The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode Part 22

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 gra.s.s, 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 G.o.d!

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 Hotel 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 hotel, 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 hotel 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 pa.s.sion and admiration, that her face was familiar, at least that there was about it something that suggested remembrance.

"This," she said, "is a fortune!" Her accent was British and her voice very soft and sweet. "It is quite a large fortune, isn't it? My debts here are small. I have not fifty pounds in the world," she said smiling, "I work for my living, too. I have been extravagant, for I had really made a lot of money, but lately I've thrown everything away.

Yesterday my pearls were sold, and my jewels went last week; the races and the Casino did the rest! This would make me quite rich."

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

"It is very droll that this money should have come from _you;_" she repeated "from you," with the insistence on the p.r.o.noun that he had before remarked as strange. "Even now you don't know me, do you?

Don't you know who I am?"

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

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

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

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

Bulstrode, surprised at her accents of distress, murmured an excuse and said he was much at fault, he should remember. But here the girl smiled. "Well, it is not exactly a duty to know me; my name is not quite unknown. I play in 'The s.h.i.+ning 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 a.s.sured 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 Glousces.h.i.+re? Don't you remember...?"

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

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

Bulstrode was silent.

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

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

The girl shook her head. "Nothing" she said absently, "oh, nothing.

You know what an English yeoman is! or perhaps you don't! My greatest kindness is to keep away from the Mill on the Rose" ...

But Felicia Warren was not thinking of Glousces.h.i.+re 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 amus.e.m.e.nt crossed her face as, looking up, she caught his puzzled expression. "Ah, you wonder about it!" she laughed gently.

Coming a little nearer to him, she went on: "You see, you have been my benefactor, haven't you?"

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

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

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

"Please, please be reasonable," he pleaded. "You must let me help you.

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

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

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

The actress blushed crimson. "Oh, of course you thought otherwise,"

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

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

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

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

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