The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode Part 27

Here the Queen made an impatient gesture as though she shook away the impression his tone made.

"My dear Gresthaven," she exclaimed, "love means above all else happiness! One is happy with one person and miserable with another.

It's all a lottery and unless our plans miscarry I am going towards the greatest happiness in the world. But come"--She altered her tone to one of practical command--"Let us address ourselves to our flight. You have your train schedule of course? The Dover train is due here at 4:50 and it only waits for the taking on of our carriage." As she looked up at him she saw the trouble in his face, and a solicitude for her to which she was unaccustomed.

"Mon cher ami," she said quizzically, "what, may I ask, since your scruples are so great, ever led you to accept this mission....?"

"Frankly," he eagerly answered, and was honest in it, "the hope, the desire that I might...."

"Persuade a woman in love against her heart?" she smiled, and so sweetly, so convincingly, and so reasonably, he was for an instant all on her side.

"I see my folly, your Majesty."

"There's nothing but _force majeure_, Gresthaven...."

"Yes" ... he admitted reluctantly. "Let me go out now and see to our manoeuvres here." He was able to open the door which a pa.s.sing guard had unlocked un.o.bserved....

The innocent royalty let him pa.s.s, thanking him with a smile, and saw him go down the track toward the little squat station, with the guards.

Bulstrode, whose mind as he walked along was busy with train schedules, recalled, nevertheless, the Duke's letter, which he still had in his letter case, and he took it from his pocket and re-read it.

"... We are to have over the week-end a dash of royalty. Carmen-Magda, the Queen of the petty kingdom of Poltavia." (This mention of the Westboro' guests had quite escaped Bulstrode's mind in his contemplation of the last page of the Duke's note.... "We are to have a compatriot of your own, a Mrs. Jack Falconer.") And royalty being very relative to the unsn.o.bbish American, he had simply transferred the t.i.tle (with possibly a possessive p.r.o.noun before it) to the other lady!

He smiled as he reflected that the Westboro' express was destined to arrive at the Abbey without either the royal guest or Mr. James Thatcher Bulstrode. But more to the point, more instantly absorbing was the fact, that within ten minutes the slow train from London to Westboro' would arrive at Radleigh Bucks, the little station before which he now stood, and from it, undoubtedly, would descend the real Lord Gresthaven. If Jimmy needed encouragement in his self-imposed role of Master of Fate, if he needed to forget the ardor and the determination of the little Queen, if he needed to forget how, in youth, he had cordially hated those interfering people who, on horseback and in chaises, tore after flying lovers to waylay them at Gretna Green--he found his stimulus in recalling that he was "the King's friend."

"It's after all something of a distinction," he mused, entertained by the idea, "a sort of royal _n.o.blesse oblige_--and since the poor dear herself has so made me out to be, given King the precedence, how could I, in the cause of gallantry, have proceeded otherwise! It's this diabolical little brown chrysanthemum," he mentally laid the fault there. "It is evidently a telling mark. People in books are always meeting unknowns who are to wear a red flower in the right lapel of the coat".... and he had unintentionally gone over into a romance--and his _triste_ part in it was that of an unsympathetic spoiler of a romance.

As after a prolonged parley with the station officials he walked leisurely back to his carriage, his wallet grown very thin indeed and his honest heart suffering many sincere pangs at the contemplation of his conduct altogether, he argued: "She is absurdly young--she will, after a little, go back to her allegiance (he put it so), and I don't take much stock in that barbaric Gela anyway, he probably is a Hungarian band-master or a handsome ticket-agent, a plebian creature whose very remoteness from her own life has fascinated her."

Bulstrode, not quite sure just whom he was supposed to be by the train people, found himself bowed and escorted back to the carriage which had been turned and manipulated and side-tracked--reswitched and displaced, till even its own locomotive and train of cars would have been at a loss to find it. He had the sense of being a traitor, brute, imposter, and Providence all in one--which combination of qualities was sufficient to explain his embarra.s.sment and his nervous manner when he at length rejoined the Queen.

