When Jimmy came to himself, he found that without either seeing Mrs. Falconer again or having even bidden a decent good-bye or godspeed to his fiancée, he was back again in Paris. He had run away. Well, that wasn't any new thing, he was always at it. Paris, in the month of August, gave him a hot, desolate welcome, and it was with difficulty that he could find a lawyer who would help him down to bedrock and put in motion the business of winding up the affairs of Molly and her Marquis.
De Presle-Vaulx came to town and found his champion there and brought him many messages from the ladies as well as a letter which Bulstrode put in his pocket to read down in the country at the château of Vaulxgoron in the seclusion of his own room.
Bulstrode played the part of the "American Uncle" to perfection. He let the old Marquis beat him at backgammon; he wandered all over the property with the Marquise. He bought the young man for Molly Malines and closed up his beneficent affairs in a very decent manner indeed, but on the night when Mrs. Falconer and Miss Malines should have arrived at the château, Bulstrode ran away again. From then on he became a wandering Jew. He ran up to Norway, fished a little, then took a motor and some people, who did not know any one whom he had ever known, and drove them through Italy. He continued to travel a little longer, working his way northward until finally—so he put it—dusty as "Dusty Dog Dingo," tired as "Tired Dog Dingo," Bulstrode found himself in London, drew a deep breath and capitulated.
The morning he left for Westboro' Castle, Bulstrode remembers as being the most beautiful of days; it came to him like a golden gift of unrivalled loveliness as it broke and showered sunlight over England.
"The very crannies of the island," he smiled at his own conceit, "must filter out this gold to the sea."
England lay like a viking's cup full to the brim of sunlight; especially entrancing because unusual in the British calendar, and enchanting to the American gentleman because it absolutely accorded with his own mood.
It was middle November, and yet there was not—so it seemed as one looked at yellow and copper luxuriance—a leaf lost from the suave harmony of the trees. Farms, tiled and thatched, basked in summery warmth, forest, hedge and copse, full-foliaged and abundant, shone out in copper and bronze, and the air's stillness, the patient tranquillity, enfolding the land, made it seem expectantly to wait for some sudden wind that should ultimately cast devastation through the forests.
On leaving his ship at Plymouth the day before, Bulstrode found amongst other letters in his mail the Duke of Westboro's invitation for a week's shooting in the west of England: "There were sure to be heaps of people Jimmy would know"—and Bulstrode eagerly read the subjoined list of names until he saw in a flash the name of the One Woman in the World. He at once telegraphed his acceptance.
The following afternoon he threw his evening papers and overcoat into a first-class carriage whilst the guard placed his valise and dressing-case in the rack.
As there had been several minutes to starting time, he had not immediately taken his seat, but had stood smoking by the side of his carriage. He might, and did, doubtless, pass with others of the well set-up, well-looking men travelling on that day, for an Englishman, but closer observation showed his attire to be distinguished by that personal note which marks the cosmopolitan whose taste has been more or less tempted by certain fantasies of other countries. Bulstrode's clothes were brown, his gloves, cravat, and boots all in the same color scheme—one mentions a man's dress only on rare occasions, as on this certain day one has been led to mention the weather. That a man is perfectly turned out should, like the weather, be taken for granted. Bulstrode on this day, travelling as he was towards a goal, towards the one person he wanted above all to see, had spent some unusual thought on his toilet. At all events, on passing a florist's in Piccadilly, after giving his order for flowers to be boxed and expressed to Westboro', he had selected a tiny reddish-brown chrysanthemum which now covered the button-hole of his coat's lapel; it created a distinctive scheme of color. In point of fact it caught the eye of the lady who, hurrying from the waiting-room towards the Westboro' express, caught sight of the American and started. It appeared as if she would speak to him, half advanced, thought better of it, and said to the guard, who was about to fasten a placard on the window of a carriage:
"Please—-just a second—won't you, guard?"
The bell rang, and Bulstrode found himself helping the lady into his own compartment. The guard shut the door, which closed with the customary soft thick sound of a lock setting, and pasted over the window the exclusive and forbidding paper—RESERVED.
Then it was in his corner by the window, once chimney pots and suburbs left behind, that the traveller to Westboro' watched the landscape with the pale, transparent smoke from the little farms floating like veils across the golden atmosphere; the slow winding streams between low-bushed, rosy shores, and red-tinged thickets; the flocks of rooks across fields long harvested: the flocks of sheep on the gently swelling downs.
"England, England," he murmured, as if it were a refrain in whose melody he found much charm, as if his traditions of insular forebears might in some way be recalled in the word, as if it spoke more than a chance traveller's appreciation for the melodious countryside.
