.

The deserted lover waited until they had disappeared; then, turning abruptly, vaguely in search of human beings with whom he might exchange a word should he feel inclined to talk, dreading the deserted gardens ami finding his own rooms the dreariest prospect of all, he went into the Casino with the intention of waiting for the Frenchman who he thought more than likely would come and join him there. The Marquis failing him, Bulstrode chose a place not far from the table where the lovely woman, that Mrs. Falconer and himself had remarked, seated herself before the game.

Bulstrode's sense of desolation and loneliness would not leave him. If his luck had been bad, the excitement of the sport might have brought him some sensation; but, on the contrary, he won. "Only," he said humorously, as he gathered up his winnings, "only unlucky in love!"

It was well on in the night when he thrust his last roll of bank notes into his pocket. He had beaten the bank; he had raked up and stuffed away a small fortune. As he wandered out through the deserted rooms, he noted, bent over the table, her head in her hand, the woman who, in spite of his sincere absorption in Mary Falconer, had, like a temptation, crossed his mind when he first came into the Casino. No one disturbed her, and she had remained in this dejected posture for some time. This one amongst the many women in Trouville, Bulstrode and his friends had remarked for several days. She had first appeared alone; made a discreet début on the beach, passed through the Rue de Paris and kept away from the more public parts of the town. Later she had been joined by a man well known in the world, the Prince Pollona, who was travelling incognito. The woman's beauty and manner were such that her actual standing was a mooted question; it had even been remarked that she was the princess herself incognita, but that they all knew to be impossible.