The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode Part 35

"I think," she said with evident effort to speak in a commonplace tone, "it would be quite futile to urge Cecil to come."

"Oh, I shan't advise him so."

Bulstrode's quick answer made her look at him in so much surprise that he went on to say: "I would not, in justice to him, in justice to the great love I have been permitted to see, advise him to come."

The d.u.c.h.ess, during the months of a.n.a.lysis, suffering and experience, had not admitted to herself that should her husband return she would receive him, nor had she decided as to quite how obdurate she would be, and she was curious at the att.i.tude of this gentle friend. She navely asked:

"Why would you not advise him so?"

Bulstrode said, still continuing his pleasant sententiousness, "The woman's heart must be as stable as the man's is uncertain, and the man who comes back after such a separation must not find a woman who does not know her own mind. He must, on the contrary, find one who has no mind or will or life but his."

As he looked at the person to whom he spoke he was somewhat struck by the maternal look in her: he had never clearly discovered it before.

Her breast from which the fur had fallen, as it rose and fell under her soft gown, was full, generous, and beautiful; even as he spoke in a certain accusation against her, she seemed to have altered.

"Westboro'," he said a little confused, "must come back to a woman, d.u.c.h.ess, to a woman--to a consoler. I wish I could express myself--almost to a mother--as well as to a wife."

The ardent color dyed her face again; her lips moved. She put out her hand towards him, and as he took it he understood that she wished him to bid her good-by and to leave her alone. He heard what she struggled to say:

"He must not come, he must not come."

"No," he accepted sadly for his friend, "No, he must not come."

Bulstrode had chosen those times for going to The Dials when his host was least likely to take note of his absence; but it happened that more than once the Duke missed him at just the wrong moment, and more than once had been given the direction in which Bulstrode's footsteps had turned.

One morning, during a talk with his agent, Westboro'--the map of the district before him--enquired what had ever been done with the property known as The Dials, and into whose hands the old place had fallen. It seemed that it had been let for some months to a foreigner, a widow, who lived there, and alone.

Westboro' considered the farms and forests, as they lay mapped out before him, at the extreme foot of the castle's parks. It was a little square of some fifty acres by itself; it had never interested him before.

How long did the lease run on? Did the agent know? He believed for another year.

The Duke gave instructions to have the property looked into, with a view to purchase. And as the man put up his papers, he vouchsafed to his employer:

"The present tenant is very exclusive; she sees n.o.body, has never, I believe, even been to the Abbey. An old gardener who has been kept on says the servants are all foreign."

The Duke gave only a tepid interest to the information which would have pa.s.sed entirely from his mind had it not been for his next meeting with Jimmy Bulstrode.

As much to shake off the impression his last talk with the d.u.c.h.ess had left on his mind, as to prolong his exercise, Jimmy had gone down out of the garden and across the place on foot over the rough winter fields with their rimy furrows and their barren floors. As he made his way towards the bottom hedge, looking for a stile he knew would be there a little farther on, cutting an entrance out through the thorn to the road, he met Westboro', like himself, on foot, and with his hand upon the stile. The presence of the Duke where Bulstrode knew he was least thought to be, and where he was now sadly sure he was not opportune, made Jimmy stop short, troubled, and, not for a moment thinking that the fact of his being there _himself_ was singular, he made his way determinedly through the stile. As he greeted his friend, his own demeanor was decidedly one which said: "Don't go on in that direction, follow rather out of the turnstile with _me_." And he led his friend rather brusquely down the bank, hitching his arm in Westboro's, forced him along with him into the road.

"I ran down here to look over these meadows," said Westboro.' "You seem yourself, in a way, to be pacing the land off!"

"Oh, I _love_ cross-country walking," said Bulstrode warmly.

"You must," smiled the Duke, "to have cut off into those barren fields.

Were you lost?" Westboro' stopped and looked back. "You must have come directly down through The Dials."

"_The Dials_?" the American helplessly repeated. "Do you mean the old house and garden?"