He had letters, read them, and put his correspondence aside, then comfortably settling himself in his corner, began to construct for himself a picture of Westboro', whose lines and architecture he knew from photographs, although he had never been there. It was agreeable to him as he mused to fancy himself for the first time with Mrs. Falconer in England, in the country they preferred to all the others in the Old World. They were in sympathy with English life and manners, and here, if (oh, of course, a world of "ifs")—here no doubt they would both choose to live when abroad, were there any choice for them of mutual life.
Westboro' is Elizabethan and of vast proportions. The house would naturally be very full—how much of the time would they discover for themselves? There would decidedly be occasions. Mary Falconer did not hunt, and although Jimmy Bulstrode could recall having postulated that "there are only two real occupations for a real man—to kill and to love," he also knew what precedence he himself gave, and how little the sportsmen of Westboro' would have cause to fear his concurrence if by lucky chance in more or less of solitude he should find his lady there.
It was months since he had seen Mrs. Falconer—months. It had been a long exile. Each time that he started out to run away, it was just that—running away—it was with a curious wonder whether or not on his return he should not find a change. Time and absence—above all, time, worked extraordinary infidelities in other people. Why should they two believe themselves immune? The long months might have alteredher. The mischief was yet to be seen. But when in the list of noble names he had in his hand, his eyes fell upon the single prefix—Mrs.—and found it followed byThe Name, if he had not sincerely known before, his pulse at sight of the written words told Jimmy that he had not, at all events, changed!
Thinking at this point to light a cigarette, he became at the second mindful of the other passenger in his carriage and that they were alone. As he looked across towards the lady who had unwound her dark veil, he observed that she was herself smoking, holding the cigarette in her hand as with head turned from him she scanned the landscape through the window of the compartment.
He saw with a little start of pleasure what a delight she gave to the eye, tastefully dressed as she too was, in leaf brown from head to foot, with the slightest indication of forest green at buttons and hem of her dress. Her hat, with its drooping feathers, fell rather low over her wonderful hair, bronze in its reflections. Indeed, the lady blended well with the November landscape, and as she apparently was not conscious of her companion, he enjoyed the harmonious note she made to the full.
"What scope," he mused, "what scope they all have—and how prettily they most of them know it! So just to sit and be a thing of beauty; with head half-drooping, and eyelash meditative, one hand ungloved, and such a perfectly lovely hand...! (It held the half-smoked cigarette, but his taste was not offended.) He thought her a whim too debonnaire for a Parisian of the best world, and ofthatshe most distinctly was—Austrian more than likely. Every woman has her history—only when she is part of several has she a past. What had this woman so to meditate upon? She turned and he met her eyes.
"You have naturally waited for me to speak first," she said with a gracious gesture of her bare hand. "AndIwas waiting till you should have finished your letters! I, too, have wanted to think."
Her familiar address, perfectly courteous and made in a pleasant voice, with a very slight accent, was a surprise to her companion, who mechanically lifted his hat as he bowed to her across the narrow distance between their seats.
"The guard," she smiled, "came very near putting the placard on the other window! But I think we are now quite sure to be alone!" She pointed to the seat opposite. "Sit there," she more commanded than permitted, "we can talk better and I can watch your kind face, which always looks as if you understood—and I shall be able to please you better—perhaps to make you not unkind to me."
He obeyed, taking the place indicated without hesitation, and as he sat facing her, he saw her to be one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. There was at once something dazzling about her—and at the same time familiar... He had surely met her, and not long ago. Where? And how stupid of him to have forgotten! Or had he only seen her photograph and remarked her as a celebrity whose type of looks had pleased him? But no, she knew him: that was clear. He met her friendly eyes, where liking was evident as well as the suggestion of something akin to an appeal. Bulstrode was greatly intrigued.
"Unkind?" he repeated vaguely. "But why should you think that? Please me?"—and his graciousness did not fall short of her own—"But why should you...?"
"Oh, true," she interrupted him, "quite true. There is no reason why—" and she made a rather petulant gesture—"yet every woman wants to please, and none of us relishes being judged. Never mind, however, don't think of me as aperson—just let me talk to you frankly, be myself for once with someone if I can."
