The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode

Before the official who waited to see the last players leave the salle could speak to her, she rose of her own accord, gathering her silken cloak about her, and went quickly from the gambling room. Once on the stairway, however, her footsteps halted and she went slowly down as if reluctant to leave the shelter of the brightly lighted apartments. Bulstrode following her, observed her closely; tall, very slender, with a fine carriage and a lovely blonde head set on the most graceful of necks, older than Molly and younger than Mrs. Falconer, she was quite as comme il faut. All along she had worn a collar and rope of pearls which had excited Molly's enthusiasm. To-night she was denuded of her jewels; her neck was bare. Bulstrode remarked this as he walked behind in full view of the soft adorable nuque below the curls of the girl's fair hair. She trailed her dress slowly through the garden walks, her white figure in the darkness escaping from him a little as the trees made an avenue for her. But Bulstrode distinctly felt that he was expected to follow. Whether or not he might intrude he did not ask, as he came along, surprised however to see her actually stop short within a few feet of him. Under the full light of one of the big lamps, she stood motionless, her arms by her side, her chin raised. Now that he was quite near her he found her more lovely than he had even imagined.

He went up directly to her and, without asking how she might take his interference, said: "You cannot remain here alone, Madame, the gardens are deserted. What can I do for you?"

As he so spoke in his kind voice the woman lifted her head and looked full at him; Bulstrode was surprised at her words and more particularly at her voice.

"You – " she breathed, "you?"

Taking it for granted that for some reason or other it might be him more than any other man, Bulstrode went on. "You seem more or less to be in trouble, if I may say so. Won't you please let me be of some service to you – let me at least see you out of these gloomy gardens?"

But the woman, whose face had flushed, exclaimed: "Oh, no, no! Please don't bother; please leave me. I want to be alone." And, as she spoke, she turned and went away from him some few steps.

Jimmy Bulstrode never knew what impulse made him spring forward and with one sudden gesture dash from her hand what it held. But the little object fell some distance away, hard down in the grass, to be found the next morning by the guardians of the place and considered as a relic of the fortunes of Casino hazard.

"Heavens!" exclaimed the gentleman, and he caught in his hand the slender wrist from which he had just dashed the weapon. "My good God! You poor child, why, why – " and he could go no further. The woman's face, although moved, was singularly tranquil for the face of a woman on the verge of self-destruction.

"Won't you leave me," she whispered and Bulstrode, gathering himself together, said firmly:

"Leave you? Not now, certainly, not for anything in the world. And you must let me take you home."

After a few moments' silence in which she bit her lip and apparently controlled a burst of hysterical weeping, the young woman accepted his offer and very lightly put her hand on his arm. "You may, if you like," she consented, "take me home, as you call it. I am staying at the Hôtel des Roches Noires."

From the Casino gardens through the silent town without exchanging one word with her – for he saw she wished to be silent – Jimmy took the lady, as he called it, home. Once in the big corridor of the vast hôtel, into whose impersonal shelter they entered as the only late comers, he stood for a second before bidding her good-night, whilst the porter eyed them, scarcely with curiosity, so used was he to late entrances of this kind which he imagined he fully understood.

"Good-night – " Bulstrode started and at once cut himself short, for he did not really intend to say it then – he had not spoken to her and he knew he would never leave her until at least he was sure she would not take her life before the next morning.

The girl extended her hand, her beautiful face was gray. "Will you not," she asked, "come up with me to my drawing-room? I am quite alone."

Bulstrode bowed and without hesitation followed her up the stairs to the conventional suite of hôtel rooms, where, in the little salon, trunks stood about in the evident indications of hasty packing.

The girl threw her gloves, her handkerchief and her soft silken cloak on the table. She then seated herself in a corner of the sofa by an open dressing-bag and Bulstrode, at her invitation, took a chair opposite. He scarcely knew how to begin his conversation with her, but he determined at once to go toward what he believed to be the most crying need.

"You lost to-night," he said. "I saw it. As it happened, I was lucky. I have no need of money, none." He had drawn from his pocket piles of louis; he took out from his wallet a roll of notes.