There was a slight transformation in the lady whose dressing bag had aided, evidently, a brisk toilet. Under her chin flowered out a snowy bow of tulle, and she had swathed herself in the thick veil she had worn when first boarding the train. Indicating her disguise to Bulstrode, she said with her pretty accent: "I think it well to be thus." And he agreed that it was well.

His own agitation as the other train rushed in, slowed and halted, was scarcely less than hers, indeed perhaps greater, for Carmen-Magda, pale and quiet, her handsome brown eyes fixed on the window-pane, gave no sign of life, until after a series of jerks, jolts and b.u.mps, they slowly but certainly became part of a moving train, once more undertaking its journey. Then Bulstrode, who stood determinedly in the window, filled it up on the station side, giving her no chance to look out had she wished to do so, nor did he think it needful to tell the Queen what he saw: A distinguished-looking man in rough brown clothes, and oh, the curious coincidence: a reddish-brown chrysanthemum in his b.u.t.tonhole. His Striking Resemblance was accompanied by another gentleman--short and stout with military mustaches, and swarthy complexion. The two men were gesticulating wildly together, and as the train pulled away from them, Bulstrode turned about and faced the little Queen.

She had again lifted her veil, and he thought her pallor natural; in the momentary excitement her large eyes were fastened upon him with a touching confidence that nearly made the soft-hearted imposter regret the boldest act of his history.

"Are you sure," she asked him softly, "that this is the right train?"

The coquetry of her bow of snowy tulle, the debonnaire costume of brown and green, her gray hat with its feathers, were pathetic to him--her attire contrasted sadly with her pale face. She was to him like a wilful child. Not more, he decided for the sixth time, than twenty years old. She was like a paper queen out of a child's fairy book, all but her anxious face. "She regrets," he joyfully caught at the thought to arm himself and give himself right. "Poor little thing, she already regrets."

Leaning forward, he suggested kindly:

"Can't your Majesty rest a little?"

As he spoke the hypocrite knew that in less time than it would take to settle her they would b.u.mp into the station at Westboro' Abbey.

But Carmen-Magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she was _en route_ for her plebian Gela. She leaned over and picked up one of the ill.u.s.trated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages, reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin. She held it out to Bulstrode and said:

"It's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the King?"

Bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on his face.

"Yes, it is good of the King, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much animation. It was strikingly so, he could with truth say it.

Gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the King par excellence--the King seemed to have many friends---and the poor little woman opposite--with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence in a stranger--her madder confidence in Lord Almouth Gresthaven--where were _her_ friends? Jimmy leaned to her, and Mrs. Falconer could have told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that Jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined to help in spite of themselves."

"Your Majesty has done me great honor," Bulstrode said. "You have said I was the King's friend, I should like instead to be _your_ friend.

Women need friends ... even queens. Would it be too vast a presumption if I should from henceforth feel myself to be...." He waited and dared--"Carmen-Magda's friend?"

His innocent lese-majeste, coupled with the tone he used, reached the woman in her---not to speak of his personal charm.

"Didn't I imply friends.h.i.+p when I chose you for this mission?" she said.

He winced. "Of course--but I mean from now on----"

She nodded sweetly. "_Cela va sans dire_, Gresthaven."

"Don't call me so," he interrupted, "say _friend_, to please me."

She laughed.

"You are too amusing. I will say it for you then in Poltavian. It's a sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she knighted him. It cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to ask her:

"What would you think of Gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you had arranged he should do--he should betray you--should have warned your husband and have gone so far _as to fetch the King to waylay you and stop your flight_!"

But Carmen-Magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition with a word of disbelief.

"Tell me," Bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?"

She drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis were real to her at last:

"He would be the most despicable traitor in the world."

Bulstrode pursued: "What--would you think of Gresthaven--if in order to save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter your decision--he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as surely betraying your good faith?"

Here she looked keenly through him--read him--then waited a second before intensely exclaiming:

"Gresthaven--_what have you done_?"

His heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him. He did not know Poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in their own minds.

"Oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matter _what_ reason, she had only changed her _own_ mind!"

"In five minutes," he said bravely--"your Majesty will be at Westboro'

Abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which followed us from London."

With a smothered cry the Queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to her in what part of England she was. Bulstrode had put his hand out before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open window.