Jimmy Bulstrode gathered himself together and sat back in his corner. She was very lovely at it, this being herself. Gallantry would not let him bluntly tell her that she had made a mistake. A second more would clear the matter and would be quite soon enough, for him at least, to find that they were total strangers. Unless, indeed, he had met her and forgotten it. They had possibly held some conversation together in a London drawing-room. But how could he have been such a boor as to forget her? She was neither a crook nor a mad woman—she might be an adventuress; if so, she was an unusual one. He glanced at her luggage as if it might help him—a dark-covered dressing-case, bundle of furs, and rugs—new, everything new. Her left hand was bare of rings, she clasped it with her gloved fellow and said warmly:
"I can't believe it possible that you came, actually came, and that we have so smoothly met! I can't believe nothing has hitched or missed, or that everything is so cleverly planned and arranged for me, and least of all I can believe that it should beyouwho are so sublimely doing this."
"Ah—" But here Bulstrode tardily started up.Hedoing it all? At least if he was, then he must, if nothing else—know! He smiled at her with a pleasant sense of being in the secret and with indulgent amusement at her mistake.
"I think—you made a mistake," he began it with commonplaceness, but his gesture softened the words.
But the lady made a little annoyed "tchk" with her tongue against her teeth, and threw up her head with an impatient toss, an intensely foreign way of dismissing his interpolation.
"Don't, in pity's sake, talk like this," she exclaimed. "Mistake? Who under the blue heavensdoesn'tmake them—Certa! Haven't you, yourself, in spite of your moral, spotless life, haven't evenyoumade them?"
"How," flushed the naïve gentleman, on the sudden betrayed into a mental frankness of self-approval near to conceit, "how doessheknow me so well?"
"Who is there," his companion gave him the question in a challenging tone "to tell each other and every one of us what is or will be a mistake in his life? Where were everyone's eyes when I married?—Why didn't someone tell me then that my marriage was a hideous mistake? As for the rest of it..." she turned away for a second towards the window, and Bulstrode saw how the hot blood had mounted and her eyes had changed when after a moment she came back to him again. She put out towards him a beseeching hand: "Youabove all men, who are faithful to an ideal, must not give me old platitudes!"
Bulstrode's head reeled. He felt like a man who after a narcotic finds his brain suddenly alight and real things grow strange. He wanted to rub his eyes. She appeared singularly to appreciate his daze.
"It is as strange to me as it is to you, to find myself here with a man to whom I have never spoken before—to be under his protection, and to talk with him like this; and yet I have seen you so often, I have watched you in the distance, and long since I singled you out as the one man in whom I could fancy confiding—the one man to whom I could give a sacred trust."
With these words the incognita drew herself up, and her manner, with amazing swiftness, changed from a childlike confidence to a dignity not without a certain rigidness, and as Bulstrode remarked this, he also noticed that she was very young, and he was conscious in her of a something he had never quite met in a woman before—an extreme dignity, an ultra poise, an assurance.—Who was she?—And whom did she take him to be? With every turn of the fast wheels of the express it was growing more difficult to explain. She would more keenly feel the fact that he had not cut her frankness short—he had no right to her confidences even though she took their mutual knowledge of each other for granted.
"When," he ventured it delicately—"did you last see me?" It was bold, but it did perfectly.
"Oh, an age ago, isn't it? You were last on the Continent I think in August at Trouville, during La Grande Semaine."
Ah, he reflected,of course!Thatwas where, amongst so many other celebrities and beauties, she had attracted his attention. But his rapid mental calculations of those seven days could reveal to him no woman's face but one. He found himself even in this unique moment recalling the time following hard on Molly's formal engagement to her Marquis ... and those days were amongst the brightest in his life. No, there had been no foreign element at Trouville for him in the dazzle and freedom of that worldly fortnight—for Jimmy Bulstrode, in all the scene she summoned up, there was but one woman. He came back with a start to the other.
"Then yesterday, as you passed our table at the Carlton, and it seemed as if heaven had sent you to us to help us—at least so we both felt."
And Bulstrode doubtfully smiled and, now determined, broke in, or would have done so, but she waved him imperiously.
"Your mind," she spoke indulgently, "is on the wrong side to-day. Try to think only of the happiness towards which I am going so rapidly, so rapidly." Then, as she with her word glanced out of the window, she cried: "Oh, what if something should happen to the train—what if some horrible delay——"
And he shook himself to action.
"My dear lady," he began gravely, "you must hear me. You have made and are making a great mistake. I am certainly not the man..."
"Icommandyou, sir," she flashed out at him—"surely you will not disobey me—you will not make me think as well that I am making a mistake in you."
"Ah, but that," he gasped, and caught her words gratefully, "is just the point."
She smiled. "Please...! Let me judge! Only don't condemn me. Only be glad you can so marvellously help a human soul to happiness—can so generously lend yourself for these few hours to aid in my escape."
