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 adear? 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'sthrownher jockey! I see the red and white."
But Falconer biting his cigar fiercely, laughed in scorn. "She's thrownthemall right. She's left them allbehindher—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 tocrywith! but of course it is you Ishouldsee 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 meeverything," 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! tooglorious, Mr. Bulstrode, isn't he? I loved him before, but Iadorehim 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; andthat'sno 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 Mauriceas 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 onlyjudge. 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. "Pleasereason with him! He's horribly obstinate. You have put this dreadful idea in his head; now please tell him howridiculousit 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!Thatthe 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 butyou."
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:
"Iamsatisfied, but you, my friend, are not."
"Oh," shrugged Mary Falconer desperately, "you knowI'veno 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 evena honeymoonfor 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 shalldotthe 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.
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.Whatcan 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 discreetdébuton 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.
Before the official who waited to see the last players leave thesallecould 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 ascomme 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 adorablenuquebelow 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 fromyou;" 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'tthinkI know you. Should I?"
"Youhaveseen 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; hedidremember 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 hehadbeen 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, butthis, thismust 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 foreverythingI 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 donotsee! 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, therewasno 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 youdidcome 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 mydébutand 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, hergenrewas 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 couldonly, onlygo 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.
But, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder:
"You must gonow: that is what I ask you to do. I have seemed, and indeed I have thrown myself upon your mercy; but, in reality, I don't do any such thing. You will soon forget me, as you have been able to do all these years. The table is full of your money. I am poor, and yet I don't take it. Doesn'tthatprove a little my good faith? Doesn't it? Only think of me as the most romantic dreamer you ever saw, and of nothing more. Oh,no," she breathed softly, "no, a thousand times...!
"I've answered your question before you've asked it! No, I couldn't; no woman who wants love is content with pity. I would rather starve than take money from you although I have lived on your money for years. I would rather be unhappy than take what you could offer me for love. You mustn't speak; you mustn't ask me. The temptation is very great, you know, and itmightwreck me. No, Mr. Bulstrode, and the reason why I say it is because I've seen."
"'I've seen?'" he repeated her words. "You've seen, but what do you mean—what have you seen?"
"I'm going to tell you why I sent for Prince Pollona, although you don't ask me. I came to Trouville alone. I saw you; I've watched you with your friends." Bulstrode accepted quietly. "The two young people are engaged to be married and the other two are husband and wife—well...?"
A spasm of pain crossed Felicia Warren's face and she put what she had to say with singular delicacy for an actress who had risen from the people.
"I know," she said, "I understand, but when I saw you, I knew that there was no hope for any other woman who loved you—and I gave you up then. I sent for Pollona."
The introduction of even so little into the room as the suggestion of the woman he loved, startled Bulstrode as nothing else under the circumstances could have done. It struck him like a lash. He was disenchanted, and he more quietly considered the girl whose confession and whose beauty had made him nearly disloyal.
Felicia Warren, as though she took it in her own hands and, mistress of herself, knew how much she could take and what she could deny herself, laid her hand on his arm.
"You can do nothing at all, just as you have always done—and I—I can learn to forget. But I have refused your money to-night," she said piteously, "haven't I? and I am penniless; I have refused more too; perhaps what no woman who loves could refuse as well. Don't you think that there is something due me? Answer me this? Tell me. Youdolove her, youdo?"
As she leaned against him, the years seemed to fall away and to leave her a girl again, nothing more than a child he had known. He took her face between his hands and looked into it as one might look into a well. He saw nothing but his own reflection there.
"God knows," he said deeply, "I could not willingly pain a living creature, and to think that I should have made you suffer, have made a woman suffer for years. Let me do all I can, my dear, let me—let me!"
"You love her?" she persisted.
His hands dropped to his side. "With all my soul," he said, "with all my soul!" He thought she would sink to the floor, but instead she caught fast hold of the table on which his money lay. She leaned on it heavily, refusing his aid. He took one of the girl's cold hands in his.
"Listen, listen! Let me say a word. How do you think it makes a man feel to hear what you have told me to-night? to see you as you are, to grow to know you in such a short—in such a terrible way, and in a few hours to grow to know you so well, to find you dear, desirable, and then to leave you, as you tell me I must leave you. I can't do it; I have never been so miserable in my life, and if I find I am entirely helpless to serve you I can never get over the regret."
Felicia Warren turned a little.
"I have found you near disaster," Bulstrode urged, "I must and will see you to the shore. If you utterly refuse to let me take care of you as I can and will, will you then," he hesitated, then brought it out—"Willyou marryPrince Pollona?"