Bulstrode's manner and speech were rarely curt and evasive, but he seemed this time embarra.s.sed and taken unawares. As the two men sat in the motor which waited for the Duke down the road, Westboro' fixed his gla.s.s in his eye and looked hard for a second at his friend.

Bulstrode's cheerful face was distinctly disturbed.

"I'm thinking something of buying The Dials," Westboro', after a moment, said against the wind.

Poor Jimmy. If the house had not sufficiently up till now materialized out of his fancy as a possession, it declared itself at once, without doubt, as something he must look after. It was only a little bit of England, luckily----

"Well," he exclaimed, "to be frank, old man, I've, too, been thinking I should like to buy that property. You could surely spare me this little corner of Glousceshire."

"Spare it!" cried Westboro', "my dear chap, fancy how ripping to have you a landlord here! To catch and hold you so! We'll go over the whole place together. My agent shall put the matter through for you."

"Good G.o.d, no!" said Bulstrode, "don't let your man have wind of any such a deal. The place would go up like a rocket in price. If you really yourself care to withdraw as much as possible, that's the most you can do. But for G.o.d's sake keep off the place, like a good fellow."

Behind his long moustaches the Duke covered a smile, but he conciliated his agitated friend.

"I'll keep off the gra.s.s until the turf is all your own, my dear Bulstrode."

"Thanks!" said the other cordially, and sat back with a sigh of relief.

"There," he reflected peacefully, "my presence is explained--it's quite perfect. I shall be a landowner in England. At all events, it's lucky the property is sympathetic. I'm glad I didn't get balled up in this affair in, let us say, _New Jersey_, and find myself forced to purchase the Hackensack Meadows.

"Did the old house look deserted?" asked the Duke wickedly.

"Oh, rather!" replied the other gentleman.

"Really!" wondered Westboro'. "Why, they tell me that it is let to a Donna Incognita--a foreign lady."

Bulstrode, whether at his own lie or at the shock of his companion's knowledge, blushed, and his friend saw him redden. And the Duke, in whom candor was a charm, stared at his friend, half-opened his mouth, and then sat speechless. The suggestiveness of the whole affair rushed over him so rapidly that he had not time to ask himself whether he credited his suspicions or not.

"Good heavens! _Jimmy_ carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple country village!" He looked at the face of the man by his side, but Jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and showed no intention of meeting the Duke's eyes. If it were not a vulgar intrigue, what could it be? How difficult it grew to connect such a _liason_ with his friend. But as he thought on, the Duke began to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary! Why should he suppose Jimmy so unlike the rest of his set? More scrupulous, more sinless than other men--than himself? He couldn't answer his own question, but he did so think of Bulstrode, and since his late house party had believed that Jimmy cared for Mrs. Falconer. The lady at The Dials was certainly not she.

Bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in the mind of the Duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human, rather consolingly human. In their mutual intercourse the Duke had felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed.

Along by Bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be.

And although Jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes.

By the time he had reached this point in his reflections the motor had stopped at one of the side doors of the castle.

"There is, of course, some perfectly proper explanation--" the Duke decided. It's a harmless flirtation, if any flirtation at all.

Perhaps it's a beneficent bit of benevolence; at any rate it's Jimmy's own affair, and after all, he's going to _buy_ the property--perhaps he's going to marry. Why not?

Ashamed to have placed his friend, if only momentarily, in an equivocal position, he turned about as they got out of the car and put an affectionate hand on the American's shoulder.

"Oh, I expect, old man, that you've got some wonderful scheme up your sleeve! You're going to be married and fetch your bride to The Dials."

Poor Bulstrode unfortunately echoed: "_Married_!" with a world of scorn in his tone. "My poor Westboro,' after what I've lately seen and heard here--forgive me if I say that for the time at least I'm not too sharply tempted."

"Since," he said as he greeted her, "you appear to be intending to live here forever, you'll welcome me when I come back from London. I'm coming back for Christmas, but if I don't run in before you'll understand, won't you, that it is because I simply haven't dared.

Westboro' has already seen me cut across to this place."

The d.u.c.h.ess interrupted him. "Oh, in that case, I shall, of course, be obliged to move away." And to her great surprise Bulstrode quickly agreed with her.