She was escaping! Well, he had nearly guessed it! The new luggage alone was an indication. Unless her mania was for taking strangers to be intimate friends, she wasn't fleeing a madhouse! From what did she so determinedly run?—and how in heaven's name was he helping her? Did she think he was going to marry her? Into what tangle had the man he was unwittingly impersonating got himself—and in default of his appearing on the scene in what would his absence involve poor Bulstrode?
He took off his hat and put it down on the seat—thus his fine head was fully revealed to the lady's view.
"I do not know you," he said determinedly. "You do not know me, but you seem bent on not acknowledging this fact or permitting me to state it."
But even this plain statement did him no good, for she said, quite agreeing with him:
"If I had ever spoken with you—been near you before, I would not be here now. You see it is just yourimpersonality—yourhavingno connection with anything in my life that makes it possible! But why," she exclaimed impatiently, "do you spend these few hours with me in this meaningless warfare? You should, it seems, take the honor more graciously, and since you are here, have consented to be here, show me a little kindness. Since, after all, willingly or not, you are in effect nobly helping me to do what I am doing."
And this brought him wonderfully up to the question of what was he doing? What was he supposed to be furthering here? It was his expression, no doubt, that made her ask with curious aptness: "Just how muchdoyou know?"
The poor gentleman threw out his hands desperately. "You can't think how in the dark I am! How beyond words mystified."
"How droll!" she laughed sweetly, "and how amusing and all the more beautiful and like you, to be, in spite of yourself, here. You see we have switched off—just as you said we would do."
So they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his feet. He looked out: it was a fast express, a through train—the first stop should have been Westboro' Abbey.
"Yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you arranged so cleverly!—and the Westboro' people will go on without us."
Would they indeed! Lucky people, but not if he could prevent it. But his attention to the train's procedure had come too late.
He opened the window and looked out. They stood at the side of a switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the far distance Bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train. He drew in his head and quietly asked his companion:
"What has happened to us, do you know?"
She laughed deliciously. "Know? Why, of course, I do. You're delightful! Of course I have followed every step of the plan—the special for Dover picks us up here in three-quarters of an hour, doesn't it? We make the boat for Calais, and there Gela meets me andyourmission is done!"
The gentleman opposite her listened quietly, and before speaking waited a second, staring down at her, his hands in his pockets: there they touched a little coin which he always carried: a coin that opened at a sacred point to discover to his eyes alone a picture of a woman as lovely as this woman, as human, and one whom he had good cause to suppose loved another man than her husband. The woman opposite him was escaping from her husband.Thatwas what she was doing! He who had striven for fifteen years to prevent the like in the life of the one woman of all, now appeared to be helping this poor thing to the same thing. He did not believe he was to be waylaid and robbed, or that any trick had been played upon him. The only thing he didnotbelieve was that the woman knew him! Before, however, brushing the delusion aside, he asked, his candid eyes upon her: "And my mission being so done, what then becomes of you?"
The shrug of her shoulders was neither an indication of indifference nor a pretty desperation! it rather was a relinquishing of herself wholly to Fate—an abandon.
"What becomes of a happy woman who goes with the man she loves?"
"Her Fate," said her companion, "has no single history. She is most often disillusioned, many times tragic, and always disgraceful."
"Ah, hush," she said angrily, "you presume too far. If you only intended to lecture me—to condemn me—why did you come?"
At this sincerely humorous challenge Bulstrode smiled.
"I did not, to be quite accurate, come," he said, "and I assure you I am here against my will. You refuse to listen to me; you turn my efforts to put things straight against me—and now."
The handsome creature gave him a flash from angry eyes.
"Your Excellency is scarcely polite. But I understand. Even my rank doesn't protect me: and although your old friendship for Gela did overcome your scruples, and our letters did touch you—still we should have remembered that you are, above all else, the King's friend."
Bulstrode fell a step back. Before he could take in the curious honors that were being thrust upon him, the lady went hotly on:
"You know how indulgent of me the King has been: how he adores me still, how blind he is, and you pity him and have no mercy for me."
Here, for she, too, had left her seat, she went over to the compartment window and turning her back full on Bulstrode, stood looking out, and she thus gave him time and he took it, not to consider his part of the affair, but, as if it had been suddenly revealed to him by her words, the woman's part in it. After all it was scarcely important whom, in error, she believed him to be. In a strange fashion, through some trick of resemblance, he was here and in her confidence in another's stead—impersonating some man who, in spite of the reputation for goodness and honor accredited him by this lady, would scarcely, Bulstrode felt confident, be as scrupulous regarding the adventure as he himself was fast becoming. The woman—the woman was all that mattered. She was a Queen then? A Queen! And he had so naïvely ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty oflèse-majesté—that she, poor thing, attributed hissans gêneto her fallen state!
