The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode. Van Vorst Marie
Jimmy! how sweet and kind and ridiculous! It won't be fit to be seen."
"Oh, never mind that," he waved; "no one need see it. I haven't – she won't let me."
He had accepted a cup of tea from the lady's hand; he drank it off and sat down, holding the empty cup as if he held his fate.
"Tell me," she urged, "all about it. It was just like you – any other man would have found means to show charity, but you have shown unselfish goodness, and that's the rarest thing in the world. Fancy posing every day! How ghastly and how wonderful of you!"
"No," he said slowly, "it wasn't any of these things. I wanted to do it. It amused me at first, you see. But now I am a little annoyed – rather bothered to tell the truth – He met her eyes with almost an appeal in his. Mrs. Falconer was in kindness bound to help him.
"Bothered? How, pray? With what part of it? You're not chivalrous about it, are you? You're not by the way of feeling that you have compromised her by posing?"
"Oh, no, no," he hurried; "but I do feel, and I am frank to acknowledge, that it was a mistake. Because – do you know – that for some absurd reason I am afraid she has become fond of me." He blushed like a boy. Mrs. Falconer said coldly:
"Yes? Well, what of it?"
"This – " Bulstrode's voice was quiet and determined – "if I am right I shall marry her."
Mrs. Falconer had the advantage over most women of completely understanding the man with whom she dealt. She knew that to attempt to turn from its just and generous source any intent of Mr. Bulstrode would have been as futile as to attempt to turn a river from its parent fountain.
"You're quixotic, I know, but you're not demented, and you won't certainly marry this nobody – whose fancies or love-affairs have not the least importance. You won't ever see her again unless you are in love with her yourself."
Bulstrode interrupted her hastily:
"Oh, yes, I shall."
He got up and walked over to the window that looked down on Mrs. Falconer's trim little garden. A couple of iron chairs and a table stood under the trees. Early roses had begun to bloom in the beds whose outlines were thick and dark with heart's-ease. Beyond the iron rail of the high wall the distant rumble of Paris came to his ears. Mrs. Falconer's voice behind him said:
"She's a very pretty girl, and young enough to be your daughter."
"No," he said quietly, "not by many years."
As he turned about and came back to the lady the room seemed to have grown darker and she to sit in the shadow. She leaned toward him, laughing:
"So you have come to announce at last the famous marriage of yours we have so often planned together."
Bulstrode stood looking down on her.
"I feel myself responsible," he said gravely. "She was going home, and by a mistaken impulse I came in and changed her plans. She is perfectly alone and perfectly poor, and I am not going to add to her perplexities. I have no one in the world to care what I do. I have no ties and no duties."
"No," said Mrs. Falconer; "you are wonderfully free."
He said vehemently:
"I am all of a sudden wonderfully miserable."
He had been in the habit for years of suddenly leaving her without any warning, and now he put out his hand and bade her good-by, and before she could detain him had made one of many brusque exits from her presence.
On the following day – a Sunday, as from his delightful apartments in the Ritz he set forth for the studio, Bulstrode bade good-by to his bachelor existence. He knew when he should next see the Place Vendôme it would be with the eyes of an engaged man. His life hereafter was to be shared by a "total stranger." So he pathetically put it, and his sentimental yearning to share everything with a lovely woman had died a sudden death.
"There's no one in the world to care a rap what I do – really," he reflected, "and in this case I have run up against it – that's the long and the short of the matter – and I shall see it through."
As he set out for Miss Desprey's along his favorite track he remarked that the gala, festive character of Paris had entirely disappeared. The season had gone back on him by several months, and the melancholy of autumn and dreary winter cast a gloom over his boyish spirits. A very slight rain was falling. Bulstrode began to feel a twinge of rheumatism in his arm and as he irritably opened his umbrella his spirits dropped beneath it and his brisk, springy walk sagged to something resembling the gait of a middle-aged gentleman. But he urged himself into a better mood, however, at the sight of a flower-shop whose delicate wares huddled appealingly close to the window. He went in and purchased an enormous bunch of – he hesitated – there were certain flowers he could not, would not send! The selection his sentimental reserve imposed therefore consisted of sweet-peas, giroflés, and a big cluster of white roses, all very girlish and virginal. His bridal offering in his hand, he took a cab and drove to the other side of the river with lead at his good heart and, he almost fancied, a lump in his throat. He paid the coachman, whose careless spirits he envied, and slowly walked down the picturesque alley of Impasse du Maine.
"There isn't a man I know – not a man in the Somerset Club – who would be as big a fool as this!"
He had more than a mind to leave the flowers on the doorstep and run. Bulstrode would have done so now that he was face to face with his quixotic folly, but his cab had been heard as well as his steps on the walk, and the door was opened by Miss Desprey herself. The girl's colorless face, her eyes spoiled with tears, and a pretty, sad dignity, which became her well, struck her friend with the sincerity and depth of her grief, and as the good gentleman shook hands with her he realized that less than ever in the world could he add a featherweight of grief to the burden of this helpless creature.
"My dearest child!" He lifted her hand to his lips.
"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode, I'm so glad you've come, I was so afraid you wouldn't – after yesterday!"
His arms were still full of white paper, roses, and sweet-peas.
"Oh, don't give them to me, Mr. Bulstrode! Oh, why, did you bring them? Oh, dear, what will you think of me?" She had possessed herself of the flowers and with agitation and distress hastily thrust them, as if she wanted to hide them, behind the draperies of the couch. Bulstrode murmured something of whose import he was scarcely conscious. As she came tearfully back to him she let him take her hands. He felt that she clung to him. "It would have spoiled my life if you hadn't come. I would have just gone and jumped in the Seine. I may yet. Oh, you don't understand! It's been hard to be poor – I've been often hungry – but this last thing was too much. When you found me yesterday I didn't want to live any more."
Bulstrode's kind clasp warmed the cold little hands. As tenderly as he could he looked at her agitated prettiness.
"Don't talk like that" – he tried for her first name and found it. "Laura, you will let me make it all right, my dear? You will let me, won't you? You shall never know another care if I can prevent it."
She interrupted with hasty gratitude:
"Nobody else can make it all right but you."
He tried softly:
"Did I, then, make it so very wrong?"
She murmured, too overcome to trust herself to say much:
"Yes!"
She was standing close to him, and lifted her appealing face to his. Her excitement communicated itself to him; he bent toward her about to kiss her, when the door of the studio sharply opened, and before Bulstrode could do more than swiftly draw back and leave Miss Desprey free an exceedingly tall and able-bodied man entered without ceremony.
The girl gave a cry, ran from Bulstrode, and, so to speak, threw herself against the arms of the stranger, for there were none open to receive her.
"Oh, here's Mr. Bulstrode, Dan! I knew he'd come; and he'll tell you – won't you, Mr. Bulstrode? Tell him, please, that I don't care anything at all about you and you don't care anything about me… That you don't want to marry me or anything.