The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode

by Marie Van Vorst

"Where would Mr. Bulstrode please to have breakfast?"

"Why, wherever it best suited, went with the house, with the day. Where, indeed, and that was more to the point, would Mrs. Falconer have it?"

"Mrs. Falconer? Why, Mr. Bulstrode didn't know then that Mrs. Falconer had gone?"

She saw by his face that he knew nothing less in the world.

Why, directly the despatch had been fetched over from the Abbey station. There had been but twenty minutes between the getting of it and her starting away. A motor had been sent with her and the maid, and Mrs. Falconer had fortunately been able to make the train; the only one, it so happened, being Christmas Day, that connected with the Dover and Calais special.

The matter-of-fact bit of news came to Bulstrode so coldly and so ruthlessly that it took some seconds for the bitter thought that she had gone because she couldn't trust him, to penetrate. Then this gave place to an effulgent hope that it might be herself she couldn't trust! But the discovery that she had left him no message of any kind, and that she was above all irrevocably gone, struck him more cruelly than had any blow in his kindly life. He could not suffer in peace before the bland creature in silks and cameos. Crises and departures, battle, murder, and sudden death, he felt the housekeeper would accept serenely should any of them chance to occur at Westboro', and above all if they were part of the sacred family history. But Mrs. Falconer and he were not Westboro's, and he wanted to be rid of his companion and to find himself alone in order to consult time tables, to find out why it had been imperative to go to Calais, with what boat for America a Christmas-Day train could possibly connect, and to turn it all over in his mind. He at first believed that there had never been any telegram and that she had only employed a polite ruse in order to facilitate her flight.

Why, at all events, couldn't she have left him a line? She might, he ruefully complained, have strained a point and wished him a Merry Christmas! As he walked to and fro in the room now supremely deserted, he began slowly to approach a certain hypothesis which as soon as he granted, he as violently discarded. But the thought was imperious: something of its kind always haunted him like a bad ghost. It could usually be dismissed, but now it was persistent. A despatch from Falconer had certainly come the night before. Another might have followed on this morning, hard upon it? To have been sent over from the Abbey on a holiday must have been a very grave message indeed; "a matter," as the old term went, "of life and death." The phrase began to repeat itself and the conviction to grow, and as he was obliged to give it admittance and to face it, and to wonder what the shock would be to her, and what the news would be to him, how it would change things, and how they would both meet it—his promenade to and fro in the room brought him up before the centre table and he looked down upon it at length with a seeing eye. Why not? why not? he was wondering. We are all essentially mortal, and lightning never had struck yet, why not in this place? And since there had been neither shame nor blame, why couldn't he face the possibility of a perfectly natural mortality? Before him on the table lay Mrs. Falconer's green scarf, and as Bulstrode lifted the soft thing he saw that underneath it lay a despatch.

Then he knew instantly that Mary Falconer had left both scarf and telegram there, and that this was her message to him. He seemed, as the word he had not yet read met him in this form, to have been waiting all his life for just this news. The road, so long in winding home, had wound home at length, and now that he believed the crisis was really reached, there was something infinitely stilling in its solemnity.

Bulstrode could not at once draw the sheet from its envelope. He lit a cigar and sat down before the fire.

He knew, as though he saw it all before his eyes, how the despatch had found her this early Christmas Day, in her room—he knew how she had read it first and borne it well—for she was a brave, strong woman—he knew that his absence had been a relief to her. He knew how she had worn her long, dark cloak and thick veil, and had gone out to travel home alone. Oh, he knew her, and as he thought of the picture she had made, and how she would begin her sad and dreadful journey, he for the first time thought of himself—of themselves. He was too human not to know that there would be a future and that they would build anew. In the new house there would be no driftwood now; nor would they ever be haunted by the sound of a bell in the dark, for with the few brave souls who sail across the seas of life they had both of them stood by the sinking ship until it put into port.