Kings and Queens, poor dears, how human they are! What royalty could she be? And what King's friend was he so closely supposed to be? The King's friend—well, so he was—so he must be in spite of his quick pity for the lovely creature—in spite of chivalry and the trust she displayed. But to be practical: what in half an hour could he hope to accomplish—how could he keep a determined woman from wrecking her life?
His mind flew to Paddington, and his first sight of the lady on the platform. There had been near the hour two trains for Westboro', one of them a local which left London some few minutes later than the Western express.Thatlater train, no doubt of it, would fetch the real accomplice to the eloping lady. Bulstrode argued that, should he declare himself to the Queen at this point for a total stranger, the revelation would plunge her in despair, anger and frighten her, and lose him his cause—There was, in view of the cause, he now felt and nerved himself to the deception, nothing to do but to assume his rôle in earnest and play it as well as he might. He had never sat alone in a travelling carriage and hobnobbed with a Queen, but he gracefully made his try at the proper address: "Your Majesty," he began, and she whirled quickly round, pleasure on her face.
"Oh, Gresthaven!" she exclaimed with touching gratitude, extending her hand. "Thanks, mon ami! I shall not have my title long, and I shall, I suppose, miss it with other things."
Bulstrode, with her naming of him, knew at length who he was, and recalled his supposed likeness to a certain Lord Almouth Gresthaven—famous explorer, traveller and diplomat, cosmopolitan in his tastes and a dabbler in the politics of other and less significant countries than his own. In accepting his new personality, the American winced a little as he bowed over the royal little hand and kissed it.
"Your Majesty will miss many things indeed," he said gravely—"your kingdom, your people, and the King—the King," he repeated, dwelling on the word, "who, as you say, loves you."
"My good friend," the lady made a littlemoue—"I know everything you would say. You can't suppose I haven't thought of it all? To be so far on my way must I not have carefully considered every step? One is, after all, a woman—and I am a woman in love."
"One word then," pleaded her unwilling imposter—"one word. Have you also asked yourself: what chance for happiness a woman can possibly hope for with a man who allows her to make the sacrifice you are about to make?"
If his words were straws before the wind to the woman, his simplicity was impressive to her. "It has seemed to me," Jimmy Bulstrode said, "that there is a great distinction between love and passion—and that however great his passion for her, a man should supremely—supremely lovethe woman he singles out of all the world."
The Queen of Poltavia looked at the gentleman before her, who stood very straight, his head alone bent, his clear fine eyes fixed upon her own.
"Love!" she repeated softly, "how well you say the word."
A slight flush stole up the American's cheek.
"Supreme love," he ventured to continue, "means protection to the woman...."
Here the Queen made an impatient gesture as though she shook away the impression his tone made.
"My dear Gresthaven," she exclaimed, "love means above all else happiness! One is happy with one person and miserable with another. It's all a lottery and unless our plans miscarry I am going towards the greatest happiness in the world. But come"—She altered her tone to one of practical command—"Let us address ourselves to our flight. You have your train schedule of course? The Dover train is due here at 4:50 and it only waits for the taking on of our carriage." As she looked up at him she saw the trouble in his face, and a solicitude for her to which she was unaccustomed.
"Mon cher ami," she said quizzically, "what, may I ask, since your scruples are so great, ever led you to accept this mission....?"
"Frankly," he eagerly answered, and was honest in it, "the hope, the desire that I might...."
"Persuade a woman in love against her heart?" she smiled, and so sweetly, so convincingly, and so reasonably, he was for an instant all on her side.
"I see my folly, your Majesty."
"There's nothing butforce majeure, Gresthaven...."
"Yes" ... he admitted reluctantly. "Let me go out now and see to our manoeuvres here." He was able to open the door which a passing guard had unlocked unobserved....
The innocent royalty let him pass, thanking him with a smile, and saw him go down the track toward the little squat station, with the guards.
Bulstrode, whose mind as he walked along was busy with train schedules, recalled, nevertheless, the Duke's letter, which he still had in his letter case, and he took it from his pocket and re-read it.
"... We are to have over the week-end a dash of royalty. Carmen-Magda, the Queen of the petty kingdom of Poltavia." (This mention of the Westboro' guests had quite escaped Bulstrode's mind in his contemplation of the last page of the Duke's note.... "We are to have a compatriot of your own, a Mrs. Jack Falconer.") And royalty being very relative to the unsnobbish American, he had simply transferred the title (with possibly a possessive pronoun before it) to the other lady! He smiled as he reflected that the Westboro' express was destined to arrive at the Abbey without either the royal guest or Mr. James Thatcher Bulstrode. But more to the point, more instantly absorbing was the fact, that within ten minutes the slow train from London to Westboro' would arrive at Radleigh Bucks, the little station before which he now stood, and from it, undoubtedly, would descend the real Lord Gresthaven. If Jimmy needed encouragement in his self-imposed rôle of Master of Fate, if he needed to forget the ardor and the determination of the little Queen, if he needed to forget how, in youth, he had cordially hated those interfering people who, on horseback and in chaises, tore after flying lovers to waylay them at Gretna Green—he found his stimulus in recalling that he was "the King's friend."
