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Read Ebook: The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode by Van Vorst Marie Kimball Alonzo Illustrator
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Ebook has 382 lines and 23399 words, and 8 pages
tion which would have passed entirely from his mind had it not been for his next meeting with Jimmy Bulstrode.
"I ran down here to look over these meadows," said Westboro.' "You seem yourself, in a way, to be pacing the land off!"
"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."
Bulstrode's manner and speech were rarely curt and evasive, but he seemed this time embarrassed and taken unawares. As the two men sat in the motor which waited for the Duke down the road, Westboro' fixed his glass 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.
"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 God, 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 God'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 grass until the turf is all your own, my dear Bulstrode."
"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.
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.
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."
"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 Duchess 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.
"I should think it wise--not of course in the least knowing why you originally came."
She looked at him rather quizzically.
"You mean to say then that you don't really know?"
"Oh,"--he was truthful--"I have rather an idea, and I hope a more or less true one."
But the lady did not confess or in anywise help him. He went on to say:
"Your love for the castle couldn't, of course, long continue to keep you mewed up here; and you'll be shortly discovered. As far as your own interests are concerned it will be rather better to obtain the divorce as soon as possible."
"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she interposed, "don't misread me."
He nodded sagely. "On the contrary, I am translating you from sight, my dear Duchess. And you are decidedly in your right regarding the Duke."
She was so at his mercy that she hardly moved her lips, watching his face. And as Bulstrode lit the cigarette she permitted him, and took his seat before the tea things which she had set at his elbow, he went on to make out her case for her.
But the Duchess had dropped her tongs; they fell ringing on the hard-wood floor. She raised a scarlet face to him.
"No," he said quietly, "it's a plain truth. Westboro' has told me everything. I must think that he has done so. The man of me naturally condones him, and the friend in me is inclined to be lenient. But the justice and right, my dear Duchess, are all on your side."
"Oh, justice and right!" she dismissed, "only criminals need such words."
Bulstrode said cooly: "But Westboro' has been a criminal!"
"If he were," emphasized the Duchess, "didn't I forgive him?"
"Of course, you did, my dear," her friend agreed warmly, "how wonderfully, how beautifully, everyone knows. And he is all the more, therefore, dreadfully to be blamed."
She said passionately: "What do you mean, Mr. Bulstrode? How--why do you speak to me like this?"
Her extraordinary guest drank his tea with singular peace of mind.
"I think he is dreadfully to be blamed."
"But why should you tell it to me?"
"Why not?" he returned, his charming eyes on hers with the greatest tribute of affection and sympathy--"I've known you for years, I'm fond of you, you've been horribly wronged, and I'm going to see that things are made right for you. I've been very blind. I have longed for a reconciliation, I admit, with this husband who, poor stuff as he is, loves you still. But I see what a sentimental ass I've been, and how right you are."
She put her hand to her throat as if the soft lace suffocated her; she had grown very pale indeed.
"What," she gasped, "do you know of my plans and my intentions, Mr. Bulstrode? I have not told them to you."
"But I've been able to guess them," he replied.
"You've dared to, then?" she flashed.
"Oh, don't blame me," he returned. "Seeing you as I have all the while, I've been forced to make out something--to attach some reason to your living in this isolation. You've wanted, not unnaturally and very cleverly, I acknowledge, to see what's been going on at Westboro', what the Duke's been up to."
Her voice was suffocated as she said:
"Oh, stop, please! Whatever has come to you, Mr. Bulstrode, I don't know, or why you dare to speak to me as you do."
Seeing her agitation he said smoothly: "My dear child, you're so right in everything you've done, and of course I shall stand by you."
She made a dismissing gesture. "Oh, I don't need you, I don't want you."
He smiled benignly on her. "But I'm here, and I'm going to see you through."
"See me through what?"
"Through your divorce," he said practically.
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