He saw, too, as well as the look of passion and admiration, that her face was familiar, at least that there was about it something that suggested remembrance.

"This," she said, "is a fortune!" Her accent was British and her voice very soft and sweet. "It is quite a large fortune, isn't it? My debts here are small. I have not fifty pounds in the world," she said smiling, "I work for my living, too. I have been extravagant, for I had really made a lot of money, but lately I've thrown everything away. Yesterday my pearls were sold, and my jewels went last week; the races and the Casino did the rest! This would make me quite rich."

"Work for her living!" Bulstrode thought, with a pang as he looked at her. "Heavens, poor dear!" A thousand questions came to his lips, but he asked her none. He was mastering the feelings her personality, her trouble, and the night, aroused. He also decided to go at once, while there was still time.

"It is very droll that this money should have come from you;" she repeated "from you," with the insistence on the pronoun that he had before remarked as strange. "Even now you don't know me, do you? Don't you know who I am?"

"No," Bulstrode wondered, "and yet I have certainly seen you before, but save as I have noticed and admired you here, I don't think I know you. Should I?"

"You have seen me then here?" she caught delighted, "you have actually noticed me? You said 'admire'; did you perhaps find something in me to like?"

"Who," he said with sincerity, "could help himself! Of course I've seen you and remarked you with your friend."

Here she bit her lip and put up her hand. "Oh, please," she frowned, "Oh, please!"

Bulstrode, surprised at her accents of distress, murmured an excuse and said he was much at fault, he should remember. But here the girl smiled. "Well, it is not exactly a duty to know me; my name is not quite unknown. I play in 'The Shining Lights Company,' 'The Warren Company,' I am Felicia Warren —now, haven't you seen me play!"

He was sorry, very, very sorry that he had not! Oh, but he knew her name and her success; they were famous. He wished he could have assured her that he had admired her before the footlights …!

Felicia Warren's eyes strayed down at the table on which the money was so alluringly spread.

"I've been touring in Australia and the Colonies, still I go now and then to the Continent, though I am almost always in London." She paused, then regarded him fully with her great blue eyes. "Don't you remember, Mr. Bulstrode, a great many years ago when you took a shooting-box in Glousceshire? Don't you remember…?"

Staring at her, trying to place the image which was now taking form, he did; he did remember it and she?

"There was a mill there on the place. Rugby Doan was the miller, he is the miller still." Didn't Mr. Bulstrode remember that Doan had a daughter? She had been fifteen years old then, she had ambitions, she was altogether a ridiculous and silly little thing; didn't he remember?

Bulstrode was silent.

The gentleman, Mr. Bulstrode, took a strong liking to Doan; he gave him the money to educate his daughter. Oh, dear me, such a generous lot of money! Then, as the girl was extraordinarily silly (she had ambitions) she went on the stage. Her father never forgave her; poor father! She had never seen him since. "Mr. Bulstrode, don't you remember Felicia Doan? – I am the miller's daughter."

Bulstrode extended his hand. He wanted to say: "My poor child, my poor little girl," but Miss Warren's dignity forbade it. "No wonder your face was familiar," he said quietly; "no wonder! How I wish I might have seen you play, but we must do something to make your father look at things in a reasonable way. What can we do?"

The girl shook her head. "Nothing" she said absently, "oh, nothing. You know what an English yeoman is! or perhaps you don't! My greatest kindness is to keep away from the Mill on the Rose" …

But Felicia Warren was not thinking of Glousceshire or of her father. Still looking down at the money on the table, not even toward her newly-found friend, she went on, "It is not half as curious, our meeting here, as one might think. I knew you were here when I came and I have watched you every day with – with your friend." A slight expression of amusement crossed her face as, looking up, she caught his puzzled expression. "Ah, you wonder about it!" she laughed gently. Coming a little nearer to him, she went on: "You see, you have been my benefactor, haven't you?"