"It's after all something of a distinction," he mused, entertained by the idea, "a sort of royalnoblesse oblige—and since the poor dear herself has so made me out to be, given King the precedence, how could I, in the cause of gallantry, have proceeded otherwise! It's this diabolical little brown chrysanthemum," he mentally laid the fault there. "It is evidently a telling mark. People in books are always meeting unknowns who are to wear a red flower in the right lapel of the coat".... and he had unintentionally gone over into a romance—and histristepart in it was that of an unsympathetic spoiler of a romance.
As after a prolonged parley with the station officials he walked leisurely back to his carriage, his wallet grown very thin indeed and his honest heart suffering many sincere pangs at the contemplation of his conduct altogether, he argued: "She is absurdly young—she will, after a little, go back to her allegiance (he put it so), and I don't take much stock in that barbaric Gela anyway, he probably is a Hungarian band-master or a handsome ticket-agent, a plebian creature whose very remoteness from her own life has fascinated her."
Bulstrode, not quite sure just whom he was supposed to be by the train people, found himself bowed and escorted back to the carriage which had been turned and manipulated and side-tracked—reswitched and displaced, till even its own locomotive and train of cars would have been at a loss to find it. He had the sense of being a traitor, brute, imposter, and Providence all in one—which combination of qualities was sufficient to explain his embarrassment and his nervous manner when he at length rejoined the Queen.
There was a slight transformation in the lady whose dressing bag had aided, evidently, a brisk toilet. Under her chin flowered out a snowy bow of tulle, and she had swathed herself in the thick veil she had worn when first boarding the train. Indicating her disguise to Bulstrode, she said with her pretty accent: "I think it well to be thus." And he agreed that it was well.
His own agitation as the other train rushed in, slowed and halted, was scarcely less than hers, indeed perhaps greater, for Carmen-Magda, pale and quiet, her handsome brown eyes fixed on the window-pane, gave no sign of life, until after a series of jerks, jolts and bumps, they slowly but certainly became part of a moving train, once more undertaking its journey. Then Bulstrode, who stood determinedly in the window, filled it up on the station side, giving her no chance to look out had she wished to do so, nor did he think it needful to tell the Queen what he saw: A distinguished-looking man in rough brown clothes, and oh, the curious coincidence: a reddish-brown chrysanthemum in his buttonhole. His Striking Resemblance was accompanied by another gentleman—short and stout with military mustaches, and swarthy complexion. The two men were gesticulating wildly together, and as the train pulled away from them, Bulstrode turned about and faced the little Queen.
She had again lifted her veil, and he thought her pallor natural; in the momentary excitement her large eyes were fastened upon him with a touching confidence that nearly made the soft-hearted imposter regret the boldest act of his history.
"Are you sure," she asked him softly, "that this is the right train?"
The coquetry of her bow of snowy tulle, the debonnaire costume of brown and green, her gray hat with its feathers, were pathetic to him—her attire contrasted sadly with her pale face. She was to him like a wilful child. Not more, he decided for the sixth time, than twenty years old. She was like a paper queen out of a child's fairy book, all but her anxious face. "She regrets," he joyfully caught at the thought to arm himself and give himself right. "Poor little thing, she already regrets."
Leaning forward, he suggested kindly:
"Can't your Majesty rest a little?"
As he spoke the hypocrite knew that in less time than it would take to settle her they would bump into the station at Westboro' Abbey.
But Carmen-Magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she wasen routefor her plebian Gela. She leaned over and picked up one of the illustrated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages, reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin. She held it out to Bulstrode and said:
"It's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the King?"
Bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on his face.
"Yes, it is good of the King, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much animation. It was strikingly so, he could with truth say it.
Gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the King par excellence—the King seemed to have many friends—-and the poor little woman opposite—with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence in a stranger—her madder confidence in Lord Almouth Gresthaven—where wereherfriends? Jimmy leaned to her, and Mrs. Falconer could have told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that Jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined to help in spite of themselves."
