The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode Part 23

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, rus.h.i.+ng sound of the sea on the beach. The day was breaking and Bulstrode could see the white figure of Felicia Warren between the lighted room and the dawn.

He told himself that there was no reason why he should look upon her as anything but an adventuress--and a very clever one--a very dangerous one. But, at all events, there _was_ no doubt that she was Felicia Doan. She refused his money, and she told him that she loved him. But Jimmy Bulstrode, man of the world as he was, did not reason at all along those lines. Whether because he was vain, as most men are, or because he was susceptible as he always told himself he was, he believed what she said. More than once during the week at Trouville, when she should have been absorbed in Polonna, Bulstrode had caught her eyes fastened upon himself and as soon as she had met his own she had turned hers away. He had no difficulty now in recalling the Mill on the Rose, or the lovely bit of country where his shooting-box had held him captive for nearly the whole hunting season. Nor had he any difficulty in recalling the miller and his pretty daughter. Felicia even then had been a wonder of good looks, and very intelligent and mature. He could even see her as a child more plainly than he could recall the woman who had just left him. She had been a pretty, romantic girl and--she had deeply charmed him. He had walked with her under the willows; he had told her many things; he had gone boating with her on the Rose; he had tramped with her along the English lanes.

Of course he had been wrong. He had known it at the time--he had known it. And perhaps one reason why he never reverted willingly to the days spent with the girl was because his conscience had not left him free.

The money given to Doan, Bulstrode had always felt, was a sort of recompense for hours of pleasure to which he had no right. Even at the time he had feared that he had disturbed the girl's peace, and because he had not wished to disturb his own, he had given up his lease and left the place. Twelve years! Well, they had altered her enormously, and her life had altered her and her experiences, and she was a very charming creature. She was, in a measure, his very own work--almost his creation. He had helped her to change her station, to alter her life. What had she become?

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

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

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

"It's not a ruse, Mr. Bulstrode. Girls like me always have ideals. It is fame with some, money with others, dress and a social craze for a lot of them. But with me, ever since you came it has been YOU--everything you said to me twelve years ago I have remembered.

Silly as it seems, I could almost tell the very words. I have seen a lot of men since, too many," she said, "and known them too well. But I have never seen anybody like you."

Bulstrode tried to stop her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But this--this man?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was silent.

Here she hid her face and through her fingers he could see the red rise all along her cheek. Her att.i.tude, 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 cla.s.s to which she belonged. Her art and her knocking about, instead of coa.r.s.ening her, had refined her. She looked like a bit of ivory, worn by experience, and struggle, to a fine polish; there was a brilliance about her and he understood and felt, he instinctively saw and knew, that she was unspoiled.

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

"What sort of a man is Prince Pollona?"

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

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

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

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

"Oh, his rank didn't dazzle me," she murmured absently, "they seem all alike, and when they find out that I am not a certain kind they ask me to marry them... But if I could only get back to the Mill on the Rose, Mr. Bulstrode! If I might again see it as I used, if I could see you there as I used to see you--walk by your side; row with you on the river; if I could hear the wheel again as I used to hear it, then"--her voice was delicious, a very note of the river of which she spoke. Oh, she must act well, there was no doubt about that; no wonder she had been a success: "If I might walk there with you--t.i.tles, 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 ----s.h.i.+re ... "if I could _only, only_ go back again with you!"

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

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

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

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

When he finally went back into the room, Felicia Warren had not moved.

Just as he left her, she sat, deep back into the divan, leaning on her hand, with something like the glory of a dream on her face. Standing in front of her, he said slowly:

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

But the girl shook her head.

"Oh, no, _you haven't_," she a.s.sured 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!"