(Bulstrode wondered in just how far he had been beneficent!) "It's natural I should remember you with gratitude, isn't it? Thanks to you I have made my name." Her pride was touching. "You've made it possible for me to know the world, to know life and to realize my career. And now," she emphasized, "you've come to save my life and afterward give me a little fortune." Here she again pointed to the money. "My father took your money for years, Mr. Bulstrode, but this, this must all go back. You must take it back soon – not that it could really tempt me, but it hurts me to see it there."

Bulstrode, more wretched than he had yet been in his philanthropic failures stared at her helplessly. This blind beneficence, this gift made to the miller in a moment of enthusiasm had produced – how could he otherwise believe – fatal results? Here was this delicate creature in the fastest place in Europe, deserted by a man who had brought her here – on the verge of suicide.

Whilst speaking, Felicia Warren gathered up the gold and notes and she was thrusting the money into his hand.

"Please, please be reasonable," he pleaded. "You must let me help you. There isn't any question of delicacy in the situation where you find yourself to-night. If ever a man should be a woman's friend, I should be that friend to you, and you must let me. Don't refuse. Money is such a little thing, such a stupid little thing."

Miss Warren shook her head obstinately. "Oh, that depends! I've worked so hard that money often seems to me everything. Indeed, I thought so to-night when I had not a sou! I shall think so to-morrow when they seize my trunks for the hôtel bill."

"Seize your trunks!" he exclaimed. "Why – you don't mean to say – ?"

The actress blushed crimson. "Oh, of course you thought otherwise," she said, throwing up her pretty head. "I pay for my own livelihood, Mr. Bulstrode," she told him proudly, "I pay for everything I have and wear and eat and do. Don't feel badly at misunderstanding," she comforted him sweetly – "You have nothing to apologize for. Why should you or anyone think otherwise? But I don't care in the least what people say or think; that is, I only care what one person says."

With some of his gold in her palm and some of his bills in her hands, Felicia Warren put both her hands on Bulstrode's arm. "No," she said softly, "I only care what one person thinks. Can't you see that you mustn't give me this?"

"No," he persisted doggedly, charmed by her beyond his reason and angry to find that she would not let him help her in the way he wished, "I do not see! You must let me help you, you shall not be driven to desperation."

"Driven to desperation!" her expression seemed to say. Yes, so she had been, but not through financial anxieties.

"Why, I had rather starve than take your money. I could far sooner have taken it from poor Pollona; and he left me so dreadfully angry this morning."

For a second neither spoke. He saw the soft mobile face touched to its finest. Felicia's eyes were violet and large, and their expression at the moment pierced him with its appeal.

"Don't you see?" she whispered. Her voice broke here. Her hands trembled on his arm, some of the gold rattled on the floor and rolled under the divan. She swayed and Bulstrode caught her.

"… Ever since you came to the mill," she whispered, "ever – since – you – came – to – the – mill."

Before Bulstrode had time to realize what she said, or the fact that his arm was about her, she had rushed across the room, thrown open the window and gone out on the balcony. Left alone with what her words implied, Bulstrode watched her go.

The clock on the mantel pointed to three and through the open window came the long, rushing sound of the sea on the beach. The day was breaking and Bulstrode could see the white figure of Felicia Warren between the lighted room and the dawn.