"Your Majesty has done me great honor," Bulstrode said. "You have said I was the King's friend, I should like instead to beyourfriend. Women need friends ... even queens. Would it be too vast a presumption if I should from henceforth feel myself to be...." He waited and dared—"Carmen-Magda's friend?"
His innocent lèse-majesté, coupled with the tone he used, reached the woman in her—-not to speak of his personal charm.
"Didn't I imply friendship when I chose you for this mission?" she said.
He winced. "Of course—but I mean from now on——"
She nodded sweetly. "Cela va sans dire, Gresthaven."
"Don't call me so," he interrupted, "sayfriend, to please me."
She laughed.
"You are too amusing. I will say it for you then in Poltavian. It's a sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she knighted him. It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to ask her:
"What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you had arranged he should do—he should betray you—should have warned your husband and have gone so faras to fetch the King to waylay you and stop your flight!"
But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition with a word of disbelief.
"Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?"
She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis were real to her at last:
"He would be the most despicable traitor in the world."
Bulstrode pursued: "What—would you think of Gresthaven—if in order to save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter your decision—he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as surely betraying your good faith?"
Here she looked keenly through him—read him—then waited a second before intensely exclaiming:
"Gresthaven—what have you done?"
His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him. He did not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in their own minds.
"Oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matterwhatreason, she had only changed herownmind!"
"In five minutes," he said bravely—"your Majesty will be at Westboro' Abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which followed us from London."
With a smothered cry the Queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to her in what part of England she was. Bulstrode had put his hand out before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open window.
"Oh," she cried furiously, shrinking back from him, "how have you dared ... dared?"
... "To save your Majesty? Well, itwashard!" he acknowledged practically. "Harder than you will ever believe. I may say that no decision was ever more difficult to make. To be so trusted by you, and to feel myself a double-dyed villain wasn't agreeable, but the issue was a warrant for any treachery."
"Great heavens!" she exclaimed. "Who madeyoujudge of my actions, who gaveyouleave to decide my fate, what a fool I was to trust you—what a fool! You have spoiled my life!" she accused him—"You have taken from me everything in the world."
If she had been alone he knew she would have wept, and he kept his face turned from her for some few seconds. "I have certainly established a precedent for myself," he mused with humor. "Ican never run away with a woman now—never."
Small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing. She spoke, he supposed, in Poltavian, for he could not follow the meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise among the incoherences that she called him friend!
As the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more ventured to speak.
"I am not the cold-blooded traitor I seem, believe me," he tried to plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at Redleigh Bucks I was miserable to think I had, as it seems, betrayed your Majesty. But when as we came up to the station I saw the King on the platform——"
She stopped short in front of him: "The King!" she exclaimed incredulously.
Bulstrode nodded in a matter-of-fact way as if stray kings on mid-country platforms were the common occurrence of his travelling experiences.
"He had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to attach your carriage to the Dover express had been attempted, you would have been stopped by your husband himself. As it is you are simply going where you are expected to go—to Westboro' Castle."
This dénouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no place for ecstatics. She sat down in front of Bulstrode and repeated, dazed:—
"TheKing! The King had followed me! He had been warned then, but by whom? You above all did not....?"
"Oh no!" He was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this disloyalty. "I had nothing to do with it. The King had come on with the man who had played your Majesty false all along, the man who is indeed more the King's friend than he is Carmen-Magda's."
And sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him say: "I mean Lord Almouth Gresthaven."
She murmured some words in Poltavian, then besought: "Why, why do you play with me?" The tears started to her eyes.
"Lord Gresthaven," Bulstrode hurried now to his confession—"has plainly betrayed you. Either he failed to meet you as planned, or else he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your husband—at all events, both he and the King took the slow train."
"Butyou," she interrupted, staring at him—"You are not Lord Gresthaven?"
"No," he said quietly, "no, I am an American, nothing more than a friend and guest of the Duke of Westboro'. I tried over and over again to tell you this, but you would not hear me and I finally accepted the rôle you gave me with the firm intention of taking you with me to Westboro' Castle. My name is James Thatcher Bulstrode, I am from Boston, in the United States." Bulstrode thus tardily introduced himself.
And Jimmy, not pretending ever to have counted greatly on the favor of princes, was nevertheless taken aback. Not that he had any preconceived notion of what Carmen-Magda would do—when she eventually knew. He had been too absorbed in his mission, its entanglements, and his climax. He may have been prepared for some exhibition of scorn, but he more than likely looked for a social and commonplace ending to their ride, but for what Carmen-Magda did he was entirely unprepared.
