The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode Part 24

Sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had at last drifted along the sh.o.r.e to his feet. Unhappy and deserted, she reached the very tenderest part of Bulstrode's nature. Cost him what it would, he must save her.

But, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder:

"You must go _now_: that is what I ask you to do. I have seemed, and indeed I have thrown myself upon your mercy; but, in reality, I don't do any such thing. You will soon forget me, as you have been able to do all these years. The table is full of your money. I am poor, and yet I don't take it. Doesn't _that_ prove a little my good faith?

Doesn't it? Only think of me as the most romantic dreamer you ever saw, and of nothing more. Oh, _no_," she breathed softly, "_no_, a thousand times...!

"I've answered your question before you've asked it! No, I couldn't; no woman who wants love is content with pity. I would rather starve than take money from you although I have lived on your money for years.

I would rather be unhappy than take what you could offer me for love.

You mustn't speak; you mustn't ask me. The temptation is very great, you know, and it _might_ wreck me. No, Mr. Bulstrode, and the reason why I say it is because I've seen."

"'I've seen?'" he repeated her words. "You've seen, but what do you mean--what have you seen?"

"I'm going to tell you why I sent for Prince Pollona, although you don't ask me. I came to Trouville alone. I saw you; I've watched you with your friends." Bulstrode accepted quietly. "The two young people are engaged to be married and the other two are husband and wife--well...?"

A spasm of pain crossed Felicia Warren's face and she put what she had to say with singular delicacy for an actress who had risen from the people.

"I know," she said, "I understand, but when I saw you, I knew that there was no hope for any other woman who loved you--and I gave you up then. I sent for Pollona."

The introduction of even so little into the room as the suggestion of the woman he loved, startled Bulstrode as nothing else under the circ.u.mstances could have done. It struck him like a lash. He was disenchanted, and he more quietly considered the girl whose confession and whose beauty had made him nearly disloyal.

Felicia Warren, as though she took it in her own hands and, mistress of herself, knew how much she could take and what she could deny herself, laid her hand on his arm.

"You can do nothing at all, just as you have always done--and I--I can learn to forget. But I have refused your money to-night," she said piteously, "haven't I? and I am penniless; I have refused more too; perhaps what no woman who loves could refuse as well. Don't you think that there is something due me? Answer me this? Tell me. You _do_ love her, you _do_?"

As she leaned against him, the years seemed to fall away and to leave her a girl again, nothing more than a child he had known. He took her face between his hands and looked into it as one might look into a well. He saw nothing but his own reflection there.

"G.o.d knows," he said deeply, "I could not willingly pain a living creature, and to think that I should have made you suffer, have made a woman suffer for years. Let me do all I can, my dear, let me--let me!"

"You love her?" she persisted.

His hands dropped to his side. "With all my soul," he said, "with all my soul!" He thought she would sink to the floor, but instead she caught fast hold of the table on which his money lay. She leaned on it heavily, refusing his aid. He took one of the girl's cold hands in his.

"Listen, listen! Let me say a word. How do you think it makes a man feel to hear what you have told me to-night? to see you as you are, to grow to know you in such a short--in such a terrible way, and in a few hours to grow to know you so well, to find you dear, desirable, and then to leave you, as you tell me I must leave you. I can't do it; I have never been so miserable in my life, and if I find I am entirely helpless to serve you I can never get over the regret."

Felicia Warren turned a little.

"I have found you near disaster," Bulstrode urged, "I must and will see you to the sh.o.r.e. If you utterly refuse to let me take care of you as I can and will, will you then," he hesitated, then brought it out--"Will _you marry_ Prince Pollona?"

She drew from him with a cry, and by what he said she seemed to have gained sudden strength.

"My G.o.d!" she breathed, "You ask me _that_? Oh, it proves, it proves how less than nothing I am..."

Bulstrode saw he could not, must not undeceive her.

"If you wish me to do _that_," she cried. "Oh, how dreadfully, how cruelly, it breaks my dream!"

Bulstrode said authoritatively, "Listen! listen for one moment."

The eyes of the girl were dark with defiance; she brushed her hair off her brow with the back of her hand and stared straight before her.

"--Otherwise," said Bulstrode, "I will remain here; I shall not leave these rooms till morning and you will then be forced to marry me, and since you think as you do, since I have told you my secret, ruin perhaps three lives."

He had her at bay, and for a brief second, he thought she would accept his menace. But then in a sudden her anger vanished and her face softened.

"You know," she said, "that, loving you as I do, whatever you tell me to do, I must. But let me go on with my career. Let me work, let me work, and be free!"

He said decidedly, "No! You must be protected from yourself; you must have some one with you who will take care of you as I cannot do. You must do this for me. Is Pollona distasteful to you?" he pursued, "do you _hate_ him?"

She made an indifferent shrug of her shoulders.

Bulstrode was watching her face keenly, and after a second said, "No, you do not hate him. You sent for him to come to you here. He was the one to whom you turned, Felicia; turn to him now."

As she wavered and hesitated, he insisted, coming close to her:

"You have an ideal, you told me--well we can't get on without them.

Your ideal has helped you, hasn't it? It seems pretty well to have stood by you. I have one too, you must understand that, and I ask you to help me to keep it secret now."

"Why, what do you mean?" she questioned breathlessly.

"I mean," he said gravely, "that I am a very lonely man. My days are absolutely desolate excepting for those things that I can put into them. I have nothing in my life and I am not meant for such a lot. I am not meant for that! Such an existence has bitter temptations for every man, and although I have never seen you before, possibly my fate and Pollona's rest to-night with you."

Felicia Warren turned her great eyes with a sort of wonder to him.

They rested on him with a tenderness that he could not long have borne.

"You must not remain unmarried," he said, "you must not."

Without answering him she went slowly over to her little desk. She wrote a few seconds there and came back and handed to him a little slip of paper.

"When the telegraph office opens to-day, will you send this dispatch for me? It will fetch Prince Pollona to me no matter where he may be.

I have asked him to meet me in Paris and I will take the morning train from here myself."

She turned to the table on which his money lay and taking a roll of notes said, "I will pay up everything I owe here. I think I have given you every proof, every proof."

Bulstrode made no advance towards her. He saw how she struggled with her emotion. He let her get herself in hand. Finally, with more composure, she spoke again:

"I play next month in London. Will you come to see me play?"

"Oh, many times."

"No," Felicia Warren murmured, "only once, and after that I shall never see you again."

He would have protested, but she repeated, "never again," with such intensity that he bowed his head and he found that her decision brought a pang whose sharpness he wondered would last how long.

He had started, with her last words, toward the door and she followed him over to it. There, detaining him by her hand, she asked softly: "Does she, too, love you as much as this?"

Bulstrode hesitated; then said, "I do not know."

"Not know?" cried the girl, "you don't know?"