He told himself that there was no reason why he should look upon her as anything but an adventuress – and a very clever one – a very dangerous one. But, at all events, there was no doubt that she was Felicia Doan. She refused his money, and she told him that she loved him. But Jimmy Bulstrode, man of the world as he was, did not reason at all along those lines. Whether because he was vain, as most men are, or because he was susceptible as he always told himself he was, he believed what she said. More than once during the week at Trouville, when she should have been absorbed in Polonna, Bulstrode had caught her eyes fastened upon himself and as soon as she had met his own she had turned hers away. He had no difficulty now in recalling the Mill on the Rose, or the lovely bit of country where his shooting-box had held him captive for nearly the whole hunting season. Nor had he any difficulty in recalling the miller and his pretty daughter. Felicia even then had been a wonder of good looks, and very intelligent and mature. He could even see her as a child more plainly than he could recall the woman who had just left him. She had been a pretty, romantic girl and – she had deeply charmed him. He had walked with her under the willows; he had told her many things; he had gone boating with her on the Rose; he had tramped with her along the English lanes. Of course he had been wrong. He had known it at the time – he had known it. And perhaps one reason why he never reverted willingly to the days spent with the girl was because his conscience had not left him free. The money given to Doan, Bulstrode had always felt, was a sort of recompense for hours of pleasure to which he had no right. Even at the time he had feared that he had disturbed the girl's peace, and because he had not wished to disturb his own, he had given up his lease and left the place. Twelve years! Well, they had altered her enormously, and her life had altered her and her experiences, and she was a very charming creature. She was, in a measure, his very own work – almost his creation. He had helped her to change her station, to alter her life. What had she become?

Bulstrode's reflections consumed twenty minutes by the clock. He had smoked a cigarette and walked up and down the deserted room, passing many times the table where his gold lay scattered.

Finally – he did not dare to trust himself to go out to her – he called her name, Felicia Warren's name, gently, and she came directly in.

Whilst alone on the balcony she had wept. Bulstrode could see the trace on her cheeks and she was paler even than when he had struck the pistol from her hand in the gardens of the Casino. She came over to where he stood and said:

"It's not a ruse, Mr. Bulstrode. Girls like me always have ideals. It is fame with some, money with others, dress and a social craze for a lot of them. But with me, ever since you came it has been YOU – everything you said to me twelve years ago I have remembered. Silly as it seems, I could almost tell the very words. I have seen a lot of men since, too many," she said, "and known them too well. But I have never seen anybody like you."

Bulstrode tried to stop her.

"But no," she pleaded, "let me go on. I've dreamed I might grow great, and that some day you would see me play and that I should play so well that you would go crazy about me! I have thought this really, and I have lived for it, really – until – until – "

As he did not question her or interrupt, she went on:

"I said it was an ideal. Thinking of you and what I'd like to grow for you kept me, in spite of everything – and I fancy you know in my profession what that means – good."

Here Felicia Warren met his eyes frankly with the same look of entire innocence with which she might have met his eyes under the willows near her father's mill.

"I've been so horribly afraid that when you did come there might be heaps of things you would not like that I have been awfully hard on myself, awfully!"

She was lacing and unlacing her slender fingers as she talked.

"I went to Paris this spring because I saw that you were there, and after passing you several times in the Bois and seeing that as far as I could judge you were just the same as you had been, I took a new courage hoping, waiting, for you, and being the best I knew. It seems awfully queer to hear a woman talk like this to a man," she understood it herself – "but you see I am used to speaking in public and I suppose it is easier for me than for most women."

Bulstrode, more eager than anything else to know what her life had really been, surprised and incredulous at everything she said, broke in here:

"But this – this man?"

"Oh, Pollona," she replied, "has been there for years, for years. He has loved me ever since I first made my début and he follows me everywhere like a dog. I have never looked at any of them, until this week."

With a sigh as if she renounced all her dreams, she said: "I grew tired of my romantic folly. I was ill and nervous and could not play any more, and that was dreadful. So, when Pollona came to me in Paris this spring, I gave him a sort of promise. I told him that I was going to Trouville for the Grande Semaine, that I would think things over and that I would send him word."

She picked up her handkerchief from the table where it lay beside her gloves and her cloak and twisted the delicate object in her hands, whose whiteness and transparency Bulstrode remarked. They were clever hands, and showed her temperament and showed also singular breeding for one born in the state of life from which she had come.

"Well," she said shortly, "as you have seen, I gave in – I gave in at last."

"Why," Bulstrode asked abruptly, "did he leave you?"

But instead of answering him, the girl said: "But you don't ask me why I sent for him to come?"

He was silent.