As if in his declaration of himself and his identity he had taken a sponge and quite wiped himself off the slate, the Queen, after speechlessly staring at him for a few moments, quietly removed her attention from him altogether. She took from a little bag at her wrist a rouge stick with which she carefully touched her lips; from a tiny gold box she lightly dusted her cheeks with powder; she adjusted her tulle bow and her veil and then sat serenely back waiting until the train should arrive at her forced destination.
Although, one might say, unused to the manners of royalty, Jimmy was dumbfounded; the beautiful woman in forest-brown clothes picked out with hunting green had become as strange to him as in the first moment when she attracted his attention some few miles beyond London. That she should be angry at his interference he could admit, but that she should not be grateful to be saved from her husband's wrath he did not understand. Was he too plebeian for her to notice? He, of course, did not speak to her again, nor did she break the singular silence, and for some reason he did not even care to ask her forgiveness. Finally, he decided that she was thinking solely of Gela, the man at the other end of the route who would wait for her in vain, and when this sentimental view of the case occurred to him, he would have feltde trophad he not seen how completely he was ignored.
They flashed past the last miles of wooded valley and hillside. Westboro' was very soft in line and very mellow in the evening light. The landscape, through a half-mist, was as brown and green as the dress of the beautiful silent woman in the opposite corner of the travelling carriage.
Bulstrode, looking at her rather timidly, felt as if he were in a dream.
At Westboro' Abbey the guard unlocked the compartment door and Bulstrode, who got out first, helped the Queen of Poltavia to descend. As she put foot to the ground she said, half leaning on the arm he gave: "I thank you—very much indeed."
He caught the few words eagerly, and was fatuous enough to fancy that she meant something more than the common courteous acknowledgment of a man's help from a travelling carriage.
The station was deserted. The express having arrived some half hour before without them, there had evidently been no preparation made to meet this train.
Surrounded by her luggage, her brand new luggage, the Queen waited on the side of the station that faced the open country, whilst Bulstrode made inquiries about telephoning or getting word to the castle.
At this juncture, down the lane, between red thickets and golden hedges, a smart dog-cart tooled along driven by a lady. She waved a welcoming hand.
"Jimmy," she said as she drove up and leaned out and nodded to him, "I knew you'd miss the express, you're so absent-minded about trains; and who could be expected to distinguish between a 3.50 and a 3.53? So, as you see, I drove down on the chance."
He had not greeted her in words. The long afternoon, the romantic extravagant episode, of which he had been unwillingly a part, made this woman seem so real. He felt as if from a burlesque extravaganza he had come out into the fresh air; their eyes had met and Mrs. Falconer did not miss any other greeting.
"That lady," he then said, "whom you see standing on the edge of the platform surrounded by her luggage, like a shipwrecked being on a desert island, is the Queen of Poltavia."
"Heavens!" exclaimed Mrs. Falconer.
"Yes," he said indifferently, "we came down from London together."
"Why, the whole castle is in a state about her. A coach and postillion went to fetch her at the express. Telegrams are flying all over the country. Why did she take a local—and with you—Jimmy?"
"Perhaps she is absent-minded about trains as well," he smiled, "at all events here she certainly is and it will be charming of you to drive her up."
"But I don't know her!"
"Oh," he shrugged, "one doesn't exactlyknowqueens, I don't know her either, but that wouldn't prevent my doing her a service. I am sure she'd rather be driven up to a cup of tea and a fire by an American than stand here waiting for a postilion and four. It will be nice of you to speak to her," he suggested, and stepped back.
Gathering up her reins, Mrs. Falconer whisked her horse about and drove up to the lady's side. Bulstrode, from a little distance, watched her graceful inclination and heard her lovely voice. He saw Carmen-Magda lift her disguising veil, displaying her dark, foreign face. Slowly going up to the dog-cart's side, together with the groom's help, he bestowed the Queen's belongings in the trap.
"I will walk on slowly up the road," he suggested, "and most possibly you will send back for me."
"Oh, I'll drive back myself." She was quite certain about it. As he helped the Queen into the dog-cart, as she leaned on his supporting hand, she said:
"Thank you, thank you very much indeed." And he was so vain as to fancy that into tone and words Carmen-Magda put more warmth, more of meaning, than a woman usually puts into the phrase of recognition of a man's helping hand. He could not, moreover, have sworn that at the end of the sentence was not murmured a word in a foreign tongue which might in Poltavian mean "friend," but as he did not understand the language of the country he could not be sure.
As he watched the trap up the hedged lanes out of sight, he rubbed his eyes as if he were not certain whether or not he had not dozed and dreamed in his compartment on the slow train from London.... But at any rate he had the delightful heavenly certainty that this was Westboro' of an Indian summer afternoon—and that of the two women who had just driven up the lane out of sight, one at least was adorably real.