She drew from him with a cry, and by what he said she seemed to have gained sudden strength.
"My God!" she breathed, "You ask methat? Oh, it proves, it proves how less than nothing I am..."
Bulstrode saw he could not, must not undeceive her.
"If you wish me to dothat," she cried. "Oh, how dreadfully, how cruelly, it breaks my dream!"
Bulstrode said authoritatively, "Listen! listen for one moment."
The eyes of the girl were dark with defiance; she brushed her hair off her brow with the back of her hand and stared straight before her.
"—Otherwise," said Bulstrode, "I will remain here; I shall not leave these rooms till morning and you will then be forced to marry me, and since you think as you do, since I have told you my secret, ruin perhaps three lives."
He had her at bay, and for a brief second, he thought she would accept his menace. But then in a sudden her anger vanished and her face softened.
"You know," she said, "that, loving you as I do, whatever you tell me to do, I must. But let me go on with my career. Let me work, let me work, and be free!"
He said decidedly, "No! You must be protected from yourself; you must have some one with you who will take care of you as I cannot do. You must do this for me. Is Pollona distasteful to you?" he pursued, "do youhatehim?"
She made an indifferent shrug of her shoulders.
Bulstrode was watching her face keenly, and after a second said, "No, you do not hate him. You sent for him to come to you here. He was the one to whom you turned, Felicia; turn to him now."
As she wavered and hesitated, he insisted, coming close to her:
"You have an ideal, you told me—well we can't get on without them. Your ideal has helped you, hasn't it? It seems pretty well to have stood by you. I have one too, you must understand that, and I ask you to help me to keep it secret now."
"Why, what do you mean?" she questioned breathlessly.
"I mean," he said gravely, "that I am a very lonely man. My days are absolutely desolate excepting for those things that I can put into them. I have nothing in my life and I am not meant for such a lot. I am not meant for that! Such an existence has bitter temptations for every man, and although I have never seen you before, possibly my fate and Pollona's rest to-night with you."
Felicia Warren turned her great eyes with a sort of wonder to him. They rested on him with a tenderness that he could not long have borne.
"You must not remain unmarried," he said, "you must not."
Without answering him she went slowly over to her little desk. She wrote a few seconds there and came back and handed to him a little slip of paper.
"When the telegraph office opens to-day, will you send this dispatch for me? It will fetch Prince Pollona to me no matter where he may be. I have asked him to meet me in Paris and I will take the morning train from here myself."
She turned to the table on which his money lay and taking a roll of notes said, "I will pay up everything I owe here. I think I have given you every proof, every proof."
Bulstrode made no advance towards her. He saw how she struggled with her emotion. He let her get herself in hand. Finally, with more composure, she spoke again:
"I play next month in London. Will you come to see me play?"
"Oh, many times."
"No," Felicia Warren murmured, "only once, and after that I shall never see you again."
He would have protested, but she repeated, "never again," with such intensity that he bowed his head and he found that her decision brought a pang whose sharpness he wondered would last how long.
He had started, with her last words, toward the door and she followed him over to it. There, detaining him by her hand, she asked softly: "Does she, too, love you as much as this?"
Bulstrode hesitated; then said, "I do not know."
"Not know?" cried the girl, "you don't know?"
It was with the greatest difficulty that Bulstrode could at any time bring to his lips even the name of the woman he loved. At this moment the vision of her as he had seen her lately on her husband's arm going in under the pavilion of the hôtel crossed his mind with a cruel despair and cruel disgust. A sense of his solitude, of his defrauded life, rushed over him as he looked into the eyes of this woman who loved him.
"No," he said intensely, "I do not know, I do not know. I have a code of honor a million years old, but I live up to it. She is a wife, I have never told her that I love her."
The girl's incredulity and surprise were great. It showed in the smile which, something like happiness, crossed her lips. She drew a long breath; she held his eyes with hers, then she laid both her arms around his neck and Bulstrode bent and kissed her. He held her for one moment and his heart, if it beat for another woman, beat hard and fast and its pulse ran through her own. Then Felicia heard the door close and the footsteps of the man died away.
It was seven o'clock when Bulstrode found himself out in the streets. The fresh air in a keen, salt wind poured over him. Down on the beach, for a couple of francs he bribed an attendant to open a bath-house for him, and a few moments later, shivering a little in the keen air, he could have been seen running down to the sea, and in a few moments more his strong swift strokes had carried him far out into the waters which the summer sun even at this early hour was fast turning into blue.