Here she hid her face and through her fingers he could see the red rise all along her cheek. Her attitude, and more what she implied than what she said, and what he thought and feared, made the situation too much for him. With a slight exclamation he put his arm about her and drew her to him. As she rested against him he could feel her relax, hear her sigh deeply. But, as he bent over her, she besought him to let her go, to set her free, and he obeyed at once.

"There," she said, "don't do that again – don't! Pollona left me because he was jealous of you."

But at this, in sheer unbelief, her hearer exclaimed: "Oh, my dear girl!"

"Oh, yes," she nodded, "when he found that I did not love him, that I could never love him, he forced me to tell him the truth. Oh, don't be afraid," she said, as though she anticipated his anger, "you are in no wise connected with it. He thinks of me as a romantic, foolish girl. He has laughed at me, tried to shake my faith, to destroy my ideal, but at least he was honest enough to believe me; and that is all I asked of him."

Not for a moment did Bulstrode feel that she was weaving a web for him. There was something about her so sincere and simple, she was so fragile and fine and fair, there was so much of distinction in all she did and said that it put her well nigh, one might say touchingly, apart from the class to which she belonged. Her art and her knocking about, instead of coarsening her, had refined her. She looked like a bit of ivory, worn by experience, and struggle, to a fine polish; there was a brilliance about her and he understood and felt, he instinctively saw and knew, that she was unspoiled.

It took him some half second to pull himself together. Then to turn her thoughts from him, his from her, if he might, he questioned:

"What sort of a man is Prince Pollona?"

"Oh," she cried warmly, "the best! a kind, good, honorable friend. He deserves something better than the horrors I have put him through, poor dear!"

"He seemed very devoted to you," Bulstrode said, "if one could judge."

Not without pride she admitted that he was, and that the Prince had always wanted to marry her. "I might have married him," she repeated, "easily a score of times. But how it appears to interest you – " she said jealously.

"Only as he interests you," replied Bulstrode, "and what you tell me is a great satisfaction. To be the Princess Pollona is an honor that many women would be glad to have conferred upon them." Felicia Warren's good looks were undeniable, her genre was exquisite, and Bulstrode, again with no effort, believed all she said. Princes had married far less royal-looking women, of far more humble antecedents than Felicia Warren.

"Oh, his rank didn't dazzle me," she murmured absently, "they seem all alike, and when they find out that I am not a certain kind they ask me to marry them… But if I could only get back to the Mill on the Rose, Mr. Bulstrode! If I might again see it as I used, if I could see you there as I used to see you – walk by your side; row with you on the river; if I could hear the wheel again as I used to hear it, then" – her voice was delicious, a very note of the river of which she spoke. Oh, she must act well, there was no doubt about that; no wonder she had been a success: "If I might walk there with you – titles, even my art and all the rest" – she did not apparently dare to look at him as she spoke, but fixed her eyes across the room as if she saw back twelve years into – shire … "if I could only, only go back again with you!"

In spite of himself, carried away by her voice, Bulstrode said:

"You shall, you shall go back with me!"

"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she gave a little cry and caught his hand, steadying herself by the act.

"Wait," he murmured, "wait, let me think it all out." And, as she had done, Bulstrode walked over to the window, to the balcony where the fresh air met his face, where the breath from the sea fanned him, blended with the scent of the meadow. Before Bulstrode the first reflection of the morning lay like silver on the sea.

When he finally went back into the room, Felicia Warren had not moved. Just as he left her, she sat, deep back into the divan, leaning on her hand, with something like the glory of a dream on her face. Standing in front of her, he said slowly:

"I'm entirely free. No one in the world depends upon me. I have no tie, or bond to my life. I have freedom and money. So far – if what you say is all true, don't start so, for I believe it, every word – so far, I have spoiled your life."

But the girl shook her head.

"Oh, no, you haven't," she assured him. "We make our own lives, I expect, and I told you that I could remember everything you ever said to me in the past – you never lied to me, and you were never anything but kind and dear. I've been a fool, a fool!"

Sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had at last drifted along the shore to his feet. Unhappy and deserted, she reached the very tenderest part of Bulstrode's nature. Cost him what it would, he must save her.