The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode. Van Vorst Marie
took the flush of health. Remaining a little bent over, his eyes on his feet clad in Bulstrode's shoes, he said:
"I'm an Englishman. My family is everything that's decent and all that, you know, and proud. We've first-rate traditions. I'm a younger son, and I've always been a thorn in the family's side. I've been a sort of vagabond from the first, but never as bad as they thought or believed."
He paused. His recital was painful to him. Bulstrode waited, then knocking off the ash from his cigar, urged:
"Tell me about it, tell me frankly; it will, you see, be a relief. We can do better that way – if I know."
The stranger looked up at him quickly, then leaning forward in his chair, talked as it were to the carpet, and rapidly:
"It's just a year ago. I'd been going it rather hard and got into trouble more or less – lost at cards and the races, and been running up a lot of bills. My father was awfully down on me. I'd gone home for the holidays and had a talk with my father and asked him to pay up for me just this once more. He refused, and we got very angry, both of us, and separated in a rage. The house was full of people – a Christmas ball and a tree. My father had, so it happened, quite a lot of money in the house. I knew where it was – I had seen him count it and put it away. That night for some reason the whole thing sickened me, in the mess I was in, and I left and went up to London without even saying good-by. In the course of the week my brother came and found me drunk in my rooms. It seems that the money had been taken from my father's safe, and they accused me."
"But," interrupted Bulstrode, eagerly, "it was a simple thing to exculpate yourself."
Ignoring his remark, the other continued: "I have never seen my father since that night."
No amount of former deception can persuade a man that he is a lame judge of character. The young Englishman's emaciated face, where eyes spoiled by dissipation looked out at his companion, was to this impulsive reader of humanity a good face. Bulstrode, however, saw what he wanted to see in most people. Given a chance to study them, or rather further to know them intimately, he might indeed have ended by finding in some cases a few of the imagined qualities. Here misery was evident, degradation as well, timidity, and hesitation, – but honesty? Bulstrode fancied that its characters were not effaced, and he helped the recital:
"Since you so left your people?"
"The steady go down!" acknowledged the other. "I worked my passage to the States on a liner – I stoked…"
"Any chap," encouraged the gentleman, "who can do that can pull himself, I should say, out of a worse hole."
"There's scarcely a bad habit I haven't had down in the hole with me," confessed the other, "and they've held me there."
They both remained for a few seconds without speaking, and the host's eyes wandered to where, over his mantel-shelf, in a great gold frame was the portrait of a lady done by Baker. A quaint young lady in her early teens, with bare arms and frilled frock. She had Bulstrode's eyes. By her side was the black muzzle of a great hound, on whose head the little hand rested. Under the picture, from a silver bowl of roses, came a fragrance that filled the room, and, close by stood a photograph of another lady, very modern, very mocking, and very lovely.
Bulstrode, delicately drawing inferences from the influences in his life, and, if not consciously grateful, reflecting them charmingly, broke the silence:
"You must have formed some plan or other in your mind when you came to my door? What, in the event of your being received, did you intend to ask me to do?"
The stranger lifted his head and his response was irrelevant: "It seems a hundred years since I stood there in that storm and your man pulled me in. I haven't seen a place like this for long, not the inside of decent houses. When I left the ship I managed to get down with a chap as far as Florida, where he had an orange-plantation, but the venture fell through. I fancy the rest is as well forgotten. When I came in here to-night I intended to ask you for a Christmas gift of money, and I should have gone out and drunk myself to hell."
"You spoke" – Bulstrode fetched him back – "of your father and your brother; was there no one else?"
The younger man looked up without reply.
"There has been, then, no more kindly influence in your life – no sister – no woman?"
Bulstrode brought out the words; in his judgment they meant so very much. He saw a change cross the other's face.
"I fancy there are not many men who haven't had a woman in their lives for good or bad," he said, with a short laugh.
"Well," urged the gentleman, gently, "and for what was this woman?"
As if he repelled the insistence, the young fellow stammered:
"I say, this putting a fellow on the rack – "
But Bulstrode leaned forward in his chair and rested his hand on his companion's knee and pleaded:
"Speak out frankly – frankly – I believe I shall understand; it will free your heart to speak. This influence which to a man should be the best – the best – what was it to you?" Bulstrode sat back and waited, and the other man seemed quite lost in melancholy meditations for some few seconds. Then Bulstrode put it: "For a young man, no matter how wild, to leave his home under the misapprehension you claim: – for him to make no effort to reinstate himself: with no attempt at justice: for him to become a wanderer – there must be an extraordinary reason, almost an improbable one – "
"I don't ask you to hear," said the vagrant, quickly.
"I wish to do so. It would have been a simple matter to exculpate yourself – you had not the funds in your possession, had never had them. You took no means to clear yourself?"
"None."
Bulstrode looked hard at the face his care had revealed to him: the deep eyes, the neck, chin, the sensitive mouth – there was a certain distinction about him in his borrowed clothes.
"Where is the woman now?"
"She married my brother – she is Lady Waring – my name," tardily introduced the stranger, "is Cecil Waring."
Bulstrode bowed. "Tell me something of her, in a word – in a word."
"Well, she is always clever," said the young man, slowly, "always very beautiful, and then very poor."
"Yes," nodded Bulstrode.
"She is like the rest of us – one of a fast wild set – a – "
"A gambler?" Bulstrode helped the description.
"She played," acknowledged the young man, "as the rest do – bridge."
"Were you engaged to her, Waring?"
"Yes," he slowly acknowledged, as if each word hurt him.
"And did she believe you guilty?"
"I think," said the other, with an inscrutable expression, "she could not have done so."
"But she let you go under suspicion?"
"Yes."
"Without a word of good faith, of comfort?"
"Yes."
"Did she know of your embarrassments?"
"Too well."
"You tell me she was poor and – possibly she had embarrassments of her own?"
"Possibly."
Bulstrode came over to him.
"Was she at the Christmas ball that night?"
The young man rose as well, his eyes on his questioner's; the color had all left his face – he appeared fascinated – then he shook himself and unexpectedly laughed.
"No," he said; "oh no."
The older man bowed his head and replied, quite inaptly:
"I understand!"
He took a turn across the room.
The few steps brought him in front of the mantel and the photograph of the modern lady in her furs and close hat. He stood and met