The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy BulstrodeVan Vorst, Marie
General
The Sentimental Adventures of Jimmy Bulstrode
Van Vorst, Marie
Bachelors -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction; Rich people -- Fiction
The curtains, as she drew them back, showed that the fog had for the
most part lifted, and she was just in time to see the piano and the two
musicians disappear in the mist which still tenaciously held the end of
the street in shadow--a gentleman in long evening cloak and high hat
hurried after the street people. The woman's face was tender as she
watched the distinguished figure melt into the fog, and at her last
glimpse of her friend she blew a kiss against the pane.
Bulstrode did not go back that night to Westboro'. He wired out that
Mrs. Falconer and himself would be down for dinner the following day
and he also wired for a motor to meet him some few miles from Penhaven
Abbey, as the motor did the next day.
As he speeded towards Penhaven Bulstrode leaned towards the man who
drove him.
"Stop first at the inn, will you, Bowles? I'll order tea there, and
then drive on to the station at the Hants. It's the three o'clock from
London we're to meet, you know, and we've just the time."
The Abbey and its clustering village hung on the hill side some fifteen
lovely miles away to the south of them. And Bulstrode, who was at
length obediently answering the call of it, and in response to the
fancied bell of the entire country side, religiously hastening to
whatever might reward him, settled himself back in his corner.
He saw the mist fly by him as his carriage cut out its way rapidly
through Glousceshire. The air was not too cold in spite of the
dampness, for the vapor rose high, and above and below it the
atmosphere was clear.
Mrs. Falconer herself had chosen Penhaven as a place possible to drive
over to as far as Bulstrode was concerned, and far enough away to stop
over in, for tea. Bulstrode carried in his pocket the note of it, she
had written out for him. It bore the arrivals of trains, the address
of the inn; she had herself written this, recurring to a pretty fallacy
she liked to indulge in that Jimmy forgot trains, missed them, and
forgot rendezvous, and that he never really knew. Well, at all events,
he was not likely to miss meeting this one. He had thought about
nothing else since he left her in London and prepared for her as he was
always preparing for her as one makes ready for the dearest guest at a
feast.
The fact that not only had she divinely consented to the Penhaven
scheme, but that she had herself arranged the whole thing, made the
romance of the idea first appeal to herself and then readily to
Bulstrode; the fact that she had been the creator of the little
excursion that gave them to each other for several hours before what
the castle had to offer them of surprise or dulness--did not in any
measure rob the occasion of the charm of the _imprévue_ for the lady
herself. Nor did she in the least feel that it was any the less his
because it was so essentially her own plan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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