The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode Part 33

The d.u.c.h.ess had not spoken nor had she, on the other hand, with the fine courage of the true woman, been in any eager haste to discover what her husband had said of her, nor had she asked if he had spoken at all. On the other hand, aided by an extreme patience and with still greater delicacy, she had waited, understanding that her guest, whose mettle and character she knew would not permit him to betray a trust, might, however navely, disclose what he knew without being conscious of it.

But if Bulstrode gave himself or his host away, the d.u.c.h.ess made no sign that she had profited by indiscretions. The impersonality of their conversations was indeed a relief to Bulstrode, and it made it possible for him to feel himself less a traitor at the Duke's hearth.

But she talked very sweetly, too, of her children. She had the second picture to the Duke's of the little boys, a picture like the one Bulstrode had seen at the castle, and showed it to him as the father had done.

"Westboro' has the companion to this," he had not minded telling her as they sat together in the small room he had grown to know as well as the larger rooms of the castle. And at the end of a few moments Bulstrode quite blurted out: "Why, in Heaven's name do you women make men suffer so?"

The d.u.c.h.ess, who had been working, dropped her bit of muslin and looked, with her cherry lips parted and her great serious eyes, for all the world like a lady in a gift book. Her face was eighteenth century and child-like.

Bulstrode nodded. "Oh, yes, you've got so easily the upper hand, the very least of you, you know, over the best of us. It's such an unfair supremacy. You've got such a clever knowledge of little things, such a sense of the scale of the feelings, and you certainly make the very most of your power over us all. Can't you--" and his eyes, half serious and half reproachful, seemed, as he looked at her, to question all the womankind he knew--"Can't you ever love us well enough just quite simply to make us happy?"

The d.u.c.h.ess had taken up her sewing again, and her eyes were upon it.

Bulstrode waited for a little, following her st.i.tches through the muslin and the flash of her thimble in the light.

"Can't you?" he softly repeated. "Isn't it, after all, a good sort of way of spending one's life, this making another happy?"

"American women aren't taught so, you know," she said. "It isn't taught us that the end and aim of our existence is to make a man happy."

Her companion didn't seem at all surprised.

"And so you see," she went on, "those of us that do learn that after all there may be something in what you say--those of us that learn, only find it out after a lot of hard experiences, and it is sometimes too late!"

She seemed to think his direct question called for a distinct answer, for she admitted: "Oh, yes, of course there are some of us who would give a great deal to try. And you see, moreover," she went on with her subject as she turned the corner of her square, "you put it well when you said 'love enough.' You see that's the whole thing, Mr. Bulstrode, to love enough. One can, of course, in that case, do nearly all there is to do, can't one?"

"Nearly all," he had smiled, and added: "_And a great deal more_."

The household G.o.ds, whose dignity and harmony had not been disturbed during the absence of the master of Westboro', were unable, however, to give him very much comfort on his return. The Duke's motor cut quickly up the long drive and severed--clove, as it were--a way through the frosty air and let him into the park. The poor man had only a sense of wretchedness on coming home--"coming back," he now put it. Huddled down deep in his fur coat, its collar hunched round his ears, his face was as gloomy as that of a man dispossessed of all his goods; doors thrown open into the fragrant and agreeably warmed halls fetched him further home. But the knowledge that the house had been lived in during his absence was not ungrateful. He sniffed the odor of a familiar brand of cigar, and before he had quite plumbed the melancholy of the place to its depths, Jimmy Bulstrode had sunned out of one of the inner rooms, and the grasp of the friendly hand and the sound of the cheerful voice struck a chord in Westboro' that shook him.

"I've been like a fiend possessed," he said to Jimmy, in the evening when they found themselves once more before the fire. "I've scarcely known what I've been doing, or why; but I know one thing, and that is that I'm the most wretched man alive."

Bulstrode nodded. "You _did_ go to Paris, then!"

"Yes," said the Duke, "and what I've found out there has driven me insane."

Although ignorant of the variations of his friend's discovery, Bulstrode was pretty certain of one that had not been made.

"You may, old chap," he said smoothly, "not have found out all the truth, you know."

Westboro' raised his hand. "Come," he said, "no palliations; you can't smooth over the facts. Frances is not in Paris. She has not been in Paris for several months." He paused.

"In itself not a tragedy," murmured his friend. "Paris is considered at times a place as well _not_ to be in."

But Bulstrode's remark did not distract his friend from his narrative.

"She has not been in Paris since I saw her twelve months ago, and she has left no sign or trace of where she has gone. There is no address, no way that I can find her. Not that a discovery is not of course ultimately possible, but what, in the interval, if I should wish to write to her? What if I should need to see her? What if I should die?"

"Would you, in any of those cases, send for her?"

"I don't know," the Duke admitted.

"But," Jimmy asked him, "did you go to Paris this time to see the d.u.c.h.ess?"

"Since you ask me frankly," the Duke admitted, "I don't think that I did."

"At all events," the other said, "you surely did not go to spy on her, Westboro'?"

The Duke was silent, then answered quietly:

"I should never ask a question--not if it meant a certain discovery of something that I feared or suspected. I don't think I should ever seek to find out something she didn't want me to know."

Bulstrode, at the blindness of a man regarding his own intentions, smiled behind his cigar. "Well?" he helped.

"I went over to France," said the Duke--"and I suppose you'll scarcely believe a man who you say is not a lover to be capable of such sentimentality--simply, if possible, to have a sight of my wife, to see her go out of the door, or to see her go in, to see her possibly get into a carriage; and how did I know that it would not be with another man?"

"How did you find out that she had left?"

"I asked for her at her hotel."

"The first question, then," Jimmy smiled.

"A fair one?"

"Oh, perfectly."

"I was told that the d.u.c.h.ess had left Paris months before."

"And then?" the other man's voice was placid as he spoke for the Duke.

"Then you went to her bankers, her bakers and candlestick makers; in short, you asked all over the place, didn't you?"

The Duke swore gently. "Well, what would you have a man do?"

"Why I would have him do that," nodded Jimmy, "by all means. Any man would have done so."

In the half second of interval whilst the Duke was obliged to swallow his friend's sarcasm, Bulstrode had time to think: "Here I am, once more in the heart of an intrigue. Its fetters are all about me and I am wretchedly bound by honor not to do the simple, natural thing."

Then he asked boldly: "Well, what do you think about it, Westboro'?"

"Think?" Westboro' repeated, "why, that she has deliberately escaped from me, put herself out of any possible reach; she doesn't want a reconciliation and she has gone away. She may have gone away alone and she may not, that I don't know, and I don't believe I want to know."

"Oh, you'll find her." It was with the most delightful security and contentment that his friend was able to tell the Duke this. But the cheerful note struck the poor husband the disagreeablest of blows.

"Gad!" he laughed, "what a cold brand of creature a bachelor is! 'Find her!' as one might speak of finding an umbrella that you've left by mistake at your club. Of course she can be found. There are not many mysteries that search can't solve in these days. And d.u.c.h.esses don't drop off the face of the earth. I could no doubt have found her in twenty-four hours, but I didn't try to. I don't know that I want to find her. It isn't the fact of where she's gone that counts--that she wanted to go--that she has voluntarily made the separation final and complete."

"Then," persisted the bachelor, "you don't really _want_ to find her?"

"Jove!" the Duke turned on him. "You don't know what it is to love a woman! You've got some imagination--try to use it, can't you? Can't you?"

He met the American's handsome eyes. A flush rose under Bulstrode's cheek. Westboro' put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "I beg your pardon, dear old chap."