The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode Part 26

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 a.s.surance.--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_! _That_ was 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 pa.s.sed 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..."

"I _command_ you, 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 your _impersonality_--your _having_ no 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 n.o.bly 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 much _do_ you 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 and _your_ mission 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. _That_ was 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 did _not_ believe was that the woman knew him! Before, however, brus.h.i.+ng 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 relinquis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.sure 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 navely ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of _lese-majeste_--that she, poor thing, attributed his _sans gene_ to 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. _That_ later 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 a.s.sume his role in earnest and play it as well as he might. He had never sat alone in a travelling carriage and hobn.o.bbed 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 grat.i.tude, extending her hand. "Thanks, mon ami! I shall not have my t.i.tle 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 little _moue_--"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 pa.s.sion--and that however great his pa.s.sion for her, a man should supremely--_supremely love_ the 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...."